Food

For this year’s Valentine’s Day, I decided to abandon my sweet tooth for something more savory. Dumplings have always been a humble and nostalgic dish in my mind. But because it’s Valentine’s Day, I decided to make a more sophisticated rose-shaped version that’s a little bougie-er than usual (perfect for impressing your dinner date!).

Give back to those you love the most this Holiday Season by creating a homemade cookie box for them. Learn how I created my own with these festive cookies, using a simple shortbread dough versatile enough for all 5 cookies.

To continue with the truffle salt trend, I thought I’d share something that I made a couple months ago when I first got the truffle salt from Truffle Shuffle for my birthday—avocado toast! Since I love having avocado toast for breakfast, and because it’s something that’s pretty difficult to mess up, it naturally became the first canvas for the truffle salt.

Mashed potatoes can act as a blank canvas for your favorite spices, and so I decided to pull out my current favorite: truffle salt. I received a jar for my birthday have been using it ever since in pasta, eggs, and even on my avocado toast. If you love truffle fries, then you’ll definitely fall in love these creamy truffle mashed potatoes too.

Learn the tips and tricks to make one of the most difficult but delicious desserts—the French Macaron! In this recipe, I filled them with a savory black sesame cream cheese buttercream to balance out the sweetness of the cookie.

One dish that I came across literally everywhere in Spain was Tortilla Española, also known as the Spanish omelette. This dish is insanely simple, and is traditionally made with only 5 ingredients—eggs, potatoes, onions, olive oil, and salt.

Let’s make one of my all-time favorite things to eat: potsticker dumplings, otherwise known as gyoza. We’ll be making them with 2 different fillings: pork and cabbage (which is actually my mom’s recipe) as well as chicken and dried shiitake mushrooms.

After realizing that asparagus is a pretty popular breakfast item, I got inspired to create this super-duper—is this even cooking—easy recipe of sautéed asparagus with poached egg.

A warm and creamy risotto is the perfect comfort food to warm you up on a cold winter’s day. It only takes a few ingredients to make, and can be made vegetarian by substituting the chicken broth with vegetable broth. Plus, it’s the perfect restaurant-style dish to impress your Valentine with this Thursday ;)

The thing I love most about Shakshuka is that it’s super flexible: you can easily make it vegetarian, and it’s a meal not limited to breakfast. If you’re going vegetarian with this, I recommend adding veggies like zucchini or eggplant and proteins like chickpeas or white beans.

Fried rice is a great way to make use of leftovers and a staple dish in every Asian household. This time, I decided to give fried rice a Southern flair by adding bacon, frying the rice in the bacon fat, and cooking the entire thing in a cast iron pan to give the rice a crunchy crust at the bottom—almost like hot stone bibimbap!

Cooking a pasta dish in one pan is a great way to prepare a meal without worrying about the extra pot of water, straining the noodles, and cleaning up additional kitchen tools. This one-pan pork belly/bacon carbonara is a great way to try out this one-pan technique and only requires 7 common ingredients.

Mapo Tofu was one of the favorite dishes from my mom to eat growing up. It works as a main or a side, and tastes just like home on top of a steaming bowl of rice.

This is actually a copy cat of a dish I had at the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney—I was so obsessed with how it tasted that I actually called the concierge to ask the chef for the recipe. They were nice enough to tell me exactly what went into it, and I was totally able to recreate it at home. 

Bibimbap can also get a bit heavy with amount of white rice that's in the dish, which you might not even notice when mixing it around with the other ingredients. The portion given at restaurants for this dish can also be quite big. In my version, I swapped out some ingredients for a lighter version of this dish.

It’s autumn in California, and you know what that means—fig season! For breakfast, I decided to ditch my usual avocado toast (unheard of, I know), for a more seasonal favorite—figs and ricotta on toast.

A super-duper moist cake filled with maple syrup, honey, condensed milk, and topped off with ricotta and pistachio. I know “moist” might not be a word you’re comfortable with… it’s the best way to describe this yummy cake.

I made my first cooking video! I started off the first episode of “Cooking with Cinders” on making 5 different kinds of stuffed dates—sweet and savory.

Cacio e Pepe is a dish that requires only 4 ingredients: pasta, black pepper, pecorino cheese, and pasta water. A common staple in Roman cuisine, this dish appeared on the menus of multiple restaurants I visited in Italy.

I decided to do a little bit of research on desserts I could make with the Mochiko rice flour I had lying around, and found that mochi cupcakes were actually quite simple. I tried a total of four different flavors: matcha mochi cupcakes with no filling, and 4 different plain cupcakes stuffed with passionfruit jam, guava jam, and cookie butter.

This recipe was originally inspired by what my mom used to make for me and my brother on hot summer weekends. This is the perfect dish to make when you're short on time, and don't have too many ingredients in the fridge.

You may think I'm a weirdo for saying this, but I'm not a big fan of desserts that are head-to-toe drenched in chocolate. Luckily, there are two ingredients that pair wonderfully with chocolate that help balance the rich flavor: cream cheese and raspberries.

Otherwise known as 朝食 —choushoku—or 朝ご飯 —asagohan—a traditional Japanese breakfast consists of a variety of fresh ingredients that contribute to a colorful spread. A set will usually contain Miso soup, steamed rice, some kind of grilled fish, rolled egg omelette and more adventurous items like natto (fermented soybeans) and umeboshi (a kind of pickled plum).

Say goodbye to Apple Turnovers forever. Opt for these Cuban Guava and cream cheese Pastries instead. They are super easy to make and only require 5 ingredients: puff-pastry, cream cheese, guava paste, sugar, and egg.

These are basically the grown up version of Bagel Bites. Topped with arugula, a splash of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, this is a perfect bite to accompany a glass of wine and board games on a cozy Saturday night in.

Hong Kong Egg Tarts are one of my favorite Dim Sum dessert items. Luckily, they are also one of the easiest desserts to make and require the fewest ingredients