Adventures in eating with Miki Kawasaki
This post takes its inspiration from M.F.K. Fisher’s “Consider the Oyster” (1941). Fisher, for the uninitiated, is considered to be one of the founders of modern food writing as we know it. She does have some very smart critics, though. […]
Sorry, vegetarians. Chicken Cuteness: Baby chicks are adorable and fluffy, sure, but it’s all downhill from there. I mean, when I see a full grown hen or rooster, my first thought isn’t “I want to hug you and kiss you […]
At the beginning of the 2015, my New Year’s resolution was to eat more boldly. I think I did pretty well! Here are five highlights: 1. Shrimp Skimpy At first I thought this was kind of underwhelming, but then I […]
> What’s after dinner? Well, dessert, duh. I first found my way into the kitchen through baking. Back when I still needed a step stool to reach the counter, I became obsessed with the cinnamon rolls from the Gold Medal […]
1. Short ribs Also known as wife of Adam chops. 2. Oxtail Slow-cooked oxtail: like a cow tail, but with masculine-gendered meat. 3. Brisket Brisket is so tender and melt-in-your-mouth delicious that it will literally melt in your mouth. And […]
I once wrote about how I became obsessed with aglio e olio (garlic and olive oil pasta) after watching an episode of Korean tele-drama Pasta. Since then, I’ve forgotten most of the plot of that show (something involving fish livers […]
Head over to Serious Eats to read my story on dukkah. Truth be told, I had never tried the stuff before writing about it. I knew it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch, since anything containing nuts and spices […]
A round up of recipes to try and foods to seek out. Red curry-spiced kabocha soup with Thai basil pesto This soup had the best red curry paste I’ve made from scratch, as well as a pretty decent Thai basil pesto […]
Yes, this was one of the most wonderful things ever. No, I did not follow my own advice about not being too “matchy”. I used the leftover red cabbage from last week’s meal to make kimchi, which l may or […]
There’s some vague, unofficial rule in fashion about never matching too much. If this plate were an outfit, it would surely be in violation: chickpea hummus, chickpea falafel, even pita bread made from chickpeas. I suppose the best solution to this […]
Unpublished photos from the files. Chicken skin wrapped shrimp bites One of the dishes from my culinary final. You haven’t been truly intimate with a chicken until you’ve deboned it and stuffed it with another animal. Tomato curry with beef […]
In what is easily a personal best, I made four curries today – and all at the same time. It may have been for an assignment, but nevertheless, I’m still feeling pretty baller right now. Two of the recipes are […]
Although cumin lamb is associated with Sichuan province, there is an unmistakable Muslim influence in it, a testament to the diverse cultures that have left their imprint on China’s foodways. This version, however, adapted from Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese […]
I don’t eat delicious, lovingly prepared homemade meals every night. Sometimes I end up getting takeaway from Whole Foods—bad sushi is a very guilty pleasure of mine (seriously—did you know that the Unification Church is by far the largest distributor […]
Although I’ve tried to become something of a connoisseur of ethnic groceries, first in DC, now in Boston, I admit that stepping into them still feels like a gamble. I revisited Phu Cuong grocery this weekend, with a shopping list for […]
Leftover broth from the braised chicken was used to create a soup for this ramen, which includes homemade noodles and roast pork loin. The distinctive red hue comes from the addition of lots of chili bean paste. My roommate pointed out […]
I’ve never been to Mission Chinese Food, but it must smell like heaven. This chicken stew, adapted from head chef Danny Bowien’s recipe, should be made into an aromatherapy candle. With the copious amounts of cumin, fennel, and Sichuan pepper […]
I’ve never taken Spanish lessons, but having worked in the service industry, I’ve managed to pick up some of the food lingo. I tried to think of what you would call these in Spanish: tacos de chorizo con papas, queso […]
Last week I made some rather forgettable jerk chicken that was saved by the addition of this rice and beans recipe from Simply Recipes. I loved the creamy, fragrant rice so much I made it again. Happening upon this beef stew […]
