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CONTACT ME

Taste Curator

904-290-6924 | mimi@tastecurator.com

PO Box 2922
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32204

130 Corridor Rd # 2922
Ponte Vedra Beach, FL 32204

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Sometimes just a simple bowl of chicken #congee with roasted cabbage will do #comfortfood #comfortfoods #asiancomfortfood

Test your CI (culinary IQ) by naming the ingredients in this super yummy salad/veg dish.
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I want to follow up with further comments. First, congrats to @pho4me and @andreas_febrianto for guessing correctly on the ingredients in this veg dish. And thanks to chef Kevin Fink @emmerandrye for inspiring me to make brined/seared cabbage. He proved that any ordinary ingredient can be elevated to gourmet status when you cook it right and present it beautifully.

In our household, few dishes could compete with my husband’s Pittsburgh style steak in his #greenegggrill. This dinner, according to our daughter, was the best steak meal yet, because of the sides. Can you guess all the vegetables here, every single garnish and accompaniment besides the steak? I’ll start listing 2 sides: mille feuille potato with leek ash, cabbage quenelle (brined in chicken stock then seared). Now your turn.

Sometimes when you cook so much and you don’t have time to make dessert, like me, the next best thing to do is pick up dessert at @biscottisjax where they sell their decadent cakes by the whole or by the slice. Here I got our fave flavor, #peanutbutter #moussecake and transferred into my double walled glass cups, garnished with my daughter’s chocolate shortbread with fleur de sel. Not shown here but we also drizzled some #screwballpeanutbutterwhiskey on top for that extra kick. Sinfully good.

What does a Vietnamese family eat for Thanksgiving? Everything but turkey. We started out with a charcuterie board. Stone crab is in season so Chef Scott at @bluefishjax generously gave me some, which I cracked & served with warm butter in @redboatfishsauce salt, so yummy. Yes Vietnamese Caesar salad is a thing. All you have to do is replace anchovy with fish sauce and your Caesar will have this depth of flavor and umami out the wazoo. To make it even more Asian, I replaced croutons with lotus chips. Some pomegranate helped give it the yin yang of flavor. I have always liked Caesar salad but didn’t care for the rich, thick creamy dressing. But I was so inspired by the amazingly delicious, non creamy Caesar dressing made by our friends Susan & Jeffrey when they invited us over for the best Italian home cooked dinner. This salad was so good, I could eat it everyday. I’m always practicing my VIGLO popup dinner recipes and plating skill, so this fried crab claw wrapped with fresh shrimp paste coated in shave almonds and green flat rice “cốm” was part of my experiment. The final dish was butternut squash fioretti in Bison bolognese sauce. What I was most proud of was dessert, rosette apple tart made from scratch (even the crust) by my daughter. Just to have three generations of women (my mother in law, myself, and my daughter) cooking in the kitchen together was my favorite part of Thanksgiving. Now if only I could get my husband to join my kitchen team would be even more magical 😊 So grateful for my family, always.

I missed another chance of becoming a millionaire 😊Someone beat me to this idea of selling baked chicken skin snack. I’ve always loved the taste and healthier idea of snacking on crispy chicken skin instead of potato chips. It has less calories than chips, only 2 g carbs a bag, and 12 g of protein. It’s an awesome idea and I wish I had done it first. I’ve put baked chicken skin on my VIGLO popup dinner menu 3 times now, whenever I needed some crunch with great flavor. It’s always better when you make it yourself, super easy. But I love the convenience of being able to eat it anytime I have the crave attack. Crispy chicken skin to me is like bacon- so good. Wish @flock.foods nothing but success.

When life gives you #meyerlemon, you make Meyer #lemonmadeleine
Mais bien sur

Meet my new sous chef, whithout whom I would have had to stand over the stove and stir my cheese sauce for a long time. Stirring is one of the most boring, mundane kitchen jobs for me. This battery hands free blender has 3 speeds (video shows the lightest speed), my latest gadget fave. BTW, it’s not as loud as in the video (bc I turned the volume up when videotaping).

Chef Bourdain knew a thing or two about character because he had it. I have worked & staged with many talented chefs. But it’s the ones with character that I truly admire.

