Dining date: 5/10/11 One of the most comforting foods in my childhood (and still now) is a good bowl of wonton soup. It’s a dish that every Chinese restaurant seems to have, but they can vary quite a bit from bowl to bowl. When I order it in a restaurant, there’s often only 4-5 dumplings…
Dining date: 5/1/11 I’ve been wanting to make some type of pulled pork for a little while. I wish I had an outdoor smoker – I would totally have smoked a pork shoulder by now. Alas I do not, but I stumbled upon some recipes for oven pulled pork that promised good results. Combine this…
Dining date: 4/16/11 Scarpetta’s spaghetti is one of the best pastas I’ve ever had; for $24 per serving, it probably should be. I first got an in-depth look into how this pasta is made on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, where chef Scott Conant demonstrated how he prepares it. It’s quite simple really, only involving a…
Dining date: 3/20/11 I often wander into my local supermarket not knowing what I’m going to get. Many times, I know exactly what I want to eat and make a bee-line directly towards my desired meat and produce. Other times, I use the market for inspiration and develop a menu on the spot, depending on…
Dining date: 2/26/11 It’s been a while since I posted some home cooked food. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I haven’t been cooking (I still cook maybe four times a week), it’s just that I’ve had a lot of restaurant posts to catch up with. Anyway, this past weekend, I felt like roasting…
Christmas seemed to come up pretty fast this year. Maybe I’m just getting older. But maybe it’s because I didn’t have any days off between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Either way, the past month really flew by and Christmas was here before I knew it. As usual for this occasion, Christmas is a two-round affair; lunch with my mother’s side…
For Thanksgiving and Christmas, it’s been customary for my family to do two meals: lunch at my aunt’s (mom’s side) and dinner at my grandmother’s (dad’s side). This year was no exception. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a chance to prepare anything myself since I flew up to the Bay Area in the morning. Regardless, there was…
This was my first time cooking pork belly, and also my first time cooking anything confit. I found myself with a four-pound slab of pork belly and a dizzying array of options in how to cook it. Looking through a number of recipes, I finally decided on Thomas Keller’s pork belly confit recipe in Ad…