Category Archives: Homemade

Tofu “noodles”

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As someone who is half (Cantonese) Chinese, I have probably done the most experimentation with my vast country’s food in last ten years than I have at any other point of my life. For those in the know and who are interested, Chinese cuisine’s endless variety and regional cuisines have been spotlighted a lot more, and because of this, demand for those ingredients has increased. So while amazing online sites like Mala Market exist, even our local Hong Kong Supermarket in Manhattan Chinatown stocks a lot of these rarer ingredients now. I feel like a lot of my food experimenting in the kitchen has just begun!

Before we ended our daily double commutes to Chinatown for Kaia’s preschool years (still a little sad and wistful this has come to an end…), I started stocking up on a lot of freezer and pantry items since I knew the daily access would be gone soon. A few of the things I stocked up on for the freezer were pressed tofu and tofu “noodles.” The “noodles” are pressed tofu strips that have been wound up into flat balls, waiting to be unraveled, cut, and blanched. These are not only tasty with a nice springy texture, but they are also extremely high in protein; an 85-gram serving is already 23 grams of complete plant-based protein!

I made them today using a Sichuanese method as a cold salad. The dish is known as “Three-Sliver Vegetable and Tofu Salad With Chili Oil Dressing” (Hóngyóu Sānsī, 红油三丝), which I got from Xueci Cheng, this Sichuanese recipe developer I’ve been following. It’s a really easy dish once you have the chili oil made. You mix a couple additional ingredients into the chili oil (soy sauce, sugar, sesame oil, a pinch of salt) and whisk it. Then you add it to a plate of finely julienned and salted carrot and cucumbers (drained of excess liquid from the salting) and the tofu strips. I didn’t have the patience to finely slice the tofu strips into tiny noodles, but maybe i will try again next time. Then you add more chili oil on top, toss, and finish with minced cilantro. It was a nice, crunchy, chewy, spicy salad!

I really enjoyed this tofu salad. I’ve already added these tofu “noodles” to my list of things to buy again when I am in Chinatown next!

The roasted duck is bubbling and scenting up the house

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We are currently about 15 minutes away from a fully finished, whole roast duck. The entire house smells like a combination of five-spice blend and duck fat. I have already drained off over a cup of duck fat from the pan. From my office area, I can hear the duck’s fat bubbling off into the bottom of the roasting pan. I am eager to see how crispy my duck skin has gotten and how much of the fat has been rendered from the skin!

Assuming this is successful, I wonder if we will get lucky at our next Costco run (next month!) and score yet another reasonably priced whole duck to roast! Then I can really put my duck skills into repeat practice!

**Several hours later**

Okay, so I got the leg and thigh right: the skin was flavorful and crispy while the meat was juicy and tender. The breast is really where the challenge is. Even with two heat settings, 325 F for 75 minutes and a 425 F blast for 15 minutes, the breasts still had not rendered out enough fat to get crispy; they actually seemed annoyingly flabby. So I let the whole duck rest for about 30 minutes. Then I carved it… Okay, fine. I didn’t really carve it. I kind of butchered it and messed it up. A lot of the skin tore off. Rib bones got stuck to the breast. I am a pretty sloppy whole chicken carver, but this duck was even more challenging and frustrating! ChatGPT gave this explanation for why this was more frustrating: “Duck is trickier to carve than chicken because the breast sits tightly against a broad rib cage and the skin is thinner and more delicate. The easiest way to stop tearing it is to stop thinking of it as ‘slicing meat off the carcass’ and instead remove each breast as one whole piece first.” I guess I will have to heed that advice next time… If I decide to brave out a whole duck roasting experience again.

I still managed to have two separate and mostly in tact breast pieces with their skin on top. I took both pieces and laid them down in a hot, un-oiled carbon steel pan to render out more fat and crisp up the skin. The result was pretty good. But I have a feeling I would have done a better job if I had just carved up the duck into separate raw pieces to begin with, “confited” the legs, and seared the breasts the way we did in my duck cooking class Chris got me over three years ago. I’ll consider that for next time.