Is there such a thing as too much umani? Not when it comes to my two faves: truffle and #redboat #fishsauce . Did you know that they now have Red Boat salt? So I combined white truffle oil, Red Boat salt, red chili, and kewpie mayo to make my truffle Red Boat aioli. It goes great as a dipping sauce for seafood, fries, spread in sandwiches or rolls (hello lobster roll). Notice I only use Red Boat fish sauce because it’s made from first pressed fish. Someone asked me if there are any brands for 2nd pressed fish sauce. No, if you don’t buy first pressed, the rest is the same. Fish sauce to Vietnamese cuisine is as sacred as olive oil to Italian cooking. First pressed is the purest of its kind. Sure Red Boat costs 3, 4 times more than the rest. But while other brands’ have been pressed who knows how many times with added shellfish, MSG, preservatives, and water, Red Boat’s got none of that, and it’s loaded with Vitamin B & minerals. Before you wrinkle your nose at fish sauce, ask yourself if you like anchovy. That’s what fish sauce is made of. And Red Boat has a pleasant aroma, no fishy smell with superior flavor. No, Red Boat didn’t pay me to say all that. But they should 😊

Clams & saffron fioretti pasta with home grown Meyer lemon cream sauce, jalapeño, watermelon radish, garnished with cilantro oil, lemon thymes, brown butter sage, and caviar lime. The acidic from the Meyer lemon balances the umami of the clam juice well, and the caviar lime pearls enhance this dish with their popping texture. My favorite part is digging up the delicious juice at the bottom and slurp it like a soup, so good. #clampasta #caviarlime #seafoodpasta #fioretti #pastalover

It’s hard for me to find a good Vietnamese restaurant in the US that I like. My palate is spoiled by growing up eating the best Vietnamese food, and having lived in Houston with so many excellent Vietnamese restaurants, plus more exposure to it from my annual visits to Vietnam. And when you throw in the fact that I can cook them- it’s no wonder few Vietnamese restaurants could please me. That’s why I was surprised to find such a good Vietnamese restaurant in Vancouver, “Anh and Chi” (means brother and sister). I sat at the bar where nice mixologist Kam @volatile_project gave me an awesome show. When I saw “banh cuon” on the menu, I had to order. If you make it the traditional way, with a cloth stretched over a steaming pot of boiling water, the rice roll is tissue paper thin & translucent with its minced pork and wood ear filling shown through. And their accompaniments of fried pork patties & crispy shrimp blossom were on point. Their “banh khot” looked so good too but would have been better had it been less doughy and more crispy, if I may say so. Unlike a lot of Vietnamese restaurants, “Anh and Chi” clearly put efforts towards creative plating and unique dishware. They also have such an inspiring story. When people look at immigrants’ successes, they don’t know about the sweat and hardship behind it. Anh and Chi’ story began in 1983, when “our parents arrived in Canada as boat people from Vietnam. With limited English, great responsibility, and deep nostalgia for the people and places they left behind, our parents started making Pho out of their home. What then began as a pop up shop evolved into an iconic noodle shop. For 33 years, our parents were all hands on deck – in the kitchen, at the market, face to face with customers, having worked day and night.” As I was reading their story on their website, I felt nostalgic to when I was a kid helping my aunt operating her Pho “shop” in her tiny apartment on the weekends to make ends meet. I was more of a pest than a helper to my aunt, but the exposure gave me first glimpses into how food can bring strangers together, make them happy, and enable people from different cultures understand each other better.

When we travel, we like to combine casual eating with fine dining. Not all fancy eateries do it right, but the @Botanistdining knew exactly how to make us feel special without constantly hovering over us (don’t you hate that?). Our server Geneviève was charming with a perfect dose of attentiveness. Their seared foie gras was so good (almost as good as @dinematthews ‘ chef Alex Yim’s), and their fish & schnitzel with fresh truffle was divine. I was mesmerized by their display of endless house-made pickles. Our group also went to another equally pricey restaurant on our trip (which shall remain nameless) but the atmosphere and service were so bad that it decreased our appreciation for the food. Not all fancy dining experience are worth the money. This one totally was.

