After years of making Chinese recipes at home, I found myself measuring the same ingredients over and over. Eventually I started mixing a jar of sauce ahead of time. It isn’t meant to replace the unique seasonings that make each recipe different, but it gets me halfway there on a busy weeknight.
Continue reading “Three Foundation Sauces That Make Chinese Cooking Easier at Home”
This pasta from Norcia, in the Umbria region of Italy, is made with a crumbled fresh sausage which is traditionally made without fennel and seasoned with garlic and white wine.
Continue reading “Pasta alla Norcina: Authentic Creamy Sausage Pasta from Umbria”
Super rainy here today, so time to bake. Here’s a great recipe to bring the wonderful smell of spices into the house. These cookies are addictive and really do make the house smell wonderful.
Continue reading “Ginger Spice Cookies Recipe for Rainy Days”
Calling this a salad is using the term rather loosely, but it does fall into the broad family of Thai salads. Unlike many Thai salads, this one isn’t especially fiery, making it perfect for a light lunch or simple dinner.
Continue reading “Authentic Thai Minced Shrimp and Pork Salad (Lon Kung Moo Sub)”
Sometimes the best Italian meals are the simplest. This rustic rigatoni pasta combines smoky bacon or flavorful Italian sausage with sweet peas, garlic, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and just enough cream to bring everything together into a silky sauce.
Continue reading “Rigatoni with Peas and Bacon/Sausage “
Harissa is a fiery paste which is commonly used in North African cuisine. You see it show up in Tunisian and Moroccan food quite often. It is packed with flavor and comes in many varieties, but common ingredients are chilies, olive oil, garlic, sundried tomatoes, salt, coriander, cumin and caraway seeds.
Continue reading “Quick and Easy Shrimp Recipe with Harissa”
This is the tomato sauce recipe that changed everything for me. So simple, but mind blowingly good. When I first made it, I couldn’t get my head around how it could be so good with just these few ingredients.
Continue reading “Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter”
As I’ve mentioned before, I have a large collection of modern, vintage, and antique cookbooks. One of the things I enjoy most is comparing how recipes have evolved over the decades and seeing how cooks adapted authentic dishes to the ingredients available at the time.
Continue reading “Twice-Cooked Pork: From Joyce Chen’s 1961 Kitchen to Today’s Sichuan Pantry”
Kung Pao Shrimp is one of those dishes that proves Sichuan cooking isn’t just about heat. The first thing you’ll notice is the balance of flavors. Sweet, sour, salty, and the unmistakable tingling warmth of Sichuan peppercorns all come together in a glossy sauce that coats the shrimp.
Continue reading “Kung Pao Shrimp- Sichuan Classic”
My journey to discover different cuisines began in the early 80s. I became interested in Chinese, Thai and Indian food, but I had no idea where to start learning about these cuisines, which at that time were still quite obscure. Certainly there were Chinese and Indian restaurants, but Thai restaurants were a bit more few and far between.
Continue reading “Thai Ginger Chicken- Gai Pad King”