Cooking Musician

Cooking Musician Exploring the worlds of music and food, creating beautiful shared moments and connecting people across borders, cultures and languages.

19/06/2026

I am often too busy to go see my own city… so having friends stay is my chance to explore!

At the moment the sweetest singer-songwriter, Finn Hansbury is staying with me- so get ready for lots of his music; I think his song writing, lyrics and guitar playing are gorgeous!

Finn is from the same island I’m from and his mum was a high school friend so I’ve known him forever- his mum was one of the musicians I most looked up to when I was young as well.

I decided to make some Taiwanese 3 cup mushrooms to try, he admits he doesn’t have much experience with Asian food- the East coast, especially Boston and north, aren’t the best places for this. But he’s about to move to LA for his career (so if you’re out there, be sure to catch a gig if he’s playing somewhere!) and we talked a lot about getting to explore more of this kind of food.

We have more adventures coming so until then, Happy Cooking, friends!
•
•
•

18/06/2026

Beef cheeks in massaman curry…

Another busy week with too much on and no time to edit… so here is a quick look at a curry I made with leftover pho stock beef cheeks!

After making pho a few days ago, I had quite a lot of pho flavoured beef cheeks so I made a quick video about my massaman curry which I made to use up the meat; this is a Muslim style curry from southern Thailand. Normally this is made with beef or chicken and lots of warming spices like cumin and coriander.

I was very happy to have some beautiful authentic curry paste- I do make my own, but my friend Anne from , was in Thailand and brought back some gorgeous paste made by a friend of hers. ❤️ One day I really want to tag along on one of these trips!!

A good curry paste and some meat and veg with some jasmine rice and it’s a quick easy mid week dinner.

Happy cooking friends!
•
•
•

14/06/2026

I’m getting ready for a long summer with the family in Taipei, one of my favourite places on earth, and was listening to a jam session from last summer thanks to Jim@Geddes and the TPO Big Band

TeacheRay was about 19 the first time I heard him and I was already blown away by his command of jazz language- and now he’s put out a great first album which I’m really enjoying! Big congratulations , beautiful playing as always!

Creation is all about experiments, failing, doing it again anyway, studying, looking for new ideas... and finding the people that let you mess up, try again, encourage you to keep going and celebrate when you get an great idea. So thanks Taipei friends, I’m really looking forward to seeing you soon and getting more inspiration!

Happy cooking, friends!
•
•
•

12/06/2026

Phô broth from scratch is GOLD!!

So my friend gave me a box of Wagyu cross breed bones from the cattle he raises (thank you Kenichi!!) and so I had to make something truly special…

Sometimes I make Seollungtang, sometimes niu rou mian, but this time I really wanted phô… so I stayed up all night (well, I slept on the couch so I could check the stock every hour or so) and made an epic version of my favourite phô broth.

It is flavoured with charred shallots, onions, ginger, and garlic, fresh green onions, star anise, cinnamon, fennel, black cardamom, peppercorns, rock sugar and plenty of fish sauce.

To make a bowl of phô, you need rice noodles (I bought mine- although you can make your own if you have an oven steamer, I’ve done it and it’s time consuming but not hard), culantro or cilantro, Thai basil, bean sprouts, sriracha (if you’re interested in home fermentation, you can also make this homemade and it’s amazing!!), fish sauce, lime juice and I did add some hoisin sauce but forgot to film that.

Thinly sliced raw beef is typical but I’ll use that next time- and I just love the slow cooked tendons but haven’t tried making those. Anyone have advice on that?

Happy cooking friends!
•
•
•

10/06/2026

We had a fantastic weekend away in London; with our jobs as musicians, if we say we’ll spend a weekend together, honestly it often only works if we book time out of Luxembourg- otherwise we’ll take on classes/concerts/rehearsals anytime we are around to do it 😅

So we had some great meals:
- Dishoom is one of our favourites for breakfast, particularly their endless chai and the spicy chicken liver bowl with egg on top!
- Just for info, we had lunch at Wahaca which has sadly gone way downhill in our opinion 😖 but shout out to Billy, the manager in Covent Garden who was just the best!!
- The Fat Badger in Notting Hill is a newer restaurant which is nearly unmarked and needs to be booked in advance (£69 see menu for Sunday lunch, absolutely stellar!) and has just one set meal each day- all locally sourced. One of the best British meals I’ve ever had and a very cool space!
- Soom was a brilliant Korean restaurant in SoHo, definitely one of the best I’ve been to in Europe- but I didn’t get very good shots of the food.
- Ledya was the Turkish breakfast place at our hotel and a perfect spot to catch up with an old friend before our flight home

