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.
I can guarantee the following: if you carefully follow the instructions below and do everything I tell you to do in this post, this sandwich will take its place among the best you’ve ever had in your life. It will blow past the Top 10, and at least crack the Top 5. Trust me. We’ve
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When my roommate and I come back to school after summer’s over, we always have an initial outpouring of crazy stories and funny things that we saw and did while we were away, and this September was no different. It’s almost like a back-and-forth ping-pong match of humorous anecdotes—one of us says something, and then
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Here is another familiar comfort food from Shanghai. As far as Shanghainese cuisine is concerned, this dish is as relevant as Hong Shao Rou (Red Cooked Pork) or Shanghai Soup Dumplings. My grandma used to make this dish with a big spoonful of the good stuff–lard. In those days, pork fat was saved and stored like
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This dish is inspired by street food we found during our trip to Xi’an. It was “tieban dofu,” or griddled tofu, using Xinjiang spices like cumin and chili. It’s tasty, healthy, and vegan! But the good news with this dish is that it has so much great flavor, you’ll never feel deprived despite its meatlessnes,
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Ok, so we acknowledge that crab isn’t the easiest critter to prepare. But Curry Crab is such a delicious and tasty dish…you just have to try it if you haven’t before! We always manage to prepare a few dishes during crab season, while the crabs are at their best. I had this dish in Macau last year,
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Here’s an easy vegetarian party appetizer idea for ya’ll. Lemon Manchego Toasts with Green Olive Tapenade. Deceptively easy, and really tasty. I opened the fridge last week and took a real good look at the condiments and other sundries on the door. Among the jars and bottles of mustard, mayonnaise, and Sriracha, I immediately pinpointed a sad
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Every time I pick up a package of crackers, the minute I see the ingredient list, alarm bells go off in my head. All those multi-syllabic words on a never-ending list that ultimately makes me mechanically return them back to the shelf where they belong. What’s funny is that I’d never thought to make my
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This steamed shrimp recipe is inspired by a dish we had at a restaurant down the street called Ku Xia (translation: “Cool Shrimp”). The restaurant serves a duo of shrimp dishes—one with garlic, and one with cilantro and green chilies. They steam the shrimp in a flavorful sauce, with glass noodles at the bottom, and
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Lots of families are big on chicken. Roast chicken, grilled chicken, chicken pastas, chicken pot-pie, chicken Caesar salad, you get the drill. But for as long as I can remember, whenever my family had a choice of protein, the default tended to be beef. Steaks, not chicken on the grill, steak, not chicken on top of
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In China, people often distinguish themselves as Southerners (南方人) or Northerners (北方人). It’s a question you’ll get often in taxis or first meetings. The biggest distinguishing features for us, anyway, are the regional cuisines. Southern cuisine is roughly more delicate, refined and sometimes sweeter in taste, while northern cuisine is a bit heavier and stronger in flavor. In
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Can you feel it guys? The days are getting shorter, the air cooler. I can smell the hayrides, apple cider, and pumpkins all the way from Beijing. In other words: summer is nearly over, my favorite season is on the horizon, and I have scarves and flannel shirts at the ready. But my nemesis, aka summer—with its white-hot
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In the continuing quest to rid our pantry of an overabundance of ground almonds, courtesy of Kaitlin and her impulsive, trigger-happy nature (she took to the food processor and was deliriously pulverizing our entire supply of almonds before she even knew what to do with them. Why? I’d put my money on sleepwalking.), I have been diligently
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This Scallop fried rice will blow your mind. It’s not just the fresh bay scallops that make it a treat for seafood lovers, it’s the XO sauce and of course, the crispy garlic chips, that bring it to another level. It all started when we received a jar of very high quality scallop XO sauce from
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When Kaitlin was here in Beijing last week (TWOL newcomers: click here for context!), she took about 2 whole pounds of almonds and ground them up into almond meal. After this moment of lapsed judgement that has of yet been left unexplained, she didn’t end up actually doing anything with the almond meal, leaving me with 2
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This vegetable lo mein isn’t so much a takeout dish makeover so much as just a really simple, versatile noodle dish that can be a staple vegetarian meal or a go-to meatless Monday dinner. Vegetable lo mein is healthy, tasty, and very easy to make. In China, fresh eggless hand-pulled noodles are readily available (understatement), so that’s
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So after we munched on the glory that was our first Frizzled Chive Flower Flatbread, we were definitely looking for other ways to cook our in-season chive flowers. And what could be better than a little chive flower Japanese tempura? We were inspired by the fried zucchini blossoms of the Mediterranean, and it turned out
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For the last couple of weeks, I found myself back in Beijing with the family. This always means food, food, food–lots of it and super cheap! We always have the list of places we go back to time and again, but this trip we discovered something new at our local wet market. Chive flowers! And
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This Hunan Steamed Fish, or “Duo Jiao Yu” in Chinese, is a famous Hunan-style dish. Traditionally, this dish is served using the upper part of the fish including the fish head (or sometimes ONLY the fish head. Uh, a really big fish head), but we have seen it served with a whole fish also. This
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