Donal Skehan steps out of his comfort zone... and into a Singaporean supper club.

The supper club concept has been around for years, in many different forms across the world. I remember my parents and family running one when I was growing up; they took it in turns to cook a meal based around a strange or exotic ingredient. The aim is to pair good food with good company, which for me is what cooking is all about.

In the last few years, thanks to online food discussion and social networking, supperclubs have surged in popularity, with  people from all walks of life devising menus and inviting the general public into their homes for a one-off night of food and socialising. In Ireland there are quite a few official supper clubs. The lovely Lilly Higgins runs hers in Dublin on a monthly basis. Gill Hegarty in the Ballymaloe Cookery School runs another. Despite a few failed attempts to make Lilly's in Dublin, I finally lost my supperclub virginity on Sunday night in London. I was over on a very quick visit to appear on ITV's This Morning, leaving me with just enough time to fit in a dinner with a fellow Irish food blogger, Niamh Shields (author of Comfort and Spice, out this September). She suggested via Twitter that I join her at a brand new supperclub, which had just started up in the last few months. It was daunting enough meeting someone I only knew through Twitter, but this time I was also in the company of complete strangers, in a random flat, in a city I don't know!

Straight off the plane in London, I met Niamh for the first time. We arrived in Flat 6 and were told to leave our shoes at the door, a reminder that we were in fact in someone's home rather than in a restaurant. We were one of the first to arrive for the five-course meal, but the other guests soon arrived! The company was as interesting as the food being served out of the tiny kitchen. Our host, Goz had prepared a mountain of Singaporean goodies for the Singapore National Day, and had encouraged us all to wear red in honour of the celebration.

The whole experience was a real eye opener, something that took us out of our comfort zone and threw us in at the deep end. If you spot an opportunity to attend a supper club or have the guts to run your own, I can guarantee you'll enjoy it.

Chinese Pork Belly Satay

Recipe by Goz Lee

"In Singapore, because we are a mix of cultures and races, some of our dishes overlap and fuse into one another. Satay is a good example; all the spices are clearly not Chinese in origin and most probably came from the Malays/ Indonesian cultures of our neighbouring countries.  

Satay is a typical Malay/ Indonesian dish but they are mostly Muslim so they do not eat pork. The Chinese on the other hand, love pork.  

Finally someone somewhere thought; Hmm... there's beef satay, lamb satay... but why no pork? And so this dish was born. Hallelujah! This makes about 30 sticks of satay. Or 15 if you make really big 'uns!"

Ingredients:

• 500g pork belly
• 500g pork neck (if you cant find neck, try using shoulder)
• 4 tablespoon brown sugar
• 12 shallots (or three big white onions)
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 2 inch galangal (sometimes called blue ginger)
• 1 tsp white pepper
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 2 tsp garam masala or any decent curry powder
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1 tablespoon of belachan (this is like an intense smelling dried shrimp paste - jam packed with umami)
• 1 tablespoon of sambal chilli
• 2 tablespoon of soy sauce
• 3 tsp of tumeric
• 5 fresh stalks of lemongrass
• 1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
• 1 tablespoon of cooking oil

30 wooden skewers

What to do:

Ideally, you need to prepare everything the day before you want to wow your guests, partner, spouse, offspring and mother-in-law.

Blitz everything above, except for the pork neck and the pork belly and the wooden skewers (duh!), in a food processor until fine and mushy. Add more oil tablespoon by tablespoon if it's not a nice smooth paste. Now you've got your super duper kickass marinade.

Slice pork neck and pork belly into 1 inch cubes/ rectangles.

Submerge all pork meat into the marinade and get your hands in there and mush it all around until every single sliver of pork meat is submerged.

Now skewer all the pork onto the wooden skewers.

Leave overnight in fridge to let the pork meat and marinade get intimate.

Next day, preheat the oven at gas mark 4.

Take pork satay out of fridge, and grill it on each side for about 3 mins in the oven.

If you feeling confident and adventurous give it a good blast of heat at gas mark 5 on grill for a minute to get it nice and charred.

Serve and consume!