Everything My Mom and I Cooked While She Was in Town & Recipes from Last Week

10 recipes in 4 days, honey butter corn cake, healthier sheet pan nachos, crispy shrimp spring rolls, cheesy mashed potatoes au gratin

Hi everyone,

Hope you had a great week! As many of you know, I love cooking with my mom. She’s the one who taught me how to cook and it’s still one of our favorite things to do together. Every month or two, I beg her to fly into town and spend a few days with me in the kitchen. She’s such a workhorse and so efficient that we always get a lot done when she’s here. (We made 10 recipes in 4 days, whereas on my own, I usually cook 1 to 2 recipes a day.) Below, I’m sharing everything we cooked so you can get a glimpse of what’s coming soon.

Having fun in the kitchen with mom 🤍

First, here’s a recipe for a honey butter corn cake, inspired by a cornbread my mom used to make when I was growing up. I reimagined her recipe as a delicious cake that can stand alone on your Thanksgiving table. It’s slightly sweetened with honey and melts in your mouth.

Also, my debut cookbook comes out March 3 and is available for preorder. Preorders are so helpful for first-time authors, so if you’re thinking of getting a copy, I’d be so grateful if you ordered early 🤍

What I Cooked Last Week! ↓

Honey Butter Corn Cake

This corn cake is my mom’s classic, reimagined to be melt-in-your-mouth tender and the star of your Friendsgiving table.

Honey Butter Corn Cake

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You can download the PDF recipe above and watch the video here :)

Every Recipe My Mom and I Cooked in Four Days

I’ve been feeling really busy lately and have some travel coming up, so I asked my mom to come into town and help me in the kitchen. She flew into New York on a red eye from California, arriving on the first cold day of the season. It was 31 degrees outside and snowing (Kimchi’s first time seeing snow!), but that didn’t stop her from jumping right in. After a 45-minute nap, she went straight to the grocery store to get everything we’d need for the day.

Day 1

We started with a steak chimichurri sandwich: steak, pickled onions, chimichurri, garlic aioli, and microgreens on toasted ciabatta. The flavor profile is similar to a chimichurri bowl in my cookbook. This one was for a brand partnership with Lotus using their high-end toaster I’ve been testing for months. Filming campaigns always takes longer because I want every shot to look beautiful. We toasted the bread in the Lotus toaster, which I’ve been loving and will share more about soon. We didn’t finish filming until 2 p.m., so we moved straight into the second recipe. (I posted this one today!)

Next up were sheet pan nachos, which I’ve already posted. I was inspired by that viral method where people melt cheese in the oven and slide it onto the chips. For a healthier version, we made homemade tortilla chips (so easy) and baked the salsa, beans, and cheese on a separate sheet pan. It turned out so good.

Our last recipe of the day was crispy Parmesan potato wedges. You parboil the potatoes, toss them with breadcrumbs and Parmesan, and bake until golden and crispy. The coating creates all these delicious crumbly bits. Since it’s almost winter and the days are so short, we were scrambling to get the final shots before it got dark. I only film with natural light, so timing is always tricky at this time of the year.

These potatoes were SO good!

We were really happy with all three recipes, although my mom isn’t sure she measured three or six pounds of potatoes for the last one (lol!), so she’s going to retest it when she gets home.

Day 2

We walked Kimchi, grabbed coffee, and made a plan for the day.