Recipes — Blog — Catering and Personal Chef

Spring Kale Salad with Beet Tahini Dressing, in spite of everything (RECIPE)

My friend Alice is currently giving her apartment a makeover. In introducing new life forms into the space, she’s been mulling over buying a very nice white rug that while beautiful, is prone to spots and stains. It’s going in the living room, where people convene with their red-hued adult beverages that spill when too much of these beverages have been consumed.

“I need to just eat on my dining table,” she said, determined to work around the rug of her dreams. “Yup. But if you like eating on it, you have to get another rug,” I reminded her.

Alice’s rug dilemma is symbolic. We’ve all faced similar decisions. Not necessarily related to interior decorating. But we’ve had to choose between the safe option and our heart’s desire, which always seems to be the riskier option. And no matter how prepared we feel to take that risk, we know there will be unavoidable pitfalls along the way. But also, we come closer to achieving great happiness in doing what we want and having the life (or rug) we want.

Thoughts, Recipes, CookingDiane ChangApril 13, 2017salad, kale, healthy, lunch, dinner, beet dressing, buckwheat, springComment

Coast through life with this Hibiscus Apple and Cabbage Salad with Fish Sauce Dressing (Recipe)

Some people are masters of change. I’m not. Despite appearances, like my tendency to switch jobs and cycle through boyfriends as quickly as I update my coiffe, I’m actually freaked out by the things I can’t control. Instead of resignation, I resist. Instead of acceptance, I deny. There’s a reason why I’m so fanatically addicted to daily horoscopes, WebMD, and self-help books. And those warning labels on cigarette packs. The British ones are the best, by the way, with those photos of ashy, rotting lungs. The more brutal the prognosis, the better prepared I am.

Six years ago I was fired from a job. My boss and I really didn’t get along, and on top of that, I was grossly overpaid. Instead of letting the horror movie play out, I concluded way early on that she’d eventually let me go. For months thereafter, I’d show up at work with my shoulders slumped, rocking a perma-frown. It was the world’s longest professional breakup. And of course, she did gave me the boot. Looking back, could I have been less miserable every day leading up to the inevitable? Probably. Did anticipating the inevitable soften the blow? Nope.

It's not that complicated: Black Sesame Blood Orange Tart with a Raw Pistachio Date Crust (recipe)

It’s morning. You are here. We are together in my bed. The light touches your feet which are way outstretched beyond my bed. You’ve been blessed with tall genes, but robbed of what we short people get to experience: the cocoon-like warmth of being burrito-smothered in blankets. Feeling generous, I kick the blanket over your exposed feet. You snort and kick the blanket away. I’m trying not to draw parallels here, but a few weeks ago I said the L word–you know, “I L-word You”)–which was followed by your meditative yet deafening silence, then followed by a generous “thank you.” You hugged me as a consolation. I hug you now.

It’s morning. I am examining my face in the bathroom mirror while you fix us espressos. I can hear you busying away, docile when you’re in the kitchen, care-giving and nurturing in ways I have longed for my entire life. I am distracted by lines I never noticed before. How did they get here, on my face? There’s a frown line that resides between my eyebrows, evidence of being disappointed by unreliable past lovers. From scrunching my face anxiously, angrily, melancholically. Frustrated with myself, mostly, which is why it's on my face. Right now you are giving me everything I want (including a much-needed espresso), yet this line is still visible. I smile. But it’s still there.

I'm learning that love's not that complicated. But yet.

Cooking, Recipes, ThoughtsDiane ChangMarch 28, 2017blood orange pie, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, dessert, raw dessert, black sesame, pistachios, kanten, agar agarComment

Gluten-free Blueberry "smoothie" pancakes & a story

A year ago, I decided to start a small business. Since then, it’s gone from microscopic to small, despite what people seem to gather on social media. “It looks like business is BOOMING,” remarked a friend recently. “Booming” isn’t exactly the right word. It’s more of a geriatric jog. Fine, crawl.

Why such a slow incline?

It’s complicated. Owning your own business and then scaling it so that you can generate a livable wage, hire employees, meet demands, purchase all the necessary licenses (trust me, there are tons) and insurance policies (oops), invest in heavy-duty equipment to improve efficiency, etc.–it’s not just complicated, it’s F-ING difficult. Sometimes I don’t even want to get out of bed. And then when I linger in my safety net of pillows and a down comforter, I come up with even crazier ideas, like starting a catering and personal cheffing business in addition to the bread business. It’s like deciding you want two more kids when you can barely afford to keep one alive.

Or maybe I’m not giving myself enough credit. Because the truth is, I haven’t really fully invested myself into the biz, despite what my bank account might reflect. Savings today, gone tomorrow. Lesson learned.

A Single Serving of Soy Milk (RECIPE)

Last week, my relationship ended. The dissolution had been months in the making. We were desperate miners trying to pass off pyrite as gold. For a while we believed we could. But in the end we couldn’t.

