June 19, 2020

I developed my recipe for homemade flour wraps with lemon roast chicken, hoisin, scallion, and cilantro out of an intense craving for Peking duck wraps. I had been reminiscing on some of my favorite foods and thought back to one of my more recent experiences enjoying Peking duck when Kevin and I visited his family in Hong Kong. I can’t remember the exact establishment, but I definitely recall the meticulous serving process. The chef wheeled a cart to our table and lifted up a lid to reveal the glistening crispy exterior of a roasted duck. Each movement was reminiscent of a performance. He lifted his knife and with a few meticulous cuts into the whole duck, a plate of perfectly portioned duck meat along with crispy skin was served. We all watched each and every swift movement with close attention. The chef perfectly portioned out the servings of the duck before moving on to demonstrate the steps for enjoying a properly layered Peking duck wrap. The process starts with a piece of ultra-thin pancake, a swipe of plum sauce, a toss of julienned scallions and cilantro, and a topping of duck meat and crispy skin. I loved watching the process while eagerly waiting for my turn to build a wrap. Even thinking back to the experience made me crave Peking duck wraps even more. It has been almost half a year since we last saw Kevin’s family. The combination of missing authentic, nostalgic Chinese food and not knowing when exactly we would be able to see family again made me miss all of the moments we had connecting over good food. My intense cravings for Peking duck and limited access to groceries the last couple of months led me to develop my latest creation – homemade flour wraps with lemon roast chicken, hoisin, scallion, and cilantro. The textures and flavors of my newest creation was very reminiscent of the flavors and textures of Peking duck wraps. I started by roasting a whole chicken following the same way I season my salt and pepper roast chicken and adding the same aromatics and vegetables I use when preparing my garlic lemon roast chicken over vegetables. Roasting a whole chicken is one of the most versatile uses of a whole bird. I get to enjoy roast chicken for dinner, save any remaining chicken for my curried or spicy chicken salad, and reserve the remaining bones to make stock. The concentrated stock can then be transformed into chicken noodle soup the following day or chicken and dumplings. This time around, I roasted my chicken for just a tad longer in the oven to get the ultra-crispy exterior similar to the crispy texture of Peking duck. As the chicken was roasting away in the oven, I prepared a very simple stack of flour wraps, julienned scallions, and fresh cilantro stems from my herb garden to serve with the chicken. With just a drizzle of hoisin sauce served on the side (since I didn’t have any plum sauce on hand), dinner (and a dose of nostalgia) was ready to be served.

June 10, 2020

Summer has definitely arrived in Ohio. Flowers are in bloom. The leaves on trees are greener than ever. Businesses are almost back up to full capacity. Even the herbs by my windows are growing wildly. Okay, maybe not wildly, but the herbs have made great progress in growing during the last few months. I’ve been using all of the herbs as much as I can in almost all of the meals I cook each day. I had to get another cilantro plant because the one I had at home started flowering. It may be from lack of care or it may be from too much care. I believe it’s the latter as Kevin has become obsessed with caring for the herbs. He seems to have an internal clock reminding him to water the herbs every other day. I also had to get another basil plant because the one I had wasn’t growing fast enough to meet my cooking needs. Surprisingly, even after multiple rounds of harvesting for homemade pastas, the basil plant continues to sprout deep green leaves. My thyme plant, a fairly new addition to my herb garden, has been the star of many chicken stocks and soups. I’ve even worked thyme into versions of savory oatmeal. The newest addition to my herb garden, a lavender plant, is not even close to harvesting yet. I’m excited for the lavender plant to grow out, so I can finally experiment with the herb in the kitchen. For now, let’s get back to the basil plant. This week, I noticed one of my basil plants on the brink of flowering. This was my cue to trim off some of the stems to use in some homemade pizza. I wanted to make a pizza featuring some of my favorite produce from the summer and ended up going with a barbecue peach, arugula, and basil pizza. My barbecue peach, arugula, and basil pizza starts off swapping out traditional tomato sauce with my favorite barbecue sauce. I then top the pizza with Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, mozzarella, a few shakes of spices, peach slices, arugula, and fresh basil. All of the ingredients complement one another very well and made for the most delightful light summer dinner. Kevin, who is a notorious meat eater and would always prefer meat on his pizza, did not even miss the meat one bit. The pizza had everything we loved all in one place. The cheese adds a familiar saltiness. The barbecue sauce adds a smokiness. The peach slices add a balanced sweetness. The arugula and basil add a contrasting pepperiness. When combined together, the flavors were just magical.

