Book: Plusixfive - A Singaporean Supper Club Cookbook

By Goz Lee and Friends

I haven't met Goz Lee, although the Singaporean private-equity-fund lawyer has been living in Hong Kong for about a year. Through his book, Plusixfive, however, I feel I know a bit about him, at least in the aspect that interests me most - his food.

Lee lived in London, but, like many expats, found himself homesick for the food of his native country. He thought he'd found the answer when he found "Singapore fried noodles" on the menu of a London Chinatown restaurant, but it bore no resemblance to anything he'd eat back home. That, and other less than perfect examples of dishes passed off as Singaporean in the British capital (laksa with good broth but the wrong noodles, for example) led him to start cooking his own food.

He began throwing dinner parties for friends, which morphed into a supper club (named after Singapore's country code telephone prefix); paying guests began eating at Lee's home. It was a success and the number of covers grew from eight to 18 (the most he could fit into his flat) and led to catering gigs (including one attended by the Singaporean high commissioner to London) and articles about the supper club and its founder in international publications. Eventually, when Lee decided to move to Hong Kong to expand the business, he groomed others to take over from him, although the business closed last year. And, of course, he (and some friends) wrote a book.

Plusixfive is an amusing cookbook, with personal anecdotes about many of the recipes and brief autobiographies about Lee and his friends, and even some of their relatives. As for the recipes, there's everything you'd expect from a Singaporean cookbook: otak otak (spicy fish paste wrapped in banana leaf), fried carrot cake, bak kut teh, Hainanese chicken rice, beef rendang, Assam fish-head curry, char kway teow, laksa and nasi lemak. There are also a few dishes that you wouldn't expect to find in the Lion City, including chicken meatball and egg yolk with tare sauce (by Yardbird chef Matt Abergel), mentaiko spaghetti and wagyu beef tongue with black garlic and courgette.