This recipe was inspired by two different instances where I had really good loco moco. One was when I was in Hawaii, specifically at Moena Cafe in Oahu, and the other from Ryla restaurant in Redondo Beach! Moena Cafe had a short rib loco moco with this rich, deep demi glas gravy that made me…
Tag: Cooking
Japanese Onion Soup
I came up with this because I needed to use up a lot of breadcrumbs, and one of the first things I thought about was doing a take on a French onion soup. Mostly because a few years ago on Masterchef season 10, my plating bestie Bri made one for a bread challenge, that while…
Miso Eggplant Onigiri
Miso eggplant is one of those flavor combinations that I really wanted to dislike, but actually loved from the get-go. For context, growing up, my mom would always serve bitter melon with miso paste, which caused me to develop a bit of a gag reflex towards vegetables served with miso for a long, long time….
Creamy Napolitan Pasta
This post is loosely inspired by my friend Ahran’s Kimchi-Bacon Cream Pasta recipe, which sounded absolutely delicious. Pasta, a creamy sauce with umami and heat, and pork product, there’s a lot of good things going on conceptually there, and I wanted to dig right in myself when I heard the description of that recipe. In…
Edamame-Garlic Confit Gazpacho with Socca, Sumac, and Nasturtiums
So as a part of my post-Asia diet, I swore off of foods with added sugars in them. Which is a lot of things, considering the fact that I primarily am a pastry person. In an attempt to eat better, I wanted to make something that was sugar-free, vegan, gluten-free, and still high in protein….
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…
Pate Choux Taiyaki “Beignets”
I recently purchased a taiyaki pan and was trying to figure out what other things I could make with it besides, well taiyaki. So I started thinking about what doughs or batters can I cook in a pan, and my mind went to pate choux, or cream puff batter/dough. Choux is made by twice cooking…
Gochujang Salsa Macha Rice Noodles
This recipe came about because I wanted to take the salsa macha noodles I made a while ago, but turn them 100% gluten-free and vegan. When I was fasting prior to my Hawaii trip, I had a lot of cravings. and these punchy, spicy, chewy noodles were one of them. Salsa macha is like the…
Egg Sandwiches with Homemade Milk Bread
This recipe is a thank-you letter to my mom, since she not only taught me how to make the perfect boiled egg, but gifted me with this super cute bento box, and I have been dying to use it to plate something. Between eggs and the bento, it just made sense to either do something…
Lu Rou Fan Rice Bowls
Lu rou fan, or 滷肉饭 as it’s written in Chinese, is a Chinese/Taiwanese dish that consists of braised meat, usually pork, with rice, and it’s usually served with pickled daikon and an egg that is usually braised or cooked with the stew. At least that’s how I was raised to eat it. The stew is…
Sesame Checkerboard Bunnies
I felt major FOMO when I saw so many of my fellow Asian bakers posting bunny-themed desserts during Lunar New Years(I was unfortunately in Texas during the week leading up to it with limited access to a kitchen, so I could not join in on the bunny dessert festivities nor did I have the foresight…
Mango Sticky Rice with coconut and pandan
Whenever I think of Southeast Asian desserts, mango sticky rice is probably at the top of my list for things that come to mind. Glutinous rice with ripe, fresh mango, and this salty coconut milk, the contrast and flavors are very different than what most people would associate with desserts. Some variations have toasted sesame…
Dratini Tteok
Tteok are Korean rice cakes that are eaten in both savory and sweet applications. They are quite similar to mochi, and have a delicious chewy texture to them. One of the more common savory applications of tteok is tteokbokki, which literally translates to stewed rice cakes. The cakes are usually stewed in a spicy, kimchi-gochujang…
(Shiny) Torchic Sundae
This recipe came about because I had way too many persimmons and I basically was desperate to get rid of them. So I figured, why not make an ice cream with them? Persimmons are sweet, almost creamy, and very jammy when ripe, which are nice characteristics to incorporate into an ice cream base. The skin…
Swablu Hummingbird Sundae
Back in 2002 when I played Pokemon Sapphire, a much younger Fred adored a Pokemon called Swablu. Swablu is a blue bird-like Pokemon with white, cloud-like wings. It is classified as the Cotton Bird Pokemon, and evolves into Altaria, which honestly looks like a bigger blue bird with cloud-wings, but is somehow a Dragon-type Pokemon….
Blonde Chocolate Crumb Cake Doughnuts
I would be lying if I said this recipe was not just a crumb or coffee cake baked with a hole in it. That’s literally the recipe. However, there is something doubly nostalgic about a crumb cake that also looks like a doughnut, since those are the two coffee shop staple desserts you would usually…
Pork and Miso Cream Stew
This stew is me throwing almost every umami-developing technique I have in the book(minus dried mushrooms, tomatoes, or cheese rinds) into a pot of Japanese-styled cream stew. I have made pork cream stews in the past, but I was always disappointed by the color of the cream. I had envisioned this light, pale color, but…
Apple Crostata with Dutch Crust
I literally only came up with this recipe because I had a ton of apples I needed to use up. So. Many. Apples. And while I could have dumped all of my proverbial apple-eggs into one basket, and make one colossal apple dessert, that seems lame and kind of unoriginal. I would rather stretch out…
Sloth-acado Eclairs
So for my Sylvie(if you watched my audition on season 12, you will better remember her as “Fred’s Friend” who was making all of that commentary about my chocolate LOL)’s birthday, I wanted to make a fun dessert that was unlike anything I have previously attempted. Sylvie is obsessed with this sweet passionfruit-avocado tart that…
Rowlet Inarizushi
When I was a kid who did not like raw fish yet, I found myself ordering only three things whenever we would go out for sushi: cucumber rolls, tamagoyaki(Japanese omelet), and inarizushi. Inari refers to these puffed tofu skins that are based in a sweet soy mixture, giving them a sweet, smoky, and almost salty…
Freddy's Harajuku 