I can now add #Vancouver to my list of cities with the best #bestdimsum among Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, LA, and NYC. The Richmond area in Vancouver, where over 74 percent of the city’s 200,000 residents are Asians, has become a dim sum paradise. Our friend Jeff took us to this famous dim sum place in Vancouver, Kirin, where they make their own XO sauce, their shumai was plump with big chunks of shrimp, their ha cheung rice noodle roll was made super thin, their scallop dumpling had huge scallops on them, and none of their fried dishes tasted greasy at all. But I must say, my favorite dim sum place in Vancouver is Chef Tony, because of their signature truffle shumai (OMG, they were SO good), scrumptious squid ink shrimp dumpling with gold flecks, their ha cheung rice roll was paper thin, their truffle asparagus was intoxicated with a generous amount of truffle, and their durian dessert was super delicious with real durian chunks inside the flaky pastry (and I don’t even like durian). You can’t go wrong with either place though. What’s better than excellent #dimsum to share with good friends?

If you are into cooking like me, you would understand why I was so excited to find #matsutake (aka pine) mushroom in Vancouver. Did you know they grow matsutake there and export to Japan? These mushrooms are sturdy and are what Michelin starred @ticketsbar uses for one of their celebrated dishes, shaved mushroom tart. I tried shaving all kinds of mushrooms thinly and couldn’t because they are not sturdy enough. Matsutake is the only #mushroom with that firm texture that one can shave paper thin with a mandolin, and they taste a bit spicy, yummy. I picked some up at #granvilleislandpublicmarket and knowing that I couldn’t bring them back to the States, the chef at the @fairmontvan was nice enough to allow me in his kitchen and used his mandolin to shave this mushroom. He even grilled them afterwards for me to taste with his umami house made mushroom salt. Delicious! (I’m so bad with names so I apologize for not remember the chef’s name, please forgive me, but if you read this chef, pls comment below so I can follow you. I’m sure you remember me as probably the only strange hotel occupant who had the weirdest request to use your mandolin on matsutake, a mushroom so common in Vancouver but exotic to a Floridian). They are pricey though; even in Vancouver where they grow them, they cost between $25-$30/lb.

“Cooking is a craft. I’ve heard people say ‘I’m not the creative type’. I think that’s just an excuse. I think every person is extremely creative. In our restaurant, it is not an option to NOT be creative.” WORD from Chef Daniel Humm, my hero, of 3-Michelin starred @elevenmadisonpark where I had the privilege of dining, which still remains the best dining experience I’ve ever had. Watch chef Humm’s full interview video on his IG @danielhumm such wisdom 🙌🙌🙌

Working on plating for my #ceviche: scallop & Argentine red shrimp shaped in little hearts, heirloom tomatoe, jalapeño in lime juice, yuzu tsuyu and cilantro oil. Did you know that when you slice the shrimp width wise, it naturally has a heart shape and all you have to do is trim away its excess? (which I later ground to make my king crab claw. No waste ever). Watch the video to see how it’s done #jaxgourmet #jacksonvillefoodie #eatdrinkjax #eatjax #instachefs #instachef #chefsofinstagram #asianchef #jaxchef #jacksonvillechef #gourmetchef #gourmetchefs #asianchef #highendchefs #DiscoveringChefs #chefsgossips #army_of_chefs #professionalchefs #foodartchefs #gastroart #highendchefs #chefsalert #cookniche #theartofplating #chefstalk #chefsofinstagram #chefstime #chefselection #foodinfluencer #thebestchefawards

I must say my fried king crab claw (coated with ground shrimp & crabmeat) with shaved almonds was so good, with wasabi coconut sauce & yellow sriracha, pickled watermelon, roasted okra. Thank you @foodartchefs for the repost, so honored #instachefs #instachef #chefsofinstagram #asianchef #gourmetchef #gourmetchefs #asianchef #highendchefs #DiscoveringChefs #chefsgossips #army_of_chefs #professionalchefs #foodartchefs #gastroart #highendchefs #chefsalert #cookniche #theartofplating #chefstalk #chefsofinstagram #chefstime #chefselection #foodinfluencer #thebestchefawards

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