fave five #8: kaylin eu
featuring rice cooker hacks
there are quite a few new subscribers here, so before we dive in, i just want to say hello and welcome to darn good! i’m so happy you found this little corner of the internet. every tuesday a new recipe will hit your inbox, with a reading round-up scattered in every so often and a fave five once a month. without further ado, please enjoy this week’s fave five and see you next week with a new recipe!
this week’s fave five comes to us from kaylin eu, founder and chef of berlin’s brilliant malaysian and singaporean kopitiam, ma-makan. kaylin and i first met many years ago, when i wrote about what was then her malaysian brunch pop-up and has since become her brick and mortar restaurant.
i’ve been a fan of her food since the first taste and even used her delicious homemade kaya in one of my first, and most popular, recipes published here on darn good (linked below). pro tip if you live in berlin: ma-makan sometimes slings the kaya-stuffed hong kong-style french toast as a weekend special, but even if you can’t get there on the weekend, her restaurant is really worth the visit, every time.
kaylin eu’s fave five
1. The smell of coconut rice cooking—Every morning we cook coconut rice at the restaurant. When the steam comes out of the rice cooker, it’s always a moment of comfort. It's such a heavenly smell, I think it will never get old.
2. Grilled corn at Treptower Park—I moved into the area around Treptower Park a couple of years ago, but only this year discovered and started to enjoy the little walk along the river and through the park. I mostly go to grab a grilled corn on the cob though, making sure to ask for extra butter! I love this sweet, salty, delicious snack.
3. Rice cooker hacks—I am a super lazy cook at home these days since opening the restaurant. I always want to cook the easiest meals for myself. I started to put everything in the rice cooker—inspired by IG reels, of course. Lately I've been putting in dried beancurd, sweet potatoes and dried scallops, then just topping it all with a fried egg and some kind of chilli condiment. So easy, so good.
4. Mambow—I recently went on a short trip to London, mostly just to enjoy some food. There were a few restaurants I'd been meaning to check out, but the one that stood out to me the most was a Malaysian restaurant called Mambow. It was opened late last year by chef Abby Lee. The flavours were super punchy, zingy and just so delicious! There was this squid Kerabu salad that was so spicy, but was also my favourite; I love sweet-sour-spicy dishes. The vibe of the place was very cute as well!
5. My new tank top!—A few friends have been running this amazing project, selling t-shirts and tank tops to raise money for the Berlin Legal Fund. All proceeds from the sales of these hand printed tops go directly to this fund, which helps pay legal fees of those people who have been protesting and showing solidarity with Palestine and therefore have been charged with hate speech, wrongfully framed and/or been assaulted. I am in awe of the amount of time and effort they have put into hand printing all of these t-shirts and how they’ve raised tens of thousands of euros.
It took me a while to bite the bullet and order a rice cooker but honestly I haven't looked back. Not only does it cook perfect rice every single time with minimal clean-up required but I also love that you can cook entire dishes in a rice cooker. My current favourite are various Japanese dishes where everything is assembled straight in a Donabe or rice cooker and you then simply let the heat and some time do the magic - e.g. in Enoki Gohan, aka mushroom rice!