Category Archives: Cooking

Mandoline sliced something other than zucchini today

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Today was Father’s Day, and I thought it would be a good occasion to put together a cohesive meal. Most of the time when I am making food, I am thinking in singular dishes or about how many vegetables I need to prepare. Since Kaia was born, the only times I’ve really prepared a cohesive menu are when we’ve had guests over. But I really do want to change that because I prefer it when dishes are supposed to go together. So today, I made kimchi soondubu jigae (Korean kimchi soft tofu soup) with pork ribs, japchae (Korean glass noodles with vegetables), bindaetteok (Korean kimchi mung bean pancakes), rice, and three different types of banchan: soy bean sprout salad, marinated spinach, and zucchini.

For the zucchini banchan, I decided to whip out the mandoline Chris got me during the pandemic. Honestly, I haven’t used it too many times because I am a little terrified of it. I have a mandoline section on my box grater, but I’d only ever used it a few times and didn’t really trust it (it seemed too dull, which would beg for more pressure, which is dangerous!).

The few times I’ve used the mandoline setting, I was very deliberate with each slice. I watched each cut go through. I was always determined to never get cut by it… Until today, when I finally got cut by it. I was talking to Chris. Kaia was making a ruckus nearby, and I was very clearly distracted. I kept slicing the zucchini until it got way too close to my fingers, and SLICE! A huge section of the side of my right thumb got cut off. The blood was literally getting everywhere. I was dripping blood and leaving small puddles on the counter and floor. It took almost an hour and endless tissue, gauze, and paper towels to stop the bleeding, along with applying pressure and ice. I’d never cut myself this deeply before.

Luckily, I don’t think I cut any nerve or tendon, but it’s been pretty uncomfortable. The few times I’ve knocked myself in that spot, it hurts like hell. I’ve been doing my best to not use my right thumb, which is obviously hard. But it’s so painful when something even taps it. I have a feeling this will be the worst kitchen wound I have had to date. My friend, who also cooks often, was marveling that this was just my first mandoline cut (it’s a VERY common kitchen injury!). She even educated me on “finger condoms” (today, I learned…) and how I may want to get some to protect myself from similar injuries in the future.

Next time, when I am brave enough to take out the mandoline again, I will not talk to anyone or have my child near me. I will need to be 120 percent focused. Wounds like these are not fun at all, and even typing this feels odd because I am trying to avoid using a thumb to type…

Hot cross buns, take 2, results

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It looks like I did two things right that I got wrong last time: I made sure that I used instant yeast as instructed, and I also scalded my milk to prevent any weird growth deactivation in my yeast. But I probably did not spend enough time folding over my hot cross bun balls enough. The balls were already a bit misformed when I rolled them into balls. So when they rose a lot and expanded, they just… got bigger as the same misshapen balls. The second thing I also got wrong once again was the hot cross piping. I think my flour/water paste was too thick this time; last time it was too thin, ran too much over the buns, and then completely disappeared. This time, the crosses are very clear, but a bit too thick. I also cut slightly too big of a hole in my piping bag (I just used a Ziplock bag), which made my crosses thicker than I would have liked. So appearance wise, they still are not completely what I would have liked, but they are far, far better than the crappy “hot cross scones” that I made a couple months ago. When they came out of the oven and we ate one each, we both declared that they looked, smelled, tasted, and felt just like hot cross buns. So even though they are not perfect, they are many steps closer to my ideal homemade hot cross buns.

I might not try this again so soon after having made them twice, but I do want to try my hand at them at least once more this year, just to get the hang of shaping and piping better. That’s #alwayslearning for me here!

Hot cross buns, take 2

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Since I messed up the first iteration of hot cross buns I did around Easter time, I decided that I would follow up by trying to make them again this week. This time, I was ready with both my instant yeast and my pre-scalded milk. There’s no deterring me this time! The dough is currently right by my stove rising. I just checked and it’s already more than doubled in size, which is not what happened last time. A couple months ago when I did this, the dough probably only rose about 50 percent, which was already an indication to me that something was inhibiting the yeast from growing my dough to the full potential.

