I have done chawanmushi before, and this is quite similar to that as well. The idea was to do this baked or steamed uni custard(in an egg shell) with a light buttermilk foam-type of thing, and on top of that, some fresh uni, just to tie it all in together. In the past, I have…
Category: Plated dishes
I do cook savory food, and I love to plate these kinds of dishes with all of the same focus and finesse as I would a dessert.
Chilled corn dashi with miso cornbread and Tokyo turnips
Whenever the summer rolls around, cornbread is just one of those things I always love to make! For this recipe, I went the vegan route, and made a cornbread that uses miso paste and a corn dashi, as well as a vegan coconut buttermilk, just to create a super fluffy texture and a moister crumb….
Chinese beef ragout with miso orecchiette
One of the first kinds of pasta I learned how to make from scratch is orecchiette. I love making them because it does not require a pasta roller, which not everyone has. You simply just make a log of dough, then cut it, and press it with your thumbs to form an indent. Super easy-peasy….
Salt and pepper pork chop with egg noodles
I feel like when it comes to savory cooking, I have a tendency to gravitate towards similar components – a seared protein, some sort of vegetable, some sort of starch, and a sauce. This would be no different to that. In fact, it would be 100% that. I wanted to do a lighter take on…
Roast pork belly with pork fat potatoes and vegetable ragout
This dish was basically as close as I could get to a one-pot wonder – had I not needed the pot of water to boil things in, this would have literally been achievable in one pot. We have roasted pork belly with potatoes that are cooked in pork fat, a ragout with peas, shallots, and…
Tangzhong noodles with miso-sesame dressing and Thai chilies
After I made boba from scratch, I had a bizarre epiphany – if I were to cook flour with water into a gelatinous paste, and use that to make noodles, would they come out super chewy? When you are making boba, you do that process with water and tapioca flour to gelatinize the starch, resulting…
Ricotta gnocchi with squash, fennel, and salsa verde
So this dish was actually inspired from when I was watching The Chef’s Line on Netflix. For those unfamiliar with the program, it’s a cooking competition show that was originally in Australia, before it premiered on Netflix as well. Sadly the show is no longer running, but there were a lot of cool recipes and…
Tea-smoked duck with green apple and onion
I came up with this dish because I was thinking about what the prettiest duck dish I could make, and this is what I thought up of. I love to tea smoke proteins, and I love tea smoked duck. Smoking the duck in chamomile tea specifically gives it a pleasant earthiness, and I wanted to…
Roasted cabbage with pork belly and mushroom dashi
So this is a dish inspired directly from mille feuille nabe. I wanted to do a dish that featured layers of roasted cabbage and pork in an umami-rich mushroom broth. I could imagine these soft, tender layers of cabbage that are steamed with the rendered pork fat from the belly slices between each leaf, sponging…
Scallion pancakes with braised oxtail and bone broth
So I was inspired by birria tacos, but knowing that I cannot make them authentically, I figured, why not take dishes and ingredients from my own culture, but just serve them in the same fashion? So I took the concept of a wrap with a dipping broth, and essentially made it Chinese/Taiwanese. I still remember…
Winter Glow: a plated dessert
I literally came up with this dish because a family friend gifted us Osetra caviar, and I did not want to squander it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Osetra caviar is harvested from an Osetra sturgeon fish, and it is one of the most prized and expensive kinds of caviar, second to only…
Something New: a plated dessert
I’ve been meaning to make this dessert for ages. I stumbled upon baobab(an African superfood fruit that tastes like citrus) when I was doing research on natural food colorings, and I was too curious for my own good to not buy a bag of baobab powder from Amazon and try baking it with. I have…
Pork belly and almond cream stew with vegan “cheesy” scallion and herb biscuits
So this recipe was actually a part of a collaboration a bunch of us Masterchef contestants did with Imperfect foods a while back! The company, Imperfect Foods, takes the produce that grocery stores and farmers don’t sell due to visual imperfections, and gives them to consumers at a cheaper price, which I adore, being somebody…
Vegan tofu gnocchi with shiitakes and chili oil
I came up with these gnocchi when I had the epiphany that tofu, being so similar to cheese, is whippable. Because it is whippable, you can use the tofu just like a ricotta or mascarpone, and in the case of the former, ricotta gnocchi is a thing, so surely tofu gnocchi could work, right? And…
New Rules: a plated dessert
For me, this dessert was all about trying a couple of new things. Using gjetost cheese in a fonduta was a new idea, and playing around with more savory things like carrots and pairing that with mugicha, which is a barley tea. I also featured yuzu in this dessert as well, since the sort of…
Something comforting: a plated dish
I really love stewed chickpeas. Actually I just love chickpeas in general. And luckily, I got to cook with them more often these days because I need them for their aquafaba. However, with all of the vegan meringue I have been making, I still need to get rid of the actual chickpeas themselves. So this…
Pork belly okonomiyaki (Japanese pancakes)
Okonomiyaki are one of my personal favorite things to make. The first time I ever had one was with my cousins, and it was delicious. It’s a Japanese pancake batter that can have a variety of things in it, but typically you would find cabbage, pork, and a delicious sauce and Japanese mayonnaise. A lot…
“番茄炒蛋”: a plated dish
番茄炒蛋, or tomato-fried eggs, are a childhood staple for me, and probably every Chinese/Taiwanese person. Simply put, it’s scrambled eggs with tomato, topped with scallions and/or cilantro. A very humble dish, and because of that, a great blank canvas/ inspiration for a prettier, more complex one. My mom’s version included ginger, since it provided a…
Hallucinate: a plated dish
I was actually coming up with this dish when I was doing a quarantine Google Hangout cook-together with my friends, Ann and Sylvie. We agreed that we would each make a pasta dish, so I came up with this one. I took the inspiration from my childhood favorite, beef noodle soup aka Taiwan’s national dish, and transforming…
Can you feel the sunshine?: a plated dish
Even since MasterChef season 10, there were three things I sought to learn more about/perfect. The first was tarte tatin, the second was cooking in a cast iron, and the third, which I finally have gotten around to doing, is learning more about Latin flavors. After that disastrous showing with prickly pear, I knew I…
Freddy's Harajuku 