The cleanup was a little miserable to put it lightly. Duck grease got pretty much everywhere and made its way all over the stove, all the counters, on dishes that didn’t even have duck, all over the sink and faucets. Of course, it splattered in the oven, but luckily not as much as I had feared. I was able to clean most of it off easily with a mix of baking soda, soap, water, and elbow grease. I may try this one or two more times just for the experience and challenge, but I can see clearly now why duck is one of those dishes that people leave to the pros. Even if you do get it mostly right, like I did this time, the cleanup is so freaking annoying and time consuming. I am currently soaking my oven mitts now because the duck grease is caked on so badly!

The entire apartment also smells like duck fat; it doesn’t matter what room I am in. This may be okay for now, but tomorrow, I may change my mind.

A cooking challenge: whole duck

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Last autumn while at Costco, I stumbled upon a whole duck in the refrigerator section. I looked at it and realized it was quite a gem to find a WHOLE DUCK as an option, and for a bargain price of about $3.69/lb! So I decided to add it to our cart… and then was so intimidated by the thought of cooking a whole duck that I left it in the back of the freezer this entire time. The idea of cooking a whole duck has terrified me pretty much my entire cooking life.

So I finally gathered all my courage and yanked my 4.5-lb halal duck out of the back of the freezer and have been thawing it in the fridge since Saturday night. I took it out, drained it, then fully dried it. I decided I would cook it the only way I knew how to, which is Chinese-style. I created a Chinese five spice rub with my Burlap and Barrel five-spice blend (the best!), fresh minced garlic, ginger, salt, and pepper. I rubbed it all over inside and out after pricking the skin all over to allow the fat to render out during the roast. I placed it, uncovered, in our fridge to dry out. I plan to roast it tomorrow afternoon.

Am I terrified of how it will turn out? Yes. I am scared I will overcook the breasts and not achieve crispy skin. I have procrastinated on this long enough, though. And age is supposed to make me wiser, right? I kept trying to get reassurance from ChatGPT Pro, who has been telling me that while I may be a novice to cooking duck, I am certainly no novice cook. I know the usual signs of poultry doneness, whether it’s under or overcooked, etc. I just need to breathe. So tomorrow, I will do a two-temperature roasting, the first at 325 F, then the final blast at 425 F to crisp the skin. I need as many good vibes as possible to ensure I don’t smoke up the whole kitchen from all the duck fat that will be rendered; I read that it can be as much as two to three CUPS of rendered duck fat out of a single bird!! But as all my fitness app trainers have always said: if it doesn’t challenge you, then it won’t change you!

Chinese yam, pork, and carrot soup – a Cantonese soup standby

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It’s a bittersweet week this week for us, as it’s Kaia’s last week at summer camp at the same school in Chinatown for the last two years. She spent 3K and 4K/Pre-K at this Chinese immersion, dual language school, as part of New York City’s UPK program. It’s been a gift (and quite the savings…!) to not have to pay for school for the last two years, other than after-care fees and summer camp. What this also means is that this is our last week having daily trips to Chinatown… a very sad reality I have to spend time mourning. So I started going through my list of things to stock up on and also remembered a couple of things I wanted to make with fresh ingredients while I still have easy access to them.

This year, I was able to achieve my goal of making soups more frequently. According to TCM, soup is a nourishing component of a meal. In Chinese culture, it’s often noted that a complete meal should be “san cai yi tang” (三菜一汤), or three meat/protein/vegetable dishes and one soup, served alongside rice. I had a lot of bone broth in the fridge I made from chicken wings and chicken feet I got from Chinatown. And I ended up using it today with Chinese yam (or huai shan), pork shoulder (also from Chinatown!), carrots, red dates, ginger, goji berries, and shiitake mushrooms. Chinese yam is a pretty traditional Chinese vegetable. It’s used both fresh and dried; today, I bought it fresh for this soup. It’s considered a nourishing root vegetable that supports digestion, stabilizes blood sugar, and boosts overall vitality. I remember my grandma using it in soups growing up. The texture once cooked is almost like taro. When Chinese yam is raw and fresh, the stalks are long, hard, and thin. It has a really tough brown skin with lots of “hair” on it — definitely not the first vegetable you’d pick up when adventuring to explore new produce, as it’s on the “ugly” or even borderline “scary” looking side. And once you peel the skin off, the white flesh is hard to grasp firmly, as it becomes very sticky and gummy. On the plus side, the fresh root has active digestive enzymes; supposedly when you have mucus, it can help clear it for you!

