"When I cook healthy, no one even thinks of them as health food, for not only do I use whole grains and vegetables, I also cook up umami-rich ingredients such as artichokes, crabmeat, mushrooms, salmon, seaweed… even pork, lamb and beef.

Contrary to popular misconceptions, all these foods are healthy, depending on the cut you use, and the method of cooking.

I will share some of my favourite dishes in this space over the coming weeks.

None of the recipes is difficult; all of them appeal to our Asian tastes and many have become firm family favourites, despite their healthy label!
While the changes in eating have been slow in my family, they have been certain. Today, we eat meals that are definitely more healthy than a few years ago.

A few principles emerge when cooking for health.

We would poach or steam rather than fry, we would choose the fillets of meat, which are leaner, more tender but still tasty. We would use spices for they add interest to the palate. We skim broths, for less fat and no sacrifice of taste.

These are not difficult changes. These are changes we can live with… for life."

Sylvia Tan is a popular Singapore food writer with seven cookbooks to her name. The latest, Taste is a compilation of her recipes culled from her low fat Asian cooking column, Eat to Live, first published in the Sunday Times.

She also writes on Singapore’s culinary heritage and Singapore Heritage Food is possibly a new food classic. The book describes the multicultural nature of Singapore food, documents the dishes particular to Singapore and the various culinary influences at play over the years.

In this respect, she has given lectures, workshops and cooking demonstrations on the subject and in particular on nonya cooking.
Before her full-time involvement in food writing, she was a newspaper journalist for more than 20 years.