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…
Tag: Garlic
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…
Herb and mushroom focaccia
So this recipe was actually inspired by a dinner I had at Etta in Culver City. Originally from Chicago, Etta is a modern Italian restaurant that features a lot of upscale versions of Italian classics, namely pizzas, pastas, and bread. The focaccia I had there was super pillowy and light, while speckled with tons of…
Sweet pea agnolotti with yuzu ricotta
Agnolotti are one of those pasta shapes that can be particularly tricky to assemble. If your filling is really wet, then the pasta sheets will start to warp and stick to whatever surface they are on, causing the delicate little folds you are attempting to make to come undone and the dough itself to tear…
Savory pumpkin curry puffs
These are my take on pumpkin pasties from the Harry Potter series. I would assume that they are dessert-friendly in real life, but I figured a fun little spin on them would be to go savory! For the pastry, I was inspired by Malaysian styled curry puffs, which are made with this flaky pastry formed…
Deep Dive: a plated dish
Of the five dishes from the “Namie” pop-up, I would say this was probably the one with the least amount of true Asian influence. While I took more inspiration from Halal/Middle Eastern flavors, it would be a stretch to say that it took influence from Halal-Chinese food, when it was more Jordanian with sprinkles of…
Tangzhong noodles with miso-sesame dressing and Thai chilies
After I made boba from scratch, I had a bizarre epiphany – if I were to cook flour with water into a gelatinous paste, and use that to make noodles, would they come out super chewy? When you are making boba, you do that process with water and tapioca flour to gelatinize the starch, resulting…
Squash blossom and ricotta pizza
This pizza is my love letter to Pizzeria Mozza in West Hollywood. Namely because I love that restaurant, but driving all the way over there from the South Bay area in Southern California is a giant pain. They have this wonderful pizza with Nancy Silverton’s perfected O.G. La Brea Bakery bread that has a blanket…
Roasted cornish hen with umami rice cabbage roll
I really came up with this dish because I wanted to do a cornish hen dish for a while, but was not fully sure where to go with it, initially. I wanted to do something a little European, but obviously a little Asian as well, and that’s how I came to the dish I came…
Roasted cabbage with pork belly and mushroom dashi
So this is a dish inspired directly from mille feuille nabe. I wanted to do a dish that featured layers of roasted cabbage and pork in an umami-rich mushroom broth. I could imagine these soft, tender layers of cabbage that are steamed with the rendered pork fat from the belly slices between each leaf, sponging…
Mapo tofu gnocchi
So this is a dish I made a while back for the Plant Your Vote challenge in the 2020 election. The concept was to post a plant-based dish, and this mapo tofu gnocchi dish is 100% vegan. I wanted to post it now, since Chinese New Years is coming up, and I wanted to switch…
Crunchy mala-spiced popcorn
Whenever I go running, I always come up with really fun food ideas. I don’t know why, maybe it is because my body is craving certain kinds of foods while I am exercising, or the adrenaline is going to my head and it helps me think better or more creatively, but this recipe, regardless of…
Duck fat-grilled onigiri
These rice balls were just a way for me to utilize a bucketload of leftover brown rice. With rice of any kind, it can be very bland. In the case of brown rice, that is no exception. I knew that I had to inject as much flavor as I could into it, so I wanted…
Moussaka pizza
One of my favorite dishes from Greece is moussaka. It’s basically layers of ground meat, typically lamb, sometimes beef, stewed in this tomato sauce with eggplant, potatoes, and a creamy béchamel on top of that is broiled until golden brown. With the exception of the potato, honestly, all of those things could be incorporated into…
Back to life: a plated dish
This dish is a nod to Mystery Skulls, specifically their new album and song, Back to Life. When I was conceptualizing a dish around that focuses on one of my biggest banes to existence, being the filet mignon, and focusing on taking that and making it vibrant, exciting, and beautiful. Honestly, filet is a giant…
Prince of the Dawning Sky: a plated dish
This would have been my main course for the finale. Inspired by the sun-filled sky, and the morning, it is duck and mushroom congee with ponzu-black garlic puree, duck egg yolk, braised duck thigh meat, crispy shallots, cilantro duck fat, caramelized mushrooms, and micro cilantro to garnish. The idea has multiple folds behind the inspiration….
Nightmarket: a plated dish concept
The entire basis of this dish came from wanting to shove as many Chinese/Asian inspired dishes into one thing. So we have roasted duck leg, seared duck breast, green papaya salad, and a duck fat infused bun, served with a duck-blood orange-soy sauce. It’s a lot of food, but it’s guaranteed that you’ll find something…
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…
Kale Fagottini
When I first heard of the name of this pasta, I tried really hard not to react. The term, fagottini, I pronounce the “g” like a “j”, just because I don’t want to accidentally offend anyone. The pasta itself is a purse-like dumpling, stuffed with traditionally sausage or ground mince meat. However, when I prepared…
Mussels with Latin flavors
This dish was originally inspired by the Mediterranean, but forcibly took a detour into Mexico when I could not find the right kind of chorizo and just went with it from there. Going to school in Boston, you come to love shellfish and seafood. I love eating and cooking mussels, because they plump up in…
Freddy's Harajuku 