The Chinese Cookbook Project

The beginnings of the Chinese Cookbook Project
It all started with my daughter.
She wanted to learn to cook Chinese food. And she wanted a wok and a rice cooker of her very own for Generic Winter Holiday.
Now, if she lived with me, all of this would be much simpler. She wouldn’t need her own rice […]

Hillbillies, Greens and Pigs

West Virginia is a weird place.
Anyplace that is known for moonshiners and Mothman is bound to be seen as a tad bit odd. But I am not talking about hillbillies and banjos here. Well, not directly, anyway.
I am talking about food and culture.
I can hear it now–you are laughing and saying, “West Virginia has culture?”
Well, […]

Book Review: The Story of Corn

The Story of Corn
Betty Fussell
North Point Press: New York, New York 1992
Winner of the IACP Jane Grigson Award 1993
Out of Print
This book isn’t a cookbook, but it is a book that cooks might enjoy. It is a book that unlocks the cultural history of that most American of crops: corn.
If you think of corn only […]

An Evening With Grace Young

I remember the first time I saw Grace Young’s first book, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen.
I worked at the Borders Bookstore in Columbia, Maryland in the café as a barista. That wasn’t all I did, of course–I also was a personal chef and had just started teaching Asian cookery through Howard County Parks and […]

Introduction

If I were to open a restaurant, Tigers and Strawberries would be the name I would choose. It is in reference to an old Buddhist koan which goes something like this:
Once, a young monk was sent forth from the monastery to carry a message to another monastery far away. As he walked through the dense […]