It has taken me so long to write about the time we spent in Hong Kong last winter. I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps because we were there for long enough to feel like it wasn’t a trip, so there’s no clear narrative, but not long enough to make it feel routine. I’m not sure how best to structure our stories and experiences to share with you, but at the end, it’s probably best to just start writing.

We had a wonderful time in Hong Kong, and I’d go back in a heartbeat. Hong Kong is this vibrant, slightly chaotic, proud, country full of contrasts. It is at times loud and bustling and wonderfully modern and at times ancient and mystical and steeped in tradition. Pristine luxury shopping malls smelling of expensive perfume bump up against Buddhist temples filled with incense smoke. Michelin stars are awarded to French tasting menus and hole-in-the-wall dim sum joints. You can spend $30 on a cocktail or $2 for a bowl of noodles, and both will be delicious. The iconic skyscrapers packed together in Central fade suddenly and without warning into green mountains, blanketed with hiking trails.

A friend who visited several months after we’d left told me afterwards “I wasn’t expecting it to be so Chinese.” And he’s right. The international image of Hong Kong is of a massive, modern, high-tech city, full of expats and expensive clothes and big business. And it is that, in parts, but it’s also old, and pungent, and a little run-down, and very traditional. The international glitz is fun, but for us, the real draw was outside of the glamorous neighborhoods: the hole-in-the-wall dumpling restaurants and the sleepy seaside island towns. In five weeks we barely scratched the surface – for a small country there’s a lot to explore.

Hong Kong is a food-lover’s dream travel destination. Everything is good, and you can find pretty much anything, for a price. There’s an amazing hipster coffee scene (if you’re willing to spend $7 on a latte), 61 Michelin-starred restaurants (more than London and Chicago and Madrid), wet markets where you can buy any meat or seafood you can think of, and incredible local Cantonese cuisine. I tried things I never thought I would – abalone and shark fin and literal birds’ nests – and had some of the most memorable meals of my life.

When we got back from Asia I wrote down all the recipes I wanted to eventually share here – noodles and dumplings and soups. The other night I was reading through that list and when I got to “Shanghai Noodles with Pork, Mushrooms, and Cabbage” I had the most visceral food memory. Those noodles – fat as a pencil and utterly slurpable and chewy and coated in an addictive, salty-sweet brown sauce – were unbelievable. I struggled to recreate them at home – that sauce! Those fat noodles! – but after several rounds of trial-and-error I finally have a reasonable approximation.

The first recipe I tried wasn’t saucy enough and the second was far too salty. I ended up ditching the pork because it wasn’t adding anything, and experimenting with my own sauce. Ideally I would use thick fresh egg noodles but I couldn’t find any, so I made do with fresh udon. Now that I know how to make them, these are actually very easy. Once you have the sauce ingredients, you could whip them up on a weeknight with no problem.

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Shanghai Noodles with Mushrooms and Cabbage

Thick, eggy Shanghai Noodles covered in a slurpable, sweet-salty sauce and stir-fried with mushrooms and cabbage. Inspired by an extended trip to Hong Kong.

Adapted loosely from The Daring Gourmet, with sauce inspiration from BBC Good Food. 

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Yield: 4-6

Ingredients

• 4 TBS dark soy sauce (don’t substitute regular soy sauce!)
• 2 TBS peanut butter
• 2 TBS honey
• 1 TBS sugar
• 2 TBS rice wine vinegar
• 1 tsp hot sauce
• 2 TBS plus 2 tsp sesame oil, divided
• 1 TBS fish sauce
• 1/2 cup chicken stock
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 1 TBS canola oil
• 2 portobello mushroom cups, cleaned and cut into 1/4 inch thick slices
• 1/2 lb shiitake mushrooms, stems removed, caps cut into thin slices
• sea salt
• 5 cups shredded napa cabbage
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 3/4 lb. thick fresh egg noodles or fresh udon noodles
• 2 fresh scallions, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

1. In a medium bowl, combine dark soy sauce, peanut butter, honey, sugar, rice wine vinegar, hot sauce, 2 teaspoons of the sesame oil and the fish sauce. Whisk until very smooth.
2. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the chicken stock and the cornstarch until smooth. Set aside.
3. Heat half of the remaining sesame oil and half of the canola oil in a wok over medium-high heat. Add the sliced mushrooms and sprinkle with sea salt. Cook until golden brown on both sides and tender, about 5-6 minutes, stirring often. Transfer the cooked mushrooms to a plate. Add the remaining sesame oil and canola oil to the walk along with the shredded cabbage and the minced garlic. Cook quickly, just until wilted, stirring frequently.
4. Add the sauce and the noodles to the pan with the cabbage. Use tongs to coat the noodles in the sauce, then add the chicken stock with the cornstarch. Continuously toss the noodles in the sauce until the sauce is glossy and thickly coats the noodles. Add the mushrooms back to the pan and toss a few more times, then remove from the heat. Serve immediately, topped with chopped scallions.

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I am a lover of tequila. Like, I am the person at the end of the night asking if we can do tequila shots, not because I am hammered and making poor decisions, but because I genuinely like the way tequila tastes. Especially with lime and salt, and if I get to clink glasses with a bunch of friends, all the better. Trevor and I even went to a tequila tasting dinner once, although sipping room temperature tequila from champagne glasses was a little much, even for me.

My friends all know that I love tequila, and I also happen to have very polite, very generous friends, so every time we throw a party, we end up with at least one more bottle of tequila. We now have 4 mostly full bottles (and that’s down from 5 only because Trevor just finished off a lingering bottle a few weeks back), which is arguably too much tequila. If I ever make any new friends, I think I’ll tell them that I love vodka, just to even out my collection. (Although I absolutely don’t love vodka. 90% of the vodka I’ve ever purchased has gone into make Penne alla Vodka. The other 10% was probably consumed in the form of jello shots.) To be fair to myself and Trevor and our drinking habits, we also have 5 open bottles of Whiskey/Bourbon and 7 bottles of rum (5 of which are Captain Morgan from the campaign we did with them two years ago), so we might just be booze-hoarders. Perhaps after I finish the 5-month long project of cleaning out my closet, I should move on to cleaning out the liquor cabinet. For which the obvious thing to do is throw a massive party, except now all our friends are old and mostly drink wine and beer. But I’m digressing, let’s get back to tequila.

When Kate from Hola Jalapeño reached out about participating in an enticing-sounding event called Margarita Week, I was on board for all sorts of reasons. One, I love margaritas. Two, not gonna lie, I was really thrilled to finally be included in one of those fun online blogger events that I see happen all the time but never get invited to. Three, Kate is super sweet and has been leaving nice comments on my blog forever, which always reminds me how bad I am about the friendliness part of blogging. Four, I thought that if I could make enough margaritas, maybe I could kick another bottle of tequila. This was a win-win-win situation.

My contribution to Margarita Week is this Asian-inspired Sparkling Lemongrass-Ginger Margarita. It’s loosely inspired by a Lemongrass-Ginger Hot Toddy that we had several times at one of our favorite restaurants in Hong Kong, Chôm Chôm. I will definitely be sharing that hot toddy with you in the future, but since I’m hoping hot toddy weather is behind us until next fall, we’re doing it in margarita form for now. This has a fragrant lemongrass-ginger syrup, tequila, spicy fresh ginger beer, and an utterly addictive sugar-salt-lemon-ginger rim. Once you have the lemongrass-ginger syrup in your fridge, it takes all of 60 seconds to put these together.

For lots more margaritas, be sure to check out Kate’s Margarita Week page, as well as some of the totally gorgeous drinks below (I’ll keep updating as the week goes on, so check back for more tequila). If you join in on the fun, be sure to use the #MargaritaWeek hashtag!

• Mexicana Margarita from Vanilla and Bean
• Elderflower Margarita from Autumn Makes and Does
• Broiled Grapefruit Margarita from The Cookie Rookie
• Strawberry Rhubarb Margarita from Nutmeg Nanny
• Mint Cucumber & Smoky Jalapeno Margarita from She Eats
• Honey Margarita from Sweet Life Bake
• Frozen Peach and Chambord Mezcal Margarita from Holly & Flora
• Fresh Ginger Margarita from Always Order Dessert

Sparkling Lemongrass-Ginger Margaritas

Serves 4.

