After all the snow and freezing cold temps we’ve been having, I never thought I’d see the end of winter. But spring is finally here and the cherry blossoms blooming outside my window are proof of it! And that means it’s time for hanami. Hanami—or flower...
Early Monday morning, March 23, 2015, Singapore’s former prime minster, Lee Kuan Yew, passed away. You may not recognize his name but know this: Singapore wouldn’t be the affluent metropolis and economic heavyweight it is today without this great man. Under Mr. Lee's 31-year leadership, this island...
I still crave many dishes from my childhood, like ayam goreng kunyit (turmeric fried chicken), pastel panggang (a shepherd’s pie of sorts), and roti bakso (sweet pork buns). Some, I’ve tried to recreate in my own kitchen and others, I patiently wait for. I do...
Last Saturday, I had two cooking demos at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in downtown D.C. as part of their Lunar New Year family day celebrations. The weather forecast predicted snow (they were actually right!) and I was expecting maybe 5 people to show up at...
I heart noodles. Ramen. Chow mein. Pancit. And especially my mom’s mie goreng (Indonesian fried noodles). But today, I’d like to give a shout-out to a lesser known noodle dish—japchae. A classic Korean dish, you’ll find japchae on the menu at just about any Korean restaurant in the U.S. If you’re lucky...
On February 19, 2015, we will welcome the Year of the Sheep. And so begins another round of eating because a new year celebration isn't a celebration without lots of food! I’ve written many posts on Lunar New Year foods: from a Singapore favorite, raw fish...
General Tso’s chicken may be the emblematic go-to dish at Chinese restaurants across North America but this supposedly Hunan dish is virtually unknown in China. In her 2013 cookbook Every Grain of Rice--Simple Chinese Home Cooking, Fuchsia Dunlop explains that General Tso’s chicken was actually invented by...
I love eggplant: Eggplant in baba ghanouj, eggplant in spicy tomato sauce, eggplant cooked fish-fragrant-style, the list goes on. As much as I enjoy eggplant in all its permutations, one thing I don’t do much of is cook eggplant. I don’t care for the tedium of salting...
Instead of celebrating Lunar New Year like the Chinese, Koreans and Vietnamese, the Japanese celebrate the Western New Year on January 1st. This wasn’t always the case. It was only in 1873, five years after the Meiji Restoration (the revolution that transferred power from the Tokugawa shogunate to...
When one of the moms in my son’s pre-K class inivited me to her cookie exchange party, I was at a loss. Number 1: I’ve never been to a cookie exchange and had to ask how it worked (how embarrassing!). Number 2: My family doesn’t bake cookies, at...
