Omelet with Chinese pickled vegetable
Soaring fuel prices are forcing many people, myself included, to reconsider everything we were taught about “good cooking.” Especially now, when we would normally be starting to prepare stews, bone-in roasts, and soups, dishes demanding hours of slow cooking. Gourds. Official harbinger of Fall. Well, these and pumpkin-spiced coffee drinks,…
Chicken with Zucchini and Water Chestnuts
Chicken with zucchini and water chestnuts is a departure from the usual chez IK. It’s not a stir-fry in the classic sense of high heat, fast cooking. Instead, the heat is turned down, and the wok gets a lid. New table? New cups? Nope. The above is dollhouse furniture. I…
Stir-fried bok-choy with seitan/stir-fried Chinese pickles with seitan
As promised, recipes incorporating seitan. The first, bok-choy with seitan, calls for widely available ingredients. The second recipe calls for Chinese pickled vegetable, which I’ve never seen sold outside an Asian market. I am fortunate to live near Asian megamarket 99Ranch. Others may not be so lucky. I posted these…
Seitan at home
Prior to encountering seitan in How To Cook Everything Vegetarian, on page 668–when Bittman says everything, he means it–I’d met it once before, in a Chinese restaurant on University Avenue in Berkeley, California. (The name of this place eludes me. Nor could I find it on the net.) Technically it…
Uighur Lamb Kebabs
It is our misfortune to inhabit what is politely termed a “mixed” area. Meaning there are lots of apartment buildings mixed in with single family homes. AT&T has terrible difficulty with this. Every time somebody moves out of an apartment, a tech comes out to the nearby box and instead…
Thai-Style Mushroom Salad (Yam het)
Fortunately for us, mushrooms aren’t endangered, bad for the environment, or likely to provoke the righteous wrath of the well-intentioned. Before they do, let’s get to the recipe: Yam or yum het–Thai mushroom salad. Yam het comes to us from Thailand. Yam or yum is Thai for salad, het…
Cooking Cucumbers
So, hi. I could regale you with the horror story entitled “my latest dental extraction,” but I’ve been gone for weeks. That says it all, right? For comic relief, it rained for ten minutes on Friday night. Northern California’s entire rainy season was compressed into those ten minutes. Trees, they…
Hot and Sour Soup
I cannot lie and say hot and sour soup is an easy prospect. Not that it’s especially difficult. It’s not, exactly. Hot and sour soup is a hassle. Here is a recipe resistant to streamlining, to convenience, to ease. It clings stubbornly to each and every little bowl, to every…
Thai-Style Chopped Chicken
Before the cultural appropriation police come knocking, know I make no claims of authenticity regarding this Thai-style chopped chicken, save one: it’s delicious. This is an immodest claim, but the ingredients do all the work. And yes, the ingredient list is longish, but committed cooks likely have most of this…
Cauliflower with tomato and onion/Cauliflower Dum
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’m working with The Greatest Tomatoes Of Europe Campaign, who sent me more tomatoes last week. They also invited me to meet them at the San Francisco Fancy Food Show, which was held at the Moscone Center January 19-22. I’ll share a few…