Lumpia Shanghai
Lumpia Shanghai is a beloved Filipino party staple similar to spring rolls and known for its crunchy golden exterior and savory pork filling. This version combines ground pork with crunchy water chestnuts, carrots, scallions, garlic and ginger for a filling that’s flavorful, juicy and packed with texture. A blend of soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil adds depth and umami, while a quick fry creates the signature shatteringly crisp wrapper. This recipe gives you a generous batch of about 75 rolls, perfect for feeding a crowd at your next party, or for freezing unfried so you’ve got a stash ready for any celebration, large or small. Serve the lumpia with sweet chili sauce, sweet-and-sour sauce, duck sauce or the Filipino vinegar-based dipping sauce known as sawsawan.
Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
People always ask me what my favorite food is, which is a very tough question for a professional chef who pretty much eats everything. I've thought long and hard about this and have come to the conclusion that a good ol' chocolate chip cookie is probably my biggest pleasure in life. Whether crispy, gooey, thick, thin, big, small... I LOVE them all. I've noticed that unlike me, most people are rather opinionated about their cookies. Some like them soft, and some like crispy crunchy. My best friend, Chris, is one of those people who only likes cookies that are soft and chewy, never crunchy, and when I was invited over to his apartment for dinner I decided I would surprise him with some soft, chewy cookies! After some research I found that there are two things that may help the cookies retain that soft, just-baked feel: pudding mix and cake flour. In this recipe, from my cookbook The Scone Queen Bakes, there is more brown sugar than white sugar, which helps to obtain that perfect chew. The pudding gives the cookies a beautifully sweet and robust vanilla flavor, but its creamy and gelatinous qualities keep these babies soft for the long haul — even days after you bake them, which is often hard to do!
