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…