Kimchi Chicken Cacciatorre with Kale Polenta

This dish was really meant to be a homey meal, hence why it kind of looks like a giant pile of slop in a bowl. Those kinds of dishes are indicative of the fall/winter, being super cozy, comforting dishes that are ugly-delicious. In this case, I wanted to do chicken cacciatorre, an Italian dish consisting…

Roasted Chicken Thighs with Chorizo Chickpeas

This dish is the perfect thing to eat on a cold, rainy dish. I made these chorizo-stewed chickpeas because I wanted this hearty, comforting stew. What I love from a textural contrast standpoint is that there are smoky chorizo bits and nutty, creamy chickpeas, swimming in a slightly spicy broth. That when paired with a…

Creamy Koji-Stewed Chicken Thighs

I happened to buy a gigantic bag of bone-in chicken thighs, but I ran into a bit of a hiccup when it came time to actually cooking some of them. I was already marinating the thighs in a mixture of soy sauce and koji, but I forgot to buy frier oil(I was originally going to…

Black Chicken Tsukune with Ginger Broth

This recipe wound up being like an Asian take on an albondigas soup, using black chicken(also called silkie fowl) as the base. Black chicken is a popular ingredient in Asian cuisines because it creates a gorgeous broth. My mother actually loves eating black chicken, which is why I opted to use it to make one…

“Chicken and Dumplings”: a plated dish

This dish is a revisited version of a recipe I made a few years ago, but as a more composed plated dish. The dish itself was what I made for a collaboration dinner at Mader Lao in Oklahoma, with my friends Gabriel and Dara(from season 12 of Masterchef!). I offered to do the entree, which…

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…

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…

“Lazy mornings”: a plated dish

This dish was inspired by a Hong Kong breakfast classic, being macaroni soup. Macaroni soup consists of a creamy chicken stock, macaroni noodles, and ham. It is a Cantonese breakfast staple, and I found it to be the perfect inspiration for a fun dish! For my take on a macaroni soup, I went with a…

Shoyu-koji chicken under a brick

I literally came up with this recipe when I was shopping at my local Japanese market, and found rice koji. For those unfamiliar with the product, koji is a bacteria found on rice or grains that can be mixed with soy beans to create miso. It has a ton of umami, and it can be…

Want to: a plated dish

I really love to take classic and rustic dishes and breathing new life into them. For some odd season, I have always been attracted to Southern food, despite never really visiting the South. There’s just something about biscuits, barbecue, buttermilk, and corn that just really, really appeals to me. So I wanted to do a…

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…

“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…

Phoenix in the Hawker Stall: a plated dish

So continuing on with my experiences in the lovely, most amazing MasterChef Kitchen (I hope I had enough adjectives there), there was actually a challenge where we had to cook with chicken. This challenge, not to brag, would have been a cakewalk for me, because I practiced breaking down chickens regularly in college (mostly because…

Roasted silkie chicken leg with polenta

When I was butchering black chicken, I decided to make a full-on chicken dinner out of the legs and wings! Taking the contrasting color of the chicken, and making a bright yellow polenta, a purple-ish sauce, and these colorful radishes. So with the legs and wings, I decided to roast those and pair them with…