Hot spring getaway in the summer

Seems like it’s a silly idea to go on a hot spring holiday in the middle of summer when it’s 30-degree plus out there in Taiwan, but it is what it is - let's just say it's not exactly my idea. The hot spring resort town of Beitou turned out to be much closer to the city than I thought – in fact technically it’s still within Taipei city limit and is easily reachable by MRT, their metro train system. While many opted for a day trip to Beitou from Taipei, we decided to stay there on our first night of our vacation at one of the newer resort hotels built in the mountains, with a car arranged as we landed in late morning which took us into Beitou right on time for check-in at the resort.

Practicing what they preach

"Farm-to-table", "Locally sourced fresh ingredients", "100% Homemade"... those were big, attractive slogans that many restaurants use to promote their food these days, but Linguini Fini is one of the few in town that truly practice what they are preaching day in, day out with much success commercially.

Hoshino Resort Aomori-ya

We swung by three onsen regions in our trip to the northeastern Japan in late March, and Komaki Onsen (古牧溫泉) in Aomori is the first. After spending a night in Aomori City, we took a 2-hour bus ride to Hoshino Resort Aomori-ya resort not far away from the small town of Mikawa.

Cooking at home: Christmas stollen

Well, it is probably too late for this recipe to be any useful for this Christmas season, but I found this quite easy to make and could probably turn this into a normal bread or fruit cake by cutting down on sugar content. Not a lot of kneading required and so didn't leave my kitchen counter-top with gluey, messy leftover dough to clean up.

I was inspired by my friend Wilson in his recent article in the WOM Guide featuring our chef friend Gregoire (of the Four Seasons Hong Kong) for a cooking demonstration of this traditional German Christmas bread - it's similar to the Italian Panettone or English Christmas pudding as they all involve raisins and some kind of winter spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves etc), but I love the firmer texture and less sweet taste of a Stollen, far better than the other Christmas pastries.

Anyway, unfortunately Wilson's article didn't include a recipe nor ingredient list, so I went around found a couple easier ones on Google which I used as reference, and basically just improvised along the way to suit my own taste and preference. It yielded a big loaf good enough to serve 6-8 people.