I first heard about simit years ago when I was binging The Chef’s Line on Netflix. The show is a cooking competition between home cooks and the team from a restaurant, and each week centers around a different restaurant and their style of cuisine. There was a Turkish week where I just learned a lot…
Tag: sumac
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…
Beef cappelletti with brodo and fennel
I really only came up with this dish because I had a lot of oxtail and oxtail broth leftover, and wanted to use it in something. So I came up with this idea to make a stuffed pasta with the leftover oxtail meat, and serve it in the broth to finish. But that just felt…
Something comforting: a plated dish
I really love stewed chickpeas. Actually I just love chickpeas in general. And luckily, I got to cook with them more often these days because I need them for their aquafaba. However, with all of the vegan meringue I have been making, I still need to get rid of the actual chickpeas themselves. So this…
Rabbit rack with carrot puree and warm kale salad
For my second rabbit dish, I wanted to feature the loin and rack instead. I always loved the look of a chop of meat, be it a tomahawk steak or a lamb rack, because it appeals to that carnal instinct we all have from being descendants of cavemen. Despite that being an inspiration, I wanted…
Give you the world: a plated dish
So this dish was actually in my to-do list for about four months. I wrote up the concept back in October, but I never really got around to making it. This dish is an homage to Middle Eastern food, which is actually a cuisine I came to really love during my time in D.C., living…
Let’s go in the garden: a plated dish
For this dish, I really wanted to prepare something that conjured up nostalgic childhood memories. With lamb, it was something I grew up eating a lot of, because my parents loved it. With the garnish, I knew I wanted to do something that resembled vegetables sprouting out from the earth, and so I went with…
Pork belly, apple, and cauliflower bowl
I really just came up with this dish after reading through the “Everything I want to eat” cookbook by Sqirl LA’s Jessica Koslow. In the book, there was this delicious pork belly bowl, and I wanted to make my own version of it. They paired the housemade bacon with a sorrel pesto, farro, ricotta cheese,…
colorful: kofta munti with eggplant puree and crispy beet “fattoush”
About a year ago, I made a dish that was extremely similar to this actually. But I guess you can say that this is the revised/upgraded version of that one. For this dish, we have munti, which are Turkish dumplings, stuffed with a lamb kofta filling, where we also have wilted beet greens folded in…
The Kitchen Garden: a plated dish
I still remember back in 2013, watching MasterChef UK, and being mystified by one particular dish. It was a rabbit salad dish prepared by a solicitor named Rukmini, who was known for her gorgeous plating and really delicious flavors. Back then, I really had no idea what it meant to make a plate look whimsical…
Na’an-lamb kofta dumplings with fattoush salad
I really came up with this dish when I was watching My Kitchen Rules and saw a pair of Jordanians, Sonya and Hadil, prepare a gorgeous fattoush salad. Fattoush is a Middle Eastern salad prepared with a lot of vegetables and a flatbread-type of component. For my take on it, I wanted to take the flatbread…
Freddy's Harajuku 