Cooking with Oranges (Part 2): Citrus Pasta

For the past few days I have been cooking with products from Trepunti, an online shop owned by a Sicillian farmer. I shared my recipe for a dish prepared using Sicilian blood oranges and fennels, which were hardly an innovative combination. Neither does this one actually though I did make a slight change. 

Cooking with Oranges (Part 1): Baked Fish with Orange-Fennel Salad

Recently, a friend of mine referred me to Jennifer of Trepunti Sicily, a Hongkonger who ran a farm on the ground and also an import/export business bringing many of the Sicilian produces and food products to this part of the world. I learned a great deal more about the regional ingredients and cooking just by a quick chat and message exchanges with her, and she even arranged to have a goodie box available for me to pick up with some of the seasonal produce including many of the citrus fruits. 

Suan Cai Beurre Blanc

I wish I could say this is entirely my idea, but this originally came from a dish I had recently, when the chef prepared the seared threadfin fish with fermented cabbage, fish broth and chili oil, a dish said to be inspired by the Sichuan classic “Suan Cai Yu” (hot and sour fish with fermented vegetables 酸菜魚). Taking the cue, I decided to do my own version, switching the local threadfin fish with the pack of Patagonian Toothfish which I received from the online seafood purveyor Qwehli served with Beurre Blanc sauce made based on the traditional recipe with the addition of “suan cai” (fermented vegetables 酸菜) and fatty pork. 

Challenge Accepted

Before the Easter long weekend, the team at Qwehli has generously sent me a few of their products for me to try and see what I could do with them. One of which was their Atlantic Salmon which was farmed in the North Sea in Denmark, and delivered to me as the frozen whole fillet with the skin on. I took it on as a challenge to see how many dishes I could create with this 2kg piece, and as it turned out, quite a lot actually.

Ravishing Char Siu and an Unusual Pairing Idea

A box of wines arrived at our doorstep a couple of weeks ago, courtesy of Toasst, a new business venture based on the wine club concept co-founded by my friend A just over a year ago. Most of the time I do have a good idea what kind of wines I would like to get, but I did find this wine subscription model interesting as a supplement to my usual collection. There are always those odd bottles – either from an obscure region or made using a rarer grape varietal or both – that one often overlooked, or there’s time you wanna be more adventurous. That’s when these bottles sent from companies like Toasst would come in handy as they focused on some unusual choices. 

Seafood Boil

Seafood Boil is always a good option if you need to entertain at home with little time to prepare. Not sure if it’s an American-only thing but you can see different versions of seafood boil dishes served at every household starting at around the July 4 weekend all through summer, from New England to New Orleans and from Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco Bay.  

Coq au Blue Nun

I bought this bottle of Blue Nun as part of a prank for a few wine-loving friends who were around long enough to remember the brand being the de facto standard bearer of German wines in the late 70s and early 80s – no, I still wasn’t legally allowed to drink then but I did remember having a sip or two when I was a kid. We ended up not opening that bottle to drink that evening – rightfully so – and it’s been sitting around at home since. Guess the joke was on me. 

Seafood Recipe Part 2: Hake and Potatoes

I followed up with a rustic-style seafood main course using another pack sent by the purveyor Qwehli (see my previous post for the introduction). Hake is one of the fish species I love working with, for its firm texture and versatility, slightly richer than cod and leaner than black cod. One I received was caught wild off the Atlantic Coast off France and came in vacuumed and frozen pack of around 300g - good for 3-4 person.

Seafood Recipe Part 1 - Red Mullet Ceviche

I have to go back quite a few pages to see the last time I shared a recipe here – August 2018, to be exact. Not that I haven’t been cooking at home, just that I haven’t had much time to trace back the steps to create some of the dishes I have prepared. But when the team from the French seafood purveyor Qwehli offered to send me a few sample products to try recently, I thought I would share my experience with a couple simple recipes.

Super Fancy Potluck

I was scratching my head over what to make when I went to a potluck meal recently. A few friends came over to our place to eat previously with each bringing a dish over to share, and this time, we went for a repeat at a different venue with a few others to join for good fun, with no others than the culinary team of Caprice with the meal held over at the private room at the back of the restaurant after their lunch service.

