Kakuni is a Japanese dish consisting of braised cubes of pork belly in this sweet soy-based broth, usually served with a braised egg and mustard. I came to really love this dish over the past year, when I first had it at a Japanese restaurant in Torrance, then again almost a week later when I…
Category: Meals
Savory dishes or garnishes that can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
Pork Loin with Fennel, Green Apple, and Potato
This is like the most quintessential meat and three veg-type of dish I am putting on my blog. Mostly because it is homey and comforting, but I wanted to plate it in a more elegant and whimsical way. I wanted to do another pork loin dish, but in terms of what I wanted to pair…
Gyutan (Beef Tongue) Doria
Doria is a Japanese rice gratin, consisting of steamed rice with a white sauce or cheese poured over it and the entire thing is then broiled until golden-brown. I truthfully never had doria until this year, and that is a HUGE shock to me, given that I’ve been to Japan over 5 times, lived there…
Chocolate Chip-Ricotta Pancakes
Back during the summer, I had a decently-sized tub of ricotta, which I only used a small portion of for lasagna. And that left me with a large amount of ricotta cheese that I had to stretch across about 4 different recipes. This was one of them. But I chose to post this specific recipe…
Beef Moussaka
This recipe came about because I had a bunch of leftover potatoes, and I happened to purchase some graffiti eggplant the other day. Graffiti eggplant is just an eggplant that has a striped white and purple skin. Besides that, it literally tastes the same, and is just another eggplant, aka perfect to cook in a…
Beef Heart with Lemon-Pecorino Risotto
Beef heart is a very fascinating ingredient. Being a high-activity muscle, heart as an ingredient can eat chewy after being treated with most cooking methods. However, I love preparing it in a marinade, then searing it, almost like how you treat ahi tuna. I actually never touched a beef heart before I made this recipe….
Cappelletti with Walnut-Miso Dashi
This literally was a recipe that came about because I had about 8oz of ricotta cheese leftover and I was not 100% sure what to do with it. I made a poll on Instagram, giving a couple of the options I was leaning towards: the choices were: ravioli, cheesecake, doughnuts, or whatever Google told me…
Momotaro Tomato and Bacon Pasta
I love Momotaro tomatoes. They are this pinkish-red Japanese tomato that has a mild sweetness to them. While eating them fresh is usually the way to go, I wanted to try cooking them, and I definitely was not disappointed in the end product: I made a tomato sauce with some of the Momotaro tomatoes, and…
Pork Loin with Pommes Aligot and French Onion Jus
This dish was in my to-make list for almost 8 months – I wanted to try my hand at making a French technique-driven dish, featuring a French onion jus and pommes aligot, and this is what came about from that. For those who are unfamiliar with where I was going with, a French onion jus…
Jalapeno Pork Ribs with Jalapeno-Cheese Cornbread Madelines
Ribs and cornbread is a classic childhood pairing of mine whenever we would go to Chicago For Ribs in Redondo Beach growing up. It’s unfortunate because Chicago For Ribs is closed now, but it featured a variety of barbecued ribs, barbecue or steakhouse dishes, and steakhouse sides like mac n’ cheese, baked potatoes, waffle fries,…
Ricotta Pancakes with White Nectarines
When I was trying to figure out what to do with my leftover ricotta cheese, one thing that Google listed was ricotta pancakes. I hilariously did a poll on Instagram on what to use that leftover ricotta for, with the top voted pick being ravioli. I already made the ravioli, but I somehow still had…
Sourdough Crostini with Figs and Ricotta
This recipe was the byproduct of me needing to use up a tub of ricotta cheese, having sourdough bread already made, and me purchasing figs from the farmers market on an impulse buy. Hilariously enough, it all worked out in the sense that I have three things, being bread, figs, and cheese, that go gorgeously…
Pinwheel Lasagna Rosettes
When I was looking up potential Italian restaurants for when I was visiting NYC(we settled on Lilia, which was solid), I did come across a restaurant called Don Angie, which featured this really cool looking lasagna. When I think of lasagna, I think of layers of pasta, bechamel, and red sauce, stacked up in a…
Potato Gnocchi with Kimchi-Bacon Bolognese
When I initially wrote this recipe, I wanted to make a kimchi-bacon bolognese for a tagliatelle or pappardelle pasta. Basically, I envisioned long noodles with this hearty meat sauce. I was inspired by these Asian-fusion pasta dishes that you could find in a cafe in Japan or Korea, and that was what I intended when…
Air Fried Blooming Onion with Onion Jus
Let me preface this recipe by saying that I actual blooming onion before. I have wanted to try one, but when I heard that they were the single most unhealthy thing to eat, I just got turned off by the idea. That is until I started using my air fryer more, and figured, why not…
Crab Cake with Kale Salad
Whenever I purchase lump crab meat, I feel like there is always a doomsday timer floating over my head, making sure to remind me that if I don’t make something/eat this crab meat quickly enough, it will go rancid and my entire fridge will smell for it. These crab cakes were my solution to using…
Artichoke-Pecorino Risotto
Risotto is one of those dishes that takes me back to my sister and I learning how to cook when we were really young. We grew up eating a lot of Taiwanese and Chinese food, as well as overtly healthy dishes(boiled romaine lettuce seasoned with olive oil and nothing else, anyone?), but the one constant…
Chili Crisp Chicken Lollipops with Japanese Pickles and Kale-slaw
For a hot minute, I have been trying to make wings using my air fryer. I love ordering wings whenever we get takeout from our local pizzeria – compared to almost every other cut of chicken besides the thigh, wings have a ton of flavor. They are annoying to eat, and you probably will have…
Crab and Chili Crisp Bagels
These bagels were a complete and utter brain child. I heard about Montreal style bagels – bagels that are boiled with a little bit of honey and have a soft, chewy crust – and wanted to make my own! However, a bagel on its own, while tasty, can be a little one-note, and I wanted…
Lomo Saltado with Shishito Aji
Peruvian food is so special in that it is the intersection of Asian and Latin cuisines – because of the Chinese and Japanese immigrants that settled in Peru, Peruvian culture takes on so many of those influences, and I am here for it! With lomo saltado, it is a dish I thoroughly enjoy – seared…
Freddy's Harajuku 