Food
Pickled Mustard Greens
I’m not gonna lie. When I went to the Asian grocery store and found the “prepared mustard greens” in the refrigerated section, they looked like a bag full of some mangled swamp creature. Basically, they’ve been pre-preserved in some way so they can sit on a shelf indefinitely, awaiting transformation. My main thought was “these are probably gonna taste like shit.” Well, after a couple good baths and a splash of vinegar here and there, these mustard greens turned out to be pretty darn spectacular. I served them as a side...
read moreSichuan Beef Noodle Soup with Pickled Mustard Greens and Cucumber Salad
Admittedly, for years, I’ve been a half-assed recipe follower. Let me clarify. I’ve always over-reached in my experimentations (yes, I’ve made some very eccentric dishes in my life), yet have only really read recipes to steal their essence and work things out in my own head, accordingly. So, if a recipe called for some rare type of purple pepper, it was probably going to inherit whatever color and derivation of pepper was on sale when I got to the grocery store. Part of this was because I’ve always lived and cooked on a strict...
read moreBanana Ginger Whipped Cream
I invented this whipped cream topping for my father’s birthday party because although he’s a very experimental eater, there are really only 2 foods that he rarely goes a day without: candied ginger and fresh bananas. From the time I was little, it seemed that my father always had a banana hiding somewhere on his person; it was uncanny! If you were in his car and a little hungry, you’d pop open the glove box and low and behold, there would be a bright, yellow, ripe banana. If you went to hang up his coat at the end of the day or...
read moreCurried Squid Salad with Cucumber Relish
Put plainly, this dish rocks. It has it all: crisp, spicy, fishy (ok, that’s not really a flavor profile), salty, sweet, creamy, chewy, and on and on. It’s so great that it’s beyond categorization, although it’s probably closest to Thai or Malaysian, if I were really pressed to pigeonhole it (please don’t make me!) Admittedly, I mostly made this recipe because I was convinced that in some way, the flavors wouldn’t work together. But, they were brilliant. Everything was exceptionally colorful on the plate, and though I...
read moreMolasses Pudding with Banana, Ginger Cream
Not sure how else to say it: this pudding tastes like a magical, late-August campfire. Plus, it’s like a dang time machine. I swear: I was pulling it out of the oven, and snap,* just like that, I was 20 years deep into my favorite childhood memory, licking the edges of my mom’s rotary beater, feeling my heart slosh and buzz around under my overalls. I’ve yet to test this theory again to see if I can move forward instead of backwards in time; I’d love to know exactly how many years I have left with my young-person’s-metabolism...
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