My friend asked me last week if I had tried making hot cross buns again given my mini disaster last time, and I told her I hadn’t yet. She gave me this look to basically keep me in check: “If I were you, I would have already done it to prove to that fucking dough that I could do it!” Good point. Time is of the essence, so fingers crossed that tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to make this work the right way this time!

Yibin Fresh-Chili Beef Noodles (Shengjiao Niurou Mian, 生椒牛肉面)

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My understanding of regional Chinese cooking has grown exponentially since my college years, when I finally learned Mandarin Chinese, how to read and write (just enough) Chinese, and when I finally started exploring more of my own (well, half) culture in depth. The truth is that as most Chinese scholars will note, you can spend your entire life studying the various regional cuisines of China, and you will barely touch the surface of it. Even when you think you know everything there is to know, some town, some city, some person or family will shock you and show you something you never even knew existed. Reading about Chinese cuisine and the endless dishes and methods through the eyes of Fuchsia Dunlop also felt a bit life changing for me (I could read her writing about Chinese cuisine and culture until the end of time). As someone who identifies as half Cantonese, I still cannot believe all the things I am learning about Cantonese cuisine. For example, it wasn’t until about seven years ago when I learned that Chaozhou (or Teochew) cuisine is considered a branch of Cantonese cuisine, known for light, fresh flavors, and arguably being one of the first cultures of the world that started eating raw fish (as it has been made famous by the Japanese today).

When the Dipshit Administration announced a couple months ago that massive tariffs were going to hit a lot of our imported goods, I went into a slight panic and went onto Mala Market’s website to purchase a bunch of premium quality Sichuanese products. This included a family of regional Chinese black vinegars, various types of Sichuanese peppercorns, a premium aged Chinese soy sauce, and some alkaline (jian shui) dried noodles. The Mala Market website is amazing — it is so informative and well researched. They not only give you a thorough background on the products they sell and how they were produced, but they also share the history of the overall products (e.g. how was soy sauce first made? What’s the history behind black rice vinegar? How did different versions come about?), and also have a pretty legitimate recipes section that cheekily notes, ‘Proceed at your own risk’). Through their website, I started learning about other regional, city-specific dishes in Sichuan and decided to start trying the recipes out.

Today, I made Yibin fresh chili beef noodles from their site. Yibin is a prefecture-level city in the southeastern part of Sichuan province, about 260 kilometers away from Chengdu. It is known for being a historical source for salt, as well as having a large pepper mill. They also produce bai jiu, or a distilled hard liquor. The noodle dish has four main components: the wheat noodles (in this case, noodles that due to being produced in an alkaline lye water, are naturally colored yellow), the noodle sauce, the saucy minced beef topping, and the fresh accompaniments (freshly chopped cilantro and red peppers). Like many very delicious Sichuanese dishes, this really needs to be assembled to order and eaten immediately. So I got all the components ready and then tossed them in individual portions in a large bowl and served them for dinner. And it was so, so good. The hot and numbing feeling of the just ground Sichuanese peppercorns was super tingly and spicy. The noodles had a perfect al dente chewy texture. And the entire dish just brought me back to our Chengdu trip, where we ate extremely, extremely well. I love and miss the mian guans (noodle houses) that we visited and where we ate copious amounts of delicious food.

I might not be able to go back to Sichuan that quickly or easily, but I have all my Mala Market ingredients to take me there via my noodle bowl at home when I please now. I’m so happy I finally made a big purchase from them this year! Every penny was beyond worth it, even if the prices aren’t cheap. You get what you pay for!

Pit stop at a Phil-Am Market to the Staten Island Ferry serves as inspiration for bread making

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After my friend’s baby shower yesterday, I helped with some relatives and another friend to load and off-load gifts and baby items back at their house. Since her friend had a car and was driving back to Brooklyn, she offered to take me to the ferry terminal so that my friend’s boyfriend didn’t have to drive me. The caveat, she said, was that she hoped it would be okay to first stop at a Filipino market on the island before dropping me off at the ferry terminal.

