hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re diving back into our series dedicated to the Bay Area restaurant scene with a part 2 of our Spices 3 episode. For those unfamiliar, Spices 3 is a Bay Area local legend in downtown Oakland that sports a variety of both creative and traditionally classic Chinese and/or Sichuan dishes. More specifically today we’re taking a shot at their chou doufu or “stinky tofu,” which is a firm tofu that has been fermented in bean curd, then shallow fried and served with a dipping sauce.

At Spices 3 (as well as most stateside restaurants), you’ll often come across this dish as a shared plate, typically ordered with family style meals. But outside of the states, you’ll more often find them at Chinese and Taiwanese nightmarket stalls, where you can order this dish on the go, and eat it with kabob skewers (and no, i have no idea why you wouldn’t just eat it with a fork). The dish (as the name implies) is quite stinky and pungent coming from the 48 hour soak in fermented bean curd, and for what it’s worth, definitely ranks pretty high on my list of more adventurous dishes to try in Chinese cuisine, up there with chicken feet and pig’s blood popsicles (please don’t ask me to make those. I regret mentioning these already). Hope you try it

It will be out on Friday January 7, 2022, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

We're live streaming every Tues at 6:30PM PST, with new recipes out every Friday!

Hello hi everyone! Wesley here. aToday we’re getting back to our series on local Hawaiian classics with a shot at one of my favorite pies from my childhood, which is the chocolate coconut “haupia” cream pie found at the legendary “Ted’s Bakery” in Oahu. For those unfamiliar, Ted’s bakery is a local institution dating back to the mid 80s on the North Shore of Oahu, and is well known for sporting a wide variety menu items to serve to local surfers and beach goers, but by far their most legendary item is their “chocolate haupia” pie. For those unfamiliar, the haupia chocolate cream pie is a multilayer cream pie with a thick and rich dark chocolate cream bottom layer, a coconut cream “haupia” center layer, and a whipped coconut cream topping.

We’ll be making use of favorite flakey pie crust recipe courtesy of Bon Appetit, but of course if you’re looking for shortcuts, premade crusts are always ok in my book. Finally as with pretty much every baking adventure on this channel, there were MANY mistakes made in my attempts, which we’ll absolutely be touching on as well. Hope you try it.

It will be out on Friday December 10, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

We're live streaming every Tues/Thurs at 6:30PM PST, with new recipes out every Friday!

hello hi everyone! Wesley here. Today we’re kicking off a brand new series inspired by the MANY requests that I’ve gotten for vegetarian and/or veggie friendly recipes, particularly those involving the use of tofu. If you’re like me, I have always been really frustrated with how tofu is used in most American vegetarian recipes, mostly because they involve using tofu as a meat substitute. There ARE many many uses of tofu throughout Asian and Chinese cuisine in particular that are built around tofu as the central ingredient (rather than a substitute), which means that the approach involved is much more conducive to creating a tender, toothsome, and tasty piece of tofu. 

More specifically today we’ll be taking a shot at a Chinese stir fry classic “wu siu tofu” or a braised firm tofu that has been shallow fried with veggies, and tossed in a dark soy sauce and oyster sauce braise. It’s one of my absolute favorite tofu dishes because the fry and braise method gives us a toothsome but also deeply flavorful piece of tofu. To add to this, it’s also a little bit more approachable than the similar “hong shao tofu” that recipe we did a little while back, since this involved a light breading and deep fry, which is a little bit more labor intensive. Hope you try it.

It will be out on Friday December 3, 2021, so bookmark the recipe here, and be sure to subscribe and hit the bell on YouTube to get notified when it’s out!

Woo Can Cook is a series where we reproduce fun foods and recipes from my childhood. Some of them are authentically Chinese and/or pan-Asian, but a lot of them are odd Americanized versions that I inherited from my parents and grandparents while growing up in the Bay Area/California.

We're live streaming every Tues/Thurs at 6:30PM PST, with new recipes out every Friday!