What's Old🔗

You must be asking what's up with AnYYwAYY for the past, Whoof, three months!?! Long story short, we had a trip to Colorado (Yay) and my parents came to visit (Yay). After nearly 4 years of being apart by uncontrollable factors, on Oct 16th, my parents finally arrived. It's been a busy yet memorable 6-week of family time. During this period, I'm proud to showcase them the best from AnYYwAYY's repertoire. They also bring inspirations and challenges to AnYYwAYY. How so? Inspirations come from developing recipes catered to their tastes and preferences. They bring new variations to some of our classics as well as some brand new items. Challenges are on the optimizing and scaling from cooking for 2 to 4. More well-thought planning and efficient execution are needed for everyday operation. Luckily we have very enthusiastic extra helping hands.

The format of this series will be a bit different. I will give a run-through of meals we cooked during this period, including family projects (spoiler: the early fall of Wang's Baozi empire) and San Diego Airbnb "cookout" (vacation house home cooking). I'd group the materials so each chapter covers one theme under which there may be a couple of variations.

Okonomiyaki - Secret Unlocked🔗

This is actually the legacy takeaway from Colorado trip that I further practiced during my parents' stay. We went to Osaka's in Boulder. The highlight there is definitely okonomiyaki (noodle is just meh). It's better than our earlier homemade version in two very noticeable aspects: flavor from pork belly and texture from cabbage.

The key to pro level okonomiyaki is to use the right meat and the right cabbage. These are the two parts not "okonomi" (anything you like).

About meat: Pork belly is a very thin cut with a decent fat band. It's like bacon but less seasoned. Usually it's only available in Japanese markets at pretty high per unit price. I also tried bacon as it's my Mom's single most favorite thing that's widely available in the US but not in China. IMO, bacon works the same if not better than the classic pork belly. Even more so if factor in cost and availability.

About cabbage: To get the right texture, you need a crunchy veggie that doesn't welt too much under osmosis (after salt draws out moisture, in this case sitting in batter that contains salt). So, not zucchini, lettuce or any greens you have in the fridge. Otherwise you'd get a soft floppy pancake that's both hard to flip and not texturally interesting to eat. That's why the traditional version uses the kind of cabbage wrapped in layers in a ball shape (not napa!). After understanding the reason behind tradition, you can still make customization on the veggie. Just need to follow the property of low moisture under osmosis. At the restaurant, they offer Kale-based batter. I tried half cabbage half capsicum. Suddenly it's "okonomi" again.

On techniques, couple of very useful tips:

• Start batter on the thicker side. Mix in shredded veggies and let it sit for a while. The moisture drawn from the veggies will make batter looser over time. This ensures consistent and even texture. Especially if you are cooking more than two. If immediately cook after mixing the batter, you'd end up with the first one very dense and the last one very watery.
• Follow the process: drop in batter -> tidy up to a round disk -> lay bacons on top side -> flip. This way the bacon hits the pan after flipping and will be glued to the pancake as the top side of batter cooks. Also, bacon oil will be the pan oil for the next one. So you only need to oil the pan for the first one.
• Preheat oven to 350F. Put cooked ones on a tray. Add cheese if desired. This way you can serve all of them hot at the same time.
• Cut cabbage into even, not too thin, not too thick shreds. You need trial-and-error to figure out what's the optimal size. Rule of thumb, too thin you'd lose the crunchy texture; too thick batter cannot hold together.

We tried three variations. As always they get progressively better from better mastery of prepping and process. But objectively speaking, any one is a fine version. To me, I just used what was available at the time.

1. OG (pork belly, cabbage)

2. Bacon (bacon, cabbage)

3. Rainbow (bacon, 1/2 cabbage 1/2 capsicum)

I started a spreadsheet to track my parents' rating¹ to all the things I made in the meantime. Given a large dataset (6-week of daily meals), it's the perfect opportunity to collect feedback as well as gauge family members' taste.

Surf and Turf🔗

It just occurred to me that there is a perfect translation for "surf and turf" in Chinese that if literally translated back, i.e. using Google translate, would be "big fish big meat"². The phrase pops out as back home it's considered essential to have "surf and turf" for any special occasion, New Year, guests over, banquet outside, etc. Naturally, to welcome my parents' arrival, I planned "big fish big meat" on their first week here.

I decided on shrimp and steak for my recent experience with the ingredients. For interests on techniques, refer to posts Pajama Steak Night and Labor Day Week. Here I will just ramble some stories.

1. Turf My mom was born in the year of cow. But that's not the only reason turf is a pretty adequate descriptor for her. Her last name is Wang, which translates to King. That's still not the reason turf suits her. The real reason is her high initiative within the family, or put in a more blunt way, bossiness, that she deserves the turf of cat family. This will probably win my Mom's waving hand, my Dad's wince and me a writer's joy to capture all.

   Aside from smart quips, my Mom is a big fan of big games, beef in particular. Steak is definitely her treat. That's why I was very happy to apply my newly learned reverse searing technique. The workflow is exactly the same as making for two. Just use 12-inch cast iron instead of 10-inch carbon steel.

   As for taste, it's as good as it looks. My parents' rating speaks for itself. To me, flavor is really nice. Just this time the meat itself is not as good as last time, too stringy to my liking. Well, not a steak fan in nature. But I'm happy my parents enjoyed it so much.

   Those of you with observant eyes may ask why plates are on an unfamiliar wooden table. Story is my parents were actually staying in a hotel for the first week as A was still recovering from covid. So the fancy "big fish big meat" dinners were actually packed, kept warm, and transported to them from our kitchen to their hotel. It was quite an effort those nights cooking and delivering. But all are good memories worth talking about now.

2. Surf Shrimp is probably my top choice to cook and enjoy as a fancy protein. It's the easiest and quickest to handle. It's pleasant to chew and gentle to digest (part of the reason why I'm so picky on meat, gotta be pleasing to both mouth and tummy). I guess the only challenging part then was cooking steak and shrimp at the same time. I had a whole day work trip the next day. To have them safely stay in their hotel room and A at home while still get homemade meals for lunch and dinner, I decided to make ahead six portions of garlic shrimp and fancy steamed rice. Though it was lots of work that night, by their feedback the next night I came back, I felt very pleased, even more so than I had tasty shrimp myself. Well, I had the mediocre pizza with coworkers that night (sigh every time big group super excited about pizza). "You all had way better dinner than me", chef's lament, in a genuinely happy way.

   I still got to try the shrimp the next day. Made extra miles to peel before cooking and served with fried rice. Definitely surf for me.

To be continued!

¹ A spreadsheet of ratings to everything will be given at the end of this series. A snippet will be attached at the end of each chapter.

² 大鱼大肉