Whenever I have a whole duck, I love to go to town. Being a butcher, it’s a ton of fun to work with the whole animal. In this case, I wanted to do duck three ways. The first was braising and roasting the leg. The second was a seared duck breast. The third, it was…
Category: Recipes
Game bird congee with Chinese krueller (youtiao)
I really came up with this concept out of a necessity of not wanting to waste produce. I happened to purchase a lot of different game birds, ranging from quails to Cornish hens to duck, and I also made stocks out of each and every one of those birds, and reserved the carcass meats as…
Let’s go in the garden: a plated dish
For this dish, I really wanted to prepare something that conjured up nostalgic childhood memories. With lamb, it was something I grew up eating a lot of, because my parents loved it. With the garnish, I knew I wanted to do something that resembled vegetables sprouting out from the earth, and so I went with…
“Chicken and dumplings” wontons
I wanted to create a play on chicken and dumplings, but using wonton soup as the inspiration. Mostly because I had half of a leftover chicken that I needed to get rid of, so I figured, why not just grind up the wing and leg meat and turn that into a dumpling filling? I also…
LAUSD Crumb Cake Doughnut Creams
These came about because I wanted to make something for my new coworker, Georgina. She was talking a lot about this coffee cake she had going to school in the LA Unified School District and I legitimately had no clue what she as talking about. So I looked it up and it was like a…
Curious little penguins: a haupia pie
I really was inspired by all of the cute baby penguin videos I’ve been seeing on Instagram lately, and I just felt like they were a perfect inspiration for a cute dessert. I knew that using butterfly pea tea would work to effect the color of the ocean, while I could use kohakutou(Japanese rock candy)…
“Light as air” layer cake
This dessert was actually for a family friend, Isabel, to celebrate her birthday. Isabel is my father’s friend’s daughter, and she’s a real down to earth person. When I was asking her what kinds of flavors she liked, she told me delicate and light, so I wanted to go with lemon, white chocolate, coconut, and…
Kabocha flan with kabocha friands
This dessert has been on my to-do list since the summer. I am obsessed with flan, it being the first dessert I ever learned how to make, and I’ve been meaning to do something with kabocha squash, but I wanted to wait until it was the fall to do so. For this dessert, it’s a…
Passionfruit cheesecake shumai
These dumplings came about from my excess of passionfruit(what a problem to have, clearly) as well as me wanting to try making a steamed cheesecake dumpling. So I figured, why not mix the passionfruit into the cheesecake and make something truly original? To be a little more fun, I decided to dye the shumai shells…
S’mores potstickers
These literally came about because I wanted to do an innovative dumpling and I was craving s’mores. So I went with a graham cracker flavored wrapper, a chocolate truffle and marshmallow filling, and a cayenne chocolate dipping sauce to balance any overt sweetness in the dessert. What I love about this dessert is that we’re…
All I want: Neapolitan checkerboard cake
I really only made this dessert because I had quite a bit of leftover strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream leftover from a cake I made for a fan, so I racked my brains around what I could possibly do with it. Since I didn’t want to make the same strawberry cake for myself, I opted for…
Gravity Bounce: a plated dessert
This is probably the last “Carole and Tuesday” inspired dessert, and in this case, it is based on the song “Gravity Bounce”, also by GGK. So the song itself is upbeat, playful, catchy, and fun, and when I think of the phrase itself, I immediately am drawn to Newton’s apple. So I decided to do…
Milky way: a plated dessert
This concept came about from when I was watching a singing anime on Netflix, called “Carole & Tuesday”. Some of the sounds really stuck out to me as good inspirations or launching points for dishes, including one called “Milky Way”. For obvious reasons, I had to include milk in this dessert as a pivotal focus….
dreaming of springtime: an icebox cake
Icebox cakes are fun to make, mostly because they’re just giant cookies with fun fillings sandwiched between each layer. In this particular rendition, I wanted to use ruby chocolate, since I have a whole bag of it and I never really use it. I wanted the dessert to be pink, since Pinktober is coming up,…
One pot cheeseburger dumplings
When I saw that there was going to be a one pot challenge on MasterChef, the FIRST three things that came to mind were Japanese cream stew, the dreaded tarte tatin that I royally messed up, and the one that I would have gone for, knowing that the recipe would be in a family magazine,…
move mountains: a plated dessert
I have been watching a lot of new shows on Netflix lately. One of them in particular that I adore is a singing anime called “Carole and Tuesday” which features a ton of catchy tracks of varying genres. One song that stood out to me in particular was “Move Mountains”, mostly because of the message…
Prince of the Growing Land: A plated dessert
This would be the third of my three princes who would have led me to my MasterChef Crown, had I been in the finale(cue sad violin music I guess?). Continuing with the sea, sky, and earth motif, this would be my earth-inspired dish and dessert! It is a buckwheat financier with brown butter bavarian cream,…
Prince of the Dawning Sky: a plated dish
This would have been my main course for the finale. Inspired by the sun-filled sky, and the morning, it is duck and mushroom congee with ponzu-black garlic puree, duck egg yolk, braised duck thigh meat, crispy shallots, cilantro duck fat, caramelized mushrooms, and micro cilantro to garnish. The idea has multiple folds behind the inspiration….
Prince of the Sea Angels: a plated dish
So even though I was eliminated in top 10, I actually did have dishes in mind for the finale. The amount of thought you saw put into the crab lantern dish, trust me, a lot more were put into these. So while it is a shame I could not make these dishes for the judges,…
IDGAF(ilet mignon): a plated dish
When I was preparing for season 10, I did cook with a lot of different kinds of meats and proteins. Lamb, duck, pork, chicken, scallops, fileting and then cooking with whole fish such as salmon, rainbow trout, black cod, I even practiced cooking ribeye for steaks. I never thought to practice with filet mignon. And…
Freddy's Harajuku 