Gumbo with Chicken, Shrimp & Squid
Make room for squid in addition to—or instead of—shrimp in this classic comfort.
Caramelized Onion & Kale Soup, French Onion-Style
Warm your soul with a side of nutrition.
Lemony Pasta with Mushrooms & Fried Kale
Deep-fry those leaves for crinkly, nori-like clusters.
Winter Squash Wontons and Ravioli
Make one or the other.
Calamari Braised with White Wine, Tomatoes & Spinach
It's simple to slow-cook your calamari until meltingly tender for this versatile stew.
Steamed Whole Fish with Spicy Black Bean Sauce
A celebratory centerpiece that cooks in no time.
Miso Chicken Soup with Leeks, Cabbage, Radishes and Radish Chips
The perfect fix for fall and leftover roasted chicken.
Roasted Broccoli and Crispy Tofu Salad
Or, roast anything and top it with this sweet-savory dressing.
Carrot Salad with Preserved Lemon
Make your own preserved lemons—or not—to use in this simple yet flavorful side.
Sopa de Lima
Chicken and lime soup with roasted poblanos is the comfort food we all deserve.
Persian Chicken Barley Soup (Soup e Jo)
Infused with turmeric, enlivened with lemon, this hearty, simple soup comforts.
Roasted Root Vegetables with Miso-Shallot Dressing
Wake up winter roots with a tangy dressing.
Spice-Crusted Cod with Beets and Lemon-Yogurt Dressing
Forget breadcrumbs; crush some whole spices for a crunchy, flavorful crust.
Three Cup Chicken Wings
Condense the savory flavors of San Bei Ji or Three Cup Chicken into a thick sauce for wings.
Roasted Hakurei Turnips with Israeli Couscous Salad
Use the turnip greens to toss into the salad, too.

Latest Blog Posts

Coconut Curry Mustard Sheet Pan Chicken (And A Giveaway!)
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Soon into developing recipes for Sheet Pan Chicken, I realized that so many recipes’ ingredients could be interchangeable, and their procedures could lend themselves to endless iterations. Case in point: I developed a recipe loosely based on a hearty, French Dijon chicken stew. It was a pan full of mustard-rubbed chicken roasting alongside chopped bacon, potatoes and heaps of sliced onions and mushrooms, which sizzled as they cooked and... Read More

Come Home to Roast with ‘Sheet Pan Chicken’
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For every cooking obsession, there should be a cookbook that speaks to it, and it alone. These are often called single-subject cookbooks, a genre that I adore. They can be pocket-sized or gargantuan, cheap or expensive, dusty-old or shiny-new and I’ll find it hard not to keep flipping the pages, nodding, appreciating its tight focus and unique perspective on the food topic in question. From exploring the historical underpinnings... Read More

Homemade Hummus with Fried Chickpea Skins
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I had so much fun making and eating this bowl of warm, homemade hummus that even though I’m far from an authority on the Middle Eastern spread—and even though there are many acclaimed recipes for it online—I just had to share this journey and recipe with you. Why hummus? It’s something I had been dropping into my shopping cart a lot lately, and eating up the tubs far too... Read More

Salmon Poke with Chayote on Cassava Chips
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Whenever I travel somewhere, I like to geek out on its food and then, immediately upon returning home, try to relive some of those flavors in my own kitchen, while they’re fresh in my memory. Often, this culminates in a dinner party on the theme of the place I had last visited. I recently traveled to Jamaica for my friend Karol’s 40th birthday, where we spent a languid 4-day weekend... Read More

Gefilte Fish and Beet-Horseradish Chrein
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I have long wanted to make gefilte fish from scratch. This is not a refrain I have heard too many people repeat. Something else I have not heard too often (or ever?) is, “I really want to eat gefilte fish sometime!” Maybe because of this, I just have never gotten around to homemade gefilte fish before. I am so glad to have finally done so, prompted by a great recipe from a Russian-American... Read More

Ukrainian Cabbage Dumplings (Varenyky), and a Confession
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The holiday season has arrived, and that means a lot of dumpling-making from November through February to my family and friends. Although no time of the year is spared of this tradition, we really bring it on the nights before Thanksgiving and Christmas: at least two types of fillings, stacks of round wrappers, and often, square, yellow wonton wrappers for boiled wontons and their filling are brought out onto the... Read More