June 6, 2020

Several years ago, Kevin and I took a short trip to Da Nang, Vietnam in between our trip to visit his family in Hong Kong. Kevin’s stepmom organized the trip to Da Nang and arranged for us to stay at a villa throughout the trip. During the night, we would hang around the villa and enjoy the beautiful ocean views. When the sun rose, we would venture out to the local streets. My favorite part of the trip was going on a food tour with a local guide and experiencing the dynamic food scene in the heart Da Nang. Our food tour guide grew up in Da Nang, and had a passion for sharing her favorite foods with visitors. We got to enjoy a little bit of everything from beef stew to bánh mì. Every dish we ate weaved in tons of fresh herbs, bright flavors, and intense aromatics. I thoroughly enjoyed every dish we sampled. Some were familiar flavors and aromas and some were not. Of everything we ate on the trip, bánh mì was my favorite. The bánh mì we ate featured grilled pork, fresh herbs, and pickled vegetables served on top of a crispy, toasted baguette. I loved the simplicity of the bánh mì paired with an intensely aromatic cà phê. I’ve eaten bánh mì before, but enjoying a bánh mì in Da Nang squeezed among locals was another experience. With all of the eating we did, we needed to work in some exercise. Our exercise came in the form of sightseeing. We strolled through the busy streets filled with locals and tourists. When we came across a rickshaw, we just had to hop on and snap a photo. Even looking back at the photos from several years ago, I can still remember all of the intense flavors and aromas in every dish we ate. Reminiscing on the trip Kevin and I took to Vietnam several years ago spurred my cravings for bánh mì. I recreated the experience with some pickled carrots, fresh herbs, and my favorite Asian meatballs. My version of Asian meatballs features a lot of the same ingredients I use when making my crispy Asian fishcakes. I began by prepping the pickled carrots and daikon, followed by preparing the Asian meatballs, and finally arranging the rest of the fresh veggies onto the toasted baguette. To bring everything together, I prepared a side of shrimp summer rolls, a simple peanut sauce, and some minty peach green tea to help wash everything down. The meal came together rather quickly. As we were enjoying the meal, we couldn’t help but to reminisce on some of our travels from the past years. We hope to be able to travel the world again and reconnect with family and friends over good food.

May 25, 2020

It’s finally Memorial Day weekend. Kevin and I have been excited for this long weekend for some time now. Kevin looks forward to having an extra day of rest away from work. I look forward to spending even more time than usual creating delicious meals in the kitchen. With the warmer weather finally among us, I’ve been trying to stay away from the oven as much as possible. The easier it is to prepare a dish without the oven, the better. My pasta salad is one of the dishes where I make endless variations of over the summer. It doesn’t require the use of an oven and comes together fairly quickly. For Memorial Day weekend, I decided to put a spin on my usual pasta salad and make a variation using the vegetables I had in the refrigerator. I chopped up a broccoli into florets and quickly blanched the florets, quartered some tomatoes, tossed in some cooked green peas, added some diced carrots, and tossed the veggies with some cooked rotini pasta and a simple red wine vinaigrette. The pasta salad would make for the perfect side dish. I scanned through my freezer and saw a large salmon fillet. I decided to defrost the fillet, cut it up into smaller pieces and fry up some salmon fillets to serve for a Memorial Day lunch. The tricky part about cooking salmon is finding the perfect way to cook the salmon so my husband, Kevin, would actually eat it. Kevin isn’t the hugest fan of seafood and would not eat seafood unless he absolutely had no other choice. The occasional times when he did eat seafood were when the seafood came battered and fried. I tried cooking seafood over the years, but Kevin still hated it. It took several tries and different combinations of flavors until I found one Kevin actually ate. The version Kevin would actually eat is made with a marinade of freshly grated ginger, maple syrup, miso paste, and soy sauce. The first few times I made salmon fillets using a ginger maple miso marinade, Kevin actually enjoyed the salmon fillets. Since then, it has been my go-to way of flavoring salmon fillets. To round out our summer lunch, I prepared some freshly sliced watermelon wedges, corn on the cob, curried chicken salad, and freshly brewed iced tea. We enjoyed the lunch together before heading outdoors for a short walk to soak in the warmer weather. With Memorial Day weekend almost behind us, we are excited to kick start the summer season.

