It all started with cancelled travel plans. I was meant to be in Hong Kong to give a keynote speech about Southeast Asian Street Food and Cultural Identity. The coronavirus pandemic put paid to that, at least for the foreseeable future.
Then my weekly Char Kway Teow pop-up stall got cancelled indefinitely — again, courtesy of Covid-19.
I figured, what better time than for me to go back to what I know best, which was live cooking videos? This was something I’d done on various platforms and in various iterations since the early days of live video streaming some 8 years ago.
Within a couple of weeks of the launch of my Lockdown Malaysian Cook-Along series on Facebook, my fellow-Malaysian chef, TV host and award winning cookbook author Norman Musa sent me a message suggesting we collaborate.
Norman as well as my friend Zaleha Olpin of MasterChef UK fame (and author of the brilliantly-titled “My Rendang Isn’t Crispy”) had similarly had their food promotional travel plans thrown for a loop.
In spite of that, they were both keeping busy by engaging their social media audiences with their videos and recipes.
