The first time I ordered boiling fish at a restaurant I expected some sort of spectacle — maybe a bubbling pot delivered to the table. Nope, what I got was a large bowl filled with just cooked greens and delicately cooked fish filet pieces in lots of salty-spicy-funky gravy topped with loads of chile and…
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Instant Pot Northern Indian Lamb Curry with Pumpkin (Gosht)
Several factors collided to result in my making this northern Indian curry, one of which was an Indian man who told me that he owned five (5) pressure cookers, some of which were Instant Pots. He was a Silicon Valley techie and loved using them to prepare foods of his heritage. The second motivation was…
Simple, Thrilling One-Bottle Cocktail Recipes: The Phuket and My My My Tai
I love cocktails but mostly save them for the weekends, when I have time to gather all the spirits and prep ingredients and garnishes. Plus, the weekends are when I have time to recover from drinking the cocktails. As I get older, I don’t drink alcoholic beverages as often, or with as much gusto, as…
Lobster Tail, Lily Bulb, and Ginger Stir-Fry Recipe
It had been many years since my family celebrated Tet together but for this year, Lunar New Year fell on Friday and the long President’s Day weekend. My dad has been dealing with some health issues so my husband and I drove about 7 hours to spend the weekend with my parents. I also volunteered…
Sriracha Pimento Cheese Recipe
Many people from the American South are familiar with pimento cheese but I didn’t try it until 2013. It was so fun and addictively good to eat that I been making it ever since. The cheese was properly cut into small dice so you could taste its flavor. I’ve made it from a recipe in…
Have Your Own Super Bowl: Host a Cookbook Club Pho Party!
Meet Kristin. She’s sitting in front of four (4!) bowls of homemade pho. How did she manage to score that kind of jackpot? She and her husband Eric, along with a group of friends, have a private cookbook club. “Most of us went to college together so it’s a great way to stay connected,” she…
My Immigrant Family’s Obsession with Paul Bocuse’s Soup with Truffles Recipe
“If you want to impress jaded Vietnamese guests, make French food,” my mom frequently told me while I was growing up. That’s among the reasons she made puff pastry when we came to the United States. It was as if she had been waiting all her life to knead excess moisture out of butter to…
East-West Chicken Stock
For the most part, Asian meat broths and stocks rarely include a lot of vegetables. Onion and ginger and basically it. No carrot or celery. However, for the Paul Bocuse soup with truffles, I came up with this hybrid recipe. I made it in my Fagor Lux, but you can use an Instant Pot or…
Vietnamese Any Day – A New Book Coming Up!
You’re looking at the draft of my sixth cookbook! This week, I sent the manuscript to my editor, Kelly Snowden. Vietnamese Any Day is all about helping American cooks work Viet flavors into their regular rotation. Many people who are new to Vietnamese food do not know where to begin. They’ve been seduced by the…
Sichuan Magic Dust Popcorn Recipe
Since late November, my friend Andrew Janjigian and I have made a total of about 55 batches of this popcorn. It’s his recipe, which he shared with me after I wrote about MSG in pho. When he realized that I was open to tinkering with monosodium glutamate in cooking, he sent the recipe to me….
