Poaching an egg is simple or complicated depending on how you look at it. I gave it a try and it worked, so here’s what I learned.

Got tired of making chicken cutlets, so I moved on to steak…

Can’t afford beef, don’t want pork. Grabbing some chicken breast and pan-searing it at home is still a pretty good deal.

You’ve all seen this congee plenty of times, and drunk plenty of it too — turns out making it isn’t that much hassle.

I’d been wanting to make a roll cake for a while, especially one as good as the kind Oshima Ruro from that one game whips up — the kind that’s delicious from the first bite. I finally gave it a shot recently, and man, it’s actually really hard. First off, a roll cake means baking a cake first. It’s a chiffon cake, just baked in a flat sheet pan. You can add matcha or whatever you like; the same cake can also serve as the base for a mousse cake, though if you’re using it as a base you can bake it a bit longer. There are plenty of chiffon cake methods out there, so I won’t go into it again. When baking in a flat pan, do not let it go past 20 minutes — that’s the max — and make sure the cake stays soft. Once it’s out, cool it down right away and start practicing a roll with parchment paper. If you don’t roll it now, it’ll firm up and crack when you try later. Then it’s time to whip the cream, spread it on, and roll.

“Gǔzǎo wèi” (old-school flavor) is a phrase you see more in Hong Kong and Taiwan — roughly means “ancestral recipe.” In northern mainland China, “old-school flavor cake” would probably just be called “traditional sponge cake,” though honestly it’s almost indistinguishable from chiffon cake at this point.

Back in college I visited some university in Pingdingshan, and a classmate treated me to this. All I remember is: really spicy, really fragrant, really satisfying. Later I found out it’s actually pretty easy to make yourself, so I gave it a shot.

I’ve made mousse cake plenty of times, but this time I went for blueberry. The method was the same as before, just with crushed blueberry filling mixed in and blueberries on the outside for decoration…

Soy sauce fried rice is a dead simple dish, but it tastes way better than it has any right to. The stuff you’re frying is basically just rice — day-old rice is best — and then whatever else you feel like throwing in. Boiled corn, lettuce, shiitake, shrimp, bacon, whatever you’ve got, just dump it in. The soy sauce is the point.

Met up with Canadian dalao Siyan Zhang yesterday. Since we’re from the same hometown, I treated him to a meal.