KUALA LUMPUR, March 19 -- When I first tried my hand at food writing, my debut piece was about porridge.

It was a personal essay on how I came to love something I had once hated, and it was moderately well-received by friends and family.

Buoyed by that blockbuster success, I stuck to the Hollywood sequel formula: the same story, just with a different lead.

This time, the central character was tofu, a food I had a hate-hate relationship with growing up.

"Bland," "boring," and "uninspired" were words I had once used to describe tofu, but this time they were used to describe my writing. "Derivative and overly prosaic" was another banger.

Oh, sorry, am I doing it again?

Anyway, I buried it with the tatters of my young and fragile ego, b...