It’s just about that time of year when the weather starts getting dramatically warmer and our heads become filled with ideas of summertime debauchery. Fortunately, with Daylight Savings time buttressing our hope that winter is gone for good, St. Patrick’s Day provides us our first opportunity to break out some festive gear and start the day drinking. While most get drunk off Jameson and Guinness, I prefer to get drunk off doughnuts – not just on St. Patty’s Day, but on a fairly regular basis. See Exhibit A: Vietnamese Coffee Doughnuts and Exhibit B: Green Tea Holiday Doughnuts.
I decided to opt for doughnut holes this time, even though I ABHOR the term doughnut holes. The name just does not justify how truly tasty and fun they actually are. Where I grew up, these were known as munchkins. Any kid who ever lived near a Dunkin Donuts knows what I’m talking about. Every birthday, my mother would pick up a neatly packed box of munchkins and I would proudly march into school with them in hand. Girls would squeal in excitement, boys would high five me; I was lunchtime royalty, even if just for one day a year. Needless to say, I have a very positive relationship with doughnut holes.
As with my other go to doughnut recipes, I like to eschew making them from scratch and go straight for the canned biscuit method. Other than the pre-heart attack that often accompanies opening a can of biscuits, there’s really no reason to stress yourself out with making doughnut dough from scratch. Instead of poking holes through the biscuits like traditional shaped doughnuts, all I had to do differently this time was cut them into four equal pieces and roll them into balls. With some heated frying oil and a powdered sugar and matcha powder blend, literally 10 minutes later I had some fresh homemade doughnut holes. They’re dangerously easy to make – I had a dozen in less than an hour!
Like my mother, I’ve always believed that beautiful looking food ends up tasting even better. Growing up, even though we never had fancy American dinner staples such as rack of lamb and Christmas ham, we always used the good china. A beautifully plated meal on a perfectly set table adds just the right touch of glamour to any dinner. It certainly isn’t easy making dinner glamorous, especially when it’s too convenient to pick up some Chipotle immediately after hitting up the gym. (I know I shouldn’t but yoga pants give me such an inflated sense of how fit I am right after I finish working out.) Because making meals an occasion is an occasion itself, I rejoice at any excuse for preparing lavish spreads and what could be more glamorous than the Academy Awards this weekend?!
I never had deviled eggs until I was a working adult but as a kid, upon hearing the name I assumed they were pretty gross. Now that I think about it, a lot of tasty, fancy food is mildly offensive at some level; think caviar, pickled vegetables, cold shrimp cocktail. Deviled eggs fit right in there with the strange yet sophisticated. Anyway, while the recipe for deviled eggs is quite basic, I’m not going to lie, if you want them to come out Oscars pretty, you have to be mentally prepared for a laborious effort. Don’t worry, just follow these steps with extra care and anyone who eats these will feel like a movie star (and even better because they’ll actually get to eat)!
1. Once you’ve hardboiled all your eggs (about 10 minutes in boiling water), spoon them into an ice bowl before attempting to peel off the shells. Take your time with this step! Unless you’re making these for yourself, I doubt you’d want to serve your guests anything looking like this:
2. After you’ve peeled all your eggs, carefully slice them in half lengthwise and scoop out the yolks into a separate bowl. You’ll want to use a damp paper towel to wipe any excess yolk off the whites.
3. Mix your yolks with mayonnaise, wasabi and ginger until a smooth paste forms. At this point, you can choose to either spoon your yolks directly onto your egg whites or go the extra mile and use a piping kit. I went with a 1M tip for the classic ridged swirls.
4. Once your yolks are spooned or piped onto your egg whites, add your toppings! With the tangy wasabi yolks, I figured some smoked salmon, cucumber, sesame seeds, shredded seaweed and green onions would make delicious sushi style deviled eggs. Plus the colorful array will light up any party!
There you have it folks, some fancy finger food for your famished film fanatics! And the Oscar for Best Appetizer goes to…:)
Say what you want about Valentine’s Day but it is easily one of my favorite holidays. Yes, it can get a bit sappy and overhyped with all the contrived romantic gestures, but there is so much more to romance than just the cheesy stuffed animals (or in my case, the cheesy stuffed pizzas). One of the most thoughtful things Jay does for me is constantly embrace my culture with open arms, especially when it comes to Vietnamese food. Not once has he turned his nose up at anything I’ve made or complained about having to use chopsticks or refused to try something my parents cooked or made any comments on the way Asian grocery stores smell. It may seem like avoiding all the above reactions is just having basic manners, but you’d be surprised how often my mother is greeted with a polite cringe anytime she serves a non Asian person anything that isn’t pho. The gestures are small but doing them consistently sends the most romantic message of all: I love you exactly the way you are and I love learning about where you came from. As an Asian American, or really any American who grew up with a different cultural background, you often feel like you always have to compromise between holding onto family traditions and growing into a more modern, Americanized version of yourself. It’s really wonderful to be with someone who lets you hold onto the things that not only remind you of home, but make you you.
Photo evidence of said cultural open-mindedness.
All mushiness aside, in keeping with the theme of trying new things in the name of romance, I present to you: the dragonfruit. These vibrant hot pink tropical fruits have a contrastingly plain white, seedy flesh. (If only we all could be as sexy and exotic on the outside while sweet and smooth on the inside for VDay.) The simple tasting flesh inside offers a similar texture to kiwi while having a mild, fruity flavor like a melon. Its light flavor makes it an easy yet unique ingredient to any dessert. In honor of Valentine’s Day, I decided to make French macarons featuring a dragonfruit buttercream frosting.
