A gift of a dear friend, a cheese made out of raw sheep’s milk and thistle rennet. Let me tell you, this cheese is delicious, but it’s also so funky, it might start playing slap bass.

Never had one, wanted to try one.

A slightly different take on the beef theme, this time short rib kind of braised like a ragu and then combined with spinach, parmesan and linguine for a pasta dish.

I was in a sudden mood for something soupy, but not too soupy if it makes any sense, so I took some beef and spinach curry that I had, warmed it with some extra water and dumped some noodles into it. It works, and it brought me to the conclusion that there’s a point somewhere where sauce turns into soup if it just becomes liquid enough.

I don’t even know what this is, I suppose launching two concepts of Vietnamese and Mexican cuisine at each other and seeing what comes out of the collision. A tasty crash, even though the tacos get softer than I’d like, they don’t have that typical crispiness that makes Bánh Xèo so good.

Same dessert, slightly different take, also good.

As a final bit of the pulled pork and kimchi combination this one is a mashup with Vietnamese Banh Xeo – rice flour crepes that you serve with lettuce and dipping sauce. Tasty, but not quite happy with the dough or my technique, the crepes should have turned out thinner crispier than that.

I don’t know what that says about me that I end up making dessert that looks like gravelly soil, but here it is. It’s leftover caramelized white chocolate that I mixed with molten sugar and dusted with cocoa powder to produce these crunchy crumbs with a mix of cocoa and white chocolate taste. The stuff itself is rather sweet, so the big question was to find something that balances it out. I tried a low sugar cocoa cake brushed with a mix of whisky and orange bitters, a layer of Greek yogurt and a scoop of pistachio gelato on top. Pretty good, even if I could probably tweak the balance of the elements until the cows come home.

Just tweaking the formula a bit. I find that a dash of yellow mustard is pretty sublime in this.

Curse it, I overtoasted the bun a bit. Eh, the rest was pretty good though. Pulled pork served in a bun with kimchi scallion mayo and lettuce.