Month: May 2019

What is it that inspires you to get off your ass and try an ambitious dish? For me, an incorrigibly lazy cook, it takes something close to a cosmic alignment of proper planets, already stocked pantry items, outdoor humidity, and ideal hair greasiness levels to get me to try something big.

The stars shifted ever so slightly when Narinda came to town a few weeks ago, and this was the result. From Bon Appetit’s cover to my kitchen, with Narinda’s confidence pushing me past the stuff that would easily scare me off. (Mainly: taking a chance on a big hulking piece of meat.) 

And guess what, the dish turned out not to be nearly as ambitious as it seemed. There was so very little to it. And I loved that Sohui Kim packed SO much flavor into a dish using East Asian kitchen basics. What a little ginger (key), red wine (pungent), sugar (sweetening), and hours on the stove (crucial) can do for a dish! It’d been a while since I’d taken a bite of braised meat so tender and so laced through with fat that the whole bite melted in my mouth. 

Alas, as is our custom, we ended up not eating until close to midnight. Was still worth it, I think. Thank you, Sohui Kim.

May I introduce you to a snack innovation developed from within the depths of my herniated disc pain a few months back? Take a sleeve of extremely, almost unbearably healthy unsalted rice crackers, add a swipe of butter plus a dash of table salt.

I SWEAR it tastes just like popcorn. Especially delicious when you won’t spring for the yummy bagged stuff or the microwaved stuff and when your stovetop popcorn comes out denser than if you’d just eaten the dry kernels straight.

Welcome to the sweetest view in my apartment. I pounced on this tub of Maltesers at Costco over the holidays, and bulldozed through them in a matter of weeks. I did share a bunch with B’s Scottish boyfriend. But more or less, finishing this tub was entirely my own achievement.

Do you know about Maltesers? They’re the British (and superior) version of the comparatively chalky Whopper candy. My sister introduced them to me years ago when she was living in Hong Kong. Let’s hear it for colonialism! The chocolate on Maltesers is milkier and smoother than Whopper candies. The malted crunch center is less sweet and, just as important, often much fresher. Of course I’ve had plenty of stale Maltesers in my life but when you get a good batch, oh it’s very, very good. 

There was no way I was going to let go of the tub after it satisfied its first use. Initially it became an adorable item of decor. Then I used it as a chocolate-scented collection bowl when I had a fundraiser-party at my apartment a few months back (the backlog of blog posts is LONG) and then it returned to the top of a book shelf for a few more months, being its bright, cute self. 

This past week Narinda was in town and I pointed her toward a rapidly wilting basil plant on my window sill. “Looks like it wants to be repotted,” Narinda said. But what kind of planter would do? Enter the cheeriest tub ever. A little of Narinda’s confident plant wisdom and a lot of my squealing later, this happened. Look at this little guy! I want to hug it. 

On a related note: I’ve started passing on some snacks that have lots of extraneous plastic and individual pouches. It’s hard to justify the extra packaging, even when it’s crazy adorable or extends the freshness of a snack. I buy a lot of bulk snack mix from my local produce market, and reuse the same plastic produce bag over and over when I refill it. Definitely not the cutest. But my environmental conscience is the tiniest bit clearer.