My friend looked directly at me and smiled since she knew what my reaction would be. “Ummm, YES; I would love that pit stop first! I’m coming in with you!” I exclaimed.

My friend’s friend went in to pick up Filipino groceries as well as takeout (they have a prepared foods section) to bring home to her family. I picked up the pancit, which she also got and recommended, a tray of kare kare (this delicious Filipino oxtail / beef peanut stew), and a bowl of ube halo halo. And while I was perusing the packaged goods aisle, I was beyond ecstatic to find dehydrated ube powder; this was the ingredient I wanted to use to make ube pandesal, but I hadn’t been able to source it at an Asian market until now! This was likely the one item I got from this place that made this trip to the market a thousand percent worth it.

As soon as I got home, I started looking up recipes for ube pandesal. A year and a half ago, I made classic Filipino pandesal bread buns and really enjoyed how simple they were to make, as well as how comforting the flavor was. My next step in my mind was to make the ube version. There are ube pandesal recipes that call for frozen mashed ube, but it seemed like based on the recipes I found that dehydrated ube powder was the most common and preferred way. I also love this packet of dehydrated ube powder I got because there are zero additives in it: it’s 100 percent ube powder with nothing else – no stabilizers, no artificial coloring, no weird thickeners, nada! I had a strong urge when I boarded the ferry back to Manhattan to make bread this weekend.

I decided I’d do the bread recipe that was on the top of my to-make list ahead of my ube pandesal urge, though, which was King Arthur’s big, bubbly focaccia. I started the dough this afternoon, did some pulls and dough turns to develop gluten, and then will let it bubble, grow, and ferment overnight for additional flavor before baking it tomorrow.

This visit to the Phil-Am Market really got me excited to want to make bread again – this was an unintended, unexpected effect of visiting a Filipino grocery store on Staten Island. And now, I have both dry active yeast and instant yeast, so I don’t have to do any conversions for yeast types or worry about whether something will fail based on the yeast type I’ve chosen!

Today’s Trader Joe’s haul – May 2025

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There are two seasons of the year when I get really excited to shop at Trader Joe’s. Granted, I always enjoy shopping at Trader Joe’s regardless of the time of year, but I think that their very best seasonal or limited time items come out during summer or winter. Winter is fairly self explanatory: this is when they get all their Christmas/holiday items that everyone loves, whether it’s the peppermint Joe-Joe’s, the fancy Belgian chocolate and biscuit variety boxes, the Belgian chocolate “gold coins” of various countries around the world, or the Almond-Roca with a private label (this one is my all-time guilty pleasure/favorite!). Summer, of course, will have a much different assortment. At this time of year, they have their best selection of skincare items (expecting that you will be spending more time in the Northern Hemisphere summer sun), as well as fun warm weather treats. These are some things I’m excited about that I picked up:

Organic guava fruit spread: This seems to be all over my social media feeds now. It’s guava fruit spread with just enough sugar for sweetness. I was excited about any type of guava fruit spread since guava is not a common fruit or flavor you find in the U.S. I actually don’t eat much jam (Chris is the jam person in our household), but when I do, I want it to be the extreme version of the fruit it claims to be of, and I want it to be just sweet enough. So if this is good, I may go back and stock up on three more before they run out for the season.

Ube mochi pancake and waffle mix: I never buy pre-made mixes for cakes, pancakes, waffles, or anything. I prefer to make almost everything we consume from scratch because I’m obsessive about how I like what I like. But this ube mochi mix is the only exception. I buy this every year to either make pancakes or to make ube mochi muffins, which I personally think have a springier, more fun texture than the pancakes do. Instead of water or milk, I like to add coconut milk because ube plus coconut are a match made in the purest love. Apparently, Chris’s mom is a huge fan, too: she likes to buy a box or two when they come in May/June and bring it back to Australia!