• 2 stalks lemongrass
• 1 c. plus 2 TBS sugar
• 1 c. water
• 1 1/2 inches fresh ginger root, peeled and cut into slices
• juice of 1 lemon
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1 tsp freshly grated ginger
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 8 oz. tequila
• 2 bottles ginger beer, cold
• ice to serve

1. Make the syrup. Use a serrated knife to cut the lemongrass into pieces about 1 inch long. You will only be using the juicier, white part of the lemongrass, not the dry green end. I usually use about 2/3 of a fresh lemongrass stalk. Add the lemongrass, 1 cup of the sugar, the water, and the ginger root slices to a small saucepan. Bring to a gentle simmer, then simmer on medium-low until the syrup is fragrant and the lemongrass and ginger are soft, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Strain the syrup into a clean glass jar, discarding the leftover lemongrass and ginger. Set aside. (After making margaritas, store any leftover syrup in the fridge)
2. Combine the remaining 2 TBS sugar, lemon zest, grated ginger, and sea salt in a small bowl and mix together until evenly combined. Rub one of the used lemon rinds around the rim of each glass you are using to moisten the rim, then dip the glasses one by one into the sugar-salt mixture, pressing the sides of the glass against the bowl to create a sugar-salt rim.
3. Add 2 TBS of the lemongrass-ginger syrup and 2 ounces of tequila to each glass, being careful not to disturb the sugar rim. Add 2-3 ice cubes and use a long spoon to give the drink a stir. Top the drink up with cold ginger beer and serve immediately.

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We are (very) slowly starting to settle in to our new house. The pile of unpacked boxes in the dining room is dwindling, and things are starting to find homes. I built a little herb garden, not exactly a priority as far as house projects go but something that I’ve been looking forward to since we decided to buy a house. Yesterday we caved and bought a mini-fridge to tide us over until our real fridge is available, and a chilled glass of lemonade in this 95° heat is already worth the cost of the fridge, in my book. Trevor ripped out some of the old cabinets and replaced them with gorgeous industrial-style pine shelves, and we now have a plan to make the kitchen usable for the next 12 months or so while we save up to truly remodel it. Things are still a little chaotic, but they’re looking up.

With a few surfaces cleared and cleaned, at least a little cold storage, and a place to store our groceries, we’re easing back into cooking.  The very first meal was a package of frozen tortellini and a jar of tomato sauce. Gourmet, I know. Last night we were more ambitious and fired up the grill for sausage, peppers, and onions, along with grilled corn on the cob. Today, I’ve managed to have all my meals at home – cereal (ice cold milk, what a delicious thing!), tomato-lentil-couscous, and now, this Smoked Salmon Soba Bowl. Because there are still a number of kitchen tools we haven’t unearthed, and because we’re just starting to build up a new pantry, I needed to keep this meal super simple, and it is. The only cooking is to boil the soba noodles and edamame, then the noodles get tossed with a 5-ingredient dressing, and topped with smoked salmon, avocado, and pickled ginger. Simple, healthy, and full of flavor. And there’s something supremely satisfying about slurping cold, nutty noodles straight from the bowl when it’s too hot to think. Enjoy, and stay cool!

Smoked Salmon Soba Bowl

A quick and easy summer dinner, delicious served at room temperature or chilled. I make this with store-bought hot-smoked salmon, making it even easier to get dinner on the table.

Dressing adapted from this Sprouted Kitchen recipe. 

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Prep Time: 15m
• Cook Time: 10m
• Total Time: 48 minute
• Yield: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1/4 c. tahini
• 2 TBS honey
• 2 TBS soy sauce
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 1 TBS rice wine vinegar
• 8 oz. soba noodles, cooked according to package directions
• 1 c. shelled edamame, cooked according to package directions
• 1 avocado, pitted and cut into cubes
• 8 oz. hot-smoked salmon
• 1 oz. pickled ginger slices
• sesame or poppy seeds for garnish

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together tahini, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, and rice wine vinegar until smooth. Taste and adjust flavors to your liking. Set aside.
2. Toss the prepared soba noodles with the edamame and the dressing. Chill until ready to serve. To serve, divide noodles between plates and top with avocado cubes, pieces of salmon, pickled ginger, and sesame or poppy seeds.

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Another post brought to you from on the road, although this time it’s not exactly planned. Trevor and I spent the last 5 days on vacation in the USVI, for some much needed sun and unplugged time. I’m pretty sure it was not particularly high on Trevor’s all-time-best vacation list, given that he’s been battling a sinus/ear infection pretty much since we landed on the island, but it was still great to be outside and soak in the views, even if we took it a little slower than we might have otherwise. However, since we were supposed to fly back into Boston Monday night and Blizzard Juno (man, I really hate that they name snowstorms now) had other ideas, we are now on an unplanned, extended layover in Miami. It’s a little bit of a pricey layover… but things could be a lot worse. A) We aren’t stuck in Boston pining for a missed vacation and B) we’re on a beach while everyone at home is just listening to the wind howl and watching the snow pile up.

So I’m still mostly in vacation mode, but I am starting to think ahead to what needs to be taken care of when I get home, and what’s coming up in the next couple of weeks. And one of those things is the big game this weekend. I’m not really much of a sports fan, but over the past 5 or 6 years, I’ve watched my baby brother turn my parents into diehard Patriots fans, to the point where I’ll show up in the house on game day to find everyone dressed in jerseys and cheering loudly for individual players. It’s a bit incongruous with my memories of growing up – my dad always loved soccer, but baseball, football, and basketball were things we played outside, not watched on TV. I’m OK with it, though, because if there’s one thing I can appreciate about watching football, it’s the food that comes with it. Nachos, chili, wings, guacamole, and pizza – it’s like junk food heaven. Of course when my family is cooking, junk food tends to be not that junky – homemade pizza and chili with cornbread are a far cry from the greasy fryolator food we associate with huge crowds and stadiums.

These wings are another example of classic stadium finger food given a healthier and more refined twist. Marinated in an exciting, Korean-inspired sauce, then baked instead of fried, they’re a bit more gourmet than buffalo wings but equally delicious. The sauce is primarily a mixture of gochujang – a spicy Korean red pepper paste – and pomegranate molasses, which adds tang and depth of flavor in addition to sticky sweetness. A few other strong flavors: fresh ginger, honey, and umeboshi plum vinegar round out the intense sauce for a balanced, spicy-sweet chicken wing. Tossing the sticky wings in toasted sesame seeds and chopped cashews after baking gives them a bit more crunch, and adds another element of flavor. While beer is the obvious choice for football-watching, it’s not the only one. I’m personally much more of a wine-lover, and these wings go just as well (if not better) with a glass of light red as with a cold beer. If you’re also a wine-lover, the La Crema Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir is a great pairing for these. The pomegranate notes in both the wine and the wing sauce will complement one another, and the Pinot Noir’s relatively light body makes it a good choice for serving with spicy food.

Find the recipe for these wings over on the La Crema blog!

Disclaimer: This post is sponsored by La Crema. All opinions are honest and my own.

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Hello from JFK’s terminal B! I am on my way home from Bogota, where I spent most of last week for work. It was the first of several trips I’ll take there this year, and while I didn’t have much free time to explore, I did get to explore the food. And it’s good – hearty stews of chicken, rice, and plaintain; lime and coconut shakes that taste like key lime pie in a glass; and big bowls of beans, beef, corn, and chorizo. Plus a little bit of avocado on top of almost everything for good measure. Despite the difficulties of exercising at 8,600 feet, I struggled through a few workouts just so I could keep indulging.

As much as I enjoyed eating my way through the city, I will say that I’m looking forward to a few vegetable-driven meals this weekend to recover. I’m thinking that perhaps another batch of these Soba Noodles with Asian Pesto will be just the thing The light, bright flavors of these noodles are just right after a weekend/week of heavy eating – and getting an eyeful of color on your plate in the middle of January doesn’t hurt, either. The pesto is adapted from a favorite Ming Tsai recipe – it skips the garlic and cheese, adds jalapeno and ginger, and complements the basil with cilantro and mint. It’s a little bit sweet and a little bit spicy, and a whole lot of green. Here I’ve mixed it with soba noodles, edamame, raw carrot “noodles,” and red pepper, but other vegetables would not be out of place either. It’s a flexible recipe, just right for reminding ourselves that eating vegetables can be delicious, even in the middle of winter.

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Soba Noodles with Asian Pesto

Pesto recipe adapted from Ming Tsai. Serves 4.

