This recipe was what I made for the 2023 LoveWorks dinner in Oklahoma City(thank you, Gabriel Lewis for the invite to cook once again!). Last year, I was lucky enough to get the dessert course, but this year, I wanted to be a little bolder, and venture back into savory. Truthfully, after Masterchef: Back to…
Tag: Garlic
Almond Butter Hummus with Cauliflower and Rainbow Carrots
This hummus recipe came about because I was trying to make hummus, but I ran out of tahini, and happened to have a jar of almond butter lying around. Fortunately, the almond butter worked in a pinch, and I ended up with a hummus that was exceptionally high in protein and nutrients(thank you, almond butter)….
Loco Moco with Mushroom-Miso Gravy
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…
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…
Classic Pan Con Tomate
I love pan con tomate. I had it for the first time in Jaleo in Washington, D.C., and it was such a simple concept – crusty, airy bread, rubbed with raw garlic, garnished with juicy, crushed tomatoes, olive oil, and sea salt. So straightforward in the components, and honestly very refreshing and light! The perfect…
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….
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…
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…
Freddy's Harajuku 