So I made this soup today. I even served it for Chris and me with a tiny little shallow dish of high quality aged soy sauce for dipping the shredded pork pieces into — super traditional and like we had it growing up. And inhaling the familiar aromas and eating it really did remind me of home — at least, the happier parts. It’s funny that it’s taken me to age 40 to really understand and appreciate how much love and care my grandma put into all the soups she made for us almost every single day. I actually cannot remember a day living with her when there was not a huge pot of traditional Chinese soup on the stove!

And while I dipped some pieces of pork shoulder into the soy sauce, I could also faintly remember watching Ed try to fish out the biggest, most tender pieces of pork out of the stock pot so that he could eagerly dip and eat them himself. I always just ate and drank what was served to me and didn’t care about which pieces I got. Most of my happiest childhood memories are tied to food.

Xia pi 虾皮 aka “shrimp skin”

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Although I’ve been cooking since I was a teen, I am most definitely always learning about new ingredients, techniques, dishes, and recipes. When it comes to ingredients, it can get really overwhelming even in a single cuisine. Chinese cuisine could easily be hundreds of different cuisines across the entire country. Although “Eight Great Traditions” of cuisines are recognized across China, I still think this is simplifying the country too much given exactly how large it is and how many influences different parts have given their neighboring countries.

For a long while in the back of my mind, I’d been wanting to buy some xia pi 虾皮 or literally “shrimp skin” when translated into English. These are not actually shrimp skins, but are teeny tiny translucent sun-dried shrimp, just a bit bigger than a peppercorn, that are used as a savory, umami-rich condiment in Chinese cooking. They add a strong, salty sea flavor to dishes like soups and stir-fries. Given its strong umami flavor, they can replace salt in a dish and would definitely require you reduce any added salt/soy sauce to a dish. And because these shrimp are sun-dried, they make for great long-term storage in your fridge or freezer, and can even be used directly from the freezer and added to stocks and stir-fries. I got reminded of xia pi again when I was at the Elmhurst Chinese supermarket I used to frequent when living in the area yesterday. I saw them in packs of half a pound in the refrigerator section and decided that today I’d finally buy some and use. I am looking forward to adding them to near-future soups, vegetable stir-fries, and even an omelet.

I love discovering and trying out new ingredients to make. But I definitely need to balance it with all my other seemingly endless ingredients at home! This is definitely a “first world” problem or challenge, but at least it’s a fun one!

Morning corn muffins gone awry

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This June will officially mark 18 years that I’ve been living in New York City. I have lived more of my life now on the East Coast than the West, and that feels kind of strange to acknowledge out loud. When people think of things that mark their new lives in a new place, especially in a concrete jungle like New York where tiny apartments and even tinier kitchens are the norm, most of them probably do not think about the kitchen gear they started with.

But I do. I still remember when I had to build my original kitchen from scratch, I slowly but surely made visits to the Kmart (RIP — one at Astor Place in Manhattan, which has since been replaced by the massive Wegman’s) and to Target at Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, Queens. I remember some of my very first kitchen purchases quite fondly: my two tempered glass Anchor brand lasagna/casserole pans, my cheap $8 nonstick cookie sheets that lasted over 10 years, my Corelle dining set (with a design that I really dislike, but I was cheap at the time, so I got it since it was the cheapest option), and my standard sized metal 12-muffin tin.

