Categories
Twitch Streaming

Chili crisp, and an eggnog gingerbread french toast bake for Christmas!

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

I first tried chili crisp a few weeks ago, when a friend brought a jar to our Asian Dumplings Cookbook Club potluck at the beginning of December. Son was instantly hooked, and has been asking me to make a batch ever since.

chili crisp over a soft-boiled egg

It takes a while to make (and beware the chilis – I was coughing and sneezing like crazy whenever I had to handle them!) but oh, if you are a fan of spice, it is so worth it.

Being a spice wimp myself, I can barely take one nibble before I’m running for a mouthful of eggnog gingerbread french toast bake, but still – it is so good!

eggnog gingerbread french toast bake

Speaking of the eggnog gingerbread french toast bake… I expected it to be tasty, but it turned out even better than I had hoped. It’s essentially a bread pudding, with a coffeecake-style crumble topping. You soak bread (I used brioche) with eggnog, eggs, and gingerbread spices, top it with the crumble which has even more gingerbread spice, then drizzle it with a warm eggnog-maple syrup once it’s out of the oven.

It’s heaven.

I did my own little eggnog taste-test as well. We tried Broguiere’s eggnog and Organic Valley eggnog – and our overwhelming favorite was Organic Valley. It’s creamier, and doesn’t have quite as much of an overwhelming nutmeg flavor (although Broguiere’s was still tasty!). So we used the Broguiere’s in the french toast bake, and used the Organic Valley for the syrup, which was perfect.

I’m planning on bringing the eggnog gingerbread french toast bake to my family’s Christmas celebration – here’s hoping they like it as much as we did!

eggnog gingerbread french toast bake

Today’s Question of the Day: What are your Christmas food traditions? What food are you having for Christmas this year?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Caldo verde, and citrus dill gravalax

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

Even though it’s seemed like a warmer than usual fall/winter so far in LA, I’ve been unusually into soup this year. Most of my soup-cooking has happened off-stream – I’ve made creamy italian quinoa soup, roasted garlic chili white bean soup, and ham bones, greens, and beans soup in the past couple of weeks. (All were great, but I’m especially obsessed with the last one – too bad we only end up with a ham bone once or twice a year!)

So to continue my healthy-ish soup obsession, we chose this tasty-looking kale soup with chourico and potatoes (caldo verde) out of one of this month’s Cookbook Club picks – My Lisbon by Nuno Mendes.

It was such a tasty choice! All the kale and veggies sounds super healthy, but with the chorizo and buttered bread to top it off, it was downright decadent. (I used the media noche bread I had in the freezer from last time we did Cuban food… Son’s been stealing buttered cubes of bread all night!) I’ve been happy with everything we’ve cooked from this cookbook so far, and this is no exception.

We also made some citrus and dill gravalax for Christmas, but it will be a few days before it’s finished curing and ready to eat – photos of that should be coming up soon!

caldo verde

Kale soup with chourico and potatoes (caldo verde)

from My Lisbon by Nuno Mendes

  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 5 oz chourico (skin removed) diced, plus a few thin slices to garnish
  • 2 onions, finely chopped
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 bay leaf
  • flaky sea salt and ground white pepper
  • 4 potatoes, such as yukon gold, peeled and diced into small pieces
  • 6 cups chicken stock or water
  • 7 oz kale, finely chopped
  • extra virgin olive oil, to serve
  • 4 slices cornbread, sourdough, or other rustic loaf, toasted, buttered, and cut into small pieces (optional)
  • good quality white wine vinegar, to serve
  1. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the chourico, and cook for a couple of minutes, then add the onions, garlic, and bay leaf, season with salt and pepper, and cook until the onions are soft. Stir in the potatoes and sweat for a few minutes, stirring so the potatoes don’t stick. Pour in the stock and simmer gently over low heat until the potatoes are soft. Remove a few tablespoons of the potatoes and set aside.
  2. Add half the kale to the soup and simmer for a few minutes. Remove the bay leaf, take the soup off the heat, and blend until smooth with an immersion blender. (Traditionally the soup is not blended, but I like to blend it and add some more fresh kale at the end.) Return the pan to the heat and taste for seasoning. Add the reserved potatoes and remaining kale and simmer for a few minutes.
  3. Ladle the soup into bowls. Finish with some thinly sliced chourico, extra-virgin olive oil, and pieces of toast. As it can be quite a heavy soup, I like to add a splash of white wine vinegar to cut through the richness.