Dubai style pistachio dark chocolate: I picked up three of these. The Dubai chocolate craze doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Since I had it at a verified place that sold it in Lower East Side with my friend when she visited back in October last year, I have seen endless variations of “Dubai chocolate” since. It’s come up in coffee drinks, milkshakes, random desserts in various shops, etc. We’ve already tried it, and this is good. At $3.99 for 100 grams of pistachio dark chocolate, this is excellent value if you like both dark chocolate and pistachio. The pistachio inside is very nutty and unmistakable. It’s also a little bit gooey with a hint of crunch. This stuff is worth it! It’s made in Turkey and not private labeled (The box says it is Patislove brand). The Upper West Side Trader Joe’s said that they are getting a “very limited supply” weekly, so if we want it, we should get as much of it as we want when we go.

Organic tart cherry fruit spread: I am not sure why no one is talking about this. Actually, yes I am: this come-back from last year has been completely and utterly overshadowed by the guava fruit spread. This was the one thing I got last year that got discontinued, likely for seasonal reasons, that I was devastated went away. Last year, I got only one jar. After I tasted it months after I bought it, I regretted not opening it earlier to buy more. But it’s BACK! This time, I got two jars. On the shelf when I saw it, there were only four jars total. When I got rang up by my cashier, he asked me what I thought of it. When I raved about it to him, he had this determined look on his face and said that as soon as he was done with me, he was immediately going on break and making a beeline for the jam aisle downstairs. If you like jam and you like sour cherry, BUY THIS.

Cheddar and parmesan cheese snackers – puff pastry cheese crackers: Okay, I’m going to be honest. I did not actually buy these. I was given them for free by my cashier! He asked me if I liked cheese and crackers, and he threw a brand-new box into my canvas bag. The cashier said they received an “over shipment” of these this week, so they were handing them out to anyone who wanted them for nada. I do love cheese crackers (Goldfish was the OG obviously, but now, Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies is my fave, though I have significantly reduced my snacking habits in the last year), and these are like a fancier version of cheese crackers to test out.

A five-stem bunch of peonies: This is my one flower purchase every year for myself. I never buy fresh flowers because I find them quite self indulgent (they die after such a short period!), though I do love them and think they make any room they are in feel brighter and livelier. But peonies truly take the cake for me. They are big, bold, beautiful, and capture everyone’s attention. And as an added bonus for someone (uh, me) with no floral arrangement skills, they are pretty darn easy to arrange given their blossoms are absolutely huge at their peak. It’s no wonder the Chinese were obsessed with them back in the day and obsessively painted them. I usually get a variation of pink, but this year, I decided to get the white ones. I really enjoy watching them progressively open up each day from really tight, small, ball-like buds. A five-stem bunch is only 10 bucks, so it’s hardly breaking the bank – it’s crazy good value! Technically, these start becoming available in the spring, but we’ve had a really cold winter this past year. So, I picked these up today.

I also wanted to pick up the seasonal passion fruit sorbet (mostly for Chris because he’s the sorbet person), but unfortunately none were in the freezer. That just means I’ll be on the lookout for them in two weeks when I go to TJs again!

Post-trip meal planning: curry in the freezer!

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In the days leading up to our departure for Guatemala, we actually had more food to eat in the fridge than I had originally anticipated. I had planned to make Burmese chicken curry for the Burmese chicken curry noodle dish called nan gyi thoke for dinner during the few days before we left, and I had already marinated and prepared the chicken. So I decided that I would still make the chicken curry and just freeze it so that when we got back, I would quickly defrost it overnight and have delayed nan gyi thoke for dinner once we returned. And it ended up being a great idea. Once I defrosted the curry, all I had to do was add some seasoning (red pepper flakes, fish sauce) and a thickener (Burmese curries are traditionally thickened with a toasted chickpea flour. I already had the chickpea flour, so I just had to toast it lightly over the stove until it turned toasty and brown. Then, I cooked the dried noodles in some boiling water, cut up some lime wedges, took out the fried shallots, and boiled eggs to top it. It was a very flavorful, satisfying dish to welcome us home.