I don’t have all those kitchen items anymore. Many I gave away, like some Corelle pieces that were duplicates of things Chris had when I moved in with him, or the smaller Anchor casserole pan that I rarely used (gifted to another friendly Buy-Nothing member!). The cookie sheets actually failed, warped, and somehow managed to snap in the oven — they literally went out with a bang — a pretty terrifying one! The muffin tin was heavily used when I lived in Elmhurst, but only sporadically since I moved to Manhattan. And then today, this 18-year-old muffin tin unfortunately saw its demise.

I got inspired to make muffins again during our recent May weekend up in the Finger Lakes/Ithaca with Chris’s parents. Along the way, we made a quick breakfast stop at this delicious, popular spot called Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen. There, we ordered two perfectly made breakfast sandwiches, a walnut sticky bun, a sour cream coffee cake slice, and a huge, fat corn muffin stuffed with strawberry jam. While I loved everything we got from here, I will say that immediately, my first thought was that I wanted to try replicating the super crunchy corn top of the corn muffin. I loved the crunchy muffin top texture so much contrasted with the gritty, coarse, yet fluffy, not-too-sweet muffin innards. I remembered that a friend told me she used a blueberry corn muffin recipe she liked a lot from NYT Cooking, so I decided to go with that. The only swap I made was replacing half the all-purpose flour with whole wheat flour for extra whole grains.

Well, I didn’t have muffin liners, so I generously oiled the muffin tin and filled them with batter, then baked it. Unfortunately, the muffins didn’t beautifully dome the way I was hoping. Instead, they kind of flattened on top of the tin, and I realized immediately that I was going to have a frustrating (and messy!) time popping these muffins out. And it was super annoying: several of them broke apart as I removed them from the tin. One almost completely disintegrated into a pile of massive crumbs, and I ended up eating the crumbs by the handful. They were tasty, but they didn’t have a beautiful dome, and they were nowhere as crunchy as Dottie Audrey’s Bakery + Kitchen.

If we didn’t have Chris’s parents over as guests (or any guests for that matter), I’d never make muffins because Chris isn’t that into them, and I can’t bring myself to eat this many muffins. And then Kaia prefers the mini ones. Muffins are kind of like dessert to me: they are a special occasion-at-home bake like cake or cookies are. We need more mouths to warrant the effort to make them. But with this, I realized that the end of this muffin tin’s life had finally arrived. So after rinsing it, I said goodbye to it as I chucked it into the recycling bin (it’s metal, so it must be recyclable, right?!).

Now, I am debating whether I want to buy a replacement regular-sized silicone muffin plan, or if I should just live with a 6-muffin silicone pan I was gifted at graduation in 2008, plus the mini muffin pan I use for Kaia’s healthy muffin treats.

Making use of my Costco “deals”

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Last October when we did a big Costco haul, I picked up a number of goodies or “treats.” I define “treats” as things that I don’t necessarily need, but I do want because they are fun. Unfortunately for me (but fortunately for my bank account), this past weekend’s Costco visit was pretty much 100 percent utilitarian. I didn’t buy a single “treat” item — everything was strictly grocery, for immediate or future use, or was usable like short socks or slippers.

So I started looking at my pantry and food storage areas when I got back to see if I had overlooked anything I got last October, and after I had organized all my newly purchased food items. And I realized that I still had a large bottle of Nielsen Massey vanilla bean paste sitting under my kitchen sink that I had used only once since purchase. I got so excited when I saw this because I had learned about this brand of ultra-premium vanilla bean paste through professional pastry chef forums. Everyone who has baked in professional kitchens has always raved about how this was their go-to brand for vanilla bean paste, that it took vanilla to the next level in their desserts, and they could not imagine living without it. Every time you use it, you see the beautiful vanilla bean seeds flecked throughout the dessert. I am obsessed with how it looks (we all eat with our eyes, regardless of what anyone says).