Today’s Question of the Day: What are your holiday plans this year?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Creamy miso vegan ramen

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

For almost a year now, I’ve been promising to make vegan ramen for one of my friends, and keep failing to deliver. *facepalm* I’m a bad friend.

But I finally found a time that worked for both of us, and got it on the schedule – definitely not cancelling this time!

I just wish I hadn’t waited so long… this amazing vegan miso ramen was just as amazing as normal ramen (the toppings! the garlicky, creamy broth!), without the feeling like shit after because regular ramen’s so heavy and fatty.

vegan ramen

A creamy, garlicky miso broth, chewy ramen noodles, flavorful shoyu mushrooms, hearty togarashi sweet potato, and nutty sesame eggplant… all the components made for a delicious, satisfying vegan ramen.

We also decided to sous-vide some eggs (50 min at 62.5°C for the perfect soft-boiled egg!), which made the (now not-so-vegan) ramen even more amazing.

All in all, I highly recommend this recipe to both vegans and carnivores alike – it’s worth the work! I just wish we had made more… we gave half to my friend, and ate up the rest right after the stream!

vegan ramen

Today’s Question of the Day: What is the best gift you’ve ever given someone else?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

10 things we’ve learned about community-building on Twitch

Last night, a newer Twitch cooking streamer asked us is we had any advice about growing a community. While our cooking stream isn’t particularly big, nor are we particularly successful as streamers, after eight months of streaming on Twitch apparently I have Some Thoughts on the matter. My response to him got a little long-winded for a comment, so I decided to turn it into a blog post.

Every community is different, and there are no cooking streamers who have really made it big yet (aside from those who were already famous or well-connected in other ways), so any advice you get is going to be more opinion than solid fact. That being said, these are the things that have seemed to work for us:

1. Consistency. If people know when to expect to see you, they’re more likely to show up regularly. Also, the more you’re around, the more opportunities people have to find you.

2. Be in it for the long term. Communities don’t happen overnight. Raids are amazing, and it’s always fun to see follows coming in, but realistically it takes repeated exposure before people start to stick and become part of your community. Lots of people follow, but then never come back. You have to be okay with slow, incremental growth.

3. Don’t get discouraged. Sometimes people who are a huge part of your community will fade away. Sometimes people will disappear for months and then come back. Life happens. It’s usually not personal. Same goes for viewership – some weeks viewership is great and it feels like you’ll get to Partner in no time. Some days nobody shows up and you feel like you’ll never get there. Don’t worry too much, and just keep going.

4. Don’t be in it for the money. Being a good cooking streamer can be expensive. There are a lot of amazingly generous people out there, but even so, the cooking community is relatively small. It’s highly unlikely most of us will ever be able to support ourselves from our streams. Be okay with this being a hobby. For us, there are so many benefits to streaming that are not monetary.

5. Invest in your community. Your community is one of the most important parts of your stream. Talk to chat, remember people, involve them in your stream. Everyone loves to feel special, and nobody likes to be ignored or forgotten about. This may not be true for every streamer, but for us having the Discord has been great for our community.

6. Quality helps. We went a little overboard, but in general, people prefer to watch and listen to better quality. Also remember that quality doesn’t just mean audio/video – how you speak, what you say, what/how you show things on stream, etc. are all ways you can improve quality without investing more money into your stream.

7. Find your own voice. It’s easier, more fun, and much more sustainable to be genuinely yourself. For example, if we tried to be super wholesome all the time, or tried to pretend that we’re chefs and cooking experts, we’d be both boring and bored – that’s not who we are. (And there are some streamers for whom that *is* genuinely who they are, and it works way better for them than it would for us!) Trying to copy someone else just ends up awkward. Trying to be [insert more popular streamer here] would never work for us – they are all great, but we’d just be shittier versions of them if we tried to mimic or copy. If you haven’t found your voice yet, don’t worry, it takes time. Just be yourself! It took us months of streaming before we felt like we found our voice. And it’s okay to be a little ridiculous.

8. Social media. This may not work for everyone, since I already started with a little bit of a social media following, but I have noticed that people do find us through Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Not a ton, but I like to think it does expose more people to the idea of cooking being a thing on Twitch. I’ve also found that visuals help – a post with a delicious-looking photo of food is more likely to get some sort of interaction than a post with just a link. I don’t have much experience with YouTube or other types of social media, but that also might work for some people.

