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. 

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.

The Perfect Celebration

We rarely contacted chefs specifically before any visit to their restaurants, not wanting to give them a wrong impression that we were expecting special treatments, but this time I did tell Chef Fabrice a month ago about our plan to eat at his restaurant in Macau, and made a special request to eat inside the kitchen. Blame that on the missus who asked for the "Chef’s Table" to celebrate her birthday.

Chef Vs (Paella) Pan

I did say it would be a long while before I will even consider doing the “chef gig” thing again since my “debut” at PMQ Taste Kitchen a few months ago. But when Chef Alex Fargas and his team approached me to be the guest chef for the weekend brunch menu at his restaurant La Paloma, it seems like a project having too much fun to say no to. The restaurant in Sai Ying Pun, with the promise of serving “Sexy Tapas”, has been doing this “Chef Vs Pan” series for a while, in which once a month one outside chef would come in to deliver his/her version of paella (using the giant 40-inch pan) and roast suckling pig as part of their weekend brunch menu.

PMQ Taste Kitchen Experience: After

"Will you do it again?" is the question I was asked most often after my brief stint at the PMQ Taste Kitchen was dusted and over. For the first few times I thought about that, feeling totally shattered after consecutive days of clocking 18 hours standing in the kitchen or running around, I was like… "no freaking way!" and I was just happy to play my old role of judging and criticizing chefs instead of being one.

PMQ Taste Kitchen Experience: During

"Service!"… midway through the PMQ Taste Kitchen pop-up event I was still getting used to the notion that someone would come to assist (almost) immediately in the kitchen once the dishes were plated and ready to serve - sometimes I wish it's like that at home. Rewinding a few days back, as the dates of the pop-up approached, I began to feel the pressure as the seats starting to fill up even before we posted the menu and other details online. At the same time, everything else appears to be on schedule - that gave me some sense of comfort until the "real fun" began (or all hell broke loose, depends on how you see it) when we opened for business.

PMQ Taste Kitchen Experience: Before

"Food is so good that you should open your own restaurant!" – any amateur cook who hosted dinner party at home must have heard compliments like this from time to time. While I believe in my case many of those comments were made only out of appreciation for the effort rather than merits, it does made me wonder what it is like working in a kitchen in a real restaurant other than my own home's. And that random thought, plus an unplanned meet-up and chat with my friends J and D one afternoon led to myself taking over a pop-up restaurant for a few days in May.

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.

Sneak Preview from the Kitchen

As our friend Fabrice is ready for his new post heading The Tasting Room in Macau after moving on from Caprice, we want to pay him a visit just to catch up, and CYY’s birthday in mid-May gave us the perfect excuse to spend a weekend in town as part of the celebration. So I let him know of our plan in advance and check whether the restaurant would be open then after being closed for the past few months for a makeover.

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.

Feb-ulous Kyoto: Cooking at Our Temporary Home

One of the main reasons of renting a house rather than staying in a hotel was to have the opportunity to spend more time eating in rather than dining out all the time during our quick weekend getaway in Kyoto. I am always fascinated at the variety and quality of food ingredients found in the area, so I thought it will be interesting to actually cook with whatever I came across in the market at the time of our visit.

Summer Recipe: Southern Style Corn Fritters

While spending late evenings watching the French Open on TV a few weeks ago, I was looking to fix up something quick to munch on. That's when I saw the cob of corns in the refrigerator, the one that I left behind by accident after getting a few of them in the weekend farmer's market for my bento lunches.

Perfect One-dish Dinner: Three Cup Chicken

I was home alone on a weeknight and wanted to prepare something real simple myself for dinner. I happened to have a bunch of fresh Thai basil that I picked up at a specialty grocery store the day before so I thought the "Three Cup" Chicken (三杯雞) would be perfect, something that was easy to make, can be done in less than 30 minutes start from finish and worked well with just a simple bowl of rice for a one-dish dinner, for one.

Juicy Cuisine at Restaurant Akrame

I was at Restaurant Akrame on Ship Street in Wanchai when Chef Akrame Benallal was in town for the week to launch the new seasonal menu at this offshoot of his Paris restaurant.

I love the sense of calmness as I walked into the cozy and contemporary-styled dining room on the side street after crawling through the early evening crowd in the drizzling rain and falling temperature. The sleek, industrial-chic decor with a grayish color scheme with modern paintings on the dark concrete wall with the clear view of the open kitchen at the back, all made the place looks comfortable and extra spacious. I also loved the metallic cutlery and fancy ceramics used to serve the meal, adding to that stylish feel to our dining experience.

The Ramen Story - Making it at home

I took on the experiment of making ramen from scratch at home not on a mission to create the perfect bowl but to try to see how difficult it was even to make a half-decent version.

I first got this idea when I picked up the book by Ivan Orkin, the chef behind the legendary Ivan Ramen (first in Tokyo, then New York City). In the past I always thought ramen is nothing more than a bowl of broth made with pork bones, slices of charsiu and noodles, but I was fascinated by the complexity of Chef Ivan's recipe of no less than a dozen different ingredients that went in, each requiring separate set of processes to prepare. This is why I decided to try on a simplified version as an one-off project in my own kitchen. I meant to start during the Chinese New Year break but at the end I didn't start until one week after.

Fun at the Butchery Workshop

Recently I joined a few others for a Butchery Workshop hosted by Chef Tom Aikens at his restaurant, The Fat Pig by Tom Aikens, in Times Square. Given I have yet tried both of the restaurants he's currently overseeing (Fat Pig and also The Pawn in Wanchai), I am interested in trying his dishes, but I am even more interested in picking up some butchering skills from him, for this is not something I could easily get some hands-on experience with.

Caramel Icecream with Salted Egg Yolks

This recipe is based on a dessert I recently made when my friends came over for dinner, and was inspired by a similar version I had at a restaurant not long ago. Salted caramel has long been my flavor of choice when I want to fix up something quick and easy, and it's proved to be a crowd-pleaser time and time again. But this time I was serving this with a slight twist, putting grated salted egg yolks on top of the scoop of icecream.

Weekend Lunch and Pommes Souffle

I was not sure what Chef Fabrice thought when I actually took up his offer to teach me to cook in his kitchen, but I was pretty excited. A few months ago I was at his restaurant Caprice at the Four Seasons Hong Kong when a bowl of Pommes Souffle appeared as the side dish to our main course, and I was fascinated by the taste and texture.

Flying Dragon's Head

The other day a friend of ours passed us a giant wax gourd grown from her garden. Wax gourd, aka Togan in Japanese, is a common ingredient for dishes in the summer in both Chinese and Japanese cuisine (despite in Chinese it's literally known as Winter Melon, or 冬瓜). According to Chinese tradition, it's known for its cooling and detoxifying effect, and to counter the summer humidity.