• 1/3 c. canola oil
• 1 jalapeno, stem removed and pepper cut into chunks (remove seeds if you don’t like much heat)
• 1 1/4 c. salted and roasted cashews, divided
• 1 inch fresh ginger, peeled
• 1/4 c. freshly squeezed orange juice
• 1 c. fresh basil leaves
• 1 c. fresh cilantro leaves
• 1/3 c. mint leaves
• 1 TBS honey
• salt and pepper to taste
• 8 oz. soba noodles
• 1 c. frozen shelled edamame
• 2 carrots, cut into “noodles” using a julienne peeler or spiralizer
• 1 red bell pepper, seeded and finely diced

1. Make the pesto: add 1 TBS of the canola oil, the jalapeno, 1 cup of the cashews, and the ginger to a food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add the orange juice, basil, cilantro, mint and honey, and begin processing, slowly drizzling in the rest of the canola oil until a smooth consistency is reached. Stop the processor and season to taste with salt and pepper.
2. Cook the soba noodles according to package directions. 2 minutes before they are done, add the edamame to the boiling water. Drain and set the noodles and edamame aside. Roughly chop the remaining 1/4 cup of cashews. Toss the noodles with 1 cup of the pesto, the carrot “noodles,” the chopped cashews, and the chopped red bell pepper. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve room temperature or chilled.

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August’s fitness goal isn’t a fitness-goal per-se – it’s less about exercise and weight loss than it is about overall health. Despite my concerns about backsliding in July, I managed to keep the scale slowly moving downwards, getting in a solid but not stellar 4 workouts a week. I stuck to my 8 different kinds of exercise commitment too: running, strength training, ballet, hiking, swimming, cardio kickboxing, jump rope, and rock climbing. It’s fun to use your body in so many different ways. What I have not been so good about in recent weeks is keeping my stress levels in check. Work has been busy and time has been short, and I found myself teetering on the edge of illness three times in July. I know what works for my body – sleep, hydration, and mental down-time – but sometimes I fail to prioritize those things. So for August, I’m focusing on taking care of myself and giving myself room to breathe. Partly this involves 10-minute morning yoga sessions at least once or twice a week, partly it involves stretching and turning all the electronics off before bed, and partly it involves toting around big thermoses of herbal tea. I’ve also been toying with the idea of learning to meditate – I’ve never tried it, but like the idea. All together, these things do not make a goal, just a focus area: relax. In a way I’m giving myself a month off from rules – and that’s part of the point.

This same mentality explains the quietness around here in the past few weeks. I love blogging, but some weeks it’s just too much to cook, shoot, edit, and write on top of everything else going on. This month I’m actively cutting myself some slack on the blogging front: certainly not giving it up, but also not beating myself up for delaying a post 1 or 3 or even 5 days from when I had originally planned it (this post being a prime example). That said, we have a gorgeous haul of garden produce this week, and I’m really excited to crank things up in the kitchen again – I’m currently experiencing a refreshing burst of creativity, and I can’t stop writing down recipe ideas. Most of these ideas seem to center around zucchini and summer squash, which are practically rolling out of our fridge every time we open the door. Zucchini noodles are a popular way of using up the abundant vegetable, but I find a bowl of raw zucchini strings a bit unappetizing. Mixed half and half with green tea soba noodles, though, I could eat a whole lot of it. I tossed this easy combination with an Asian-inspired honey-ginger-soy sauce and a few handfuls of sliced herbs, and Trevor and I gobbled it up. You could get creative and add sliced carrot, bell pepper, and scallions for additional flavor and crunch, but I wanted to keep this version all green. However you decide to spin it, it’s a healthy and refreshing summer lunch.

In September we’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming – both on the fitness goals and blogging frequency front. Despite the fact that I’ve been out of school for three years, September still feels most like the time for new beginnings, and so August feels like the ramp-up period for that. Alternatively you might think of August as the last month of sunshine and lazy summer weekends before diving back into the meat of the year – so take the time to stop, breathe, and enjoy it. That’s what I’m doing.

Past Fitness Challenges

January: 10 Visits to the YMCA; Recipe: Gluten-Free Olive-and-Feta Corn Muffins
February: One vegan meal every day; Recipe: Pakistani Chickpea Pulao with Sweet-Hot Date-Onion Chutney
March: Run 40  miles in 20 days; Recipe: Chocolate-Dipped Almond Butter Cookie Bites
April: Walk 8,000 steps a day; Recipe: Herb-Flecked Spring Couscous
May: 180 minutes of Nike Training Club; Recipe: Warm Arugula Salad with Maple Mustard Dressing
June: Fresh fruit/veggies at every meal; Recipe: Chickpea Crepes with Grilled Curried Chicken and Mango Salsa
July: 8 different types of exercise; Recipe: Homemade Spinach Wraps with Chopped Greek Salad Filling

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Monthly Fitness Goals: August // Green Tea and Zucchini Noodles with Honey-Ginger Sauce

Zucchini noodles are a great way to eat lots of veg, but I can’t quite get over the feeling that I’m being tricked out of eating pasta, so I like to mix them 50/50 with other noodles. This quick recipes mixes zucchini noodles with green tea soba, honey-ginger sauce, and lots of basil and mint.

• Author: Katie at the Kitchen Door
• Prep Time: 15
• Cook Time: 10
• Total Time: 25 minutes
• Yield: 2-3

Ingredients

• 8 oz. green tea soba noodles (or regular soba noodles)
• 1 large or 2 medium zucchini
• sea salt
• 3 TBS olive oil
• 1 TBS grated fresh ginger
• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and grated
• 2 tsp sesame oil
• 2 TBS honey
• 2 TBS soy sauce
• juice from 1 Meyer lemon
• 15–20 leaves fresh basil
• 15–20 leaves fresh mint

Instructions

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the soba noodles according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
2. Use a julienne peeler to cut the zucchini into long noodles. Place zucchini noodles in a colander and salt liberally. Place colander over a bowl and let drain for at least 15 minutes.
3. Heat the olive oil in a small pan over medium heat. Add the grated ginger and grated garlic and fry until golden brown and fragrant, about 2-3 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent sticking. Remove from heat and stir in the sesame oil, honey, soy, and Meyer lemon juice until a smooth sauce is formed. Add the sauce to the soba noodles and toss to coat.

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The Book: Even before I got to the recipe section of Anya Kassoff’s new book, The Vibrant Table, I knew I would like it. Discussing her healthy eating philosophy in the introduction, Anya writes that she creates “recipes that utilize the most nourishing ingredients in the tastiest ways possible… without feeling confined or making too many rules.” I sometimes struggle with my feelings about diet labels – vegan, raw, gluten-free, paleo, whole 30, etc. On the one hand, at their most basic level, they all encourage eating more whole foods and vegetables, a principle that’s hard to argue with. But move beyond the basic principles, and I get really frustrated with the focus on excluding “bad” things instead of eating more “good” things, as well as by the diet-shaming communities that unfortunately seem to pop up around popular diets (loved Shanna’s post about that a while back). Personally, I like to think I’m of the “everything in moderation” camp, and I would never sacrifice flavor for health, so it was refreshing to hear those feelings echoed in a book with the tagline “Recipes from my always vegetarian, mostly vegan, and sometimes raw kitchen.”

Anya and her daughter Masha are the writer/photographer team behind the popular blog Golubka, and they’ve managed to translate the same helpful and friendly tone and gorgeous photography that have mad their blog a success into this cookbook. The Vibrant Table will inspire you for every meal of the day, with as many healthy breakfast recipes and snacks as savory lunch and dinner ideas. Since I’m a bit of a Russophile, the dishes with a strong Russian influence hold special appeal to me, and I loved getting glimpses of Anya’s memories into summer days at their dacha, foraging for mushrooms and berries. Most of the recipes require a medium effort level: they’re not extremely simple, nor are they overly complex. There also aren’t too may “out there” ingredients (by which I mean the dairy and meat replacements and weird alternative powders that some vegetarian/vegan recipes rely so heavily on, and really turn me off as an omnivore). Instead, the focus is on whole foods and natural flavors you’ll be able to find fairly easily. True to the title, the food really is vibrant, and I love that the photography, which is light-filled and richly colored, compliments the bright and healthy feel of the food so gorgeously.

The Food: I cooked dinner from this book the same day it arrived in the mail – I was so inspired by it that I went out to the store just so I could make the Chickpea Crepes with Mango Salsa that night. I later adapted that recipe to have more Indian flavors and served it with grilled curried chicken (recipe here!), and I’m sure it’s one of many recipes inspired by this book that will enter my regular dinner rotation. For this post, I’m sticking to a recipe that I didn’t feel the need to adapt in the slightest – these beautiful, refreshing Peach and Avocado Summer Rolls. These summer rolls are packed with an astounding number of bright, juicy flavors. Even though they’re one of the main ingredients, the peaches feel unexpected with each bite, when gorgeous little bursts of peach juice mix with the creamy avocado and toothy rice paper. The sauce, too, is intense and delicious, with both the sourness of the tamarind and the saltiness of the soy making it mildly addictive. I will certainly be making these again – they make a filling summer dinner that’s not heavy in the slightest – but I’ll definitely need to practice my wrapping technique (i.e. please excuse the messy styling in these pictures).

