Meat

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Meat, Snacks, Top Posts In 90 Days

A WRONG AND IRRESPONSIBLE SANDWICH

We’ve all heard about this growing up, that the adult life is all about responsibilities. “Pfff, whatever…” I said. I mean what does that even mean, really? As if kids don’t got no responsibility, like I hadn’t already been tying my own shoes, wearing my painful braises, and attending my designated school every morning where I dealt with mean kids on my own like any accountable, dutiful children since seven. Think I did all those for fun? I was doing good for my own greater good. Responsibility. You know? In fact, it seems that my whole life so far has been a reversed testimony for such statement.

As I am slowly coming to terms that my diligent, responsible life had took its last dying breath the moment… I became an adult.

01.05.2014

In All recipes, Meat, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Snacks, Top Posts In 90 Days

HIGHLY ADDICTIVE PARTY CIGARS

Oh mah God… I haven’t been under so much pressure, yes, since the time when I realized I needed six more credits to graduate college (SIX! “Professor, your otherwise gross beard appears unexpectedly dashing today”… just kidding)… and it is precisely the reason why, as much as I may seem to be an ideal candidate to host a dinner party, I shouldn’t be allowed to. At all. Because my management skills crumble in disarray when I’m cooking more than one thing. There’s a large number of oysters that I’m pulling all strings to keep alive inside a fridge that lacks everything else to cook them with, and a whole scale-on, bone-in, head-attached sea bass that frankly… I don’t remember inviting to dinner. On top of which, a 7 pounds limp-neck goose-beast is going to be dropped onto my doorstep like surprise! any minute now… could be like now! Plus did I mention I’m supposed to make a tart? That’s it, time for emotional breakdown.

Hey, nobody said my threshold for stress isn’t delicate at best.

12.13.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Vegatables

ANDY WRECKER GREEN CURRY MEATBALLS

Let’s all be honest here. Yes. Including those of us who say we love to cook, and would ferociously defend the legitimacy of home-making Turkish kofta platter, Taiwanese gua bao, or even Italian duck prosciutto, once in a blue moon at least, let’s not kid ourselves. In practicality, the song and dance of travelling to exotic and exhilarating corners of the world through a dialogue in our own kitchen is, most of the time, only romantic in theory. At the end of the day, if you are any lucky, the flaming urge for such adventures mostly gets put out by a take-out menu amidst a stack of its own kind, that quietly settles in a kitchen drawer with can-openers and plumber-contacts. Authentic, or not authentic. Good, or no good. Doesn’t matter.

That’s what normal people do.

12.02.2013

In All recipes, Dairy, Meat, Soup, Vegatables

THE WEST LAKE HYBRID

You know… as someone who’s been gutting dead animals… chopping things… hacking and hammering in the kitchen for the past 15 years, I pride myself for the fact that I seldom, and I mean rarely burn or hurt myself inside my ruling domain. No, it isn’t because I’m more masterful at wielding heavy machineries, but because I have a deeply-rooted, intolerated fear for pain which led to a full spectrum of obsessive precautions before any hazardous conducts in the kitchen. But… just before I sat down for a chat with you, I though, hey, maybe it was a good idea to first finish slicing those mathafuckin’ fibrous and tough galangals for easy freezing… just to check it off my list…

Well, just like that, there goes my left middle-finger now looking tragically like a tissue paper and tape-wrapped lollipop, summer strawberry flavour. You see? You see me waving my middle finger in 360º just so you can see clearly? Especially at you, galangals.

11.15.2013

In All recipes, Got Nothing But Time, Meat, Noodle/Pasta/Rice

THE INCONVENIENT RAGU-TH

I almost couldn’t wait to tell you all about this hysterically inconvenient ragu. I started curating its debut so many weeks ago, impatiently waited for the temperature to drop and the first damn leaf to fall, until everything… every single elements in the atmosphere ready your hearts for the most glorious, madly delicious ragu you have yet to try. I even prepared a number of high-impact vocabularies to describe its entire four hours of making, two of which involves you standing by the stove remorselessly scraping the bottom of the pot in the name of culinary commitment, because I was gonna tell you that there’s no compromise when it comes to what I call the art of harvesting caramel, and you’re going to eat it all up.

The recipe has been sitting in my cue for a week now and I haven’t been able to lift a finger. Well… you know what happened.

