The city promised higher-than-usual July 4th fireworks for better visibility from home this year. In a swirl of holiday excitement, I promised our guests tacos. Scalable, flexible, easy-to-prep tacos.
Being seriously rusty on the entertaining front, however, I made a bunch of silly mistakes. The adobo tofu wasn’t one of them.
Read MoreBoston was on my mind frequently over the past year. I was a post-grad there on 9/11 trying to eke out a living, carrying around a brick of a cell phone. When uncertainty permeated everything, a local Cambodian-French restaurant provided respite.
This restaurant served an incredible dish called mee Siem. It was unlike anything I’d ever tried at that point: rice noodles in a complex spicy sauce piled with bean sprouts, sweet bell peppers, fresh cilantro, fried tofu strips, crackly pork, and omelet ribbons. They published a cookbook. That recipe wasn’t in it.
An early Google search for the dish produced zero results.
Read MoreMarch was already awful, and that was before this week in Boulder. Earlier this month I experienced what felt like the worst pandemic burnout yet. To try and find a bit of joy, my mind turned to banh mi sandwiches.
They reminded me of summer, recalling food trucks, fresh air, sunshine, grilling, sharing meals with friends. I’d been wistful about these special Vietnamese sandwiches while weathering spring snowstorms and continued isolation, repeating to myself, “We have to hang on just a bit longer.”
Read MoreI put on sunglasses when the large buffet-style pans arrived at the table, not because of the light but the heat. This was my first experience going all-in on Sichuan cuisine. Two of the main courses swam in red oil piled high with vibrant chili peppers.
Protective eyewear was a must.
Our friends Dan and Carol had brought us to a Sichuan restaurant for lunch in the Portland area in the Before Times. Mostly I was excited, but honestly also slightly scared.
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