Recipe Shortlist: Cacao Buckwheat Granola; Apple and Carrot Breakfast Salad; Zucchini, Chocolate, and Blueberry Pancakes; Marinated Stuffed Poblano Chiles; Golden Gazpacho; Lazy Sweet Potato Dumpling Soup; Beet and Buckwheat Gnocchi; Zucchini Spaghetti with Nectarines and Pumpkin Seed Pesto; Fresh Fig Cupcakes; Earl Grey Poached Pears with Hazelnut Panna Cotta

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Disclaimer: I received a review copy of The Vibrant Table from Roost Books, but I was not otherwise compensated and all thought and opinions are my own.

Peach and Avocado Summer Rolls

Recipe from The Vibrant Table. Makes 15 rolls.

• 4 TBS smooth almond butter
• 2 TBS tamarind paste
• 1 TBS maple syrup
• 1 TBS grated fresh ginger
• 1 tsp soy sauce [Note: I used 3 TBS to get the sauce to a good consistency, and the flavor was still good]
• 2 medium ripe avocados, peeled, pitted, and sliced
• 1 lime
• 3/4 c. pistachio nuts, chopped
• 1 TBS plus 1 tsp hazelnut oil
• sea salt
• 3-4 oz. baby spinach
• 15 rice paper wrappers
• 3 medium peaches, pitted and thinly sliced
• 1 c. mixed fresh basil and mint leaves

1. To make the sauce, whisk together the almond butter, tamarind paste, maple syrup, ginger, and soy sauce until smooth. You may need to increase the amount of soy to get a thinner sauce if using very thick almond butter. Taste, and adjust balance if necessary.
2. Place the avocado slices in a shallow dish and squeeze the lime juice over them. In a small bowl, mix the pistachios with 1 tsp of the hazelnut oil and a pinch of sea salt (only if using unsalted pistachios) and set aside. In a large bowl, combine the spinach leaves with the remaining 1 TBS of hazelnut oil and toss gently with your hands to coat the spinach.
3. Fill a large flat dish (such as a pie plate) with slightly warm water. Soak the rice paper wrappers in the warm water one at a time, submerging each wrapper evenly and soaking until soft. As you remove each wrapper from the water, fill it immediately: place 1-2 peach slices in the middle, top with 2-3 avocado slices, a handful of spinach leaves, a few basil or mint leaves, and a small spoonful of pistachios, followed by 1 more peach slice. Don’t overfill the wrapper, as it will be difficult to roll. To roll it, fold the bottoms of the wrapper up over the filling on both sides, then roll to close. Repeat until all your filling is used. Serve immediately with the dipping sauce.

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There isn’t always something to say about dinner. As a blogger, this fact sometimes stumps me. But food isn’t always nostalgic, or earth-shatteringly creative. Sometimes, dinner is what it is simply because it uses what you had in the fridge and it was the Friday of a long week, so you wanted something more than a quick omelette or a salad. Something hearty that would go well with a much-needed cold beer.

That’s all the story there is behind these short ribs. They were simple and satisfying and good enough to share. The Asian flavors in the spice rub on the beef married well with the lightly dressed soba noodles, and the raw peppers and snow peas provided a nice freshness and crunch. I adapted the recipe from The Great Meat Cookbook, where I turned as soon as I realized my original plan for the short ribs (goulash) wasn’t going to pan out. I reviewed the book late last year, but I’ll say again that it’s an excellent resource for a meat cooking novice. And with that, I’ll leave you all to enjoy your weekend.

Vietnamese-Style Short Ribs with Soba Noodle Salad

Adapted from The Great Meat Cookbook. Serves 2.

• 1/2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder (I made my own)
• 1-1/2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 2 TBS plus 1 tsp dark brown sugar, divided
• 2 lbs beef short ribs
• 1 TBS peanut oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 tsp minced fresh ginger
• 1 1/2 c. chicken or beef stock
• 1 TBS Asian fish sauce
• 2 TBS plus 1 tsp rice vinegar, divided
• 1 1/2 tsp soy sauce
• 1 whole star anise
• 8 oz. dried soba noodles
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 1 red pepper, washed, stemmed and seeded, and sliced into thin strips
• 1 c. fresh snow peas, washed and sliced in half on the diagonal
• minced fresh mint or cilantro, for garnish

1.  In a small bowl, mix together the five-spice powder, paprika, salt, pepper, and 1 tsp of the brown sugar. Rub this spice mixture all over the short ribs, then place on a platter, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight.
2. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Heat the peanut oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add the short ribs and sear for 1 to 2 minutes per side, until nicely browned all over. Remove the short ribs and set aside. Add the onion to the dutch oven and saute for 5 minutes, until softened. Add the garlic and ginger and saute 2 minutes longer, stirring. Add the stock, fish sauce, 2 TBS of the rice vinegar, the soy sauce and the star anise. Scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan, and bring to a boil. Return the short ribs to the pan, cover, and place in the preheated oven.
3. Cook the short ribs in the oven for 90 minutes, flipping them over and checking for done-ness every 30 minutes. They are done when they are tender enough to pierce with a fork, but are not falling apart. Remove the ribs from the oven but keep covered.
4. Put a pot of water on to boil and prepare soba noodles according to package directions. While they are cooking, degrease the sauce from the ribs, and add 1 cup of it to a small saucepan. Stir in the remaining 2 TBS brown sugar and 1 tsp rice vinegar. Bring to a boil over medium heat and reduce to make a thick, syrupy sauce, stirring frequently.
5. When the noodles and sauce are done, toss the noodles with the sesame oil, sauce, and prepared peppers and snow peas. Serve with the short ribs and chopped mint or cilantro.

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I may have found a new favorite cookbook. When I look through upcoming cookbook releases and think about which books I want to include in my reviews, some are obvious choices – books that have received a lot of advanced praise, like Vegetable Literacy or Gran Cocina Latina, or books that were written by my favorite bloggers, like the upcoming Vegetarian Everyday from the blog Green Kitchen Stories. Others I choose on more of a whim, and the fact that The Chef’s Collaborative Cookbook ended up on my desk is the happy result of one of those whims.

The Chef’s Collaborative is an organization founded by a group of like-minded chefs in the early 90’s to promote the ideas surrounding sustainable food. The organization now has 6,000 members, 115 of whom have contributed recipes which celebrate local, sustainable ingredients to this collection. Personally, I was happy to see so many local Boston and Cambridge chefs contributing to this book – Jody Adams and Brian Rae of Rialto (Pan-Seared Black Bass with Pepper Stew and Spicy Green Pesto), Ana Sortun of Oleana (Sweet Potato Chickpea Dolmas with Spinach and Crispy Mushrooms), Barry Maiden of Hungry Mother (Heirloom Beet and Upland Cress Salad with Apples, Grapefruit, and Fennel-Buttermilk Dressing), and a dozen others. (Side note: I feel really lucky to be able to walk to so many incredible restaurants. I need to start branching out beyond the Indian place around the corner.) In line with the organization’s mission, this book brings a lot of helpful information about navigating “ethical” eating in today’s world to the table – there are many side-bars with information about label-reading, understanding GMOs, why you should choose grass-fed, and more. Of course, some of these topics are controversial, so you should always read with a critical eye, but this book does begin to answer a lot of the most common questions about food politics.

Now, on to the food: I want to cook everything in this book – the Asparagus, Spinach and Spring Pea Lasagna, the Chestnut Waffles with Roasted Apples and Cream, the Smoked Rabbit and Andouille Gumbo, the Wild Ramp and Farmstead Cheese Strata with Roasted Tomato Wine Butter, even the Spicy Calamari with Tomatoes and Saffron Aioli (I don’t eat seafood…). Every recipe makes me drool a little bit. I think the book really benefits from having contributions from so many talented chefs with different aesthetics – all the recipes are creative but in slightly different ways, meaning each recipe seems fresh and the collection of recipes doesn’t feel the least bit tired. Just flipping through it is getting me beyond excited for our growing season to start in earnest. The first recipe I tried, these Thai Pork Sliders, was a slam dunk on all accounts. I’ve been craving a burger for a while (OK, let’s be honest, I’m always craving a burger), and these little umami-packed bites where just the ticket – craving 100% satisfied.

