2016 Southeast Asian Steak/Grillhouse Calendar

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*Pages are 4" x 6". Print them on that sized photo paper at home or a good copy shop!

Last October in LA, Harana held its first event as the provider of food pairings for a wine tasting to launch my good friend's wine club, Bacchus Room. A few hiccups aside, I was content with the menu, the attendees were all smiles (thanks wine), the event was a great bash.

At this time, I was already penning a follow up event to close out the year. It was basically poised to be a punky Filipino/Southeast Asian steakhouse/Animal to sort of ride out in the direction of stuff I was cooking last year. The menu was far along and planning was going well with guidance from fresh experience from the first event.

In parallel to this, I was working as a product designer in LA and hunting for a new gig. Just a week after the Bacchus Room event, I was blessed with a new opportunity in the Bay Area. So with hitting the ground running at my new job and doing so in less known territory (where I hadn't developed my sourcing digs for niche ingredients that I had on lock in So-Cal) the year-end event was shelved.

Also shelved were plans to follow up last year's Noodles Calendar with something for 2016 as I couldn't think of a theme in time for NYE—all while I was sitting on a pile of original recipe sketches for the steakhouse event (idiot). Eventually, things clicked and these two shelved projects became this unshelved hybrid project and here it is... way late. PDF download link is on the left. Enjoy.

2015 Recap: Knife Fight KO Part 2

06-22-2015, TOMAHAWK RIB CHOP: Two attempts: Home smoked salt, patis chimichurri. Dungeness crab fat and roe. Medium. Since this round fell around Father's Day, I figured it could double as a well-deserved gift for my pops. With these heightened stakes, I got two of these cuts and crabs to allow me one practice run the night before the holiday. The crab I opened for the first run was particularly generous in fat and roe making this steak a bit more transcendental than the Father's Day one. Sorry pops. The onion ring saucer kept the chimichurri sharp and fresh cuttings from a nearby rosemary tree broadcasted a nice dank woodsy aroma.

06-29-2015, CHOCOLATE: Tsamporado (champorado) flight: Homemade ice cream "affogato-rado," white chocolate matcha "matchamporado," and hazelnut butter with crushed pili nut "Ferrero Rocherado." Homemade waffles. Just playing around with a Filipino classic and childhood favorite. It's as much of a celebration of rice as it is of chocolate. Plated like the cascading rice terraces of Banaue.

07-06-2015, SWORDFISH: Salted tumeric scallop congee, buttery pan-seared swordfish steak and mint pickled cucumber ripples. One thing I realized about myself after submitting this dish is how little I like to dress my fish. If you strip this dish down just a little, it's basically fish with rice. Beer battered Baja fish tacos? All day. Seafood ginataan? Amen I say to you. But generally, I just want good salt and a little citrus and vinegar on the fresh naked fish that I that I buy. 

07-13-2015, FREE FOR ALL: Beef sweetbreads and pork brains dinuguan: Lobes of said offal seared and dusted in cumin and peanut powder. Scrambled eggs and brains. Spiced pork bloodbath. It was brilliant of Knife Fight to have no challenge ingredient for the final round and just have us contestants cook what anything we wanted for our final entry.  Fellow cooks treated this as the fun swan song to the eight-week melee that it should be. As it's been with Harana on occasion, my entry was a bit off-putting but it was precisely the statement I wanted to make. It's gnarly but not without rhyme and reason. It's a callback to my heritage and upbringing, the improvisations were subtle but kept the dish recognizable, and it was actually yummy, even to the non-Filipino guests who were over when I was making this.

2015 Recap: Knife Fight KO Part 1

 

Knife Fight is Esquire TV's hairier and punkier answer to the more groomed  Iron Chef and Chopped. For their then-upcoming season, their Instagram launched an 8-week competition to win a trip to New York and dinner at the newly transported The Gorbals. Each week, an ingredient was designated for contestants to craftily use in their Instagrammed dish. Harana was not yet, but almost. This was actually the final charge that realized Harana and yet, I hadn't covered it here or in since I entered the competition pre-Harana and had to post with my personal Instagram. So over half a year later, here are my entries for the first four rounds:

05-26-2015 PUMPKIN: Mashed pumpkin-shrimp croquette balls on fresh basil boats. Crusts: Panko, chicharron, and paprika. Parmesan dusting + balsamic. Even as the first go, I'm probably more happy with this entry than most of the eight by the marks it hit:

  1.  No-frills ingredients.
  2. The ingredients gelled while maintaining clear hierarchy.
  3. Brag alert: I think this dish was a witty and original take.
  4. Yummy.

R.I.P basil plant. You served 2015 well.

06-01-2015, BEEF BRISKET: 1.Pulled brisket in pear and garlic hoisin. 2. Tender lime leaf brisket with coarse sambal and tallow + ale roasted corn. I would have loved to smoke a slab of brisket for this round but that wasn't really in the picture with my work-commute schedule last year. With the help of a pressure cooker, I had these two dishes plated in a little over an hour. The pulled brisket was a killed—prime for any starch you could plop it onto. For the juicy lime leaf slices, the bold sambal and beer-tallow corn was perfect consolation for having to pass on the smoke.

06-08-2015, BEETS: 1. Beet flan with lychee, mint, and jasmine flower. 2. Beet-scallop gin ceviche with shiso leaf. That flan was pleasantly mild while the lychee provided a cool jolt to punctuate the dessert nicely. I would say that the ceviche was my weakest entry in Knife Fight KO. As with the flan, I was jumping off that light fruity sensation that beets give and dovetailing that with a floral component (gin) and adding a non-overpowering protein with the scallops. That was nice and all but in pushing the ceviche bent, I added the onions and the seemingly reasonable umami of salmon roe. Those latter elements were just too harsh to go with the whole light and floral party going on. Oops.

06-15-2015, MUSHROOMS: Ground black beech mushroom and liver spread 50/50 and pistachios in red pepper-caul fat cassettes, grilled asparagus in quesillo braids, yogurt, and ajvar. Successful or not, you could say that the pumpkin croquette entry sought originality and creativity. This entry however, overshot and became the bizarre-o entry. It was my excuse to force new ingredients into my pantry and try some weird packaging stuff out. Things soon wound up far from how I intended. The cassettes became triangular, the caul fat was ripping, the braids were limp... it looked a lot different in my head! It was this kind of clumsy ordeal BUT the flavors worked surprisingly well together. Maybe this mix would be better off with a focaccia or a sandwich. 

*Working in West LA, I frequented Aroma Cafe for killer ćevapis, which acquainted me well with ajvar (a versatile roasted eggplant sauce). Also to my delight, the area is keen on Oaxacan cuisine. As a result, many Mexican food lovers in the area like myself find themselves tangled in quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese) at least a few times a week. It's fun stuff.