The problem with watching films and TV shows about food (the gastronome’s second favorite pastime) is that they’re impossible to get through without craving what’s on the screen. I’ve been making my way through Korean drama Pasta, in which aglio e […]
Braised goat in drunken glaze with jasmine rice and green beans Last weekend, I went to Phu Cuong, a recently opened Vietnamese supermarket in Dorchester to get some of the ingredients for my Pad Kee Mao. There’s nothing that will […]
White chocolate oatmeal cookies with cranberries These cookies from Cook’s Illustrated, by way of Smitten Kitchen, are one of my favorites. I like to lessen the amount of oatmeal by a quarter of a cup and replace it with dried […]
Roast pork, broccoli rabe, and sharp provolone sandwich An ode to the Pattinson Avenue, my favorite sandwich from DC’s Taylor Gourmet. I’m creating a mock food website for a class, where I posted a tutorial on how to make this. View […]
Udon with mushrooms J. Kenji López-Alt has been posting some wonderful vegan recipes over at Serious Eats, the sort written for those of us with tastebuds. I don’t mean that as a dig at my vegan and vegetarian friends. But really, every time I see…
Spiced lentils with lamb (yakhni’l-adas) and swiss chard in yogurt (siliq bil laban) These recipes come from Nawal Nasrallah’s Delights from the Garden of Eden, a historically-minded Iraqi cookbook. According to Nasrallah, yakhni not only describe…
Macaroni and lots of cheese OK this snow needs to go away before I pose any further risks to my health.
Laab with mushrooms and pork So I suppose the news story of the moment is that Boston is going to get 2+ feet of snow this weekend. Right now, it’s barely a few hours into the storm and the window in my room is so clogged that I can’t see anything…
Chicken giouvetsi I made shrimp giouvetsi once a few years back and have returned to the dish, and variations on it, rather often. Rather than boiling the orzo that goes into it, everything is baked casserole style, infusing the pasta with the fla…
Chettinad curry, green beans with coconut and mustard seed, broken rice This recipe was designed for someone like myself: a home cook with a seriously overstuffed spice cabinet that never seems to declutter no matter how many times I make curry. T…
Red curry with chicken, squash, string beans, and eggplant There are as many red curry paste recipes as there are Thai cookbooks and Thai cooking blogs. I don’t have any particular favorite and usually only end up consulting them to remind myself …
Berbere rubbed chicken wing A vegetarian acquaintance of mine who once worked as a waiter told me that he generally didn’t mind handling meat or watching guests eat it but for one exception: chicken wings. Something about gnawing and picking at th…
Laksa asam – Penang hot and sour noodles After a truly hectic end to my first semester in grad school, I finally have some time to get back to cooking and other important things in life, like marathoning episodes of Breaking Bad and reading all of…
Beer braised corned beef brisket with veg What better way to celebrate the end of the semester than with a big sloppy pile of pleb food? Pierre Bourdieu eat your heart out.
Navel oranges and oil-cured olives with tarragon and sea salt Orange and olive is one of my favorite flavor pairings. After seeing it on a menu with yellowtail crudo a few years back, I encountered it again via old school, pre-soapbox Bittman. It’…
Corn and miso ramen with vegetables and ground pork Yes, even I will stoop to terrible puns sometimes. I still have some corn flour left over from making the corn cookies, which I’ve already tried using in pancakes. For some reason, corn and miso …
Kale saag with tofu on an onion seed flatbread Cheap, healthy, and tasty. This is one for all seasons.
Yellow rice with sausage, edamame, okra, and pickled onions It’s been a few weeks since any dinner has appeared on this site. Not that I haven’t been cooking – life just hasn’t been able to accomodate the massive “project” meals I usually post. So…
Momofuku Milk Bar Corn Cookies The biggest perk of being in a gastronomy program is, duh, getting to eat food in class. Sometimes the food is related to the course material (like earlier this week when I got to try some dishes based on medieval Is…
Tamarind soup with shrimp, rice, and peas This week I finally had an opportunity to attend a lecture in Harvard’s Science and Cooking series, which normally I wouldn’t be able to do due to classes (thank you Christopher Columbus for the day off?)….