Curried White Beans and Kale with Cherry Tomatoes
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Beans, greens and grains: Remember this formula, and you will be fed for a lifetime in a very healthy, inexpensive and earth-friendly way. And it’ll never get old. You simply cannot exhaust the shapes, sizes and varieties of beans, grains and green vegetables alone (but have fun geeking out over heirloom beans and trying!). And there’s no limit to how you can prepare these—from black beans and rice to daal to minestrone,... Read More

Easy Like Sunday Sauce
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Call me a culinary thief, but I love cooking passed-down family recipes from other peoples’ families. I say that with a bit of mischievousness because usually, the recipe-writer—the nonna, auntie, etc.—had shared their recipe with someone whom they love, but they probably never imagined that it would one day be used by a total stranger, me. It’s kind of thrilling. Read More

Winter Squash Fritters with Walnuts and Feta
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Say you want something savory, crispy, and fried—to start out a dinner, perhaps. Or to round out a more wholesome meal. Or to bring to a party, instead of a bag of chips (which I’ve done many times out of sheer enthusiasm for good potato chips and its place and purpose, and find no shame in). But let’s say you have time to roll up your sleeves in something... Read More

Gobo (Burdock Root) Gratin
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When faced with a vegetable that you’ve never cooked before, you can always try making it a proxy for a something that you have. Especially if that vegetable is as familiar as a potato, and the preparation is as adaptable as a gratin. Nowadays, we tend to think of this dish as a creamy, cheesy casserole of sliced potatoes. But you can cook anything in the oven with a sprinkling of... Read More

Sticky Rice Stuffed Cabbage
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Food tucked inside individual portion-sized packages—it’s a formula that has served many favorite dishes of mine. From dumplings to tamales, these dishes are often clever ways to stretch or use up scraps and leftovers. Because yesterday’s stale starches and bits of proteins are much more charming dressed up in a wrapper. This dish is a cross between the minced mushroom and meat-laden Chinese sticky rice that I grew up... Read More

Spicy Chili Crisp and Peanut Ice Cream (with Spicy Chili Crisp Peanut Sesame Brittle)
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Sweets with a salty, savory hint have always been around—think the pinch of salt in a chocolate-chip cookie recipe. But in recent years, it’s become a selling point. From “salty” caramel to “salted” chocolate chip cookies, the emphasis has really moved over to the savory side of the equation in sweets. And, we’ve seen plenty of sweets with a spicy kick as well. For me, the worlds of spicy, savory and sweet all came... Read More

Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie
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I’ve had an earworm for the last few weeks. Ever since finding a record called “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” by Jay & the Techniques, the title track has been playing in my head nearly constantly. It’s a great song—have a listen. This pie is not what the song is actually about, but I just couldn’t shake the idea of making it. In an uncanny confluence of new seasonal fruits and old... Read More

Corn on the Cob with Gochujang Mayo
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There’s really nothing that parallels that burst of succulent kernels when sweet corn is in season, late summer. Just the noise of biting them straight off the cob—often uncontrollably fast—is a soundtrack to the season. Not to diminish the enjoyment of pure corn on the cob, maybe slicked with butter, but I’ve been slathering those juicy ears with a combo like this all summer: mayo mixed with some kind of spicy sauce. This... Read More

Caesar Salad with Seared Scallops
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You don’t have to reinvent the wheel for a meal. Especially not in the summer, when it’s often hot and humid enough to make the stove a scary place. I seem to wind up with so many heads of lettuce in the summer, too—from my CSA or farmers markets or friends—that I have to play a version of pin the tail on the donkey with them that involves lettuce heads,... Read More

Chicken and Basil Wontons
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This wonton filling is proudly—if improbably—fashioned after san bei ji or Three Cup Chicken. This is one of the ultimate dishes from Taiwan, and one I love enough to try to twist into different forms any day. It starts with a deeply satisfying blend of soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine (the eponymous “three cups”), and it’s splashed with copious aromatics—garlic, ginger and basil. I wanted to get its zingy,... Read More

Asparagus and Feta Quiche
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It may be the twilight hour for spring but I’m savoring as much fresh asparagus as I can get. You know those ethereally green, snappy twigs of juicy, crispy, woody goodness won’t be in season for much longer here in the Northeast. If you’ve been simply grilling them like I have been a lot these short pre-summer nights—or perhaps enjoying them raw in a lightly dressed salad—then you may... Read More