I went all out on this recipe, guys – homemade slider buns, homemade pickles, homemade aioli. It was all surprisingly easy. The slider buns only took 40 minutes from start to finish, with a quick ten minute rise built-in that gave me time to do the dishes before popping them in the oven. The pickles were an essential part of the recipe, but really required nothing more than making a quick salad. The Sriracha aioli was a last minute decision, based on a hunch that these might need something a little creamy to tie them together, and it made all the difference in the world. It’s addictive stuff.

I have to add – Trevor told me while eating these sliders that he gives this book a rating of “seven forks and a spoon.” When I asked what scale this was on, his answer was “the scale of silverware.” I’m pretty sure this means he approves, as well as that he finds himself very amusing. (I suppose he should also get credit for frying the burgers and doing the dishes…)

The bottom line: The Chef’s Collaborative Cookbook is an instant favorite for me. The creativity and quality of recipes in this book – all of which truly celebrate local, seasonal produce, from  quinces and fava beans to fiddleheads and wild crab apples – really help it stand out from the crowd. It’s not a book that will explicitly teach you the basics, but it will bring exciting, restaurant-worthy food down to a level that’s accessible for a home cook. Recommended for anyone who is looking to explore the principles of local, seasonal cooking, or who simply wants to bring a new level of creativity into their kitchen.

Disclaimer: Taunton Press sent me a review copy of The Chef’s Collaborative Cookbook, but I was not otherwise compensated for writing this review and all opinions are my own.

Thai Pork Sliders with Pickled Cucumbers

Recipe adapted slightly from The Chef’s Collaborative Cookbook. Contributed by Chef Helene Kennan. Makes 8-10 sliders.

Note: the only changes I made to this recipe where to include a little bit more of various seasonings – more garlic, more ginger, more herbs in the pickles. This was simply a matter of taste, but I liked the little bit of extra flavor boost. Also, you will have leftover pickles, but they’re delicious straight out of the jar, so don’t worry about using them up!

• 1 lb. ground pork
• 2 cloves garlic, finely minced 
• 2 TBS finely minced fresh ginger
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
• 2 tsp soy sauce
• 1/4 tsp white pepper
• 1/4 c. rice vinegar
• 1/4 c. honey
• 2 TBS freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 medium or 1 large cucumber, peeled and thinly sliced
• 1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
• 8 large fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped
• 16 fresh mint leaves, coarsely chopped
• 1 TBS vegetable oil
• 1/2 c. roasted salted peanuts, coarsely chopped (optional)
• 8-10 slider buns (see below for recipe)
• Sriracha aioli (see below for recipe)

1. Combine the pork, minced garlic, minced gigner, sesame oil, cinnamon, red pepper flakes, and soy sauce in a medium bowl and stir together until meat is seasoned evenly. Set aside while you prepare the pickles to let the flavors meld.
2. Whisk together the rice vinegar, honey, and orange juice in a medium bowl until the honey is dissolved. Stir in the cucumbers, chopped cilantro, basil, and mint, and thoroughly coat all the cucumbers with the dressing. Set aside.
3. Lightly coat a griddle or cast-iron pan with oil and warm over medium heat (if you don’t have a cast-iron pan, use a regular pan but use more oil). Form the pork mixture into 8-10 small burger patties. When the pan is hot, add the patties and cook for 3 minutes per side, or until firm to the touch and cooked through.
4. Serve the burgers with the pickled cucumbers and Sriracha aioli on top of the slider buns. Serve the extra pickled cucumbers on the side with chopped peanuts, if desired.

Sriracha Aioli

Makes about 1 cup of aioli.

Note: I used an immersion blender to make this aioli. There are lots of other ways to do it – including by hand, or in a food processor, if you don’t have an immersion blender. Just be sure to slowly drizzle in your oil so the emulsion doesn’t break!

• 1 egg yolk
• 1 TBS of lemon juice
• 1 tsp water
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 c. olive oil
• Sriracha, to taste (we used about 3 TBS)
• sea salt, to taste

1. Place egg yolk, lemon juice, water, and mustard in the bottom of a vessel in which your immersion blender fits snugly. Pulse the blender a few times to blend the ingredients so that they are smooth. Very slowly drizzle in the olive oil as you pulse the blender, pausing the drizzle occasionally to make sure that the aioli is coming together and turning creamy white. Continue drizzling in the olive oil while blending until you’ve used all the olive oil.
2. Remove the immersion blender and stir Sriracha and sea salt into the aioli a little at a time, tasting as you go, until your aioli has the desired flavor and heat. Refrigerate leftovers in an airtight container for a few days.

40-Minute Homemade Slider Buns

Recipe adapted slightly from Taste of Home. Makes 16 slider buns.

• 2 TBS active dry yeast
• 1 c. plus 2 TBS warm water (110°F to 115°F)
• 1/3 c. vegetable oil
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp salt
• 3 1/2 c. flour
• egg wash – 1 egg beaten with 2 tsp water
• sesame seeds

1. Preheat oven to 425°F. In a large bowl, combine yeast, water, oil, and sugar. Let sit and proof for 5-10 minutes – yeast should dissolve and get slightly goopy. Stir in egg and salt, then stir in flour a half cup at a time until you have a soft dough. Turn out dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 5-8 minutes. Break into 16 equal sized pieces and roll them into balls. Flatten slightly and place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise for 10 minutes.
2. Brush the top of each bun with a small amount of egg wash, then sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake buns for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.

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My shelf in the fridge is kind of a disaster right now. There’s leftover tamarind and palm sugar from three batches of Pad Thai, dark mushroom soy sauce and Chinese broccoli from Gong Bao Chicken, tahini from Roasted Carrot and Tahini soup, failed grapefruit and ginger bars (a precursor to these cookies) that I don’t want to eat but can’t bring myself to throw out… it’s crowded in there. I love having all these fun condiments available, but when you’re sharing a fridge with four people (read: four bottles of milk, four cartons of eggs, four bottles of soy sauce, etc.) it can feel like they’re taking up room for real food. You know, like vegetables, and chicken. The fridge situation is complicated by the fact that tonight, I’m getting my first delivery from Blue Apron, with ingredients for 3 delicious meals that will also need to make their way into the fridge. Conundrum.

So when I was thinking about what to make for Greatist this week, I knew it couldn’t require anything that wasn’t already in my fridge/freezer/pantry. As I thought about it, I realized that this is a way I should try to eat more often – using up what I have instead of always running out to get something new in order to make something just so. It’s less wasteful. So I mixed up a delicious tahini, soy sauce, and honey sauce, marinated some chicken I had waiting in the freezer in it, added some blanched Chinese broccoli, and cooked it all up in a frying pan with rice. It came out amazing – sweet and salty and satisfying – and just goes to show you that a good sauce can go a long way! Head on over to Greatist for the recipe – and feel free to use it as a blueprint for using up whatever you have languishing in your fridge.

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I’ve always been a bit of a bookworm. When I was at the height of my reading-frenzy, which was probably 4th or 5th grade, I used to keep lists of every book I read during the year, and in the summer, I’d frequently go through multiple books a day. Chapter books, of course. Now, a lot of my book time is spent with cookbooks, although don’t be surprised if you find me sitting on the floor in the used paperback section at the bookstore, a stack of 9 books I want to buy at my side. Because I had so much fun writing cookbook reviews this fall, I’ve decided to make it a more regular feature here. Hopefully, weekly, although I’m not off to a good start, given that I planned to post this on Thursday… I’m blaming blizzard preparations. So I bring you “Book Club,” a column that will feature mostly newly released cookbooks, sometimes old cookbooks, and occasionally great fiction or non-fiction I’ve been reading on the side. I hope you enjoy it!

First up is Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking, a book by Fuchsia Dunlop, which was just released on Monday. This is Fuchsia’s 3rd cookbook focused on Chinese cuisine – she is also the author of Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking and of Revolutionary Chinese Cooking: Recipes from Hunan Province. In addition, she wrote the memoir Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper detailing her food-driven journeys through China. Although not ethnically Chinese, Fuchsia certainly knows the ins and outs of Chinese cooking better than most.

Every Grain of Rice is a solid cookbook. It starts with an introduction to Chinese ingredients, utensils, and techniques, and quickly moves into recipes organized by main ingredient – tofu, leafy greens, chicken & eggs, root vegetables, mushrooms, noodles, dumplings, etc. Every recipe has a lengthy headnote, often describing the history or cultural importance of the dish, as well as the flavor and any adaptations you can make. I’m a big fan of good headnotes – when you’re confronted with a book full of a hundred recipes, it makes it so much easier to know what recipe to choose! Almost every recipe also has a beautiful, clean, full-page photograph to go with it. The photographic style is simple and bright, perfectly reflecting the food it depicts.