Apart from eating, we walked 24,000 steps from City to Shoreditch and explored that area- it’s very different to when we lived in London 30 years ago!- and also the Spitalfields Market, saw the most mad and hilarious show, Titanique- a comedy retelling of the Titanic movie starring a Celine Dion look-a-like 😅 and then, the next day, biked from one end of the city to the other. Finally, we went to St Paul’s Cathedral for a free organ recital, a lovely way to sit and enjoy the incredible cathedral dome!

What are your favourite things to do in London? I need advice for next time!

Happy travels, friends!
•
•
•

07/06/2026

Today’s bento lunch box:

Rice with aonori seaweed
Padrón peppers with shaokao seasoning
Mixed mushrooms baked in parchment with citrus miso butter and saké
Salt cured entrecôte with cured garlic miso butter

I love making bento, but it’s been ages since I did it! Anyone else a bento fan?

Happy Cooking, friends!
•
•
•

03/06/2026

Recipes inventions…

More often than not, we are just tweaking other people’s ideas when making recipes- and this fried cheese definitely came out of multiple recipes I’ve made and tasted over the years… but I’ve never had anything exactly like it before!

I’m very happy with how it turned out although two was plenty for me 😅 Having it kushiage style (fried and on a stick) worked really well- and I preferred the scamorza to the mozzarella as well. it definitely needed a sauce to balance the flavour and texture- the mango habanero bbq suace added some sweet and heat plus a little vinegar kick to complement it really well.

Any other ideas for what to dip these in?

Happy cooking, friends!
•
•
•

02/06/2026

I’ve been running around so much I couldn’t make any new recipe videos, but here is a quick look at one of my favourite summer meals…

Grilled entrecôte (get the heat even higher than I did for best results), roasted red peppers, sprouting broccoli with garlic, lemon and olive oil dressing and some baked potatoes… sitting in the garden with good weather and good friends, it can’t be beaten!

I hope you are all enjoying some nice moments and good weather where you are…

Happy Cooking, friends!
•
•
•

30/05/2026

This was a travel week for me so I was trying to quickly clean out the fridge before I left…

After I saw what really needed to be used (prawns, tomatoes and feta), I remembered a recipe I used to make in high school for a Greek style pasta; it’s been so long I didn’t remember exactly what was in that one from all those years ago, but I made a basic tomato sauce with garlic, then added the prawns and herbs (they are really thriving in the garden just now!) and finally the feta.

What would you have made?

Happy cooking friends!
•
•
•

Holiday week hijinks…1: Brussels Jazz Festival2: Hanging with 3: Brussels bar with and 4: walking in Amsterdam5: Epic...
29/05/2026

Holiday week hijinks…

1: Brussels Jazz Festival
2: Hanging with
3: Brussels bar with and
4: walking in Amsterdam
5: Epic concert in Haarlem
6: Jordan John (from ToP) taking over the bar
7: Great hang with Dave Richards, trumpet of ToP thanks to our mutual friend
8: post concert fun with
9: drinking cremant on the flight to Dublin
10: Lots of Dublin walking… including IMMA (modern art museum), Kilmanheim Gaol, Dublin Castle, etc
11: Korean fried chicken and fantastic cocktails
12: Sea salt and maple syrup matcha latte at Powerscourt
13: Best ice cream
14: brown bread and Di**le sea salt cone (missing 2nd cone- Di**le gin and jasmine green tea)

Best restaurant of the vacation!! 15: fried aubergines with whipped tofu and the best lumpia ever with green chilies filled with pork and smoked Toonsbridge cheese
16: braised oxtail with greens and fermented shrimp paste, stir fried cabbage and garlic rice
17: Sisig (fried pigs head) with egg yolk
18: Street music

Happy travels friends!
•
•
•

Address

台北市士林區中山北路五段505巷42弄1號
Taipei
111

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Cooking Musician posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category