a culinary genealogy
Below, view all our posts in chronological order, starting with the most recent. To browse recipes by category, course, or collection, visit our Recipe Index. Also be sure to check out our How-To section and Chinese Ingredients Glossary.
Today, we’re going to talk about how to make lotus seed paste for mooncakes, steamed buns, and other Chinese pastries. With the Mid-Autumn Festival (mooncake season) coming up, I thought I’d post a recipe for this delicious filling, so you can craft your own Chinese pastries at home! My favorite application? Lotus mooncakes! What Are
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Egg rolls. They’re the quintessential Chinese takeout food. This egg roll recipe is a copycat of the basic version you’ll find in takeout places and Chinese buffets, with cabbage and roast pork in the filling. It’s been a very long time since I was regularly making them in my parents’ takeout restaurant, when we’d crank
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Golden syrup isn’t an ingredient commonly used here in the U.S. However, it’s often essential to British cooking and baking, and it’s also used in some Chinese traditional desserts, like mooncakes. Golden syrup is extremely easy to make at home, requiring just 3 common ingredients (regular sugar, water, and lemon juice), and very little active
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These wok fried peanuts are an ideal snack to keep around. You’ll see them most often in Cantonese restaurants, served in small dishes around a lazy susan along with pots of tea. They’re the perfect little appetizer while you wait for your meal to arrive. They’re also great to have around for many other dishes,
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Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls, or cha gio, are a popular and tasty appetizer. If you eat out at Vietnamese restaurants, you’ve probably tried these tasty morsels. Now you can make them at home! The first time I had good cha gio was in Austin, Texas while visiting friends. It was a great meal. I had
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This recipe for our family’s ultimate roasted tomato meat sauce is the perfect way to show off sweet late summer tomatoes. Like in Sarah’s Slow-Roasted Tomato Pasta recipe, roasting the tomatoes before adding them to the sauce heightens their tomato flavor. It really makes this sauce particularly rich and delicious. So get to your garden,
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Today, we’re sharing one of our favorite summer treats: peach squares. The recipe comes from our neighbor across the street, who shared her fruit square recipe with us years ago. We’ve been making it every summer since! A Welcome to the Neighborhood When we first moved to the neighborhood my parents still currently live in,
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Every year, when the spring weather starts to peek through, we plant our vegetables and hope for the best! Many readers have asked to see our garden, but I’ll admit we are a little self-conscious about sharing. Like any home gardener, we’re at the whim of the weather and the small creatures that pass through
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This all-purpose peanut sauce can be a life-saver when the last thing you want to do is cook an elaborate meal! Tasty on Everything This peanut sauce is great on almost anything. Tossed with noodles, drizzled over veggies, meats, or tofu, or served as a sauce for all your favorite dippables like summer rolls, chicken
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Pickled and fermented vegetables are a signature ingredient in Chinese cooking. With our garden bursting with early spring kale this year, we decided to make these Chinese Preserved Greens. You can use any leafy, robust vegetable, like tender kale, mustard greens, or radish greens, which are ideal candidates for this recipe! Preserving An Abundance of
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Nuoc Cham is a tasty and versatile Vietnamese dipping sauce and dressing. When you think of many Vietnamese dishes, it’s hard to imagine having them without it! What is Nuoc Cham? Nuoc cham is salty, sweet, and tangy sauce made from fish sauce, garlic, lime juice, sugar, chilies, and vinegar. It has a signature fish
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This tofu avocado salad is a no-cook, vegan, healthy recipe with a tangy Asian dressing that can be customized to your liking! An Excuse Not to Cook! This may surprise you to hear, but even us food bloggers get tired of cooking every now and then. I find that this is especially true when it’s
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Green Sichuan peppercorns (qīng huājiāo, 青花椒) are cousins of the more popular red Sichuan peppercorns. Like their red kin, green Sichuan peppercorns are not spicy-hot. Instead, they taste citrus-like and produce numbing micro-vibrations in the mouth when eaten, setting the stage for spicy chilies in classic Sichuan cuisine. This spicy, numbing combination is known as
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Hoisin sauce, though not included in our list of 10 Essential Chinese Pantry Ingredients, is a well-known Chinese condiment. It can sometimes be confused with sweet bean sauce (tián miàn jiàng, 甜面酱) and sweet bean paste (dòubàn jiàng, 豆瓣酱), but it has its own distinct flavor and uses. Let’s take a closer look at what
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This white sugar sponge cake recipe (白糖糕 – báitáng gāo in Mandarin or baak tong gou in Cantonese) has been a long time coming. We’ve received many requests for bai tang gao over the years! I apologize for making you all wait so long for this classic recipe. The suspense was definitely not intentional. It’s
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Today’s recipe is for every diehard Sichuan food fan out there. Fuqi feipian (夫妻肺片; fūqī fèipiàn) is about as Sichuan as it gets. It’s a dish of sliced beef and tripe, swimming in chili oil with that signature combination of fiery spice and mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns that keeps you reaching your chopsticks back into the
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One of the most sought after recipes in the plant-based cooking world is a good creamy dressing or sauce. Luckily, it’s not that difficult to achieve! With this perfect vegan garlic aioli in your arsenal, you’ll never be at a loss for a creamy, tasty condiment! The Best Sauce for Vegans and Meat-lovers Alike This
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Thai grilled chicken, or gai yang, is one of the most flavorful grilled chicken recipes you’ll ever make. Traveling to Thailand (or Laos, where the dish is called ping gai) and having this chicken hot off the grill from a street vendor is definitely on my travel bucket list. Until that day, though, making this
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