The Matcha Mochi Cookie: Square One

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The Matcha Mochi Cookie: Square One

Mochi cookies are a rare sight to see, but it is about time rice flour is the star of the show and takes its own form. A cookie that is crispy, smooth, chewy, light, and most importantly delicious. My original intent of engineering a mochi cookie was to... well engineer a cookie. I started with a Matcha Mochi Cupcake recipe that I knew was delicious. It had a crisp texture on top and a chewy mochi center. If i could increase the crispiness to chewy ratio I would have something great. I broke down the recipe and looked into the water, fat and protein content of all my ingredients keeping track of details such as an egg is composed of 66.6% egg whites, 90% of which is water. Where did this get me? I was left with a bunch of numbers on a spreadsheet, cookieless and sad. I just needed to start baking. It took me 4 trials to get to my Final Recipe.

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Engineering a Green Tea Mochi Cookie: Planning Phase

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Engineering a Green Tea Mochi Cookie: Planning Phase

If you search for "the BEST chocolate chip cookie" on Google, you'll come up with recipes by the boat load. Every food blog has to have to have a chocolate chip cookie and they all claim that is the "best". Some are crunchy, some are cake-y. Others can be light or have deep caramel overtones. There is so much information out there on developing a chocolate cookie, my favorite being Kenji Lopez-Alt's "The Food Lab: The Science of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie", but there are only a handful of posts on Mochi Cookies.

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Give Your Steak a Bath (Sous Vide)

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Give Your Steak a Bath (Sous Vide)

Cooking a steak in water does not sound appetizing at all, but surprisingly this method yields one amazing piece of protein.

Steak itself is a tricky beast to tame. I can still remember my first encounter tackling this piece of meat. Fresh out of the dorms in college I started cooking for myself in my apartment. I mastered the art of stir frying chicken and broccoli passed down by my mother, but unfortunately that was the only skill I learned before I was left to fend for myself. Luckily my dad, the grill master, loves a juicy steak and packed me a Costco supply of steaks frozen for my convenience and to mix it up my meals a little. I took one slab of meat out, thawed it for a few hours, and called my dad for instructions to reassure myself that everything would be fine. "Salt and Pepper. Cook on one side for 4 minutes. Flip. Cook for 4 more minutes. A splash of soy sauce." And there you have it, the Chan Family secret for a perfect steak. Little did I know that there was more to it than that.

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