Kouign-amann, pronounced almost like “queen a man”, is a popular French/Breton pastry, originating from the Brittany region. I remember first learning about it from “Chef Steps” on YouTube, back in high school, where I horrendously butchered the pronunciation of it because I don’t speak French. The last time I successfully made kouign-amann was spring break, during…
Author: Freddy
I have some training in both savory and pastry when it comes to food. I love to develop recipes in my spare time, just because the creative side of cooking is what really appeals to me.
“Welcome to the lantern festival!”: a plated dish
This dish was definitely my favorite to make when I was in the competition. Not only did I get to impress the judges(and finally claim some much needed emotional redemption!), but also Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto as well! And with a freaking $500 Alaskan King Crab! Like what the hell?! Even to this day, I…
Tooigai: a fried chicken sandwich
Who doesn’t like a fried chicken sandwich? I know I’ve made my fair share of them in my 24 years of living. For this rendition, I wanted to do a Japanese take on a Southern classic. I went with milk rolls, and karaage styled fried chicken, using mochiko to crust some thigh meat. For the…
Honey-yuzu Paris Brest
This recipe really just came about because I wanted to make a Paris Brest, aka a ring shaped éclair. When I thought about my fillings, I decided to go with three in total. A yuzu Bavarian cream, homemade honeycomb candy, and honey mascarpone cream. I also made a honey-yuzu-bee pollen glaze, and infused the actual…
Beef and Broccoli Revised: a plated dish
On the back of that wedding challenge, the elimination that followed was a freaking outdoor grilling challenge, in the patio where we all stood during the helicopter intro! It was crazy! The contestants on the losing Red Team had to choose from a huge variety of steaks and grill a dish in an hour. Which…
Above and beyond: a galaxy cheesecake
Truthfully, I have done a galaxy entremet before. But this one is slightly different in that the filling is made with cream cheese, and it’s a little less ficklesome. That and I topped it with zefir, a Russian marshmallow made with apple puree, but instead of apple, I used cherimoya, aka custard apple. Why? Because…
Blood orange-mascarpone cake doughnuts
These literally just came from an experiment where I wanted to make doughnuts, but I didn’t have any yeast, and I was too lazy to buy any/I had no patience to wait for yeast to proof anyways. I knew that you could make cake doughnuts, which would not require yeast, and I decided to go…
O-parts: a plated dessert
I am obsessed with Oreo cereal. Even as a kid, Oreo O’s were one of my favorites. I don’t know if it’s because I have early childhood memories of buying them from Taiwanese 7-11’s and dunking them into milk or whatever, but I knew for a dessert called “O-parts”, oreos had to be a focus….
Sunny-Joy Lemon Tart
This was a signature dessert from the now-defunct baked goods delivery service I ran with my friend, Joy. The name was inspired by our two Chinese names, mine being “sun” and hers literally being “joy”. The tart itself was a pate brisee that had panko bread crumbs and goat milk powder in it, just to…
Liz’s banana-chocolate tarte tatin
So this dessert goes out to a very special lady, Ms. Elizabeth Linn. She blew us all away during the tarte tatin challenge(the same one I’m probably never going to fully live down), when she made a banana tarte tatin with chocolate crème anglaise. I remember when we were planning our tarte tatins out, she…
Mixed Berry Opera cake
I made this cake with my friend Adrienne just because I’m still trying to convince her to audition for season 11 of MasterChef and I wanted to see how quickly she can pick up arguably a tricky cake to make. Ever since my first Opera cake, I wanted to do another rendition, but using more…
your silver garden: a plated dessert
This dessert was named after a song by Kalafina, a Japanese music group known for their slightly edgier songs. However, “your silver garden” honestly sounded more like a nursery rhyme, at least compared to some of their darker songs like “Magia” or “heavenly blue”. So I went with that name to symbolize a mint-chocolate dessert!…
Making my way: a plated dessert
As I do have a habit of naming my desserts after songs and lyrics, it is very easy to assume I named this one after “A Thousand Miles” by Vanessa Carlton. And I don’t blame you if you think that, because that is a touching song and it reminds me of White Chicks, a movie that…
Face my fears: tarte tatin redemption
Fucking tarte tatin. Let me tell you now, this was the LAST dessert I expected to ever have PTSD from during my reality cooking competition journey. I love apples, I love caramel, and I love flaky pastry. And I’ve made this before(as the judges let everyone know to the point where they made it seem…
Stronger than you: a plated dish
For this dish, it was my chance to redeem my horrendous performance with the Latin America brief. Being a panicky idiot, I had no clue what to make. So I opted for the snapper, made a yucca puree that was wallpaper glue(fun fact, yucca should NEVER go into a food processor, because the starch content…
colorful: kofta munti with eggplant puree and crispy beet “fattoush”
About a year ago, I made a dish that was extremely similar to this actually. But I guess you can say that this is the revised/upgraded version of that one. For this dish, we have munti, which are Turkish dumplings, stuffed with a lamb kofta filling, where we also have wilted beet greens folded in…
Phoenix in the Hawker Stall: a plated dish
So continuing on with my experiences in the lovely, most amazing MasterChef Kitchen (I hope I had enough adjectives there), there was actually a challenge where we had to cook with chicken. This challenge, not to brag, would have been a cakewalk for me, because I practiced breaking down chickens regularly in college (mostly because…
Vanille: a plated dessert
When I first started learning how to bake, I actually kept a sketchbook where I’d draw out my dessert ideas. One of them was a vanilla cake with apple that I dubbed “Vanille” after an over the top bubbly, bordering on annoying character from Final Fantasy XIII. Let’s not forget I’m as much a weeb…
“Friends in my heart”: a plated dish
This dish was inspired by my MasterChef journey (only the season 10 part, not the very short-lived seasons 8 or 9 parts LOL). I had met two people I became extremely close to, being a young lady from Texas named Mollie, and a guy from Sacramento named David. After I got a certain stage in…
it’s my life: a plated dish
Now you might be saying, if you somehow managed to read through ALL of my blog posts, that I had already made something with this as the name. That was a dessert. This is a savory course. I’m allowed to have a dessert and a dish share the same name, since they can be different…
Freddy's Harajuku 