December 8, 2021 In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

Kahlua buns stuffed w/ mascarpone cream and salted pistacchio powder

Somewhere inside this cold hard exterior of mine, as hard as it is to admit, there's always been this fantasy of being the person who gives out home-baked panettone every year during the holiday season.  Not too early, not too late, just a couple gatherings after the first snowfall, the anticipation on the street would be, "Any day now."  It would be done right, gorgeous, plump, and permeating buttery decadent splendor that smells like long, scrutinized days in the kitchen.  It'll say

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October 15, 2021 In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

Halloween spiral pastry stuffed with pumpkin and cheddar

It's always hard to entice someone to try, let alone spend time to cook something which they share utterly zero cultural or emotional connections with.  We are after all, creatures of habits and comforts, and both were properly brought up to not speak to strangers.  For this particular reason, one might even call it an excuse, I have been hiding from you one of my all-time favorite pastries. I'm obsessed with this stuff.  But what is it exactly?  Even nowadays when Asian is the new Italian culinarily speaking, It's still so foreign and

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May 13, 2021 In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Snacks

Paper thin soft chewy, Sonoran-style flour tortilla

[ezcol_1half] For a couple years now, I've been taking jabs at creating the perfect flour tortillas. Now, any conversation evoking the word "perfect" ought to be subject to a clearer definition, doesn't it?  So here is mine.  The perfect flour tortilla, in my view, should be unleavened (otherwise it's just a thin pita), translucent, thin but elastic, flavorful enough to be a standalone enjoyment, and above all else, embodying a soft chewiness that you could feel in between bites. It's safe to say that the recipes I used over the years didn't stray far from the typical ones floating around the internet, more or less, kneading flour, warm water (often ambiguous on the exact temperature), some sort of animal fat all together which is rolled out and toasted on a skillet.  Simple, yes, and those aren't horrible either.  Anything containing that amount of lard just can't be.  But in the end

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March 15, 2021 In All recipes, Sweets

Chewy marshmallow nougat w/ cheese crackers and pistachio

"  It has just the right resistance, just the right gives, and just the right amount of crunches, dense and chewy yet airy and textural.  " [ezcol_1half] In case you're wondering why there's again a video instead of process photos, I'm actually thinking about experimenting with this new format from now on.  Based on feedbacks, videos seem to demonstrate the makings of the recipes much better than photos, and hence removing more fear and unfamiliarity from people who are trying to make them.  So I will keep doing it this way and see how it all goes.   So putting that aside, what we have here today is what I would like to call a marshmallow nougat, or marshmallow crisp, as some also call it, a snow crisp.  It is a very popular, well circulated, essentially a nougat-like candy bar of sort that's been making buzzes in Taiwan and Hong Kong's food-fad circles.  For someone who's not in the slightest bit into candy bars, even less so with nougats specifically, I too fell for its satisfyingly chewy texture with airy crunches from the crackers that are generously dispersed throughout.  But if you know what a snow crisp is and are wondering, "but wait, this

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February 22, 2021 In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry

Layered scallion pancraffles

[ezcol_1fifth]-[/ezcol_1fifth] [ezcol_3fifth] "  SOMETIMES THE RIGHT THINGS DON'T MAKE SENSE. " This is not a croissant.  I know better not to call it such without the distinct lamination equally spaced across in laser-precision, if only to avoid sudden eruptive rage from the sentimental hearts of any avid croissantologists.  But this is not a scallion pancake either.  Not only that its yeasted, bread-like dough stands apart from the standard model.  But the ungodly amount of butter in between its much thinner circular layers, stained green from bled out scallions could surely, I speculate again, rattle the graves of many conservative Chinese grandmothers.  Not that dead people have feelings.  But I wouldn't underestimate their much-alive grandchildren with multiple Twitter accounts.  I guess what I could safely refer to it as, is probably that it's a waffle.  For nowadays, anything and everything cooked in a waffle machine, let it be raw fish sushi or spaghetti bolognese, is unmistakably, a waffle.  No progressive movement there. Or, I could just call it something else entirely.  A pancraffle. And if you are one who doesn't spend too much time on correct name-calling, but instead, on actions, then you'd be rewarded with these crispy and flakey outside, soft oniony and buttery

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December 4, 2020 In All recipes, Vegatables

Long string beans stewed in Thai curry tomato sauce

"  the devil lies in the impromptu dollop of Thai red curry paste, which I consider a tragically unrealized soulmate to tomato sauces  " [ezcol_1half] This may not look much.  It was an accident really, the kind that perhaps only landed so simple and good because of. Yes I said "good", to a vegetable.  What is happening to me?  In a household where most end up rolled out of the fridge only for postmortems and the rest consumed only in repentance instead of joy, this dish received an unexpected broad spectrum of endorsement.  Even though it may be deemed as a mundane green beans stewed in tomatoes - and you're not wrong - the devil lies in the impromptu dollop of Thai red curry paste, which I consider a tragically unrealized soulmate to tomato sauces.  Its magic locked within the pulverized lemongrass and galangal was freed by sizzling olive oil, casting this old red sauce in a spell of lemony gingery fragrance and warm heat.  Of course such motherly sauce would've gladly taken any displaced vegetables under her wings, but I took a particular liking on her behalf to long string beans because of - other than the make-believe resemblance to spaghetti -

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October 14, 2020 In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

Brûlée Coconut, Palm Sugar, Pork floss sticky buns

"  It's savoury-sweet kinda thing, you know, obviously, but also smokey around where a mixed aroma of coconut, butterscotch and bacon meet and greet.  " [ezcol_2third] What in the world is pork floss?! And where the hell do you get palm sugar?!  Or both, for that matter?! Ok fine, so I knew this is gonna be a hard pitch.  And I'm probably not helping my case when I tell you that pork floss, invented by an anonymous Chinese likely on a night of massive insomnia, is a brownish cotton ball made of predominantly pork, which is cooked, shredded, then painstakingly dehydrated while being tumble-fried inside a wok until what used to be muscle tissues have then transformed into super fine, fiber-like fluffs.  Whaaat?!  And as if that's not mind-bending enough, its flavor profile wonders in between savoury and sweet with a maple bacon or jerky-like porkiness oozing into your sensory space as your mouth grapple to understand this textural anomaly. It's really just like any other culinary ingenuities that took form initially as a means to tackle food preservation before refrigeration, but ended up being cherished by its culture even till this day.  Stretching from southern China down to Southeast Asia, hey, pork floss matters. 

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