So Many Recipes, So Little Time
Negative reviews can be entertaining — people complain about the darnedest things. Reading them out loud on the way back after a good meal is like reading Chekhov’s The Complaints Book: — kitchen closes at 11, at 11:02 the manager refuses to let us order a burger… this chris christie look-alike sissy man was supposed…
Erik Kim’s Pepperoncini Tuna Salad from The New York Times has been on my list since forever. But when the craving hit, it didn’t feel like fiddling with a can opener and draining. Summer laziness takes unexpected forms. That day, a piece of salmon in place of canned tuna — 10 minutes at 425°F on…
Another great find from my oldest Thai cookbook — Kaeng Jeut Wun Sen Muu Sap, or vermicelli soup with minced pork. No complicated ingredients or fancy techniques. Regular mushrooms can easily stand in place of black fungus and spaghettini or angel hair in place of bean threads. It seems that key ingredients to the flavor…
Dog days of summer — last Monday was officially the hottest day on record on the planet. Summer is sliding off the top of my list. The one good thing about it is less traffic where we live — schools are closed, everyone is traveling elsewhere. I miss cold weather cooking — long slow simmering, oven,…
Thai Khao Tom Kung Lae Kai, or rice soup with shrimp and chicken, is similar to Chinese congee but it is much lighter, brothier. Without any particular Thai ingredients — no fish sauce or lemongrass, no galangal, no lime or makrut leaves — it’s unmistakably Thai. This is probably the best soup I have ever…
Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year resonates with me like no other book on food and cooking. The concept of kitchen year should be entered into a dictionary with a proper definition as a year of recovery, reset, a year of pulling thoughts and getting acts together — a preparation to move on in a different…
Accidentally stumbled on a package of salmon and tuna scraps at H Mart. My first thought was to greedily scoop them up with an avocado. As I was driving home, a thought came up to stretch the scraps for dinner and maybe even lunch. Here we go! In a nutshell, 3 cups of short grain…
Some dishes cross borders taking small steps. Like meat wrapped in dough — from dumplings, to manti, to pelmeni, to peramiach, to khinkali, to samosas, to pierogi and pirozhkis, to ravioli, and beyond. Others take a bigger leap — like Russian salad with its Belgian roots or Chicken Kiev with its French origins, like Tikka…
A very therapeutic salad when there’s a need to take the mind off things — lots of chopping. And minimum cooking. For this salad, I like smaller squid cut in about 3/4” rings. Smaller shrimp also seem better. Cut lengthwise, they create nice corkscrew shapes that not only look nice but trap the herbs and…
Back to kimchi for a little bit. There are still three jars in the fridge asking to be used. Here’s Braised Beef with Cabbage Kimchi. Tangy, sweet, and savory, this fusion dish seems so familiar and so different at the same time. It is easy to put together and it tastes especially good the next…