Eat Drink Style I'm Sorry For the 29 Years of Torture - Mother's Day Dinner

Raising a child is probably life's biggest challenges. From the day your child is born, your eyebrows will start to curve downwards. Your forehead develops creases like a shar pe's fur. And your blood pressure raises everytime you have to send a message to him/her. But you keep going. You keep going every single day until you see that they can function on their own. And even then, worrying never leaves your mind until they day you sleep infinitely. I was never a bad kid. I never got into any fights. Never hung around the wrong crowd - I was a schoolboy/soccer jock. Never got suspended from school - well maybe once for having a Motorola Pager with me during school. And it wasn't even one of those cooler pagers that everyone had – it was the one that held like 4 numbers and when paged, sounded like a semi backing the hell up. Never got anything below a B- (college was a different story). I never got a DUI (crossing fingers). But my mom always found a reason to worry. Then in college, I got into some serious trouble - nearly got me kicked out of school. And it was with utter shame and guilt that I called my mom and informed her of my deviance. I was prepared to have my head ripped off over the phone. But my mom surprised me. Even in time of peril, no matter who was at fault, a mother will stand by your side. Everytime I saw some news report of a juvenile crime, I was always amazed that the parents faced the music and stuck with their kid - even if it was attempted murder. It wasn't until this situation that I knew how important parents are and how down they were. As I sat in the deans office with my mom, I knew she was embarrassed. But she held my hand so tightly that I knew we were going to get through it. And we did thankfully. The dean simply wanted my mom in the conference so that she was aware of the severity of the incident. I dreaded the car ride home because I knew she would let me have it, but she didn't. She simply said "I know you won't do that again" and smiled at me. And ever since then, I made sure that I would never have to bring my mom into a situation like this again. And since then...



...I have not publicly urinated on a college campus.



So for mother's day, instead of taking her to a dim sum restaurant in SGV like every other Asian family, my sister and I cooked her a meal at home. After all, what's a few hours of cooking versus 29 years of nurturing this insanity called Dylan.



Seared Scallop & Pear Salad
I love scallops and I'll continue to cook scallops until I stop writing this food blog. Because I love tater tots, and to me, this is the marine version. A simple drizzle of kosher salt, freshly ground black pepper, a searing hot pan and you're well on your way to the Olympics. I'm lazy when it comes to making my own dressing so I just call on my good friend Angelo Pietro because he gets the job done. I have to add fruit to all my salads now, it just creates a nice balance of savory, fresh, sour and sweet in every bite. I usually have a problem searing scallops nicely because of the amount of water that leaks out of them. A sign of a chemically-enhanced scallop is its high water content. They basically inject something to 'fill' the scallop up and when cooked, it ruins everything.



Lobster & Garlic Aioli Crostini
A few weeks ago, J and I ate at Hungry Cat in Hollywood. Its run by Suzanne Goin of AOC & Lucques' husband and it's a great place to enjoy oysters and super creative drinks. Their most popular dish is the Lobster Roll Deluxe which consists of chunky lobster, garlic aioli, parsley baked in a greasy roll. It's so rich but so good. If you try it out, I recommend sharing it or you'll get sick. Anyway, this was my attempt at recreating it. I simply boiled some lobster tails and cut the meat free from the exoskeleton. I then added it to a makeshift aioli prescribed by my incredibly talented friend, Yoony of Immaeatchu. I took mayo and added some cayenne pepper, freshly ground pepper, lemon, grated garlic, chives, shallots and lemon juice. It was very light and went well with crunchy texture of the baked crostini. This makes a great summer picnic dish.



Veal Osso Buco & Linguini
I've neglected my wonderful Le Creuset pot for quite a while and brought her out of the attic for this special occasion. There's something nice about braising food in a quality porcelain pot - like I live in a French chateau surrounded by sheep and drink wine endlessly under a willow tree with my paperboy beret. Two and a half hours of braising the veal shanks in chianti wine, fresh thyme, bay leaves, chicken broth and mire poix and you're good. The sauce that's produced tastes really good over pasta - like gravy on mashed potatoes.

Hope everyone did something special for mom. My mom might have killed me if I took her to Hometown Buffet instead. Thanks again for everything mom. You're the best. Thanks for reading.