I was obsessed with eating shiozake salmon during my time in Japan. Every morning, my breakfast consisted of shiozake salmon, an onsen egg, rice, and a bowl of miso soup. This recipe is an homage to that, minus the miso(which is going into a different recipe). For those unfamiliar with the term, shiozake literally translates…
Category: Meals
Savory dishes or garnishes that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Gochujang Salsa Macha Rice Noodles
This recipe came about because I wanted to take the salsa macha noodles I made a while ago, but turn them 100% gluten-free and vegan. When I was fasting prior to my Hawaii trip, I had a lot of cravings. and these punchy, spicy, chewy noodles were one of them. Salsa macha is like the…
Egg Sandwiches with Homemade Milk Bread
This recipe is a thank-you letter to my mom, since she not only taught me how to make the perfect boiled egg, but gifted me with this super cute bento box, and I have been dying to use it to plate something. Between eggs and the bento, it just made sense to either do something…
Lu Rou Fan Rice Bowls
Lu rou fan, or 滷肉饭 as it’s written in Chinese, is a Chinese/Taiwanese dish that consists of braised meat, usually pork, with rice, and it’s usually served with pickled daikon and an egg that is usually braised or cooked with the stew. At least that’s how I was raised to eat it. The stew is…
Dratini Tteok
Tteok are Korean rice cakes that are eaten in both savory and sweet applications. They are quite similar to mochi, and have a delicious chewy texture to them. One of the more common savory applications of tteok is tteokbokki, which literally translates to stewed rice cakes. The cakes are usually stewed in a spicy, kimchi-gochujang…
Brown Betty Beggar’s Purses
Because of apple picking, I had a plethora of apples that I needed to get rid of. I had to think of creative ways to use them, beyond just making a cake, or cookies, or pie, and that was when I thought about crepes. I remember the first time making a crepe, and how therapeutic…
Confit Garlic Knots with Chili-Lemon Crema
Back in the tail end of 2017, a freshly-minted 23-year Fred was forced to go to a department outing at his first job, on his birthday. Because his boss at the time decided it would be a great idea to plan a department outing on his birthday without telling him. So beyond the fact that…
Trio of Onigiri
This recipe in a lot of ways is my play on a charcuterie board, but featuring onigiri. I wanted to make three different kinds of rice balls, featuring pork belly, salmon, and mushrooms, two sauces, one that was creamy and garlicky and another that is sweet-sour-smoky, and some Japanese-style pickles to garnish with. When I…
Sourdough Liege Waffles
This recipe has been on my to-bake list for probably longer than I would care to admit(mostly because I forgot exactly when I came up with the idea, but it was definitely before Easter). I love liege waffles, which are waffles made from a yeast-leavened dough, giving them this breadier texture. On top of the…
Rowlet Inarizushi
When I was a kid who did not like raw fish yet, I found myself ordering only three things whenever we would go out for sushi: cucumber rolls, tamagoyaki(Japanese omelet), and inarizushi. Inari refers to these puffed tofu skins that are based in a sweet soy mixture, giving them a sweet, smoky, and almost salty…
Salsa Macha Noodles
I was craving some chili oil-noodle business, and I was watching the Chef Show on Netflix, where they were making salsa macha, and that was literally how this recipe came about. For those unfamiliar with it, salsa macha(not to be confused with matcha green tea), is a salsa made with dried chilies, sesame seeds and/or…
Hotcakes with purin and cream
Whenever I am bored, I watch videos of people eating at Japanese cafes. I don’t know why, but it’s always fun to live vicariously through other peoples experiences! In one particular video, I saw people eating this super thick Japanese hotcakes, which are basically just fluffier, cakier pancakes. I also wanted to do something with…
Vietnamese Coffee Sticky Buns
There are two beautiful things about being on a diet. The first is obviously that you lose weight and in a healthier way. The second is that you continuously develop cravings for things you know you should not be eating, and that is a wonderful basis for some really delicious desserts. These sticky buns are…
Super simple pita bread
While in the midst of my crash dieting, I have developed some hilariously random cravings. Super fluffy pita bread has been one of those. About a year ago, I had dinner with my friends in downtown LA, at a restaurant called Girl and the Goat(which is best known for their flagship in Chicago, and being…
Koji-fried chicken with chili honey
Over the past year, koji became one of my favorite ingredients. For those unfamiliar with it, koji is a type of bacteria or fungus that grows on rice or grains. It is used as a culture in Japanese cooking to ferment soybeans into miso paste. Because it is a fungus, koji contains natural umami in…
Herb and mushroom focaccia
So this recipe was actually inspired by a dinner I had at Etta in Culver City. Originally from Chicago, Etta is a modern Italian restaurant that features a lot of upscale versions of Italian classics, namely pizzas, pastas, and bread. The focaccia I had there was super pillowy and light, while speckled with tons of…
Buckwheat noodles with mushroom tare
I literally came up with this recipe because I was craving soba noodles, and I happened to heat a ton of buckwheat groats, so I figured, why not make my own. For those who aren’t sure what buckwheat groats are, they are basically the unhulled seed of a buckwheat plant. You grind those to form…
Lengua(pork tongue) mole with corn tortillas
I have made many moles in 2021, and this was one that I found to be perfect for the winter. By using lengua, or pork tongue, you have this rich, stewed meat that just soaks up all of those beautiful spices and chilies. I grew up eating a lot of pork and beef tongue, just…
Karaage lollipops with mole colorado and yuzu sunomono
When it came to parts of the chicken you would find in an upscale restaurant, I found that almost nobody felt that a chicken wing was fine-dining worthy. So I wanted to tackle that, and try to class up chicken wings a little bit. Mostly because they are delicious, have tons of flavor, and need…
Sweet pea agnolotti with yuzu ricotta
Agnolotti are one of those pasta shapes that can be particularly tricky to assemble. If your filling is really wet, then the pasta sheets will start to warp and stick to whatever surface they are on, causing the delicate little folds you are attempting to make to come undone and the dough itself to tear…
Freddy's Harajuku 