The Seven Greatest Recipes of All Time
I started cooking as soon as I moved out of campus during the third year of college, and I never looked back. At that time, cooking symbolized the first step towards adulting, and I was so excited to finally live like a grown-up. I remembered my first time in the kitchen: I made seared salmon, and I accidentally knocked over my cutting board, dumping all the minced garlic on the floor. It was clumsy.
Some of my first creations, lol!
However, I am a determined foodie who is always pursuing the great flavors I’ve imagined in my mind, so I kept on trying. I remembered spending lots of nights watching youtube videos for cooking techniques, and experimentations that spanned the whole afternoons. Just like this, my cooking journey took off: from 20 min easy stir fry, to several-hour multi-step recipes, and finally, to hosting/co-hosting dinner parties.
Dinner parties circa 2017 and 2019
I love cooking - it is my way of connecting with the greater community, by getting to know about the local ingredients and food culture, as well as cooking with and for loved ones. It’s been a fun adventure!
Below are a few of the greatest recipes I’ve found myself going back to again and again through my years of cooking, if you’re looking for some kitchen inspirations…
A list of agenda:
Bolognese
Italian Meatballs
Beef Bourguignon
Shanghai Lionhead Meatballs
Peking Roast Duck (shown below)
Raspberry Ricotta Cake
Canelés
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The Best Bolognese Ever
I love this recipe - it is from the LA-based designer Pia Baroncini and her Italian husband, and the resulting dish is extremely rich in flavor. The cooking video is actually an ad for her clothing brand! So adorable.
The entire recipe is a lot of work (calls for at least three vegetables and three kinds of meat), and it’s worth it for special occasions. However, if you are just looking for a good meal during the weekend, 3-4 Italian sausages, 1 carrot, 1-2 tomatoes, 1 can of crushed tomatoes (or tomato puree), 1 tsp tomato paste, 1/2 white onion, salt and a little red wine also make a very good sauce. The essential is to use many kinds of tomato ingredients, cut up and break down Italian sausages instead of using plain ground beef, and wait for 40 minutes on low heat for everything to come together. I’ve made it three times this year already. Favorite dish of 2020.
Bolognese: August, March, February of 2020.
The Best Italian Meatballs Ever
Bon Appétit’s Best Spaghetti and Meatballs, and 4 tips for the Best Damn Meatballs Ever. Many ingredients, no cutting slacks here.
Italian meatballs: 2018, 2017, 2016
Beef Bourguignon
Nothing beats a bowl of beef bourguignon on a cold windy day. Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon has always been the classic, but Melissa Clark’s recipe from NYT is equally good. Don’t overlook the pearl onions - they’re actually one of the best parts!
Beef bourguignon: 2020, 2017, 2016.
Shanghai Lionhead Meatballs
I’m a real fan of this instagram cooking account of a Hong Kong grandma (@cookingmaama), and my mouth watered as soon as I saw her lionhead meatballs (her recipe is here). The trick is to hand chop your ground pork from a whole piece of meat - no food processor, no buying supermarket ground meat. The result: the most chewy meatballs ever.
Lionhead Meatballs: 2019 Thanksgiving, 2019 March, and the original dish posted by @cookingmaama
Peking Roast Duck
As a Beijing girl, Peking Roast Duck is always one of my first dishes to eat whenever I go back to my hometown. In Beijing, we eat it by cutting the duck breast in pieces, then use a thin white flour wrap to roll it with cucumber, scallion, and a kind of sweet and salty sauce, as shown in the second picture below. It is like a small burrito.
Peking Duck: 2019, 2018
Wherever I go, I will always miss the combination of these goodness creating fireworks in my mouth. Since I haven’t been able to go back home during holidays ever since I moved to New York, I’ve been making a Peking Duck every year during Christmas/New Year. I found this duck recipe from 曼食曼语 and this white flour wrap recipe on the Chinese cooking app Xiachufang, and it tastes just like home!
Since the recipes are in Chinese, I translated them below in English.
Ingredients:
For the duck:
1 whole duck 2 tablespoons of honey 2 tablespoons of Chinese sherry wine (Liaojiu) 1 tablespoon of Chinese white vinegar 1 - 2 apples A few slices of soft bread Chinese scallions “Da Cong” (you can substitute with leek onions or green onions) 1 - 2 cucumbers Tianmian (Sweet Flour) Sauce
For the wrap:
200g all purpose flour 100g water Some cooking oil
Other equipments:
A good oven, tin foil, a roaster pan with a rack, a wine bottle, a sauce brush, a meat thermometer.
The cooking process:
Wash the duck in the sink. Boil some water, and pour it all over the duck for at least three times, until the skin is separated from the body. This procedure is to make sure the duck is crispy outside, but juicy inside. After this step, the skin should have a parchment paper-like feel.
Place the duck on a wine bottle, and use a chopstick to open its wings, as shown in the picture. Put the duck in a well-ventilated area to air-dry, such as next to an open window on a chilly day.
Mix honey, liaojiu, white vinegar and 2 tablespoons of water in a bowl. Brush the mixture on the duck, and repeat for another two times, with half an hour in between. Continue to air-dry the duck overnight, or for at least 5 hours in total.
Pre-heat the oven to 395F or 200C, and stuff the duck with apples and bread. Cover the duck legs and wings with tin foil.
For the roaster pan, use tin foil to cover the tray below the rack, and pour some water on the foil sheet, like this. Place the duck on the rack with the breast facing down, and put it in the oven. The water in the pan helps prevent the kitchen from getting too smoky by absorbing the vaporized duck fat when roasting.
Immediately lower the temperature to 340F or 170C, and bake for 40 mins. Flip the duck and bake for another 30~40 mins, or until done. When the duck is done, its internal temperature should reach 165F, but 150 ~ 165F would also be enough for the duck breast, since it could be eaten medium-rare.
For the wrap:
Mix water with flour and form it into a dough. Put it in the fridge and chill for 20 mins.
Divide the dough into small balls of 1 inch diameters, and roll them into the size of dumpling wraps.
Brush each wrap with oil, and stack them on top of each other. Use the rolling pin to roll the stack and stretch the wraps to the size of a hand (approximately 8 inchs). Steam for 15 mins, or until done.
Note: When roasting a duck, it is easy to make the kitchen very smoky as the dripping duck fat vaporizes in high heat. Since I don’t have a roasting pan with a rack, I’ve previously only been using empty baking trays to catch the duck fat, and frankly the method did not work out even when I changed the trays frequently. Next time, I am going to use a little water in the roaster pan, or perhaps try this method with pie plates. If you know of any good tips for smoke-free roasting, feel free to comment below!
The Desserts
Compared to cooking, baking is definitely a science. It calls for accuracy, or you risk a disaster for being just slightly off. However, the desserts below are fairly foolproof. The cheesecake is super moist, and the canelés are rich in flavor. I swear by Bon Appétit’s Raspbery Ricotta Cake, and Mimi Thorisson’s Canelés de Bordeux.
Ricotta Cheesecake: 2018, 2020
Canelés, 2018
And that’s all for the greatest recipes of all time!
Which ones would you like to try?