“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…

Modern Pan Con Tomate

Originally was going to serve this recipe with homemade ricotta and whey, specifically using the whey in the crystal bread, but I opted out of doing that, mostly because even the classic pan con tomate doesn’t use ricotta cheese, so this recipe should not either. There are times when cooks, myself included, can get a…

Sweetbreads(mollejas) with mole

This dish is a play on one of my favorite dishes, which is mochiko chicken with a Mexican mole. In this case, I wanted to challenge myself here, by using sweetbreads. For those unfamiliar with them, a sweetbread is a kind of offal, or organ meat. Specifically, it is the thymus gland or pancreas from…

Salsa Macha Noodles

I was craving some chili oil-noodle business, and I was watching the Chef Show on Netflix, where they were making salsa macha, and that was literally how this recipe came about. For those unfamiliar with it, salsa macha(not to be confused with matcha green tea), is a salsa made with dried chilies, sesame seeds and/or…

Tofu gnocchi with mala-spiced arrabiata ragout

I would be 100% lying if I said that this dish was not hideous to look at. I feel with pasta dishes, they are either super gorgeous, or super rustic(my way of saying that the components are just piled on top of each other because they have no other way to go on the plate)….

Air fried poutine with spicy beef gravy

This is honestly the ugliest thing I have ever made. But that’s what poutine is: fries with gravy and cheese curds. What sets this poutine apart from most is that I went with using my air fryer on to potatoes – this does not make them fully guilt-free, but it does alleviate some of that…

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…

For Mollie: a plated dish

So during the beginning part of my MasterChef journey, I had made several close friends, besides my bestie Bri. There was Sage, the 18 year old from Long Beach(my neighboring beach town!) who competed on MasterChef Junior, season 1(and sadly didn’t make it to the top 36). David, my fellow skinny Asian/straight clone from NorCal….