A Taste of Finland with Sara La Fountain in KL, Malaysia

Celebrity chef Sara La Fountain is in KL and I got to attend her cooking demo at The Royale Chulan Hotel Kuala Lumpur today, thanks to Asian Food Channel and American Express! :)

Isn't she gorgeous?

Not only is she gorgeous, this American-Finnish sensation can cook too! Sara trained at The Culinary Institute of America, the world-renowned culinary school in New York and is currently starring as one of the hosts on New Scandinavian Cooking airing on the Asian Food Channel. Sara is also a fashion model, and in Finland where she is based, she is a popular media personality and has her own cooking show, Avec Sara. She has also published several books and her first cookbook, A la Sara, earned her the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Award in the "Best First Cookbook" category. After four years of hard work, she has launched her second cookbook titled Passion for Food, which focuses on food that is easy to prepare and influenced by the different seasons in Finland.

Talented and gorgeous!

Live life to the fullest and enjoy it..


Despite being a very slim chef, Sara loves trying new food - food is where Sara's passion lies. She hopes to inspire people at home to cook and enjoy food. Her grandmother and mother inspired her love of food, she recalls that at the tender age of 4, one of her favorite food was oysters. Sara tells us that she has very good memories with food and through her show, hope to instil the same feeling for her viewers.

During the cooking demo, Sara showed us how to make 3 simple yet delicious dishes. The first one is a goat's cheese salad with beetroot, dark sweet bread croutons, marinated red onions and blueberry-balsamic vinaigrette, or in short "Sara's Finnish Forest".  Blueberries happen to be one of her top 3 favorite Finnish ingredients - other two being mushrooms (chanterelles in particular) and crayfish (she tells us to visit Finland in August, that's when they throw crayfish parties!). An essential herb for Finnish cooking is dill.

Sara is meticulous when it comes to plating of her dishes, with girly and feminine twists. It is certainly evident in her beautiful plates of food. And she brought along with her the dark rye bread all the way from Finland to complete this dish!

Jovial Sara :)

Putting on the marinated red onions

Posing with the finished dish

Sara's Finnish Forest - isn't it pretty?

Not to mention delicious too. 

For Sara, the five most important components in food is the flavour, idea, love (sharing with your friends and family), fun and easy to prepare. Next, she shared with us a dish that she love to eat during summer. She uses seasonal ingredients such as peas, potato and radish for this dish. A simple, yet nicely executed dish - fried fish with summer potato vegetable salad. 

The salmon roe, sugar snap peas and radish adds colour to the dish!

Fried fish with summer potato vegetable salad

Sara shares stories about her cookbook, Passion for Food, with us. She styles and takes her own photos for the cookbook!

Who doesn't love milkshakes and popcorn!  Unfortunately this cookbook is not available in English yet.

Paparazzi!

Lastly, Sara prepared a summer pavlova with passionfruit cream served with strawberries and pistachio - definitely my favorite dish of the day :)

Sara loves music and is currently taking DJ lessons. She hopes to do disco cooking in the future, that sounds so FUN!

Sara is so photogenic, don't you agree?

Delicious dessert

Lucky me got to take a photo with celebrity chef, Sara La Fountain! :)

Will be sharing the recipes for the three dishes soon! Sara will be holding a sit-down dinner with cooking demo tomorrow in The Royale Chulan KL, more details here. 

Location: Bunga Emas, The Royale Chulan Kuala Lumpur, 5 Jalan Conlay, 50450 Kuala Lumpur.

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