Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about the food traditions of other Asian cultures, especially during Lunar or Chinese New Year. The Vietnamese, who celebrate Tet, celebrate with a host of different foods like banh chung, thit kho, candied fruit and lots of pickles. In Singapore,...
In Asian cuisine, the bowl is ubiquitous as a receptacle for food. In Japanese tradition, donburi refers to both the dish and the oversized bowl that contains the rice topped with various ingredients. Korean bibimbap comprises a bowl of rice topped with an assortment of kimchi, seasoned...
Mothers should be celebrated every day, not just once a year, for all they have do for their children, even long after they’ve left home. That being said, we should all take advantage of Mother’s Day to show our mothers in an extra special way...
Taiwanese cuisine has languished under the culinary radar in the U.S. for far too long. To be honest, even I was unsure how Taiwanese food distinguishes from mainstream Chinese. Fortunately, I came across The Food of Taiwan—Recipes from the Beautiful Island (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015) by...
I have vivid memories of the annual dragon boat festival, also called Duan Wu Jie (端午节) or Double Fifth Festival (because it occurs on the 5th day of the 5th month of the traditional lunar calendar). Most of the time, we watched the dragon boat races (the...
Leela Punyaratabandhu is the lyrical voice behind the award-winning Thai food blog SheSimmers.com. Her debut cookbook Simple Thai Food--Classic Recipes from the Thai Home Kitchen (Ten Speed Press, May 2014) was released almost exactly one year ago on May 13. To celebrate her book's first birthday, I asked Leela to...