So many different variations of curry exist around the world, but what makes Burmese curries unique is that a) they start with a base of lots and lots of deeply caramelized onions, b) they include coconut milk that is cooked down, c) they are thickened with a toasted chickpea flour. Once you have all this and add a protein like chicken, some seasonings like fish sauce and black pepper, as well as some home blended Madras curry powder (I almost went out and bought a blend, but I realized when I looked at all the spices that make up Madras curry powder that I had all of them already at home, so why not just toast and blend my own?!), it creates a really thick, luscious stew that has layers upon layers of flavor. It’s so good and rich that it almost makes you want to lick your bowl clean. This is definitely a curry that will be on repeat for us.

And although I did not originally plan to make chicken curry in advance as our return-home meals, I’m really happy it worked out this way and that we had a quick yet seemingly complex meal to come home to. I already have things in the freezer like frozen cubes of tomato-onion masala for quick Indian meals, but this would basically be like an easy freezer meal. You would just have to defrost, add seasoning and heat up, then add a carb like rice or noodles, and you’d be set. I will likely do this ahead of future trips we have. No one complains about ready-to-go chicken curry upon arriving home from anywhere!

Haw mok and Thai cooking fun

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Today as part of our dinner at home, I made haw mok, also known as Thai red curry custard with fish. I’d never heard of it until I saw a video that Pailin posted on her YouTube channel, Hot Thai Kitchen, but it sounded easy enough with ingredients I either already had or could easily source, so I decided to make it. It came out tasty and had a nice presentation, as it was steamed in a cake pan on top of banana leaves, which added additional fragrance to the curry custard.

While steaming the haw mok, I realized I had come a long way with my comfort with Thai cooking. I remember when I first moved to New York and how intimidated I was by Thai cooking in general. I lived in Elmhurst at the time and was surrounded by endless delicious and fiery Thai restaurants with lots of chilies and spices. I didn’t realize then how straightforward Thai cooking could be. Now, it seems like I’m always tinkering with some Thai recipe at least once a month. My comfort with Thai cooking and ingredients has grown to a point where we almost regularly eat something Thai or Thai inspired at home. And after Chris got me a bunch of Burmese ingredients, I’ve been learning more about Burmese cooking and techniques, as well. In the last week, I’ve been reading Burma Superstar’s cookbook, which has gotten me acquainted with different ingredients I’m not used to as well as ways of cooking that are most definitely a fusion of Chinese/Southeast Asian/Indian cuisines. This makes sense given Myanmar’s geographic location. Who knows – maybe I’ll get super comfortable with Burmese ingredients, and they’ll also be regularly on rotation at home, as well.

A friend I made recently who is also really into cooking said that people like me aren’t very common — people who not only are adventurous eaters, but also actively learn about different cultures’ food and cooking techniques. To be honest, I don’t even know what I would do with a lot of my spare time if I didn’t spend it reading and learning about this stuff. Food is an important part of our lives to live (duh, you have to eat), it’s a key part of our health and well being; it’s an integral part of our cultures and identity. What else would I do with all my time outside of family, travel, and work, if I didn’t spend it thinking about food?

Cooking mistakes happen in twos – the hot cross buns without crosses

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Since as long as I have known Chris, he has talked about how much he loves hot cross buns at Easter. He’s not a religious person at all, but he did grow up in a Christian family and with Easter traditions. And one of those traditions that exists in both Australia and the U.K. is having hot cross buns on Good Friday. These are lightly spiced, lightly sweetened fluffy bread buns that are usually filled with raisins and dried currants. They always have their unmistakable white crosses on the top. I originally always thought they were like a frosting, but I subsequently learned after reading recipes for hot cross buns that they are actually a flour-water paste that are piped on just for the appearance of a cross. Once the buns are baked, they are then slathered with a light sugar/honey/citrus glaze so that the outside has a faint sweetness.

I researched a few recipes to attempt to make this, but I wasn’t quite sure which one to go with. Chris found a recipe that claimed to be “the best” in Gourmet Traveller. It combined the famous recipes of three different well known chefs, and so I figured it would be a good one to use. Unfortunately, the explanations weren’t very clear as to “why” things had to happen, so I ended up going astray. For one, it uses instant yeast; I only had dry active yeast at home. But I’ve successfully subbed in dry active yeast on many other bread recipes, and I figured this wouldn’t be any different. That is, until I noticed that while the dough was rising, it wasn’t rising as much as I had anticipated. And I started going down a Google/ChatGPT rabbit hole, trying to figure out what I did wrong. And then I found it: milk has enzymes that tend to prevent dry active yeast from fully allowing doughs to bloom, and so it’s best to either avoid using the two together, OR to scald the milk and allow it to cool to a lukewarm temperature. The scalding would deactivate those competing enzymes.