Festive Baos

We were hosting breakfast at church for about 70 people for a second time at the end of February and this time I experimented with a new recipe – or rather, a traditional one with a slight twist. I always prefer a hot breakfast over the usual cold pastries, especially during winter and the first time we did a steamed gua-bao with pork belly with some success (at least I think most people seem to like it), so I thought we would do an encore, except this time I am going to make one in red color, something I called the “Chinese New Year Special Edition”.

Kinmedai no Yuanyaki

It’s an impulse buy when I picked up a whole kinmedai (goldeneye snapper) at the Kagoshima Fish Market in the morning just before I was taking the return flight home that afternoon. I was there to check out the shokudo there for a quick breakfast early morning, then after the meal I saw this beautiful fish lying on the bench at one of the market stalls. Since I was going to cook something for the potluck dinner back home the same evening (“with any goodies I found from the trip”, as I told the host P and S), I bought the fish, asked the fishmonger to separate the head and tail from the body and wrap everything nicely in an icepack, and I then put it in a stainless steel box in my check-in luggage.

Middle East Inspired Recipes

Our trip to Jordan and Israel a few months ago didn’t turn us into a fan of falafels but we did enjoy a few new dishes and food ingredients while we were there, and I decided to do a Middle East-inspired menu during our Christmas and New Year celebration at home. And since I realized I haven’t done a recipe post for a while so I am going to share what I did for my main course.

Make-ahead Meat Dishes

From what the names suggest, pork rillettes and gyuniku shigureni sound like two dishes from entirely different worlds, but in reality they were surprisingly similar. Both were meat based and made use of only a small set of ingredients; both involved slow cooking to bring about the intense flavor, and both can be made ahead and served at room temperature (no reheating required!), which made them great candidates as part of a simple home-cooked meal.

Festive Recipe Re-interpreted

Loh Bak Goh 蘿蔔糕, or as CYY calls it, “Robert Go”, is one of those festive dishes we eat during Chinese New Year. Made with shredded white radish (or turnip or daikon) plus a number of other ingredients in a rice flour-based batter and steamed in a deep dish, the dish symbolizes growth (with the word “goh” 糕 sounds like high, or 高 in Chinese). It's often called "Turnip Cake" in English or as Singaporean would say, "Carrot Cake" - but regardless of names, they are all referring to the same thing.

Recipe: Rustic Cake for the Cooler Season

I made this dessert when my friends from New York T and L came over for dinner one evening in October. As the season of fall finally arrived I wanted to do something that fell in the mood of this cooler season. 

Cooking Experiment #4: Roca Brothers and My Sweet Imitation

Taking the week off from work meant I could go to events that I normally couldn't go. A couple weeks ago chefs Joan and Jordi Roca from El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain were in town for a private dinner event and on one of the afternoons, they delivered a cooking masterclass to a small audience. It's been such a privilege to be invited to join.

Cooking Experiment #3: I am Team Steam

"Are you on Team Steam or Team Boil?" a food magazine raised this question in its recent issue about crabs - referring to the "right" way of cooking them. In my adopted home state of Maryland, famous for its crab dishes using Atlantic blue crabs from the nearby Chesapeake Bay, we are firm believers of Team Steam and the question was not even debatable, period.

Cooking Experiment #2: Learn Pho from the Pro

A few months ago my chef friend Peter showed some of us at the kitchen of his (previous) restaurant the way to do a proper Vietnamese Pho Bo, using a modified recipe which is easier and more practical for home cooks. I have always wanted to try that at home, but never got a chance until this week when I had more time playing around in the kitchen.

Cooking Experiment #1: Potato with a Fancy Name

I decided to take a week off in the middle of summer just to get some rest at home. When we told others about the plan, or rather a "non-plan" of doing nothing, many seemed surprised that we were not travelling anywhere. Well, it’s not exactly a week of “doing nothing”, but I have decided to take this week for some cooking experiments at home.