9. Remember that your audience is Twitch. Put yourself in their shoes. What do you want to see when you watch a stream? Do you want to be entertained? Relaxed? Remember that you are asking people to watch and talk to you for hours and hours every time you stream. You have to keep them engaged.

10. Have fun! This is the most important one for us. If you’re not enjoying yourself, it’s probably not going to be fun for your viewers either. And if you’re not having fun, it’s going to be way more difficult to keep doing this for the long term.

Are we experts? Nope. Is this going to turn you into the next Ninja? Hah! Definitely not. But these are all things that can’t hurt, and hey – maybe they’ll even help a little!

(Have questions about Twitch? Want to start streaming, but don’t know how? Feel free to ask questions in the comments, check out my stream, or join our Discord and ask questions there! I’m always happy to answer questions and help out new streamers!)

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Vietnamese catfish spring rolls

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

vietnamese catfish

One of the things I like doing every once in a while on stream is going back to recipes I made on my blogs years ago, and trying them out again.

Obviously we do that every Saturday, when we remake (and retake the photos) of old Sushiday sushi recipes.

But today we revisited something we were both very excited about – a Vietnamese catfish recipe that I first made in 2009, and then again in 2013.

vietnamese catfish

This time, the one big change was that we actually broiled the catfish after we baked it.

(This is the first time we’ve actually lived in a place with a working broiler.)

pineapple lychee fizz

While the catfish was in the oven for an hour, I decided to make a drink with some lychees that Son’s dad gave him last week.

allison with the pineapple lychee fizz

I found this recipe for pineapple and lychee fizz, which turned out deliciously.

pineapple lychee fizz

Tropical vacation, here I come!

allison with the pineapple lychee fizz (the most cringey photo of me ever)

Once the catfish came out of the oven, it was spring roll time!

spring rolls

Can you guess which rolls I made, and which were Son’s?

spring rolls

(Hint: Son’s reeeeallllly bad at rolling spring rolls. Even his own mom makes fun of his rolling skillz.)

spring rolls

The catfish skin was crispy, the flesh was fatty and flavorful, and overall it was oh, so good.

spring rolls

Our only complaint: we wish we had gotten a bigger catfish!

spring rolls

Today’s Question of the Day: What is your favorite summer drink?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Ukoy (Filipino shrimp cakes)

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

ukoy

Today was a very, very special day on our Twitch stream: Son’s Twitch debut!

While he’s been the voice behind the camera ever since we started, he has never once (purposely) shown his face on stream.

Until today.

ukoy

Since it was not only his first time on camera for the stream, but also his first time ever cooking from a recipe, we chose something easy for him to make.

He sent me a link to these Filipino shrimp fritters that he saw on Fridgg a few weeks ago, and it looked like a pretty easy recipe, so I decided that would be his first recipe to try.

Even though it took him an hour to get the sweet potato grated… and was more nervous than he’d ever been about anything… he did a great job! He got through the three-hour stream, the shrimp fritters turned out wonderfully, and everyone in chat seemed to love him.

I’m so proud!

ukoy

Today’s Question of the Day: What is a cooking skill you’ve always wanted to learn?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Jajangmyeon (Korean black bean noodles)

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

jajangmyeon

In today’s stream, we had our very first fishcoin reward stream!

A little background about fishcoins, since I haven’t mentioned them on the blog before:

If you watch my stream live, you earn a point for every ten minutes you watch. There are ways to play games or gamble to earn more points, and on occasion we may also give out points (aka “fishcoins”).

Once you earn enough fishcoins, you can redeem them for rewards. The lowest reward tier is 1000 fishcoins, and allows you to pick a country whose cuisine we have to cook from on stream.

Our first fishcoin redemption was from a longtime viewer named Tulie, and she asked us to cook something from South Korea!

From previous chats, I knew she adores jajangmyeon (black bean noodles), so we decided to make that on stream.

A few days beforehand, we decided to try out jajangmyeon at the H Mart food court, just to make sure we knew how it should taste. And to be honest… we were pretty underwhelmed.

But we went through with the planned jajangmyeon stream anyways. And let me tell you… NO REGRETS.

While the food court jajangmyeon was bland and uninspiring, our homemade version was delicious, flavorful, and full of meat and veggies. I doubled the recipe, and mixed a very small amount of stinky shrimp paste into half – which added even more umami to the dish.

