Freddy's Harajuku

Butterscotch and purple yam wool bread

These have been a brainchild of mine for a while – I wanted to make a fluffy, Chinese-style pastry with a baked yam filling since 2018 actually. But I was lazy. The idea of peeling and steaming yam and then mashing it sounded tedious. But then I realized, why not just microwave the yam? It’s…

Injeolmi and barley tea mirror glaze cake

This was a last-minute cake order for my sister’s high school best friend, Jane. Jane is currently expecting, and in commemoration of that, I wanted to make a dessert that was very much to her liking – Jane herself is Korean, and she loves Asian desserts and flavors. So naturally, I went with injeolmi powder,…

Baked lapseng buns

These are the baked version of my childhood favorite lapseng buns that we would get at dim sum when I was a kid. I guess growing up in America, and being more familiar with hotdogs than I was har gow at that point in my life, lapseng buns, being so similar to a hotdog, were…

Matcha-yuzu macarons

I was in the mood to make some macarons the other day, and these were what I came up with! I wanted to definitely do matcha, since it’s been a while since I made matcha-flavored anything, and I figured, just to make them a little unique, why not add some yuzu to them? The shells…

Carnitas congee with salsa chintextle

I really wanted to dedicate this dish to the rabbit hole that was exploring Oaxacan recipes on the internet over the past year. That and watching chef Claudette Zepeda-Wilkins’s video on Vice about mole. In that video, she mentioned how salsa chintextle, a Oaxacan mother sauce made with pasilla chilies and shrimp, was quite similar…

Tofu ice cream with tofu water meringue

So this would not be the first tofu ice cream recipe I have made. However, it would be the first where I do not use coconut milk – that makes a huge difference in the actual flavor of the ice cream, as coconut milk, while it does contain the necessary fat to create creamy vegan…

Nigredo: a plated dish

This was one of those dishes that I had on my to-make list for months, but I just never got around to it, mostly out of laziness – I wanted to practice doing a Oaxacan style black mole, using black garlic, but I just never got around to buying the chilies for it until more…

Purple yam mooncakes

If I did not post a mooncake recipe this year, I would have felt like a bad Taiwanese American. I did make some last year, but that was more of a test run, using somebody else’s recipe. So this time, I went ahead and did some more tests, and came up with one that is…

Sea Angel: a plated dessert

This was the last dish in my “Namie” pop-up dinner, featuring strawberries and lychees to embrace the summer. I wanted to use both in several different ways, and I also wanted to use pate choux as the base for this dessert, since I just love how choux with craquelin resembles a coral reef. With the…

Deep Dive: a plated dish

Of the five dishes from the “Namie” pop-up, I would say this was probably the one with the least amount of true Asian influence. While I took more inspiration from Halal/Middle Eastern flavors, it would be a stretch to say that it took influence from Halal-Chinese food, when it was more Jordanian with sprinkles of…

Pearl in Hiding: a plated dish

So this was one of the five dishes I made for my “Namie” pop-up dinner during the summer for my friends from 4Foodie(special shoutout to Kate and Victoria for the amazing photos from this!). Originally, it was just going to be three dishes, but I extended it to five, and this was a super last-minute(two…

Ocean Lily: a plated dish

Out of the five dishes I served at my “Namie” pop-up for 4Foodie, I would say that this one was the one I was most excited about. I never actually tried to do a sashimi dish before, at least without the help of somebody else slicing the fish for me. However, in this case, I…

Uni custard with yuzu buttermilk

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…

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….

Purple passionfruit mochi truffles

I’ve done mochi truffles in the past, and these were some that I wanted to do, featuring passionfruit! The interior is passionfruit liquid core with a passionfruit mousse, while the exterior is a super soft mochi made with shiratamako, dyed purple naturally using acai powder, just to mimic the color and appearance of a passionfruit….

“Chonky” peach pie

One of my favorite memories growing up was when summer would come around, and the peach tree in our backyard would provide us with white peaches to last an entire summer. I love eating peaches, and while I don’t often bake with them, whenever I do, I love to use them for making pies specifically….

Halva, almond, and apricot tart

So I made this tart because of two reasons: I had a ton of halva in my freezer that I wanted to use in a dessert, and I was seeing my former-pastry chef friend, Janae, and I wanted to make something for her(which ended up being these tarts!). For those unfamiliar with halva, it is…

Peaches and cream soufflé pancakes

These were literally on my list to make for weeks, ever since my mother gifted me with some white peaches to eat/cook with. For me, white peaches symbolize the summer, because we had a peach tree growing up in Torrance in our backyard, and it just made summer a season more to look forward to(besides…

Head in the clouds: a plated dessert

The inspiration for this dessert came from me testing out a couple new techniques – using sago, which are little tapioca pearls, to make a strawberry flavored “caviar”, and using lychee juice to make a foam. I wanted to create this sort of ethereal, sea-meets-sky, summery sort of dessert, embracing fresh lychees, and pairing them…

Brown butter and apple pancakes

These were literally inspired by the Dutch pear pancakes from Prune in New York City. Unlike the Dutch Baby pancakes, which is made from baking a loose batter at a high heat to create a giant fluffy pancake, these are more cake-like, and cooked with large visible slices of fruit in the batter. In the…