As I started flipping through the recipes, one of my first thoughts was: “This is how Rongjie eats.” Rongjie is my friend/co-worker who sits across from me at work. Both she and her roommate are Chinese, and everyday she brings in a lunch that one of them has made consisting of rice, some sort of dark and saucy meat or tofu dish, and dark leafy greens. It’s very different from how I eat, but also very healthy. I decided that for my recipe testing for this book, I would try and emulate this typical Chinese way of eating, by making Gong Bao Chicken, served with Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce and plain rice. And this is where things got interesting.

One challenge of Chinese cooking is that you need Chinese ingredients – which can be hard to find, depending on where you live. Since I’m fairly unfamiliar with Chinese cooking, I brought in a list of the ingredients I needed to show Rongjie and to pick her brain on what they were like, and what might be good substitutes if I could’t find them. Her suggestion? Just go to Chinatown. But I didn’t want to go by myself, so I coerced her into coming with me to show me where to go, which is how both of us ended up in an insanely crowded Chinese grocery store, two hours before the MBTA shut down for the blizzard, and two days before Chinese New Year. INSANE. But really exciting. I was super over-stimulated in there – rows and rows of bright and unfamiliar ingredients, being pushed on all sides by tiny old Chinese ladies, the smell of fish in the air, occasional announcements in Chinese that seemed to cause quite a stir among the other shoppers… it was an experience. But I got what I needed – dark soy sauce, Shaoxing wine, Chinkiang vinegar, potato starch, and Chinese broccoli.

When I got home, snow swirling outside, I was ready to start cooking. But after all that adventuring, I discovered that both my garlic and my ginger had somehow managed to go bad. Sigh. I went forward anyways, borrowing minced garlic and using dried ginger instead. Not as authentic as I wanted, but both dishes still tasted great, so it was all OK. The chicken in particular was delicious – sweet, salty, and spicy, with a thick tangy sauce, it was as good as any Chinese takeout I’ve had. And since I have massive bottles of soy sauce, wine, and vinegar leftover, I’m excited to start trying some of the other recipes – like Stir-Fried Beef with Black Bean and Chili, General Tso’s Chicken, and Buckwheat Noodles with Red-Braised Beef. The real test of any of these dishes, though, will be when I bring the leftovers in for lunch and get Rongjie’s expert opinion. If she has any comments, I’ll report back.

The bottom line: Every Grain of Rice is a solid cookbook that serves as a great introduction to simple Chinese cooking. Based on my limited knowledge of Chinese cuisine, the recipes seem authentic, and the few that I’ve tried have been delicious. Cooking from the book will require an investment in a few special ingredients, but once you have the basics, you’ll be able to cook most of the recipes in the book. From a design standpoint, Every Grain of Rice is clean and well organized, with plenty of beautiful full-page photographs. I’d recommend this to anyone who likes eating Chinese food, or who is interested in learning a new cuisine.

Disclaimer: I was sent a free review copy of Every Grain of Rice by the publisher, W.W. Norton, but I was not otherwise compensated to write this review and all opinions are my own!

Gong Bao Chicken with Peanuts

Reprinted from Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop. Copyright © 2012 by Fuchsia Dunlop. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company.

• 2 boneless chicken breasts, with or without skin (11–12 oz/300–350g in total)
• 3 garlic cloves
• An equivalent amount of ginger
• 5 spring onions, white parts only
• A handful of mild dried chillies (about 10)
• 2 tbsp cooking oil
• 1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
• 3 oz (75g) roasted peanuts

For the marinade:

• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp Shaoxing wine
• 11/2 tsp potato flour

For the sauce:

• 1 tbsp sugar
• 3/4 tsp potato flour
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp Chinkiang vinegar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp chicken stock or water

1. Cut the chicken as evenly as possible into 1/2 in (11/2cm) strips, then cut these into small cubes. Place in a small bowl. Add the marinade ingredients together with 1 tbsp water, mix well and set aside while you prepare the other ingredients.
2. Peel and thinly slice the garlic and ginger and chop the spring onions into chunks as long as their diameter (to match the chicken cubes). Snip the chillies in half or into sections. Discard their seeds as far as possible. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.
3. Heat a seasoned wok [or frying pan] over a high flame. Add the oil with the chillies and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry briefly until the chillies are darkening but not burned (remove the wok from the heat if necessary to prevent overheating). Quickly add the chicken and stir-fry over a high flame, stirring constantly. As soon as the chicken cubes have separated, add the ginger, garlic and spring onions and continue to stir-fry until they are fragrant and the meat just cooked through (test one of the larger pieces to make sure).
4. Give the sauce a stir and add it to the wok, continuing to stir and toss. As soon as the sauce has become thick and shiny, add the peanuts, stir them in and serve.

Chinese Broccoli in Ginger Sauce

Reprinted from Every Grain of Rice: Simple Chinese Home Cooking by Fuchsia Dunlop. Copyright © 2012 by Fuchsia Dunlop. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company.

• 3/4 lb (350g) Chinese broccoli
• Salt
• 4 tbsp cooking oil
• 2 tbsp finely chopped ginger
• 1 tbsp Shaoxing wine
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp potato flour mixed with 1 tbsp cold water (optional)

1. Bring a large panful of water to a boil (a generous 21/2 quarts/21/2 liters will do). Wash and trim the Chinese broccoli. If the lower parts of the stems are thick and fibrous, peel away their outer skin with a potato peeler.
2. When the water is boiling, add 1 tbsp salt and 1 tbsp oil, then the Chinese broccoli. Blanch it for a minute or two to “break its rawness.” The stems should be just tender, but still crisp. If you are stir-frying them immediately, simply drain the broccoli stems and shake dry in a colander; if you want to serve them later, refresh the stems under a cold tap to arrest cooking before draining well.
3. When you wish to serve the broccoli, add the remaining oil to a seasoned wok over a high flame, swirl it around, then add the ginger and sizzle briefly until you can smell its fragrance. Splash in the Shaoxing wine and add the sugar. Add the broccoli and stir-fry, adding salt to taste, until it is piping hot. (If you are using broccoli blanched earlier, then cooled, you will need to pour 2–3 tbsp water or stock into the wok and cover it, so the stems reheat thoroughly.)
4. Remove the stems from the wok and lay them neatly on a serving dish. If you wish to thicken the juices, give the potato flour mixture a stir and add just enough, in stages, to thicken the sauce to a clingy consistency; then pour the sauce over the broccoli and serve. If you do not wish to thicken the juices, simply pour them and the ginger over the broccoli.

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I made small changes to each of the three recipes I tried. In general, I don’t think it’s fair to review a recipe that you’ve changed, since you’re no longer reviewing the recipe as the author tested it. In this case, however, what I was really testing were the sauces, and for the most part, I didn’t change those. I also made each dish in a way that was practical to me – e.g. I don’t eat shrimp, so I’d never include it, and I’m unlikely to have “sweet preserved shredded radish” around, even if I were to cook Thai food regularly.

Some general tips for cooking any of these recipes – have all your ingredients prepped and ready to go before you turn on the stove, as things will move quickly once you begin cooking. Use fairly high heat so that your ingredients sizzle as you add each one. And last, don’t overcook any of the ingredients – you want your veggies to remain a little crisp and your egg to not completely dry out.

1) Bon Appetit Pad Thai

While I have a feeling that this recipe was the most authentic, it was actually my least favorite of the three. It was too sharp tasting and not balanced enough for my liking. Of course, as I mentioned above, I did make a few changes – in this case, scallions in place of garlic chives, chicken instead of shrimp, no tofu, and no preserved radish. Admittedly, these changes are fairly substantial, but the sauce just didn’t do it for me. Now, if you like a sour and slightly spicy Pad Thai, you might enjoy this dish, but it’s not going to get you that takeout flavor I suspect most of us are looking for.

