This recipe is my East Meets West take on steak and risotto. I wanted to make a risotto with steak and kale, which is something we might eat for dinner for a special occasion, but using some Japanese ingredients to give it a new identity and keep things new and different. So with the steak,…
Tag: Cooking
Liver and Onion Piccata
I am one of those weirdos that likes liver and onions, okay? Back in college, when I was learning Montenegrin food, I noticed liver was a commonly used protein in that cuisine. I still remember when I was auditioning for Masterchef season 10, since I mentioned being a heavy baker more than a savory cook,…
Chorizo Chicken Thighs with Cavatelli
A while ago, I was trying to make a dish with chorizo, but accidentally grabbed Mexican chorizo instead of Spanish chorizo. To confirm the differences here, Mexican chorizo is more like a mince or sausage meat, meant to be cooked to be crumbly. Spanish chorizo is dried and is more like a cured meat product…
Eggs, Bacon, and Toast Gnocchi
When I think of Americana, I just randomly think of that scene in Parks and Rec where the Gergich family is singing about eggs, bacon, and toast. So I figured, why not take that inspiration, and making a gnocchi dish? Originally, when I was conceptualizing this dish, it was going to be a pasta dish…
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…
Roast Duck with Purple Yam and Radicchio
When I was thinking of a main course to serve my mom, the tricky part was the protein. Half the menu was fruit/vegetable-focused, while I also had a soup course that used poultry in the form of black chicken. I knew in terms of proteins, my mom would either want a fish, duck, or lamb,…
Heirloom Tomato Salad with Meiji Tofu and Shiso-Pistachio Pesto
This salad is a celebration of summery produce, featuring tomatoes and tofu in a very light, refreshing salad. In a lot of ways, it is like a caprese salad, but if you subbed out the basil with shiso and the mozzarella with tofu. This was one of the four courses I made for my mom…
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…
Stewed Beef Tongue and Prunes
This is the definition of a granny dish. Stewed meat and prunes. Literally a grandma-inspired dish is there ever was one. It is a giant bowl of brown too, yet this is a dish that I really enjoyed making, and eating. Beef tongue is such an under-loved cut, being more popular in Latin dishes(for lengua…
Umami Oil Scallion Pancakes
When I was testing out a recipe for scallion pancakes, I happened to have made an umami oil with celery leaves and scallions, so I figured, why not infuse my dough with some of that? The dough itself was a subtle green color(which might not have photographed too clearly, but I promise you that there…
Sourdough Bolognese Pizza
While I was experimenting with sourdough pizza crust, I happened to also have meal-prepped a giant vat of bolognese(meat sauce), just to have throughout the week for potential dinners. Originally, this was going to be a bolognese pasta post, but I forgot to photograph that, and decided instead, let’s use the bolognese on the pizza…
Pork and Collard Chou Farci
Chou farci is a French dish that translates to “stuffed cabbage”. I love doing renditions on stuffed cabbage or cabbage rolls because it is fun to bite into something that looks like a vegetable, only for there to be this unctuous, savory filling instead! In the case of my recipe, I wanted to pair the…
Haricot Vert and Feta Pita
I had purchased green beans(or haricot vert) on a whim and was trying to figure out a way to use the last few up in a fun and creative way. That was literally how this recipe came about. When I think about haricot vert, I distinctly enjoy their snappy texture, when blanched and shocked properly,…
Hamburg Steak Dinner
This recipe is my slightly bougie-r take on a a meatloaf and mashed potato dinner. I had some ground beef I needed to use up, and I figured why not make a hamburg steak? Hamburg steak is a Japanese yoshoku-style dish that is basically a beefed up(pun semi-intended here) hamburger patty that is seared and…
Red Miso-Black Garlic Pork Belly Baozi
Since I am about to travel in Taiwan/Japan in April, I was starting to think about what dishes from my youth that I missed the most. Baozi, or meat buns, were such a ubiquitous part of my childhood, being something I would eat at dim sum, for breakfast on occasion, and whenever I would visit…
Pork and Shiitake Shumai
I still remember as a little kid watching Chuka Ichiban(a true old-school anime that heavily featured Chinese cooking, so think Shokugeki no Soma, but way less pervy) in Taiwan, and the main character Liao Xiao Ming made a dish called shumai. 5 year old Fred had zero clue what that was, but after asking his…
Cheesy Broccolini Focaccia
This is one of those recipes that came about because I had a lot of leftover broccolini and was trying to figure out what to do with it. I still remember during the pandemic how people would make aesthetically pleasing focaccia landscapes, and figured, why not take a whack at it? Truthfully, I used to…
Lamb-Chickpea-Kataifi Fritters
These fritters were partially inspired by the mala cream shrimp dim sum from the Netflix show, Culinary Class Wars. The dish itself was a mixture of ground shrimp and pork, rolled in julienned spring roll wrappers and deep fried, so that there were these thin strands of crispy-fried dough for extra texture and crunchiness around…
Sweetbreads with Bacon-Caper Brown Butter
This recipe was heavily inspired by the sweetbreads with bacon, capers ,and brown butter from the now-closed Prune restaurant in New York City. Prune was a restaurant owned by chef Gabrielle Hamilton, and it featured food from her French-Italian upbringing. A lot of the dishes they served had this sense of resourcefulness, pulling techniques and…
Rayquaza-themed Mugwort-Kinako Parfait
So this recipe was the result of me being asked by The Pokemon Company to make a Rayquaza-themed dessert! The very first English Pokemon game I ever played was Pokemon Sapphire, and I loved beating the Elite Four, climbing the Sky Pillar, and catching Rayquaza. Rayquaza is a green serpentine Dragon/Flying-Pokemon that is meant to…
Freddy's Harajuku 