Last week was also when New York City was ravaged by below-freezing temperatures. Being indoors felt sad, so I filled my schedule with outdoor activity in hopes of sparing no time for nostalgia. Yet the cold city thrived with warm memories. Mine. His. There was his old apartment in the East Village where he lived after college. His favorite pizza joint. The cafe in Clinton Hill where he’d begrudgingly get his egg sandwiches. “Horrible service. But convenient,” he’d always say. My tear ducts throbbed whenever I’d see a couple canoodling in public. He and I were such unapologetic offenders of public canoodling.

Shopping at Whole Foods was the worst. The aisles were stocked with stories.

Daikon: The first time I cooked dinner for him.
Ribeye: The first time he cooked for me.
Kale: Every single time we ate dinner with his kids. God, I miss his kids.
Nuts: We had only been dating for a few weeks when he left for a month-long photo shoot in Texas. I woke up in his bed the day he left, hung-over and hungry. I stumbled into his kitchen in search of provisions and found an empty bowl and a jar of nuts on the counter. Next to the still life display was a Post-it note that read, “And the yogurt in the frig for breakfast. XX” He had written “frig” but I didn’t care that the “d” and “e” were missing or that he was missing, because everything in my life had fallen into place at that moment. And at that moment, I was at his place, blissfully eating his yogurt.

Recipes, Thoughts, CookingDiane ChangFebruary 15, 2016soy milk, chinese food, drinks, soybeans, cooking, Po-Po, grandma, blender, love, alone Comments

Practice makes perfect red bean baos (Recipe)

A good cook can as easily make a crummy cake as a good lover can screw up a relationship. Cooking skills don't necessarily carry over into the realm of baking. And sometimes a sexy cuddle should stay exactly that, no strings attached.

In cooking, there’s more room for error. Anyone with enough enthusiasm, a decent palate, maybe a glass of wine or a shot of mezcal, can dive into cooking with wild abandon and end up with something delicious. An olive oil-finish, some squirts of lemon, a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt can go a long way to save a dish.

Baking on the other hand is a science. There’s just no rushing through the chemistry and math that transform wet brown batter into an irresistible chocolate soufflé. At restaurants, I’ll often hear friends scoff at their food and say, “I can make this at home! Psssh.” But I’ve never heard anyone tell me that she or he is going to recreate the chocolate babka from Breads Bakery. That’s because baking requires a tremendous amount of studying and practicing. And humility. And an acceptance that the first try if far from being the last. But back to that earlier analogy: Baking, like a relationship, takes work.

I suck at baking. Once, I attempted to make croissants from scratch. For three days, I’d jump out of bed at 5:30 A.M., salivating as I rolled and folded the laminated dough, dreaming of the warm, buttery crescents. By day four, it was time to bake the croissants. This was my first attempt, but I was already expecting Parisian patisserie-level perfection. But the croissants came out cakey and dense. Zero flakiness. They were good enough to be biscuits but not croissants. Hadn’t I followed directions? Or measured the flour correctly? Wasn’t I careful with the dough, like a first-time mom is with her newborn? I couldn’t pinpoint the problem, not with only one notch on my belt. Anything could have contributed to my dough’s undoing, like inferior ingredients to the uncalibrated oven to Mercury stuck in retrograde.

In Love With Red Bean Paste (Recipe)

Chinese legend has it that there was once a woman who, while mourning her deceased husband, cried tears of blood. Her cattle farmer husband had gone off to fight a war. Every day and night while he was away, the woman waited patiently for him and then took her waiting to a mountain top where she’d stare deep into the horizon for her beloved’s return. But surprise, surprise–he never returned. Her optimism regressed into soul-crushing sadness. And with no Netflix, burritos, or ice cream to ease the heartbreak, she just sat on the mountain and cried. The tears she continued to shed turned into blood and then mysteriously transformed into little tiny red beans, readying the earth with seeds to sprout the first ever red bean tree.

This myth and iterations of it have come to symbolize a kind of punishing but enduring love and unwavering devotion. Because of this, it’s become customary to eat red bean soup at Chinese weddings, as if auspicious foods could steer someone with a roving eye away from committing adultery. But I love red bean soup, so any excuse to eat it, I’ll take it.

Recipes, Tradition, CookingDiane ChangFebruary 4, 2016red bean, adzuki, dessert, red bean paste, wok, sweetComment

Surprise is a black sesame ball explosion (Recipe)

Life is full of surprises. Humans, inevitably, are too.

People never fail to surprise or shock me. In good ways or ways no amount of memory loss will ever allow me to forget. Like the time in 8th grade when I learned - on a three-way call no less - that my secretboyfriendforevercrush was going to the school dance with one of my good female friends. Betrayed and so obviously dissed, I wondered how I’d ever trust people - or myself - again.

Tartine Cookies Get the Black Sesame Treatment (Recipe)

I bake to tame my inner, sometimes irrepressibly volatile beast. When I’m on the edge of an emotional decline, like when I start stalking an ex on Instagram or trolling the net for Robert Pattinson/FKA Twigs pics, I turn to baking for comfort. It’s like keeping a zen garden, only with more delicious results.

