Bakery/Pastry

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

The nuttiest profiteroles

I of all people, know how intimidating it can be to play with ingredients that are completely outside of the comfort zone. You see, it’s for the exact same reason that I seriously hate poker games with complete strangers, with unpredictable displays that I have absolutely no talent of reading, or in knowing that if I went all-in with my last stick of butter, would I be left with no chips… or anything for that matter on the table. But you know what, sometimes… well, most of the times actually, these ingredients are just little fuckers who lie! And that if you just call their bluff, you’ll find that the pot is totally worth it.

09.05.2013

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, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

rum and raisin baked tapioca pudding

How many times does a recipe have to fail you before you decide that it just isn’t meant to be? I used to simply set my maximum at three, the same philosophy… no, discipline really that I vigorously apply to all pursuits in life, but as it so proved in the course of the past few weeks, the kitchen, is a much more complicated world. Actually, it isn’t that difficult to explain my unwavering faith in this particular case because as we all experience first-handedly, nostalgia is a powerful form of religion. And with this, hoho… we go way back.

08.25.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

teardrop, tart-hearted coco donut

I wish I could tell you – after an exhausting trip in the quest for the only MRI machine for animals in China – that the kids are all right. That we are all right.

08.13.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Poultry, Vegatables

chicken in the swamp

No lattice-top? No pretty dashing colors of summer berries? Not even the scarce possibility of a scoop of ice-cream on top (people will eat anything with an ice-cream on top these days)(how’s that heatwave going)? Just when my latest favorite creation was traffic-vetoed because of its less-than-fashionable appearance (A’ight, it may look Susan Boyle but that rice can fucking sing!), I can’t believe I’m preparing to feature this visual question-mark… If you have the urge to gush out, Oh Lord this poor woman dropped that labour of a pie in the kitchen sink!… I assure I have not. It’s this stubborn nerve of mine, you see. I want to cook for traffic I really do. I’m not playing cool. But it’s this nerve for curiosity… this damn nerve…

07.25.2013

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, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

peach mascarpone pot pie + ginger molasses cookie lid

Had I anticipated enough courage to pick up the topic of peach and mascarpone again this summer, I probably wouldn’t have cashed that sob-story so early. After that horrendous disaster of a pie, if that pile of slumpy menace could still be called that…, I was determined to quit peach forever, total rehab. After all, they quit me first. You see, that’s the other side of the story. Years ago, peaches decided to join the alliance of fruits that were waging an allergy campaign against me by inducing itchy mouth every time I tried to reach out a friendly lick. As I was addicted to rejection, every summer since was a struggling anniversary of our separation. Even after more than a decade… that day when I picked them out of the mascarpone-puddle-of-death and ate them, the peaches still made damn well sure that I was reminded. I saved them from the fate of the eternal dumpster and they repaid me with crawly esophagus… lil fuckers.

07.17.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Sweets

likely pairing dark chocolate & gouda cookie

The agony of making creative effort in the kitchen is, more often than not (and don’t tell me otherwise), we fall into the tormenting limbo between imagination and reality and sometimes the plunge feels eternally lasting. My current episode has been ruthlessly stretching into its 9th day-anniversary, on-going, in cold blood. Do feel bad because here it comes…

07.08.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Seafood, Snacks

poorman’s lobster roll

Right. I apologize for my “rare” unprofessionalism last time. Can we start over? I promise I’ll keep it together this time because oh boy this faux-lobster roll is too delicious to miss out on. But it’s strange to compose this post because the day I cooked it, my doggy-Armageddon-day had not been realized, and staring back on the make-funny-“when life gives you shrimp, make lobster roll”-line that I drew up then to mock my general cheap-ass style, it now seems to actually speak to me on a philosophical level… My words-in-past is making contact with my present inner-self. Wooh~ (believe it or not this is me keeping it together).

06.17.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Sweets

breakfast milk tea & honey pound cake

I’m going to push my opinion-quota by saying that the US is the least tea-cultured among the other places I’ve lived in (Taiwan, Vancouver, Hong Kong… Beijing). Americans aren’t particularly keen on tea, evidently as some may now defensively refer to Snapple’s along this line as a clownish counter-argument, and now… they shall stand to be mocked by public (no, it’s too late to take it back).

06.13.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Dairy, Meat, Snacks, Vegatables

the infinite kitchen sink hand pie

Sometimes I get a little personal when I take a stroll through the expansive, razzle-dazzling and star-crusted cosmic jungle that is food-blogosphere. I really don’t mean to compare I really don’t. Wise man once said that… “Go… just do your own things” or something… you know but put in a MUCH more profound and scholarly terms. But the thing is (and it’s a big thing) that I can’t help but feeling like Gimli the dwarf when self-put besides the others, whom I’d like to call the blogger-elves of the Woodland Realm (birds chirping pls) because I mean really, just REALLY, do people SERIOUSLY live like that? Prancing with in-season-only, tree-ripen fruits and vegetables galore by the farm-stands and POOF! an effortless display of fairy-salad and angel-tarts on a oh-my-granny-just-left-me-this antique table. Or picking WILD FLOWERS in pastel tea-dresses surrounded by rainbow and songs and THAT’S what she EATS on weekends!? For REALZ? I bet their body parts self-shave, too…

Yeah. I’m jealous.

06.06.2013

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Vegatables

rock’n potato roll

There were many aspects in life turned unexpectedly different after moving to Beijing. I didn’t expect that in any foreseeable lifetime, I’d accessorize a biking trip to the grocery with an industrial-grade gas-mask instead of a summer straw-hat. I didn’t expect neither that instead of battles on sample sale weekends, I’d be fighting other choking victims online in a gas-mask-shortage-frenzy when the days get worse. Yah I know there’s a general wisdom to be applied here somewhere… positive psychology and affirmations do-kid-yourself kinda BS or whatnot… but then comes the unexpected irony.

06.03.2013