Reason For Not Eating Out #64: To Cook Things You Didn’t Think Were Possible
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Cooking is empowering. And it’s unique, in that this simple exercise provides you with one of the few daily necessities for survival—food. You can’t say that for going to the gym, or writing a brilliant essay, as empowering as those activities may be. It’s not always the case that whipping up a plate of dinner gives you a great sense of personal accomplishment. But when you cook something that... Read More

Apple and Roasted Hakurei Turnip Salad with Hot Honey-Mustard Dressing
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I’m a big fan of two-ingredient “salads”—if you’ll allow me to call them that. What makes a salad a salad? It’s not uncommon to see a “tomato salad” with just tomato and dressing. So is the imperative on fresh vegetables? (Not so! What about chicken, egg or grain-based salads?) Does it need to be cold? (No! Warm or room-temperature salads are a typical Moroccan side, like with carrots, for instance.) To... Read More

Braised Short Ribs with Red Wine, Tomatoes and Rutabaga
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I’m convinced that big chunks of root vegetables are the perfect complement for rich, hearty winter stews—they absorb all their juices like savory sponges while adding to the complexity of the sauce. Even if nontraditional, they can make a stealthy starring role in such venerable cold-weather, long-cooked staples as cassoulet—with or without the addition of meat. Or wine-braised short ribs. Read More

Miso Chicken Soup with Leeks, Cabbage, Shiitake Mushrooms and Radishes, with Radish Chips
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Who says you can’t put miso in chicken soup? Or chicken in miso soup? I get it—miso paste is a great plant-based source of protein and flavor. Chicken soup, made from flesh and bone, needs little help in those departments. But I couldn’t decide. When it comes to winter slurping satisfaction, both chicken soup and miso soup are such all-time comforts. If you like both those soups, too, they... Read More

Steamed Whole Fish With Spicy Black Bean Sauce
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Growing up, pretty much any time I ate fish it was prepared in one of two ways: steamed whole, then drenched with julienned ginger, scallions and soy sauce. Or, pan-fried whole, then drenched with spicy, garlicky bean sauce. Later on, I would grow to love dipping fried fish sticks into ketchup and savoring every juicy bite of a Cajun-seasoned catfish fillet. But at the beginning, it was all about... Read More

Philly Cheesesteak Dumplings
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What doesn’t taste good in a dumpling? Good question. Another: Is there any festive occasion whose theme can’t be dumpli-fied? I say there is definitely not. So when Super Bowl LII weekend was approaching, and I realized that one of the teams playing was the Philadelphia Eagles, I decided to make dumplings with a filling a la the city’s signature hoagie. Cheesesteak Dumplings aren’t that different from Cheeseburger Dumplings, after all. Read More

Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas and Preserved Lemon
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There’s evil starches, then there’s good-for-you starches, from a modern-day health perspective. White potatoes are roundly shunned as one of those bad, rotten, festering ones of the bunch, bound to metastasize into a gummy tube of fat around your waistline. Refined white flours are bad, too, if you can even eat them without experiencing painful gluten intolerances! Now, I will never call either of these types of food “bad” entirely,... Read More

New England Clam Chowder
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Let’s start off a year of fewer regrets. It’s 2018, a good time to start getting things done! It’s about time to do things that have long been neglected and put off, like a laundry list of—well, laundry is one of them. And for some reason, I have never made New England-style clam chowder before. Let’s knock this one off and keep on going strong. Read More

Reason For Not Eating Out #63: Because It’s Cold Outside
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The lyrics to the classic wintry song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” did not age too well. Sung as a male-female duet, the woman repeatedly insists “I really must go,” to which the male singer retorts, “Baby, it’s cold outside.” But you can tell from the smugness in his voice that he’s really not that concerned about the cold. He wants to get her into his bed. And maybe she... Read More

The Worst Dish of 2017, Reimagined
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Happy End of the Year. It’s that time of looking back at all the highs and lows of 2017. Best-ofs and worst-ofs. Instead of offering my take on the best food books of the year, or ranting again about Gifts Not To Give the Cook, I wanted to try to put a positive spin on one of the worst moments in dining of 2017, according to Eater’s Senior Food Critic, Robert Sietsema. Reviewing... Read More

“Italian Sub” Lasagna
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Late fall, when the heaters turn on and the skies turn gusty and gray, is the start of dinner party season for me. The days of strolling around and sitting down in the park for an impromptu picnic are done for the year. The air conditioners have been deposited to their upper reaches of closets. It’s cozy indoors, and even when you pack a table with twelve guests and blow... Read More

