I got the new Fuchsia Dunlop cookbook! Oh, come on, you know you’re jealous. It’s as delightful as the last few, but with more non-spicy recipes and simple home cooking. My celebrity crush on her remains undiminished. As usual, even when testing a recipe from a new cookbook I couldn’t leave well enough alone. We […]

God, look at those charred peppers! They’re the long, vaguely gnarly, kinda slender but not really, fairly spicy but not very, probably Italian ones I find at my local organic Korean grocery store. I love them with a deep and abiding love. Dave, however, is pretty sure that nightshades give him stomachaches, so I don’t […]

Dear people who live in or visit London, Have you stopped by Ottolenghi yet? You should. It is a happy place that makes people happy. I spent about 2 hours fighting through insane crowds and delayed buses to get there during a London tube strike once (not counting the time spent flying across the pond […]

Perhaps you’ve perused the fridge at Kam Man or some other Chinatown grocery store and seen jars of this crazy awesome mushy liquid that looks like rotting rice in cloudy water. It’s sweet and boozy, a tasty precursor to more refined sakes. You can brew your own using Chinese wine balls (actually, yeast balls), but […]

My wok has been yearning for seasonal vegetables. Since my bedroom door opens right into the kitchen, I can hear the wok at night, crying for fresh foods soon to go out of season and disappear until next spring. I can’t sleep with a crying wok just a few yards away from my head. Something […]

The best thing about these meatballs is the coating. Each meatball is dipped into a coating made of stock, dark soy sauce, and cornstarch, then seared until nicely brown before being braised further. The seared layer of soy sauce coating each meatball is a tremendous burst of flavor, and absolutely makes the dish for me. […]

Actually, it’s a rhizome. But never mind that. I ordered sweet and sour lotus root at a restaurant not too long ago, and it was my favorite dish of the evening. Naturally, I tried to replicate it at home the very next day. I looked at the wildly different recipes in Fuschia Dunlop’s two cookbooks, […]

What do you do with leftover string beans sitting in your fridge? Start craving a stir-fry, perhaps. That could be the answer. Start poring through your favorite Chinese cookbooks, such as The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore by Grace Young. Find a recipe for a […]

I’m sorry, we ate the stewed spare ribs up so fast, all I have left to show you are the bones. Okay, okay, fine. I saved a bowl for you. The ribs were lusciously tender, the meat quite literally falling off the bones in the pot. That’s what hours of slow braising in a sand […]

I keep seeing these tiny, adorable clams in the Chinatown fishmarkets whenever I’m out shopping around there. They live in vast bins, not far from the live frogs and periwinkles that I keep meaning to learn how to prepare. I have this thing about eating cute things. I like doing it. If I see something […]

I just purchased a copy of Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking by Fuschia Dunlop. It came very highly recommended, and rumor has it that this is the best text on Sichuan cooking available in English today. I’m very excited and looking forward to trying out a whole lot of Dunlop’s recipes. […]

I’ve been sorting through my mother’s cookbooks lately, taking out the ones I want to keep. She has so many interesting Thai and Indian and Chinese cookbooks that I can see already what I’ll be eating for the next few months, at least. This recipe was the first thing that caught my eye when I […]