I don’t make that many desserts anymore unless we are hosting friends and family over, though. So my opportunities to bake elaborate treats are not that plenty. But I knew I wanted to use it in the next couple weeks while Chris’s parents are in town. So I asked Claude AI to find me a quick and easy recipe with simple, household ingredients to highlight the deliciousness of my premium vanilla bean paste. And smartly, it suggested a classic dessert: vanilla bean custard. All you need is milk, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and of course, vanilla bean paste, and you’ve got dessert ready in less than 20 minutes. I mixed all the ingredients together minus the milk in a heat-proof bowl. Then, I warmed the milk over the stove until steaming. I slowly whisked the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture. Then, I put the mixture back on the stove and whisked until thick. Then, I placed the custard back in a clean bowl and put in the fridge to cool. Tomorrow, we will get to enjoy a very, very vanilla beany custard — all thanks to my fancy Nielsen Massey vanilla bean paste and the quick help of my budding good friend Claude.

It’s not a real Costco “deal” unless you use it. So, I better find new ways to put my fancy vanilla bean paste to use, and this is how I will start!

Banh xeo love for the family

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Although I am half Vietnamese, I never ate banh xeo until I was a teen. My mom never made much Vietnamese food at home because her favorite Vietnamese dishes were so laborious. Plus, cooking was done out of necessity, not passion, so she could feed her family economically. So when we ate Vietnamese, it was at the occasional Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco, during a day trip to San Jose (along Story Road), or down to Westminster, California, which has the biggest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam. With banh xeo, it was love at first bite for me: the banh xeo, or sizzling crepe, was crispy, almost chewy in the center, fragrant from coconut milk, and generously dotted with mushrooms, shrimp, and pork pieces. Banh xeo is usually stuffed with mung bean sprouts, and the most traditional ones have mung bean in the batter and also scattered inside with the mung bean sprouts. The sizzling crepe gets an even bigger hit of flavor once you add fresh Vietnamese herbs, roll it in lettuce or rice paper, and then dunk it into nuoc cham dipping sauce. 

Banh xeo is not a weekday meal, as it has multiple steps. its batter needs to be soaked, ground, then rested. And each crepe takes at least 12-14 minutes to make, end to end, assuming you are making it properly, have your mise en place ready to go, and are allowing the crepe to get fully cooked and crispy at the edges. It’s a true labor of love. The cooking part on the stove can be tricky and is where I have personally messed up a number of times because I’ve rushed it — a true rookie move. Some take the easier way out by shallow or deep frying the Banh xeo, as this cooks the crepe much faster. I stick with the traditional and less-oil/less caloric method of pan frying. And once the banh xeo is ready, it ideally needs to be eaten within 20-30 minutes to be enjoyed at its peak, otherwise it will quickly get soggy and even mushy, and the magic will be finito. So it’s hard to make for large groups unless you have multiple pans going at the same time. They don’t keep well warm in the oven, sadly. One of my Instagram food friends said that when she makes it, she has everyone gather around her kitchen counter and wait for the next banh xeo to drop, and the second it comes off the pan, she serves it immediately and they literally dive right into it. Once that one is done, it’s onto the next one. As the chef, she eats it all while cooking and standing up. The rush is real!

Well, I had the craving and ingredients, so I wanted to make it for Chris’s parents’ arrival back from their Nevada, Utah, and Toronto travels. So we did have to start cooking dinner right before we ate to ensure peak crispy banh xeo. But I think it was worth it: they got to experience something super fresh and authentic, and I got to witness Chris’s dad try to roll and wrap rice paper with his “I can’t stand eating with my hands” mindset. Kaia even got to enjoy another rice paper roll. Joy for all!

Chè Thái (Vietnamese fruit cocktail)

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I grew up eating many variations of chè, or traditional Vietnamese sweet soups and puddings. As a child, I enjoyed them just as much as I enjoyed western desserts like cake or ice cream. Plus, I didn’t have easy access to these Vietnamese desserts unless we stumbled upon a Vietnamese bakery or were in San Jose or Orange County. My mom never made very much Vietnamese food given our favorite Vietnamese dishes can be very laborious, and there was no way she’d ever go to the great lengths it takes to put together a Vietnamese dessert like these.