Squid and baby bok choy over egg noodles This stir fry is a favorite of mine for when I want something fairly quick and easy. I used leftover homemade noodles from last week’s Khao Soi to soak up the briny juices that the marinade for it gives off…
Khao soi – curry noodles with chicken, pickled mustard, shallots, crispy noodles, cilantro, and lime Recently I’ve been reading a lot about matters of authenticity and what it means in the food experience. Since about ninety nine percent of the fo…
Doro wott and ye’abesha gomen (Ethiopian chicken stew and collards) with farro More than a week after I moved, I finally got around to cooking a proper meal. That first week was painfully ridden with canned tuna and greasy quesadillas, but hey, at…
Linguine with meatballs In the last few months my cooking has leant towards spice and flavor heavy dishes – a lot of Thai and Chinese. Of course I love these sorts of foods, but I also had a practical motive in making them: to get rid of as much o…
Niu Rou Mian – egg noodles with beef and Chinese broccoli Last week, after four years in DC, I finally made it out to Eden Center, a mega strip mall for Vietnamese businesses just over the river in Virginia. All the talk I’d head about it being a …
Som tam and pad thai I’ve already explained my love/hate relationship with pad thai. Right now, I’m trying to focus on the love, which is that it’s great for cleaning out my pantry. I’m guessing that in Thailand it’s not typically served with som …
Minnesota wild rice soup with mushrooms It’s quite obvious looking through my photos that rice is a big staple of my cooking. I usually opt for jasmine, but I ran out of my last bag of it a few weeks ago. I’ll be relocating to Boston at the end of…
Corn and potato soup with sorrel pistou, berbere roasted eggplant with merguez sausage / baby eggplants at sunset I’m not sure what I was thinking when I bought yellow corn and purple potatoes for making soup. Any third grader could tell you that …
Lemongrass chicken with coconut rice and sauteed kale with mushrooms I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve come across an interesting recipe, only to find that the instructions are designed for the charcoal grill. It’s as if all the…
Drunken noodles, revised / Stir-fried broccoli tips This past weekend I had set out to make Yotam Ottolenghi’s Malaysian duck curry. However, upon getting to the grocery and experiencing a bit of sticker shock at the price of duck ($15 for one bre…
Pad Horapa – Thai basil chicken with crispy skins This dish is closely related to the Teochew style chicken I made a few weeks back. The Thai version seems to have been heavily influenced by the Chinese, due to the fact that many Teochew migrated …
Blueberry pie The internet is probably crumbling right now under the weight of thousands of pictures of summer fruit pies posted by an army of food bloggers. Allow me to tip that scale a little further by contributing my own completely unneccesary…
Salted salmon, grated beets with dill, Russian kale, and brown Basmati rice Although the main components of this dish suggest something vaguely Nordic, each item was seasoned with quintessentially Japanese ingredients: rice vinegar and sesame oil …
Cha ca la vong – Rice noodles with hake, herbs, peanuts and fried shallots Another recipe that is a copy of a copy of a copy. Even if far removed from the source, the abundance of herbs picked straight from my own and from neighbors’ yards made th…
Dan dan noodles I love being able to roll out of bed on Sunday mornings, literally walk about 30 paces to the west, and then in a half-asleep haze stumble my way through the Bloomingdale Farmer’s Market. For a fairly small market, it packs an incr…
Homemade linguine with basil pesto, trumpet mushrooms, pecorino romano, and pine nuts I had never heard of pesto until I got to college. During my freshman year I had a crummy work-study job ladling food at the cafeteria. On my first day I was ass…
Teochew style chicken with basil and Sichuan peppercorn Another recipe from Eileen Yin Fei Lo’s Mastering the Art of Chinese Cooking. The greens are deep fried basil leaves. I love how luminously translucent they become after cooking. Of course, t…
Goat curry with coconut milk Goat is the most widely consumed meat in the world, yet it’s difficult to come by in the U.S.. Luckily for me, there’s a sweet lady who offers it at my neighborhood farmer’s market every Sunday. Goat is ideal for brais…
Pad Thai I never order Pad Thai when I’m eating at a Thai restaurant. It’s like ordering a hamburger at a high end steak house — incredibly pointless and lacking in all the real action. Why order noodles that have likely been adulterated with sic…
Aloo Gobhi Naan Pizza One time when I was shopping at Lotte Plaza, I came across a giant freezer full of naan pizzas on sale for $1.50 each. Although I generally try to stay away from frozen meals, I nevertheless proceeded to load my cart with a h…
Tagliatelle with asparagus and clams A riff on the ubiquitous linguine with clams using leftover bacon and konbu dashi from shrimp and grits combined with sherry, soy sauce, and a seafood broth made using the shrimp shells.