Neither my mom nor my Po-Po baked. The oven was for storing clean pots and dishes. It was as foreign to me as the hand mixer, which I’d use as a pretend space gun.

In the 4th grade, word had spread that the Costco frozen section had pre-made cookie dough. Inspired by bestie’s description of this magical product, my mom and I headed to the grocery store where I mistakenly bought a tub of cookie dough ice cream instead. After opening the lid, my mom said matter-of-factly, “This is ice cream.” Stubborn and eager to prove her wrong, I convinced her to let me proceed.

Recipes, Thoughts, CookingDiane ChangApril 22, 2015Recipes, black sesame, tartine, cookies, baking, Grandma, Tangyuan, holiday, Pop-up Comment

Soup, Spices, and a little Sorrow (Recipe)

Dad and I sat comfortably on the couch together. Our shoulders touched and our knees probably did too. This was our sitcom family moment, 20 years too late.

I visit with my father a few times a year and toggle between my “broken woman” and “dutiful daughter” personas, a little pissed about his absence during those complex and sometimes mortifying teenage years. (I’ll never forget the times my friends would ask about my dad, and I would say he’s a traveling business man. I mean, he’s an electrician.) Before I leave his house, I dutifully quiz him on his diet and finances. He’s always consuming too much canned foods or spending too lavishly. A “few times a year,” is probably enough for both of us.

But here we were, half-pretending to be close and half-experiencing an unusual father/daughter bond. He was ecstatically bragging about the beef noodle soup recipe he recently perfected, born from an old family recipe. I was happy to see him so enthusiastic, especially around me.

A Recipe for the New Year (Recipe)

Last night was Chinese New Years, so my friends and I made our way to a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan to hear the clamor of other Chinese people and the clinking of china. Like the obedient Chinese kids we are, we ordered all of the auspicious foods traditionally eaten during New Years. Our table overflowed with noodles (long life), fish (luck and prosperity), chicken (family coming together), oranges (wealth), dumplings (fortune), and more. We're gonna be rich, bitch!

This is the fifth year that I’ve celebrated Chinese New Year without my family. so I've been trying to recreate family dinners – minus the home-cooked dishes and sadly, minus Po-Po.

If I had gone home this year, however, things would have been a little different. First of all, I’m too old to collect red envelopes filled with cash from my elders. As a gainfully employed 30-year-old, I AM one of the elders. I would have jealously side-eyed my niece as she received hers. After all, those little red envelopes are a rich part of Chinese tradition, and they do so much to validate one’s youth and naiveté.

Recipes, Tradition, Thoughts, CookingDiane ChangFebruary 20, 2015dumplings, homemade, grandma, chinese food, chinese, chinese new year, filling, doughComment

The Key Ingredient (Recipe)

We were sitting adjacent in a booth, with a view of the entire restaurant, lights dim as is the trend in most Brooklyn restaurants so we couldn’t really see anything but each other. We could barely even read the menu. He was holding the small tea light up against the menu. I was doing the same. We were on the same page, no pun intended.

This was our second date. Our first one had gone so well that naturally, our second spontaneous daytime hang out spilled over into the evening. Our nonstop conversation did as well.

He was the first guy I met who seemed normal and kind of interesting. We both swiped right on Tinder, engaged in some witty banter, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best. Here we were, at my favorite restaurant in Greenpoint, knowing full well that dinner was just a precursor to “dessert” at his apartment later.

“We should share plates,” he suggested. At this point, I was swooning - hard.

“And why don’t you pick for us?” he continued.

It was like he entered my brain, looked around, and exited through my heart. And my heart was bursting with a million butterflies.

“How about the broccoli and fava bean salad?” I asked.

“Sounds good.”

“The radish appetizer sounds amazing too, doesn’t it”

“Let’s get that too.”

Two for two so far. I was on a roll.

“Let’s try the rabbit,” I said confidently.

There was long pause.

He finally spoke. “Hmm. It has cilantro. I don’t eat cilantro.”

Recipes, Thoughts, CookingDiane ChangFebruary 9, 2015Recipes, Signature Sauce, Sauce, Hot Sauce, Dumplings, Noodles, Dipping, Soy, homemadeComment

American-ish Chinese-ish (Recipe)

While I was born in the U.S., my upbringing was anything but typical American. But what does it mean to be a typical American anyway? Immihelp.com says that, “People from all over the world have immigrated to the United States. Therefore, it is very difficult to define a typical American, as there is no such thing. However, a majority of the current Americans are of European descent; therefore, the description below is primarily with that in mind.”

This explains why sitcoms, movies, and books I grew up with in the mid ‘80s and ‘90s reverberated with cultural themes that I had a hard time identifying with. There’s a memorable scene from Full House that confused the shit out of me when I was ten years old.

Cooking, Recipes, Tradition, Thoughts, VideosDiane ChangJanuary 19, 2015breakfast, wine brew, mochi, homemade, typical American, soup, dessertComment