Selfie - A Cook or a Chef

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Selfie - A Cook or a Chef

🎵 I wish I was little bit taller,
I wish I was a baller,
I wish I had a girl who looked good
I would call her 🎵

I have always wanted to be a lot of things. In elementary school, growing up with Snoopy and Calvin and Hobbes, I wanted to be cartoonist. After learning guitar in attempts to impress ladies in high school, I wanted to be a rock star. Before college I wanted to take my passions of art, Legos, and physics and become an Architect. Eight college applications later, I got rejected from the Architecture programs I applied to and had been accepted to 4 Universities that offered me their engineering program. Fast forward 8+ years later (time is flying), I am a licensed Professional Engineer.

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[Recipe] Earl Grey Mookie

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[Recipe] Earl Grey Mookie

I know, I know what you're thinking. What the heck is a mookie. For those of you who have seen my Matcha Mochi Cookie post you can guess that is it my mochi cookie (moo-k-ie). Okay, I don't know if that name will stick but let me know what you guys think.

Matcha is an instant favorite in the food world and for a good reason too. But sometimes us food enthusiasts want something different with a tea flavor. Earl Grey is an up and coming favorite with hojicha and genmaicha trailing closely behind his greener older brother. I decided to tackle an earl grey cookie, earl Grey doesn't get the credit it deserves. I stuck with the mactha mochi cookie proportions but had two different methods for incorporating the tea flavor into the cookie. One is to just substitute ground tea leaves as a 1 to 1 substitute for Matcha powder. Another would be to seep the tea in warm milk, hopefully to get a more pronounced flavor. I set up an experiment and made my matcha mochi cookie as my control.

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The Real Ramen Burger

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The Real Ramen Burger

In 2013, the Ramen Burger crazy swept over America by Keizo Shimamoto and it was one of those "Why didn't I think of that..." creations. Immediately there were hundreds of recipes for the Ramen Burger and none of them felt right in my mind. I was able to try the Official Ramen Burger at a San Francisco Tofu Festival last year, and I have to admit, it was pretty damn good. I have never attempted making a Ramen Burger as I was always more interested in making the conventional soup and noodle ramen, but seeing bloggers and imitators making mediocre Ramen Burgers, I decided to see how I could fare.

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Selfie - Flavor Bouncing and Dish Development

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Selfie - Flavor Bouncing and Dish Development

As someone who used to always cook following a written recipe, developing a dish on my own seemed impossible. I wasn't too successful until recently when I stumbled upon Grant Achatz' (Alinea) video on flavor bouncing. It gave me the opportunity to look into the mind of the chef at one of best restaurants in the world, and a foundation to start planning my own dishes.

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