i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
It’s been over 4 years since I started on this journey and it’s had its ups and downs. I thought I’d give everyone an update on my progress as far as my edible landscape/food forest goes. The good thing is, everything is maturing and filling …
This is a recipe featuring fishmint (Houttuynia cordata), also known as the chameleon plant, or yu xin cao. I grow it in my garden, having gotten a bit from my parents since it’s an attractive ground cover. It’s used often in southern Chinese and Vietnamese …
As my ducks egg-laying season gets off to a late but present start, I’m treating myself to my favorite way of eating eggs–namely, the yolk, and always raw. This one is different from my single-side sear short rib donburi in that you can use thinly sliced rare roast beef, thinly sliced filet mignon, or thinly sliced leftover prime rib and requires no additional seasonings to the meat during the cooking process.
I use a sukiyaki styled tare sauce, which is just sugar, sake, mirin, and soy sauce, drizzled over the meat, topped with a duck egg yolk and garnished with some chives from the garden. All on top of freshly steamed white rice. This is a no fuss type meal, not super decadent, but is comforting and delicious. If you have leftover prime rib or are just hankering for sukiyaki or gyudon, this is for you.
Alternatively, for the meat, you can use sukiyaki meat quickly blanched in hot (but not simmering/boiling) dashi stock. Or a nice fresh cut chopped raw for tartare style!
Asparagus season is in full swing in my garden which means the sweet, nutty, why-does-my-pee-smell-weird spears are a common sight during mealtimes. In general, I like them simple, roasted with a little olive oil and lemon, a turn of the salt and pepper grinder. Very …
There’s a Greek restaurant near me that makes an absolutely delectable charcoal octopus, tender and grilled to perfection. They usually serve it with a side of vegetables and some lemon potatoes. I don’t always finish the lemon potatoes, so rather than letting it go to …
I got my last box of ugly produce this past week as my garden has sprung to life and I won’t be needing their services until winter. I received two eggplants in it and while I do like eggplants, for busy weeks it’s one of those things that seem more like a curse than anything else, weighing heavily on my mind that I’ll have to use them up or risk them going bad (and to the ducks.)
I had a smidgen of free time today so I grit my teeth and decided to do babaganoush. It’s a creamy eggplant dip that is common from the Mediterranean to the Middle East. It is also much easier and less work intensive than tempura for me. This recipe uses the skins, but you can take the skins off after roasting if you prefer. I like it for the health and the texture though.
I had made several different kinds before, following recipes from all over. Eventually, this is the one that I hybridized and enjoyed the most. If you find the garlic a little too spicy at the outset, you can omit the roast the single raw clove, or you can allow it to sit in the fridge and mellow out before serving.
While it isn’t a true perennial, rather, biennial (meaning it dies after the second year when it flowers), parsley (Petroselinum crispum) is a staple in my food forest. I actually never really used it in my cooking until a few years ago, when I started …
I’ve been meaning to make a post about this particular dish but I find myself always finishing it before taking a picture. This is a nostalgic childhood dish–my mom would make a huge pot of it during chilly days, and we’d immediately recognize the fragrant, savory, and smoky flavor coming home from school or waking up.
While it’s directly translated to “Borscht” from its supposedly Russian roots, my mom said that in her childhood, it was a community stew that was made a few days after the new years where all the leftovers in town would be collected, thrown into one giant pot ,and cooked. She and everyone else would stand around fishing for the different ingredients. The character for Luo is ç¾…, meaning “to collect.”
Whatever its origins, this tomato based stew is an amazing and filling dish, and my mom’s recipe has two secret ingredients that I haven’t found anywhere else, but creates a soup unlike any other. To give it a subtle sweetness and smoky flavor, she would add a tablespoon of ketchup and barbecue sauce. It’s weird, I know, but the flavors work beautifully together.
If you don’t have oxtail, another fatty on the bone cut like short rib is an acceptable substitute. I like my stew meat tender, with a melt in your mouth feel, rather than dry.
With the abundance of radishes in my Misfit Market box (read my review here), I started to think of creative ways to use them up. I just so happen to still have two mason jars full of dried black trumpets from last year’s mushroom foraging …