2) Mark Bittman’s Pad Thai via Serious Eats

This recipe straddles the line between authentic and take-out quite nicely. It has all the complexity and flavor that I’m looking for, but the sauce was a little too thin, the sauce to noodle ratio was too high, and I found the vinegar flavor a little bit too strong. Further investigation led me to the fact that Mark’s original recipe has some substantial differences from the Serious Eats version, but I didn’t test that one out – I’ve added it to the list for the future. The changes I made to this recipe were as follows: vegetable oil instead of peanut oil, chopped endive instead of Napa cabbage (only because the only Napa cabbage at the store would have been far too large to fit in my fridge), and chicken instead of shrimp. After tasting the sauce, I also added two tablespoons of palm sugar to the sauce, as I found the sauce as written to be too sour. With the additional sweetener the flavor was pretty close to what I wanted. I think to get my perfect Pad Thai recipe, I’d have to somehow combine this recipe with number 3…

3) Easy Pad Thai from Brownies for Dinner

This recipe is decidedly the least authentic, but it was also super-duper easy, with fairly good results. I followed this one almost to the T – I just replaced the brown sugar with an equal amount of palm sugar, since I had already bought the palm sugar and I figured it would add a little more complexity. Flavor-wise, this recipe was the least challenging of the three – it would be easy for kids and picky eaters to palate. However, the trade-off was a loss of depth, and I did think the soy flavor was a little out of place. If you’re new to Thai cooking, though, I’d start with this recipe – for the amount of effort (and investment in special ingredients) you put into this recipe, I think you’ll be pleased with the end result.

The conclusion: I haven’t found my ideal Pad Thai recipe yet, but I feel a lot more knowledgeable about what works and what doesn’t. I’ve scribbled down some ideas about how I might combine recipes two and three to get what I’m looking for, and I’m going to keep testing recipes – I’ll let you know when I find a combination I love. In the meantime, if you have a favorite Pad Thai recipe, please share!

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Update: Giveaway now closed! Congrats to Andrea on winning the book (sorry, Mom, maybe next time!). Thanks to everyone for entering and leaving your favorite dishes – I have so many great Japanese recipes to try now – sounds like katsu curry and okonimyaki are must tries.

I don’t cook a lot of Asian food.  Sure, your occasional super-Americanized stir-fried rice, or a little chicken cooked in soy sauce, but rarely anything traditional.  It’s out of my comfort zone.  I have a lot of friends who are enamored with various Asian cultures, or who are part of an Asian culture and still very much tied to their family’s traditions and roots, but I’ve always been more drawn to Western food cultures – Italian, French, Irish, Polish, Czech.  It’s more accessible to me – closer to home.

This is precisely why Nancy Hachisu’s beautiful new cookbook “Japanese Farm Food” was such a wonderfully eye-opening book for me.  Just the introduction is full of new information – the best type of miso to buy for everyday use, how to grind tofu, and what, exactly, a suribashi is (it’s basically a grooved mortar and pestle for grinding seeds and nuts, if you’re wondering).  In fact, there were so many new words and ingredients and techniques in the opening chapter that I was almost a little intimidated.

I shouldn’t have worried – simplicity turned out not to be a problem.  Many of the recipes are simple, some shockingly so – like “edamame and sea salt,” or “raw egg on hot rice,” both of which are exactly what they sound like.  This level of simplicity is typically not my cup of tea in cookbooks – as someone who spends a lot of time cooking and thinking about cooking, I don’t need a book to instruct me in truly simple preparations.  However, in this book it seems appropriate.  Japanese food is simple by nature, and it is in preparing the simplest meals that technique truly counts.  There are also plenty of recipes a bit more complicated, like Chicken and Miso Meatballs or Egg Custard Squares with Crab and Spinach.  Some ingredients, such as yuzu, miso, and fresh wasabi, may be hard to find, but once you’ve sourced them, they’re used over and over again.

For anyone who grows their own vegetables or frequently finds themselves with an abundance of produce, you will find many new ways to prepare them in this book – a major plus.  Between Fried Eggplant Halves with Sweet Miso, Smashed Cucumber Pickles with Garlic, and Zucchini Coins with Roasted Sesame, I’ve taken plenty of notes on what to do with next year’s end-of-summer produce.  I should also note that the recipes in this book are intrinsically healthy, as much of traditional Japanese cuisine is.  Very few recipes call for dairy or wheat, the majority are vegetable based, and the techniques are such that the ingredients maintain most of their nutritious qualities.  If you’re looking to change your diet and lifestyle (and you like Japanese food, of course), this book may be a great source of inspiration.

But this book is not just about the food.  A big part of its charm are the short vignettes, little glimpses into Nancy and Tadaaki’s life in their Japanese farmhouse.  At first it seemed strange to me that the stories were somewhat disconnected, and not a continuous tale of Nancy’s integration into Japanese life, but I think they ended up being my favorite part.  The wannabe farmer buried inside me loved imagining the first taste of a fresh pecan grown from seed 20 years earlier, or of midsummer edamame just pulled from the bush, served hot and salty with a cold beer, the way Americans might enjoy corn on the cob.  I think any armchair traveler with the slightest interest in Japan will revel in this book.

This is a book that was very clearly assembled with a lot of thought and love.  It is not haphazardly thrown together, nor is it repeating material and recipes that those of us who consume food literature at a rapid pace have seen a hundred times.  But before I can truly condone any cookbook, I have to test out a few recipes to see if they’re worthwhile.  In this case, I started with the homemade ramen.  Ramen is a food so steeped in mystique and tradition, I was curious to see how it would turn out at home.  The answer?  Worth every minute of the 3-hour preparation.  The long-simmered chicken broth is clear and nourishing, the home rolled noodles puffy and tender, the half-boiled egg creamy and full of the broth’s flavor.  It is exactly what I want to be slurping on any cold and dreary afternoon. It definitely takes some planning ahead, and the noodles were a little bit tricky to work with, but I would absolutely make it again on a lazy Saturday.  I still have a few more recipes to test, but so far, this book passes the recipe test.

The bottom line: Japanese Farm Food is a ground-up introduction to traditional Japanese food, packed with simple, technique-focused recipes.  Nancy’s voice is strong and her stories intimate – resulting in a beautiful book that is clearly a labor of love.  I’d strongly recommend it to anyone looking to expand their repertoire of healthful (or vegetarian) recipes, learn new methods for cooking fresh produce, or to anyone with any interest in the culture and food of Japan.

Giveaway:  Thanks to the folks over at Andrews McMeel Publishing, I’m giving away one copy of Japanese Farm Food.  To enter, leave a comment below, answering the question: What is your favorite Japanese (or generally Asian, if you’ve never had Japanese food) dish?  Have you ever made Japanese food at home?  (P.s. I loved hearing your answers about your favorite winter dish – seems a lot of you love beef stew and chicken pot pie!)  For one additional entry, you can subscribe to Katie at the Kitchen Door via email or RSS, and leave a separate comment letting me know you have (you can also do this if you’re already a subscriber).  One winner will be picked at random at midnight on Friday, November 2nd.  Be sure to include your email in the comment form so I can get in touch with you!  If the winner doesn’t respond to me within 48 hours, they forfeit their winnings and I will pick a second winner.  US only, apologies to my international readers! Giveaway now closed!

Disclaimer: I was sent a free review copy of Japanese Farm Food by the publisher, Andrews McMeel, but all thoughts and opinions shared here are honest and my own.

Ramen at Home

Recipe from Japanese Farm Food, by Nancy Hachisu.  Serves 4.

For the broth:

• 2 carrots, cut into 1 inch lengths
• 2 small Japanese leeks, or 4 scallions, trimmed and cut into 1 inch lengths
• 1 inch fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
• 4 bone-in chicken thighs (or 8 wings)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 2 TBS rapeseed or sesame oil

For the noodles:

• 2 TBS sesame oil
• 2 c. flour
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 egg yolks, at room temperature

For the toppings:

• 4 eggs
• 1 small bunch chopped bitter greens, such as bok choy or kale
• 3 TBS finely chopped Japanese leeks or scallions
• 1 sheet nori, cut into eights
• Soy sauce, miso, or sea salt (to taste)

