One of my absolute favorite sandwiches is the banh mi. A Vietnamese-French hybrid, it features a baguette that has pate, some sort of meat, pickled vegetables, chilies, and cilantro on it. It’s been one of my favorites for years ever since I had one from Lee’s Sandwiches(yes, I know it’s a chain, but still, the banh…
Tag: Frying
Meyer Lemon-Elderflower-Meringue Beignets
I love a good beignet. Fluffy doughnuts are honestly my favorite thing ever for munching on, especially when they’re stuffed with something. In this case, I had a ton of Meyer lemons sitting in my fridge, and I wanted to use them up. Immediately, my mind went to lemon curd. And with lemon curd, you…
Tofu steak: a childhood favorite
One of the best things I ever ate growing up was the tofu steak at Kappo Seafood in Torrance. It was this crunchy, creamy, deep fried block of tofu with mushrooms that were stewed in a sukiyaki-type of sauce, served with bonito flakes and scallions. I still remember ordering it as a kid, just out…
Duck-scallion congee with duck fat-Chinese churros
Whenever I butcher whole ducks (this happens a lot more than you’d think, but I guess that’s the benefit of butchering whole animals), I love making stock using the bones, and then taking the scrap meat from the carcass and folding that into congee, which is Chinese rice porridge. When I was learning how to…
Fried chicken sandwich with brown butter pretzel bun, furikake corn, and sesame slaw
I’ve seen spicy fried chicken sandwiches popping up since last year when I was watching Top Chef: California, where my favorite contestant, Marjorie Meek-Bradley, prepared one for a quickfire challenge. Since then, it has resurfaced with Shake Shack, and is a favorite guilty pleasure of my older sister’s. Now personally, I’m a big wuss the…
Ham and cheese croquettes
These…were born from a mistake. Basically, I did not have enough rice to make arancini one summer ago, and I was craving fried food like a fat motherfucker. I had maybe 1/4 cup of rice, but I found potatoes in my fridge. So I decided, why the fuck not, let’s go with that shit and…
Beignets with ovaltine-mascarpone affogato and dark chocolate custard
I had this craving for beignets one night when I saw a video of my friend who went to the infamous Cafe du Monde in New Orleans and got to record them making these beautiful, cloud-like beignets and serving them with a nice cup of coffee. So, because I went to school in Boston at…
Matcha sugar doughnuts
For my Advanced Food and Beverage concept, BA- (a 2 1/2 in one Japanese dining experience), we featured a morning bakery called Panya, which would turn into an izakaya (Japanese gastropub) at night. Panya boasted a lot of cute and simple baked goods and doubled as a cafe in the morning. One of our signatures…
Chocolate double decker doughnuts
“I’m hoping for chocolate to give me the will to live.” – Sophia Pou, My Kitchen Rules. As stated by the obnoxiously entertaining Goddess of the babes, chocolate is life. I fucking love chocolate. So much so that I decided to make chocolate-flavored doughnut dough. But I didn’t just stop there. No, it would be way…