This lamb stew came about because I got a bone-less leg of lamb, and was kind of struggling to figure out what to do with it. You see, if the meat came with the bone, I could make a gorgeous lamb stock, or even a meat pie. And the bone itself would be able to…
Tag: Yogurt
Figs, Aerated Kefir, and Poached Egg Salad
So I won’t lie, this was basically a re-hashed plated dish version of the fig-arugula flatbread I made before, but instead of mascarpone-feta, I made an aerated kefir(drinkable yogurt), and replaced the flatbread with brioche soldiers. Oh, and I put a poached egg in there, just to add more richness. What initially inspired this dish…
Semolina-Tahini Cake with Biko and Coconut
While I was going through my sugar fast, I was craving basically everything with sugar. This dessert specifically was one of those sugar-deprived fantasies I conceptualized around two desserts that are notoriously sugar-laden. One of the inspirations was basbousa, an Egyptian semolina cake that is baked with tahini for a nutty texture, and is normally…
Plated Yogurt-Semolina Olive Oil Cakes
I always have this craving for semolina-olive oil cake. Olive oil cake has this rich, dense crumb, while semolina gives it an almost corn-like flavor that is mild and pleasant. I came up with this dessert because I bought a gigantic 3 pound tub of yogurt, and while I love yogurt(nowhere as much as Terry…
Chocolate-Peanut Butter Muffins
I am actually surprised by how few times in my life I have made muffins. Back before I even started learning how to bake, my sister would make these banana-Nutella muffins all the time, so you would think that I would have taken my hand at something similar, but I guess I just haven’t felt…
Yakult and Muscat Panna Cotta
Muscat grapes remind me of my first time in Japan, when I was served green muscat grape jelly. In Japanese, muscat is pronounced “masukaato”, and since I was only 16 at the time, I was not sure if that meant musket, as in the gun, since I was still too young to know what moscato…
Open-Faced Pistachio-Strawberry Tart
I personally love the combination of strawberry and pistachio. Strawberries are tart, sweet, and are just such a beautiful red color. Pistachios can be crunchy, creamy, smoky, and salty. The two really balance each other nicely, especially when sugar enhances both ingredients separately. Strawberries with sugar is such a simple combination, but the sugar really…
Apple Mont Blanc
So my fellow AAPI pastry friends (Dara Yu and Jess Wang) and I wanted to challenge ourselves to make a fun holiday dessert using apples, just in time for Thanksgiving. While I have also done a pie collab with my dear friend Sam, in case you are not a pie lover, this recipe is here…
Rhubarb-Elderflower Petit Gateaus
About 5 years ago(which is such a weird preface to say out loud because man, time FLIES), I made a dessert that featured rhubarb and elderflower. Ironically, it featured strawberries as well, so I opted to not even include rhubarb or elderflower in the name of the dessert. The cake itself featured elderflower mousse, and…
Strawberry-White Chocolate Tart
Whenever I think of my earlier childhood, I recall going to the local Asian bakery section in the Japanese supermarket and getting fruit tarts. Buttery pastry, silky, custard pastry cream, fresh fruit on top, a simple combination, but really delicious and addictive. With strawberry tarts in particular, they take what I love about fruit tarts,…
Yakult-Passionfruit Popsicles
It has been a minute since I last made popsicles in general. I do love making them, though I find that with frozen desserts, they take a bit more time. That being said, popsicles are super simple to do, and there is a lot less manual or hands-on work that you need to invest in…
Yakult and Pineberry Roll Cake
When I first heard about pineberries from my coworker Georgina, I just knew I had to use them in something. Pineberries are albino strawberries that supposedly taste like pineapples – truthfully, they just tasted like tart strawberries to me, but that was fine either way, because I really wanted to use them for their beautiful…
Sourdough Pita
The initial idea for this recipe came about because my friend Sylvie was nonstop raving about how good the sourdough at Bavel in LA is. To quote, she said it was the fluffiest pita bread she ever had. And that piqued my interest. I happened to own the Bavel cookbook, so I looked up their…
Super simple pita bread
While in the midst of my crash dieting, I have developed some hilariously random cravings. Super fluffy pita bread has been one of those. About a year ago, I had dinner with my friends in downtown LA, at a restaurant called Girl and the Goat(which is best known for their flagship in Chicago, and being…
Beetroot red velvet with yuzu cream cheese frosting
So this was actually a cake order for a friend’s boyfriend’s birthday. He wanted a red velvet cake, and I did not want to use red food dye, so I opted for using beetroot powder. My initial batch turned out brown, as beet root powder does not like being baked, and I had to do…
Yogurt panna cotta with instant ramen “crunch”, yuzu chia seeds, and macerated peaches
So before somebody assumes that I was smoking something, I came up with this dish in response to a friend giving me a “Mystery Box” challenge. She wanted to see what I could do with spicy Korean instant ramen and chia seeds. Hilariously enough, my mind did not want to go in the savory direction,…
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…
Tea-smoked duck with green apple and onion
I came up with this dish because I was thinking about what the prettiest duck dish I could make, and this is what I thought up of. I love to tea smoke proteins, and I love tea smoked duck. Smoking the duck in chamomile tea specifically gives it a pleasant earthiness, and I wanted to…
Mango lassi mille feuille
So with this dessert, I wanted to combine Indian flavors with Albanian and French techniques. For the pastry, I went with a homemade phyllo, brushed with ghee just to guarantee that beautiful browning on the dough. With the filling, I did a yogurt and cardamom namelaka, which is a ganache that is whipped. For this…
Aurora: a “glow-in-the-dark” entremet
So before I get into the rest of this post, I want to clarify the technical misnomer of this cake. I used tonic water, which allows the cake to glow under black light. Different than actually glowing in the dark, but still really cool. That being said, this is actually the second time I have…
Freddy's Harajuku 