May 18, 2020

I have been in full recipe development mode during the last two months. Businesses in Ohio are beginning to slowly open. Kevin and I have continued to stay indoors. On the weeks in between trips to the grocery store, I find myself scouring through my pantry to try to use up each and every ingredient I have on hand. These days, I try to limit the number of times I stop by the grocery store to replenish on ingredients. I used to stop by the grocery store once a week, but these last few weeks, I have only stopped by the grocery store once every 2-3 weeks. My cooking and baking frenzy have led me to finding new ways to put spins on old favorites and test out new ideas along the way. One dish I have been working on is a version of fried and steamed pork buns, a loose interpretation of Sheng Jian Bao. Sheng Jian Bao is a type of bun in Shanghai cuisine. It features a fluffy bun with a crispy bottom and is filled with meat and vegetables. I love it because it combines two of my favorite foods of all time – pork dumplings and steamed buns. I applied cooking techniques from making dumplings and steamed buns to create my fried and steamed pork buns. I fry the buns first in a skillet, then add water, and steam the buns. This is how I get the perfect crispy bottoms on my pork buns. The dough for the buns is almost the same as the one I use for my pork dumplings. It did take me a couple tries to get the dough just right, but once I got the ratios for the dough down, I ended up with the most fluffy, crispy, and savory fried and steamed pork buns. Before I could share my pork buns, I needed to let Kevin taste them first. Kevin, my husband, grew up in Hong Kong and had his fair share of authentic Shanghai cuisine. Some of his best memories with his family involved sampling some of the best Shanghai food in the world. He is also brutally honest when it comes to giving feedback on the authenticity of my interpretations of his favorite foods. When Kevin and I both traveled to visit his family in Hong Kong earlier this year, we ate at some of the best restaurants specializing in Shanghai cuisine. Kevin always orders Xiao Long Bao and Shanghai noodles. I prefer scallion pancakes. Kevin’s family loves good food, so I know all of their restaurant recommendations are top notch. Back in our home in Ohio, I am constantly testing and retesting recipes to make sure I get them just right. Once I finished preparing my fried and steamed pork buns, I served them up to Kevin and he ended up eating ten buns. He did reserve just two buns for me, so I can at least taste my own creations. Watching him eat the fried and steamed pork buns with pure joy on his face meant my recipe was ready for sharing.

May 9, 2020

I woke up this morning with the most intense cravings for egg rolls, braised pork rice, and milk tea after an evening of virtual hangouts to celebrate Kevin’s birthday. Kevin’s close friend, Clay, had arranged a virtual hangout through Houseparty with some of Kevin’s closest friends in Ohio. We spent a few hours playing a digital version of Mysterium, a board game popular amongst our friends. I still prefer the physical game, but with the social distancing, the digital game sufficed. By the time 10:00 p.m. rolled around, I was ready to sleep. Kevin stayed up much later to continue playing additional digital games. I didn’t realize how tired I was until I woke up at 9:30 a.m. the next day. I finally got myself to get up off the bed when I heard my stomach grumbling. I headed straight to the kitchen to reconstitute some dried mushrooms to make some braised pork rice, a spin on the classic Taiwanese style minced pork rice. Minced pork rice was a dish I spent many years eating during my college years in Ann Arbor. The minced pork rice I ate at my favorite college tea spot always had soy braised eggs served alongside the rice bowl. Instead of braised eggs, I made some egg rolls, fried them up, and served them alongside my rice bowls. I also brewed up some tea, brought out the condensed coconut milk I’ve been obsessed with lately, and some whole milk to serve with the tea. Whenever I had minced pork rice in college, I always made sure I had some milk tea on the side. A couple spoonful of condensed coconut milk was all I needed to get the creaminess and sweetness I needed in my perfect cup of milk tea. Kevin prefers a classic milk tea with whole milk, so I brought out some whole milk for him. A few years after graduating from college, Kevin and I got engaged and made a special trip out to Ann Arbor to have our engagement photos taken. We walked through some of the same streets we used to frequent throughout our college years. Much to my dismay, the tea spot was gone. I was bummed to not be able to have a bowl of minced pork rice and glass of strawberry milk bubble tea again from my favorite tea spot. To this day, I still have intense cravings for minced pork rice. Luckily, my braised pork rice works wonders to satisfy my cravings for minced pork rice whenever the cravings kicked in. The combination of flavors has been ingrained in my memory after eating and making the dish all of these years. Today, I made a simplified version using red onions instead of shallots. I halved the ingredients in my typical braised pork rice recipe, omitted the eggs, and made egg rolls to serve on the side instead. For the egg rolls, I also simplified the list of ingredients I typically add when making egg rolls to accommodate the ingredients I did have on hand. My simplified eggs rolls featured a blend of cabbage, carrots, scallions, and aromatics. The throwback meal was just what we needed to start the weekend off on the right foot.