Cassoulet and Rillettes: A Post-Thanksgiving Trip to France
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The greatest Reason For Not Eating Out is having leftovers in the fridge. And the greatest reason for having leftovers in the fridge, of all days of the year, is perhaps Thanksgiving. If you made the requisite roast turkey for the grand dinner, you’re bound to have lots of bits and pieces of turkey meat clinging to the carcass, no matter how much of it you and your family ate. Many cultures can... Read More

Torn Cabbage Salad with Apples and Pecorino
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This dish is part-recipe, part-stress therapy. When I served it as part of a baby shower brunch recently, people kept coming up to ask me a) Was that raw cabbage? and b) How did you cut it? You don’t cut it, I told them. You have to roll up your sleeves and tear it with your bare hands, which I demonstrated by air-tearing. It’s a lot of fun. Read More

The Last Barbecue of the Summer

posted in: Ruminations | 10

My friends Richard and Sam are my only local friends whose apartment has an actual yard with grass, a pretty spacious one, too. So naturally, they host barbecues all summer long. The last one I went to I was so busy preparing not one but two trays of homemade dumplings–veggie ones and pork–that I ended up getting there late, tired, and in the middle of a hot July, not even hungry. This weekend, I brought to their place the least … Read More

Green Salad with Baby Red Potatoes, Bacon, Shaved Smoked Cheddar, and Onion with Lemon Vinaigrette

posted in: Recipes, Sides & Salads | 2

  I suspect that the title is long enough for readers to come to their own conclusions about this recipe, but even so, I’m going to blab.  Chilled red potatoes are my new croutons.  They have this ever-so-subtly satisfying pop when your teeth break into their skins, and taste even more earthy and mildly creamy when cold.  Remember how much you liked the cold potato salad at all those barbecues in the summer that you filled yourself up with it before you got to … Read More

Plain Old Fried Rice with Five-Spice Tofu

posted in: Grains, Recipes, vegetarian | 11

I almost winced when reading an “Asian” (fusion, I guess) recipe in a major glossy magazine that called for a Noah’s Ark full of ingredients from all across the world. It was a pork recipe, and just the notion of using fish sauce and Chinese black bean sauce in combination was enough to make my stomach turn, let alone calling for more than three tablespoons of fish sauce period. But the fact that the recipe also included hoisin sauce, sesame … Read More

Hanger Steak with Portobellos

Cooking for one is something that I struggle with on a daily basis, and the impracticality of it is a major reason why single people around my age eat out all of the time. I’m not going to lie and say that it isn’t a big load of work to make something elaborate for just one night, for one person, and then get creative with the leftovers and ingredients not used. Or the time-consuming aspect of it. Think of all … Read More

Desserts: The Disasters Part One

posted in: Regrets | 3

Desserts have never been my close kin in the kitchen. I don’t think my mother ever prepared a dessert, and she also wasn’t the kind to keep the freezer stocked with them unless it was summer, and my brother and I begged and squealed for popsicles. Then, we got this nifty popsicle mold that we poured 100% orange juice into and froze. Its handles even had this basin to catch the melting juice, with a straw attached to slurp it up. So … Read More

NYC Pickle Day is Not Eating Out

On Sunday, the lampposts were decorated with green balloons along Orchard Street in the Lower East Side. Down a few narrow blocks to Guss’ corner deli, a neighborhood landmark pickle maker, and the garlicky brines of some dozen pickle makers’ tents filled the air of the dank, congested streets. It was a beautiful day in the city.

Reason for Not Eating Out in New York #2: Mystery Illnesses

It’s now been almost two months since I began this blog and hence, not eating out in New York. My first taste of restaurant food when I landed in Los Angeles last week during vacation was an awkward reintroduction, to say the least. We went to a less-than-great Shanghai-style restaurant, and for the rest of the evening I had a battle with stomach cramps. Mind you, I never get sick from eating out. I’ve eaten plenty of street meat, any … Read More

White Bean Zucchini Soup with White Cheddar Scallion Muffins

I really wasn’t sure what to do with all that cheddar I hoarded back from Tillamook. When the nice lady working at the factory’s store told me that the cheese was indeed transportable as long as it was unopened, I went apeshit and got a few blocks, forgetting that the only thing I really do with cheddar – and I only eat the sharpest of the sharp white – is slice it up and munch on it with wine, or … Read More

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