I’ve finally garnered the nerve to document my ill-fated cooking adventure on Christmas. I’d had a half-baked notion this year of roasting a chicken stuffed with sticky glutinous rice spiked with Chinese sausage, shittake mushrooms, and other seasonings commonly found in a zongzi, or bamboo leaf-wrapped rice dumpling. The original idea was to serve this [...]

The meal my family eats on Christmas Eve, a stark contrast to the all-American holiday meals like Thanksgiving, is usually an all-out feast of 5-10 Chinese dishes cooked by my uncle and my mom, a roast duck or chicken from the store added on, and a dessert of some type that we’re too full to [...]

I’d like to think there’s an old Hawaiian tradition of serving Christmas ham with pineapple. I’d also like to think that I’m in Hawaii instead of New Jersey this Christmas as well. But unfortunately, neither are most likely true. But because ham is not on the menu for my family’s Christmas this year, or for [...]

I began reading Julie and Julia, Julie Powell’s memoir about her year of cooking every single recipe in the 1961 classic cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her first success is the potato soup, or potage parmentier. The soup’s ingredients are potatoes, leeks, butter, cream, and salt. Not such a hard thing to swing [...]

A quintessential plate of 4-way chili at Skyline Chili: that’s cheese on top of chili on top of spaghetti. Yes, spaghetti.
I was pretty sure that Ohio wasn’t the cheese state. But what did I know? It was my first trip to anywhere in the midwest, not including airport layovers. I found myself there last weekend [...]

braised whatever

Technology, bitter foe. I came home excited to make this recipe I saw in the Times, along with a fascinating article on Hungarian Hannukah cooking. Nevermind that I had really only read the article, and barely glanced at the recipe. I could remember well enough what kind of supplies I would need at the [...]

Good-bye, Park Slope. Hello, Fort Greene. It’s been about 2 weeks after moving into my new apartment, two days since I got the gas stove working, and before the cooking begins, a good assessment on my former and current surroundings.
After some thought, I present the culinary pros and cons of Fort Greene/Clinton Hill, and Park [...]

In case you haven’t checked out one of my favorite blogs, which also happens to be written by a young female foodie living in Brooklyn, it’s a fine time to begin. Eat Drink One Woman hosted by Ganda Suthivarakan has a Q&A with me on it, but there’s plenty better stuff on the site to [...]

Long frustrating story, but the bottom line is: Keyspan sucks. There’s still no gas in my apartment. The good thing is, my friends have been offering me their delicious home cooking, and in one instance let me use their kitchen to make them dinner. It’s been a harmonious transaction.

photo of The Cherry Tree’s backyard courtesy of Meredith–thanks!
Over the weekend, I celebrated my 25th birthday with a few friends by bar-hopping around my old streets in Park Slope. Little did I know you can now bar-hop on Fourth Avenue. We began at Sheep Station, at 4th Ave. and Douglass, and I was dismayed to [...]