I never realized when I was younger how much healthier most of these Asian desserts were because they actually had good-for-you ingredients like real fruit and even beans — yes, beans! The one my mom got for me most often in my early years was che dau xanh, or mung bean pudding. It’s a pudding-like che that has mung beans cooked down until soft with some sugar, and sometimes flavored with pandan. Then it’s topped with a very luscious, whipped coconut cream. Another one I enjoyed occasionally was che ba mau, also known as “three colored dessert.” This one has layers of pandan jellies, mashed sweetened mung bean, red beans (sometimes even kidney beans), and a thick layer of sweetened coconut cream.

One version of che that I’ve been thinking about a lot since we were in the Philippines (halo halo!) was che thai, which is translated to mean “Vietnamese fruit cocktail,” in the style of many Thai desserts, hence the “Thai” in the name. I suppose that to describe it a a “fruit cocktail” is fairly accurate given it’s a few different types of fruits and jellies served in a sweetened “soup” that uses coconut milk/cream as its base. So I decided that once the weather got warmer and we had company over that I’d make it. Chris’s parents have arrived for their annual visit, so this will be their first dessert at home with us. It’s pretty straightforward and easy given most of the ingredients are from cans: canned longan, lychee, jackfruit, toddy palm seeds, young coconut flesh, and even aiyu jelly can be used. If you don’t want to use aiyu jelly from a can, you can either make your own, or make a pandan jelly. I made and cubed pandan jelly this morning using agar agar (seaweed) powder – it took less than ten minutes! I also sliced up some jackfruit and toddy palm seeds, and then peeled and cut some fresh mango. I added some canned longans whole. And as the last step, I mixed the “soup” base, which was about a cup of coconut milk, some coconut water, and added some jackfruit syrup/juice from the can until the sweetness was just right. I mixed everything in a big bowl and put it in the fridge to cool.

The che thai was a success: everyone enjoyed it! Chris’s mom even had seconds. And Kaia finished the little bowl I prepared her; she was especially fascinated by the pandan jellies and got so excited she was able to eat jellies with her mama’s approval ( did make them, after all!). If it were in season, I would have liked to include pomegranate seeds to give the che thai a red color to make the soup “pop” more, but I guess I can save that for another time. Some recipes, to add a “red” fruit, will take canned Chinese water chestnuts, chop them into small pieces, coat them in tapioca starch and red food coloring, and then boil them to infuse the red color into the water chestnuts. But I am trying to avoid artificial colors and flavors as much as I can, so I nixed this. And I don’t think anyone would have thought that could enhance tonight’s dessert. Sometimes, it really is the simplest desserts that are quite delicious.

Making strawberry matcha latte at home

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The last time I was at a matcha cafe, I was very tempted to get their strawberry matcha latte. But then I balked at the price — $9. I thought to myself, I know I can easily make this for so much less at home, and I would enjoy doing it. So I ordered a cheaper matcha latte that day and made a mental note to myself that I had to buy strawberries when on sale next and commit to making the strawberry sauce base.

So I got two pounds of very ripe strawberries from a street vendor in Astoria last weekend, and this time I knew I was finally going to make this happen! I washed and cut up the strawberries, tossed them into a little saucepan with a little bit of sugar. Then I boiled and simmered it for about 10 minutes. I pureed the sauce and stored it in a jar in the fridge. The “hard” work was done here.

Today, I finally put it all together: I added about a quarter of a cup of the strawberry sauce to two tall glasses (for both Chris and me), then poured in about half a cup of milk to each. I took some of my Costco everyday matcha powder and whisked it with some hot water. I added this to the glasses along with some ice and stirred a bit. Then I took a sip.

This was definitely tasty, and likely more satisfying knowing that I made this all by myself… And knowing that each of these glasses did not cost $9! I am more than happy to pay for lattes or tea/coffee drinks out when I know I cannot be bothered making the equivalent at home. But for me, a strawberry matcha latte is very low effort, high reward. And as long as I have matcha at home and affordable access to sweet strawberries, then I’m all in on making these and enjoying at home.