1. Make the broth.  Preheat the oven to 450°F.  Place carrots, leeks/scallions, ginger, and chicken thighs in a roasting pan, and toss with salt and oil.  Roast for 40 minutes.  Pour chicken, veggies, and all the juices into a large stockpot, and cover with 16 cups of cold water.  Bring to a boil, then lower heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour.  After 1 hour, remove the lid.  Take out 2 of the chicken thighs and place in a small bowl.  Cover the thighs with hot broth and let cool to room temperature, then shred.  Continue simmering the remaining broth for another 30-60 minutes, until it is reduced to about 8 cups.  Strain broth into a clean pot and keep warm over low heat.  Discard vegetables and remaining chicken thighs.
2. Make the noodles: mix 2 TBS of the sesame oil into the flour with your fingers until it is crumbly.  Add eggs and egg yolks and stir with your hand until incorporated, then knead on a flat, clean surface for 5 minutes until the dough is pliable but stiff.  The dough takes some force to really work it into a pliable piece.  Let dough rest 10 minutes.
3. Roll out the noodle dough to a thickness of about 1/8 inch using a pasta machine or a heavy rolling pin.  Cut into noodles by hand or using pasta machine.  Nancy recommends skinny linguine-shaped noodles, but we made thick ones because the dough wasn’t workable enough to make the smaller noodles – the thick ones worked great for us!
4. Prepare the toppings: bring a large pot of water to a boil over high-heat.  Add the eggs and boil for exactly 7 minutes, then remove with a strainer and place directly into a bowl of ice-cold water.  Let cool, then peel.  In the boiling water, blanch the bitter greens until just tender, then add to the cold water with the eggs.  Keep the water boiling – you will use it to cook your noodles just before serving.
5. Once the broth, noodles, and toppings are ready, prepare the bowls: add a small amount of miso, soy sauce, or salt to each bowl (according to diner’s preference) and pour a ladelful of hot broth over the seasoning.  Stir the broth into the seasoning.  Divide the shredded chicken amongst the bowls.  Drop the noodles into the boiling water and cook for 2 minutes – they will float up to the top when they are done.  Remove the noodles with a strainer and divide among the bowls.  Top off each bowl with a few more ladlefuls of hot broth, 1 egg cut into halves, a handful of the cooked grens, some of the nori pieces, and a sprinkling of scallions.  Serve very hot, with extra seasoning as desired.

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Dumplings.  They seem to be one of the few foods that appear in almost every global cuisine in some form: pierogi in Poland, vareniki/piroshki in Russia, gyoza in Japan, samosas in India, ravioli in Italy, etc.  There’s even a cookbook on it, called  World of Dumplings (which I haven’t read, but showed up when I googled “dumplings worldwide” and it looks interesting!).  And why wouldn’t they be ubiquitous?   They’re delicious, addictive, bite-sized, finger food, filled with pretty much anything you want.

When I got back from my weekly long run yesterday, Trevor was just finishing making a batch of these dumplings.  He made the wrappers from scratch, rolled them out, filled them, steamed them, fried them, and even took some of these pictures.  He’s pretty good, right?  I walked in the door, thirsty and starving and cold and absolutely did work on a plate of dumplings.  As in, I ate 15.  In one go, barely taking a breath.  (And this is why you should never skip breakfast…).  It reminded me of potsticker night at Andover, when we used to have competitions over who could eat the most potstickers.  I think the record was 52 – hey, we were young and athletic then.

The filling in these, another Ming Tsai combination, is a mix of ground pork and the ginger-apple chutney I made last week.  Ming wins again.  If you aren’t as ambitious/awesome as Trevor, you can buy the wrappers pre-made and these will be pretty quick to make.  But the homemade wrappers were delicious – tender and soft and not at all rubbery – so if you have the time I’d recommend giving them a try with this great tutorial from La Fuji Mama.  We also watched this video for tips on folding them.

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Pork and Ginger-Apple Chutney Potstickers

Recipe from Ming Tsai.  Makes about 40 potstickers.

• 40-50 potsticker wrappers (store-bought or use this recipe – I think we got 30 wrappers out of it)
• 1 lb. ground pork
• 2 TBS soy sauce
• 1/2 c. sliced scallions
• 1 c. ginger apple chutney
• salt and pepper
• 1 egg
• 2 TBS canola oil

1. In a medium bowl, mix together pork, soy sauce, scallions, and chutney with a spoon.  Season with salt and pepper.  Refrigerate until ready to use.
2. Mix together egg and 2 TBS of water to make an egg wash.
3. Lay out 6 of your potsticker wrappers on a cutting board.  Place 1 tsp of filling in the center of each wrapper.  Use your finger to rub egg wash around the edge of the wrapper, then fold over into a half-moon shape and tightly pinch all along the edges to seal the potsticker.  Press the straight side of the wrapper down gently on the board to allow the dumpling to stand up.  Repeat until all wrappers have been filled.
4. Heat the oil in a large pan with a lid over medium heat.  Stand the potstickers sealed side-up in the pan and cook without disturbing for 3-4 minutes.  Then, CAREFULLY add 1/2 c. water to the pan and quickly cover the pan to avoid splattering.  Once splattering has subsided, uncover pan to check that there is about a 1/4 inch of water in the pan – if not, add a little more.  Cover pan and steam for 8-10 minutes.  If the water evaporates before the potstickers are cooked (they should be puffy yet firm), add a little more.  If they seem done but there is still water in the pan, drain water from pan.  Once potstickers are cooked, recrisp in the pan without any water for 2 minutes, being careful not to let them burn.  Remove them to a platter and serve with your favorite dipping sauce.

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I had the best weekend.  Seriously, the best.  There wasn’t even anything super thrilling about it, just lots of tiny happy moments with my favorite person that added up together to make me feel totally relaxed and refreshed and joyful.  We went apple picking and then stopped in to say hi to my dad and check on the Andover garden.  We made apple cider doughnut cake, Kerala-style beef stew, pumpkin whoopie pies with maple-cream cheese, this chutney, and an amazing salad I’ll tell you about soon.  Saturday we went to the Ipswich River Sanctuary and Trevor let the birds land in his hands and there was almost no one there – it was so peaceful and so beautiful.  Sunday started off with Trevor bringing me a homemade cappuccino and a slice of this tart while I was still all tucked under the big white comforter, half-asleep and letting the sunshine and cool breeze and smell of coffee slowly stir me.  Then we lounged for 3 hours before walking a few miles to brunch at M3 and listening to all the crazy folks of Somerville play in the Honk! festival.  Later that day I ran 10 miles (and was proud of myself) before falling asleep watching Dark Shadows all warm and cozy.  I live the good life.

You want to know something else that’s good?  Ming Tsai’s recipes.  I’ve written about how he’s kind of my idol before, but seriously, this man puts great flavor into his food.  And now that I’m employed and everything, I’ve even been able to eat at Blue Ginger… where the food lives up to its reputation.  Knowing I had almost half a bushel of apples to use, this chutney immediately came to mind.  I’ve made it several times before, and I really love it – it’s tangy and a little bit spicy but still sweet.  It’s also great mixed with sour cream and slathered on potato latkes, which is how I chose to enjoy it for dinner tonight.  Leave it to Ming to revolutionize latkes and applesauce… give this one a try, for sure.  And stay tuned for more ways to use this chutney later this week!

Apple Ginger Chutney

Adapted from Ming Tsai.  Makes 4 c. chutney.

• 2 onions, diced
• 2 inches ginger, peeled and finely diced
• 1 TBS canola oil
• juice of 1 lemon
• 8 non-mealy apples (such as Fuji, Honey Crisp, or Empire), peeled and cored
• salt and pepper
• 1 c. apple cider or apple juice
• 1 c. rice wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar

1. Cut apples into even 1/4 inch cubes (this will take longer than you think so budget extra time!).  Place cubes into a large bowl and squeeze lemon juice over them to prevent from browning.
2. In a large stockpot, heat oil over medium heat.  Add onion and ginger and cook for 3-4 minutes, until onions soften.  Add apples, and season generously with salt and pepper.  Stir to coat, then cook apples for 3-4 minutes, until beginning to soften.  Add apple cider/juice and vinegar and simmer until liquid is reduced by three quarters, about 30 minutes.  Adjust seasoning to taste.  Keeps for about 1 week in the fridge.

Scallion-Potato Latkes with Apple-Ginger-Cream

Adapted from Ming Tsai.  Makes 16 latkes.

• 1 c. apple ginger chutney (see above)
• 1 c. sour cream
• 8 scallions, thinly sliced, white and green parts separated
• 4 medium russet potatoes, peeled
• 2 eggs
• salt and pepper
• 2 TBS butter
• 2 TBS olive oil

1. Mix together apple chutney, sour cream, and green parts of scallions together.  Cover and place in fridge until latkes are ready.
2. Grate potatoes on a large box grater.  Squeeze liquid out of grated potatoes into sink; place grated potatoes into large strainer set over large bowl, and continue to squeeze to remove as much liquid as possible.
3. In a large bowl, whisk eggs together gently.  Add drained potatoes and white parts of scallions and mix together.  Season with salt and pepper.
4. Heat 1 TBS olive oil and 1 TBS butter over medium-low heat in large frying pan for 3 minutes.  Form patties out of the potato mixture and place in frying pan.  Cook latkes in batches for 4-5 minutes per side, or until golden brown.  Replenish frying pan with butter and olive oil as necessary as you make multiple batches.  Place finished latkes on a plate line with a paper towel.  Serve hot with Apple-ginger-cream.

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