I don’t collect recipes. I collect methods.

The dishes here are the result of living inside other food systems long enough to understand what actually matters: sequence, heat, balance, texture, and when to stop.

These aren’t nostalgic recreations or restaurant cosplay. They’re the things I kept making long after the novelty wore off — because they work.

I lived in Shanghai from 2001 to 2015, where cooking wasn’t performance — it was infrastructure. Food moved fast, was deeply regional, and respected process over presentation.

After returning to North America, I spent time inside a Thai meal-kit startup in New Jersey, working alongside Martin Amada, Director of The Samui Institute of Thai Culinary Arts.

Learning Thai food properly — its balance, sequencing, and discipline — reinforced what I already suspected:

Great food isn’t complicated. It’s systematic.

My role there was media and business development. I helped secure our first major retail account with FreshDirect in New York and negotiated licensing opportunities with Tasty.

I loved the product. I loved the food. Startup life, less so.

What stuck was the craft.

Every recipe here optimizes for at least one of the following:

• Texture dominance (crack, shatter, blister, resistance)
• High leverage bases (chili paste, infused oil, sauces that do real work)
• Attention over precision — you watch, you listen, you pull it at the right moment
• Minimal ingredients, maximum effect

These are recipes that reward focus, not fuss.

This isn’t a linear cookbook.

Pick one recipe and learn the logic behind it. Then reuse that logic everywhere else.

Once you understand: infused oil, controlled heat, sequencing, when sweetness belongs, when acid saves you — you stop following recipes and start cooking.

Good food behaves like good systems.

Simple inputs. Strong constraints. Clear outcomes.

Everything here has been tested in real kitchens, across cultures, and under time pressure — which is the only testing that matters.

Cook accordingly.

🔥 Toasted Chocolate

Chocolate taken to the edge under a broiler until it crackles like crème brûlée. Brittle shell. Deep melt. Completely unreasonable.

🌶 Chili Paste (Nam Phrik Phao)

Not a condiment — infrastructure. Sweet, hot, funky, and endlessly reusable. Build once, eat for weeks.

🐔 Spicy Cold Chicken

The dish that teaches everything: oil, acid, heat, restraint. Eat it cold. Think about it later.

🥒 Chinese Cold Dishes

Infused oil + acid + texture. That’s the system. Pumpkin, eggplant, cucumbers — doesn’t matter.

🐚 Clams, Fast and Dangerous

Steam, drain, fry. Ginger, garlic, chilies. No ceremony. No mercy.