Voices

Exploring Asian cuisine

By Jaci Hicken

Oct 6, 2025

FOR OUR HOME JOURNALIST JACI HICKEN, COOKBOOKS ARE ONE OF TWO THINGS: THOSE WITH NO PICTURES, WRITTEN BACK IN THE DAY, OR FULL OF PRETTY PICTURES THAT ARE NEVER GOING TO BE COOKED.

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Cookbook’s let you peer into someone else’s kitchen, into their world of food.

That is what Vincent Lim’s The Wolf of Wok Street - Restaurant quality Asian food in 80 recipes, is to me, a step inside Lim’s world of food, and the story of his family.

Peering into his kitchen, which is unlike my own, thinking, ‘if I cook that for dinner, will it taste like Chinese?’

Asian cooking is way out of my comfort zone.

I’d much rather go to a good Chinese (or any type of Asian) restaurant and let someone else do the cooking.

There are recipes in The Wolf of Wok Street that I find myself ordering every time I’m at a dumpling place.

So, under the guidance of Lim, I’m embarking on a culinary adventure tonight, trying a couple of recipes for dinner.

First up was Prawn Cheung Fun (page 49).

It could have been my lack of knowledge on how to make rice noodles, it could have been the regional supermarket only had one type of rice flour, it could have been the consistency of the batter was way runnier than expected.

But most likely, it was a learning experience, stepping out of my comfort zone, and the Prawn Cheung Fun didn’t turn out as I imagined or remembered.

Once I had a boyfriend whose favourite thing to eat was chicken sweet corn soup, and even though at the time of our rendezvous, cooking was not something I had become passionate about, somehow, I’d already known how to make this soup at home by adding creamed corn and a little starch to thicken it.

The boyfriend is now a different person and using Lim’s recipe for Chicken Sweet Corn Soup (page 66), this favourite soup is perfect every time.

The next part of dinner to tackle is (Easy) char siu pork (page 179), easy because you don’t need an oven to cook it.

Not needing an oven meant standing in front of the frypan, turning the meat occasionally to prevent sticking (or, heaven forbid, burning) for 20 minutes.

But it was worth it, as cooking char siu has become a go-to dish with a little white rice and the recommended slices of fresh cucumber.

The leftovers are going into tomorrow night's Special Fried Rice (page 94), which will work if I follow the instructions.