10.28.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Noodle/Pasta/Rice, Quick Meals

PRE-DEPARTURE MICROWAVE MADNESS

Despite the level of embarrassment that I’m sure will hit me the moment I get back from Paradise (Tuesday!), I still decided to send this truth out there. The truth that once in a while, on some particular full-moons and/or… the night before a long trip away from home, there’s absolutely no excuse for my primitive behavior. And if that’s the kind of entertainment that delights you, here it goes.

10.07.2013

In All recipes, Christmas Morning Series (overnight roast), Got Nothing But Time, Meat

X’MAS MORNING JERK-SPICED PORCHETTA

I recently took a class from Harvard called Science and Cooking. I did it without ever taking an SAT exam or having an IQ above 140, all while wearing my slouchiest PJ and tucked in the comfort of my bed with a can of soda and a tub of gummy bears on the side, and burnt through 5 lectures straight in 1 week… Oh God bless bootleg DVDS. I was once again basted in the youthful hunger of my tender college years when hope was alive and the world was shiny…, as well as the exact reason why… I slept through half of it. Dude, there’s something about the echo? bouncing off the lecture hall?… that’s 10x more potent than sleeping pills on the deepest cellular level and sends me into a baby-state coma. But relax, I still overheard something in between my wee-wee breaks to share with you all.

09.24.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Seafood, Snacks, updated recipe

insights to your shrimp dumplings

There are days, you know, not everyday, but days when I really… hate this. I mean, what is this anyways? A self-published “web-blog” about me making dinner. Talk about being a loving sponge when it comes to self-absorbing not to mention a shameless evasion from unemployment. Oops, did I not mention that? As many more dignified others who might do this as a hobby aside, I on my other sorry hand, just do this. No other self-sustaining professions at day, heck or even a non-profit charity to excuse myself of, it’s a testimony of prolonged immaturity and chronic, explicit laziness, hardly anything to be carved on my tombstone. So yeah, as this self-absorbing continues, sometimes I really hate this.

09.09.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Meat

pizza alla carbonara

You’d think that for someone who weeped slightly while watching SATC the-Village-wet-dream in her Vancouver apartment 15 years ago, and now replays movies like You’ve Got Mail the-Upper-West-Side-porn to ease her New-York-home-sickness, if now given the chance to move back to the city, would of course choose Manhattan in a heart beat. Well, almost.

09.02.2013

In All recipes, Got Nothing But Time, Meat

sichuan peppercorn red braised oxtail

I was totally honoured… thrilled actually, when one of my favorite food-site Food52 invited me to share an heirloom (family) recipe for their column. Oh why, me?! Get out of here! No doubt a little much-needed mint-drop in between all the craps that are leaving a bad taste in my mouth lately. I mean recognition in any shape or form is super awesome but frankly, I can’t help but feeling a bit… like cheating, like the time when I innocently stole an unaware blanket from Cosco (dude, I swear to God it was an aaaaaccident!). Well just between the two of us, maybe… because I suspect that Food52 probably has no idea… that I actually… Don’t have one. Uhem, I trust that you can keep a secret.

08.16.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Condiments, Meat, Snacks

2:1 sliders

I am sitting at my parent’s dinning room table in Taiwan, clicking anxiously on my mother’s laptop… scrambling to get this new post out. I’m gonna quickly leave you with these little suckers I made before leaving Beijing, what I consider to be the ideal ratio of meat and cheese when it comes to cheese burgers (in this case mini-sized), as I call them, the 2:1 sliders.

07.21.2013

In All recipes, Meat, Snacks, Vegatables

pork belly shiso yaki

Before I met Beijing, there was another affair I had a brief, bitter-ending engagement with and his name was I believe, Hong Kong. We spent an abusive 18 months together right after New York… ah New York. It was such a transcendent love, great love, Mr. BIG-GREAT that anyone else who followed was predetermined to never live up. Without the enlightenment of other perspectives, I couldn’t love a city with EVEN SMALLER living-square footage than New York… EVEN MORE CROWDED streets than ant-hills, EVEN UGLIER buildings than Taipei and many many EVEN-MORE-NESS to feel sorry for myself about. Like I said, I had no perspective. I had no idea that Hong Kong was already Aidan.

07.04.2013