When buying ingredients for the dish, I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to get fermented black bean paste, or roasted black bean paste, but roasted seemed to have a closer name to the ingredient in the recipe. I went with this black bean paste, and was very happy with my choice. I’ve heard of other people using fermented with good results as well, so you can probably go with whatever’s available to you!

jajangmyeon

Today’s Question of the Day: If this were your stream, and you had to choose something South Korean to cook, what would you pick?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Head-on, garlic-fried shrimp

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

garlic shrimp

Yesterday, May 10th, was National Shrimp Day! I don’t celebrate all food holidays… but when I do, it’s because I want a good excuse to make something I want to eat.

Like shrimp.

garlic shrimp

You’ve all probably guessed by now that we really love garlic around here. So it’s no surprise that I went for the garlickiest shrimp recipe I could find.

garlic shrimp

I doctored some of the Japanese mayo we made a few weeks ago with some lime juice and lime zest, to go with the shrimp. And let me tell you… it was all sooooo good.

I mean, crispy-shelled shrimp, garlic out the wazoo, succulent shrimp, tangy mayo. Where can you go wrong?

garlic shrimp

Today’s Question of the Day: What is your favorite shrimp preparation? Do you suck the head? Do you eat the shells?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.

Categories
Twitch Streaming

Berry bran muffins

Missed the stream? Watch it on Twitch!

berry salad with candied mint and a puff pastry arlette

This was one of those “everything that could go wrong, will” kind of streams.

Somebody… not naming any names… kept us both awake super late because he (again, not naming any names) got sucked into watching God of War streams on Twitch and wouldn’t stop talking to the other member of the couple about it. So we got to bed around 4am.

So of course we woke up late, had trouble getting our butts in gear because we were tired, and then started way too late.

mixed berry bran muffin

I had originally planned to make this fruit salad. And then I looked in my fridge right after Son clicked “Start Stream” in OBS (the stream management program we use), and discovered that my greek yogurt had gone bad.

Crap.

So I ran back to my computer and scrambled for a replacement… and finally found a custard recipe that looked like it would be a good replacement.

Okay. Everything else should be fine, right?

bran muffin top with fruit

A few days before, Son asked me to make some extra fun components for his plating “art” portion of the stream. We were browsing through Payard Desserts and he saw some things he wanted me to try. So before the stream I candied some mint (which actually turned out fine). I also attempted to make something called arlettes – pretty much mini elephant ears/half-sized pamiers. Those went… poorly. So I threw the actual instructions out the window which involved rolling out slices of refrigerated rolls of puff pastry, and just baked the slices as is. (Which worked fine, but… still not how they were supposed to go.)

What should have been a two- to three-hour stream turned into a five hour stream.

cranberry sour cream bran muffin

But! We made muffins and they were delicious! It’s berry season, and I’ve been trying to find some healthier breakfasty things, so bran muffins it was. I found this recipe for bran muffins on Smitten Kitchen, and in it she also linked to an older recipe for sour cream bran muffins on her blog that she said was a lighter version more suited to bran newbies.

bran muffin top with fruit

For the first recipe, I used a mix of fresh berries – two raspberries, one raspberry, half a blackberry, and a few pieces of diced strawberry in each muffin. I also topped half of the muffins with a few pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, which let me tell you, was an excellent decision that I highly recommend. Thanks to the liquid from the berries, this actually turned out to be a very moist, tender muffin – not the dry, dense texture you might expect from a bran muffin. They were delicious, and of the two, my favorite.

puff pastry arlettes

The sour cream bran muffin recipe called for dried fruit, so I used dried cranberries. Like the first muffins, I also topped half of these with chocolate pieces, which again was a wonderful decision. These were not as tender as the first recipe, but were still delicious. Thanks to the cranberries and cinnamon in the recipe, these taste like Christmas to me. Definitely more of a fall flavor, but I’ll happily eat these year-round!

bran muffin top with fruit, topped with an arlette

Today’s Question of the Day: What is your favorite type of muffin?

Visit my Twitch stream to catch up on past streams, and hang out when I’m streaming! Want to know when I’m in the kitchen? Hit the follow button (the heart up top) so you’ll get notifications when I’m live – it’s always free to follow! Or you can follow me on Instagram or Twitter, where I usually post when I’m starting the stream.