The macaron is such a lovely, delicate treat, but making it does take a bit of practice. Luckily, there are very few ingredients involved and the recipe yields a few dozen cookies so lots of opportunities for improvement!.
1. You want to start out by beating your egg whites until they are white and foamy. Add in your food coloring (I added 50 drops of red and 5 drops of blue to achieve my bubblegum pink shade) and white sugar and beat until soft peaks form. It took me so long to understand this whole “peaks” situation. First, there are different types of peaks you may want to achieve. For macarons, you want to make sure your peaks are soft, meaning when you flip your whisk upside down, they peaks their shape but slowly fold into themselves. Secondly, it can take more time than you expected to reach this texture. It takes me almost 10 minutes using an electric beater to get soft peaks so don’t stress yourself out after only a few minutes.
2. Once your mixture yields soft peaks, add in confectioner’s sugar and ground almonds. I prefer to buy peeled, slivered almonds and grind them myself using a coffee a grinder for a fresher, almondier texture. Use a spatula to fold the sugar and ground almonds into the whipped eggs whites, stirring just enough to get an even mixture.
3. Then comes the fun part! Spoon your macaron batter into a ziploc or piping bag and pipe about 2.5 inch circles onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Pro tip: PARCHMENT PAPER AND WAX PAPER ARE NOT THE SAME THING. I had quite a duh moment when I realized that wax paper has well, wax and wax melts in the oven. Whoops! After you finish piping your macaron rounds, let them sit for 30 minutes before baking them at 275 degrees for 15 minutes.
4. After your macarons have baked and cooled for at least 10 minutes. Sandwich them with some dragonfruit frosting. Just a basic buttercream recipe with dragonfruit mixed in will give you a tangy, delightful flavor.
Fried chicken is in my humble opinion the best way to eat chicken. I know, I know, chicken is one of the leanest proteins we can consume, but everyday healthy eating habits aside, in reality given the option between chicken and salmon, beef, lamb, shrimp, etc, I will almost never pick the chicken. Yes some spicy, slow cooked chicken is great in our tacos and who can resist a comforting, sauce drenched piece of General Tso’s, but let’s be real, does any other chicken dish elicit the same mouth watering, guilty yet pleasurable response that a good piece of fried chicken does? Didn’t think so. In fact, an unofficial litmus test I always used as a kid to determine whether or not a certain food was universally tasty was whether or not my parents liked it. A Vietnamese palette is culturally very critical and very acute; every meal is accompanied with a breakdown of its relative saltiness, tanginess, sweetness and overall texture. That being said, fried chicken was one of the few things that passed this test and consequentially one of the few American staples in our household. (If you’re curious what other non-Asian meals made the Bui’s list, pizza, Big Macs and Jamaican beef patties were the other things all four of us thoroughly enjoyed together.)
I am very blessed to have parents who are both great cooks and love to eat, but their desire to always make things themselves was often the bane of my dinner. When you’re a kid, all you want to do is be and eat like everyone else and absolutely no substitution would do. It’s not just about having mac n’ cheese; it’s about specifically having Kraft Easy Mac and finally understanding why those kids wearing sunglasses on TV were always singing about the blues. But to my surprise and delight, my mom always knew how to make the BEST fried chicken. “Even better than KFC!” I’d exclaim, which from an 8 year old is the highest culinary compliment one can receive. Her key to amazing fried chicken is basically boiled down to 3 easy steps:
1. Her secret starts with an overnight soak in heavily seasoned buttermilk. Take the shotgun approach with the spices – the more the merrier. Garlic powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, salt and a TON of ground black pepper will ALWAYS make an appearance in my fried chicken. The saltier and more flavorful the meat, the less likely you’ll end up with a boring pile of chewy, plain white meat.
2. After your chicken has soaked overnight, or at the very least 6-8 hours, the second secret to amazing fried chicken is the double dredge. The double dredge is essentially dipping the chicken in liquid, then in a coating, then back in liquid, then back in coating to maximize the crispiness of the exterior. There are lots of different liquids you can alternate between – buttermilk, whisked eggs, mustard, flour, cornmeal and panko to name a few – but I like to stick to alternating between the flavorful buttermilk the chicken was soaking in overnight an some seasoned flour.
3. Once you have fried your chicken in either a deep fryer or a large pot of frying oil, a common misstep is to drain your fried chicken on a paper towel. DO NOT DO THIS. The paper towel not only starts to steam the crunchy outside of the chicken, but the longer you leave it on the paper towel, even more oil will become absorbed and make your chicken soggy. Instead, immediately after removing the chicken from hot oil, place it on a cooling rack over a baking sheet; it does the trick of draining excess oil without making your perfectly crispy chicken soggy. The next time you’re at any fried chicken joint, you’ll notice they all use metal racks! (Warning, copious amounts of fried chicken porn ahead!)
And that’s basically it! The classic recipe is great on its own but I like to dress it up differently every time I make it. This time, I whipped up some more Sriracha Lime Mayo to make my version of Southern fried chicken sandwiches. I especially love that my biscuits are way smaller than the chicken – more of the best part!
