Barbara’s Mailbag: Wok, Don’t Run

I get a lot of email from casual and long-time readers, and it is always a joy to read each piece of it. Some of the emails are simply compliments, which is always wonderful, but often readers pose questions to me, hoping for an answer to a culinary puzzle or conundrum. Probably the one subject […]

Preserving The Chili Pepper Harvest: Chinese Chile-Garlic Sauce

This year, I planted a whiskey barrel with Thai chilies and basil; eight starts of Thai Dragon chilies, a dozen of Siam Queen basil. These relatively few plants kept us in fresh Thai ingredients for the entire summer and early fall. The rainy early summer resulted in lush growth but the first chilies were fairly […]

It’s All About The Chew: Sichuan Dry-Fried Beef

And you thought I had abandoned Chinese cookery, didn’t you? Ha! Nothing of the sort. Just because I have started doing research on recipes from along the Silk Road for work, doesn’t mean I am going to permanently turn my back on my greatest culinary love. No–I just have to multi-task! Morganna, who has been […]

Fun With Chow Fun

Chow fun is a transliteration from the Cantonese, which means “stir-fried rice noodles;” the Mandarin transliteration would be “chao fen.” It does not have anything to do with the English slang word, “chow,’ meaning “food” and “fun”, meaning “fun.” No, it does not mean “food that is fun,” though I do think it is fun […]

The Not-So-Secret Secret Ingredient To Roast Pork Noodle Soup

Zak and I were sitting with Kat, all of us with a bowl of roast pork noodle soup in front of us (well, Kat had noodles with minced up bok choy, finely minced roast pork and a bare dribble of soup in her bowl) and we were eating happily. Zak looked up thoughtfully from his […]

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