Shrimp and grits with bacon, spinach, scallion This one’s adapted from the Momofuku cookbook. Naturally, it’s got a bit of a Japanese twist, with a konbu and soy sauce base for the grits’ cooking liquid. I was inspired to make this after I got the…
Oatmeal with currants and pecans I’ve been on a granola kick ever since I had some fantastic muesli at Sprüngli in Zurich. It was one of the many things I loved about that city.
A sea of sunny yellow / Mac ‘n cheese making fun of side dish raw, macerated kale Here is how I normally prepare mac ‘n cheese: Take one box of Velveeta with shells (the kind that comes with a silver pouch of liquid cheese). Boil approximately thr…
Oxtail in berbere sauce with collard greens and rice This is an adaptation of Marcus Samuelsson’s recipe for doro wott from his pan-African cookbook The Soul of a New Cuisine. I don’t think I’ve ever seen oxtail in Ethiopian dishes before, but it’…
Sourdough crumpets with butter and marmite My buddy Jim gave me some sourdough starter and this is the first recipe I made with it. This is definitely the start of many yeasty things to come. (if you recognize the announcer’s voice, you’ll know wh…
Goan-style curry with tofu over a brown basmati and red rice blend Coconut milk curry was one of the first things I ever tried to make on my own and throughout the years has remained one of my chief culinary obsessions. I will probably be forever …
Sopa Tarasca (black bean soup, Michoacan style) Mexican cream (crema Mexicana), which is what that squiggle is, is one of my favorite condiments. Creme fraiche ain’t got nothing on it.
Jerk chicken with fried cabbage Ever see this meme? I think the same thing happens every time I try to make Jamaican, or Ethiopian, or Thai, or any other food that I dearly love that is from a place I will likely never visit. I got the recipe for …
Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookies. Sometimes I can’t decide which photo to use, with or without props. So I lied when I said I would stay away from the Milk Bar cookbook. Lindsey made the big mistake of leaving a jar full of peanut butter cups in …
Larb nuaa gae (Minced lamb salad) Last week I went to Little Serow, a basement restaurant run by the same people who own the esteemed Komi. Little Serow serves up Isan cuisine, from the northern countryside provinces of Thailand. I’d had Isan befo…
Crepe with Brussels sprouts, andouille sausage, pecan, and pecorino romano A dinner (or breakfast) made entriely out of leftovers: sausage and nuts remaining from this week’s farro dish, buttermilk left from making the funfetti cake, Brussels spro…
Momofuku Milk Bar Birthday Cake, for my roommate Lindsey Because even though she claims to be a grown ass woman, we all know Lindsey is really a kid at heart. Although it was quite tasty and not too difficult to make, I probably won’t be trying an…
Farro with andouille sausage and pecans Remember back in the early noughties when a then 20 year old Britney Spears opened the doomed to fail restaurant NYLA in midtown Manhattan? It featured Britney’s favorite Louisiana home cooking crossed with …
Arctic char and lentils cooked in berbere I don’t mind making my own berbere powder in a pinch, but the best of that paprika heavy spice mixture can be bought at Zenebech Injera. Tyler Cowen was not exaggerating when he declared Zenebech the best …
Pan-fried noodles with tofu and peppers I’ve been posting photos of my creations in the kitchen to Facebook for almost a year. When I started, I had no intention other than to document the activity that brings me the most consistent joy and sense …