This recipe suggested warming the milk until “lukewarm.” Nowhere did it say to heat it until scalding or why. Other hot cross bun recipes discussed this, but this one did not. I was beyond pissed.

It wasn’t a complete failure, as the yeast did not get killed and was clearly active. The buns were rising, just not as much. So I proceeded with the recipe. The second mistake I made was thinning out the flour-water paste too much for the crosses; it needs to be really thick to hold not just its shape, but also the white look of the crosses through baking at a high temperature. My crosses after piping looked fine. But once I put them in the oven, I could see immediately that the crosses were thinning out… and they eventually faded so that you could barely see them at all!

When the buns came out, they looked like what my friend called “a cross between wanting to be a cookie or a scone.” Chris looked at them and said, “What happened to the crosses? Wow, you really are godless.” But then, we both ate one each tonight, and I happily yet reluctantly admitted that the flavor was still spot on, and while the bun wasn’t as fluffy as I had hoped it would be, it was still pretty fluffy and light. It even had crispy edges and bottoms.

“Good hot cross scones!” Chris declared.

This was even more frustrating that this happened tonight after my garlic chips debacle yesterday. Mistakes in the kitchen happen in twos…

Garlic chips go awry

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About a month ago, I made garlic chips (and its delicious residual oil) for the second time ever, and without intending to sound arrogant, the chips and the oil came out perfectly. The first time I attempted this about three years ago, I burned a lot of my garlic chips and they tasted bitter; I had waited too long and let the garlic brown in the oil, at which point they will get overcooked and thus bitter. This time, I did a proportion of one bulb’s worth of garlic cloves to one-third cup of neutral oil. I heated the oil on medium heat until it got hot enough so that when a garlic piece was dropped in, it would lightly bubble. Then, I dropped all the garlic slices into the oil and let it fry for about 7-8 minutes, stirring occasionally until the garlic pieces turned a faint golden color. I shut off the heat, strained the garlic chips with a fine sieve, drained the garlic oil into a mason jar. And voila, I had garlic chips and oil to add to a Thai soup called gaeng jued that I made! It was really the perfect topping and flavor accent to this soup.

Today, I figured I would double this, so I used two bulbs of garlic to two thirds cup oil. Not thinking straight and trying to save time on de-skinning the garlic cloves individually, I nuked them in the microwave for 30 seconds before adding them to the oil. And well, the extra moisture from the microwaving prevented them from ever crisping up. The rule of dropping things into hot oil and hoping they will get crispy is that you need to make sure whatever you are frying is as dry as possible. And well, I did the opposite since I was clearly not of sound mind at the time and just trying to multitask. So while the oil turned out delicious and fragrant, the garlic “chips” ended up being a huge mass of garlic mush, having absorbed too much of the oil and thus never crisping up at all.

I was really upset with myself. That took a lot of my time and energy, and I ended up with a result I was not happy with. In the end, I’ll likely throw the garlic from this mini disaster into a stir-fry, but it still upset me because I really hate it when I don’t get the result I want in the kitchen; this is when my perfectionist tendencies really come out… So I decided to try it again. And this time, I got distracted by having Kaia around, and the garlic chips got too brown and turned out bitter once again. I think the multitasking didn’t help, but I also think that scaling is just hard. As much as I’d want to double the recipe, maybe I just don’t know my stovetop well enough to scale this up, even if it’s only twice as much. I failed to get the oil temperature right — it was clearly too hot. So next time, I’m just going to stick with one bulb of garlic to one-third cup of oil, and make sure to do this when I do not have my toddler around to distract me. Hot oil needs 100 percent of my attention — sorry, Pookster.