Gina Choong - Kitchen Capers

Gina Choong With a passion for cooking that literally knows no bounds, ex‐IT Manager Gina Choong has published her recipes in magazines, cookbooks, websites, taught classes and even contributed to the Overseas Singaporeans Unit of the Prime Minister’s Office. Gina’s fear of losing her family’s culinary identity compelled her to reclaim the heritage of her native Hakka dishes ‐ many recipes were already lost on the latest generation of home chefs. What started as a hobby has become a fledgling home‐cooking empire – both online and in‐
store. Gina used to teach at Kitchen Culture’s Food and Travel magazine’s regular cooking workshops, as well as acting as a ministry to troubled youths. She started an online cooking forum called "Kitchen Capers" to bring together a community of home chefs from Singapore, Malaysia and as far afield as Sweden, Canada, Australia and the United States. In March 2006, Gina Choong joined Miles Media, then the publisher for Kitchen Culture’s Food and Travel magazine and published several recipes for the magazine. In July 2006, she participated in the Singapore Food Festival 2006 and conducted a workshop “Culinary Heritage Series : Hakka Cuisine” In January 2007, Gina was awarded and nominated as Forum Chef of the month in January 2007 at Chef2Chef.Net, an online culinary forum hosted in USA. Read archived text: http://www.allamericanspeakers.com/speakers/Gina‐Choong/9619 In January 2008, she set‐up an online store to sell bakeware. Just three months later, a local magazine listed her online store as one the Top 45 e‐tailers in the land. And taught several cooking and baking courses at Chef’s Secrets Cooking Studio for 18 months. By October, she had been invited by Ate Media Publishing to submit a dish that reminds overseas people of “home”, or something that is quintessentially “Singaporean”. Together with the Ministry of Communications, Information and the Arts, she contributed to a food‐themed 18 week diary / planner that was distributed to 10,000 ‘locals’ abroad. (Check out the full story and Gina's Recipe.) In May 2009, she opened her first retail outlet at Kallang Bahru, selling bakeware and ingredients. She still teaches regular classes on the finer points of cooking, baking and cake decoration to budding cooks of all ages. Gina’s Hakka recipes have been published in a cookbook by Sally Hammond, titled Bamboo : A journey with Chinese food. You can find out more here When she’s not keeping the spirit of Hakka cooking alive, Gina is busy looking after her family members ‐ all of whom have found a new appreciation for a cuisine that is such an integral part of their culture.