My first apartment in DC was just down the street from a lovely Sunday farmers market — I remember being able to see all of the vendors setting up each weekend from my living room window, and admiring all of fragrant baked goods and fresh produce on display: leafy greens and fresh tomatoes ideal for a salad; assorted peppers and Thai basil perfect for some spicy noodles; and fresh cheese and olive oil waiting for some crusty bread. The other day, Jacques and I got to return to our old stomping grounds, and picked up a variety of wonderful finds from old and new spots: buckwheat and einkorn flours, dinorado rice, Swiss chard, cheddarwurst sausages, ham, a couple of cheeses, and a carton of eggs.

One of the things I love about a farmers market haul (besides the opportunity to buy local) is that it often pushes us to try new things, whether it’s a new ingredient or a new recipe. Because vendors are always selling what’s in season and fresh, the variety of goods is always changing. Often times we end up picking up not only what’s on our list, but also whatever looks good to us that day. That means if it’s a funky new cheese, or a new kind of herb, we get the opportunity to try out a new recipe.

This week, we tried out dinorado rice for the first time with a simple parsley and parmesan-crusted chicken, and cooked Swiss chard two ways: sautéed leaves, and roasted stems.

While it’s not always possible to make it over to a farmers market, you can always seek out locally grown goods in a grocery store — look for the apples that came from a state orchard, or the honey that was produced locally. And for the cooking diversity, make an effort to try one (or two, or three) new items each week, aiming for what’s in season. Just a couple of intentional habits can keep you cooking local and eating fresh!

Cheers and happy cooking,
Ash

We expanded our spice cabinet quite a bit during quarantine last year, with all of the cooking and new recipes we were trying out regularly. As a result, we got to dabble in a lot of new cuisines and dishes — one of which has quickly become a favorite: lovely yellow dal. The lentil-based dish is a hearty and flavorful (and healthy, I like to think!) one that is perfect for a cold winter’s night, and always leaves enough for lunch leftovers the next day. It’s wonderful mixed in with a nice bowl of basmati rice, or eaten with some warm bread to sop it up.

While I’ve always had delicious naan at restaurants eating out, I had never thought to make it myself. Thanks to a good friend who gifted me some sourdough starter last year, I’ve been seeking out new ways to use the additional starter beyond my regular weekly boules — and naan presented the perfect way to do so. With some leftover starter kicking around, I decided to try my hand at sourdough naan, which turned out to be a great complement to the dal we were making regularly.

The end result was a delicious, warm and flavorful naan that went just as quickly as the dal. To complete the meal, we made a small batch of basmati rice (mixed with golden raisins, a little parsley, and some spices), an assortment of roasted veggies, and homemade sidecars (cocktails made with cognac, cointreau, simple syrup, and freshly squeezed lemon juice — topped with a little lemon peel curl). A perfect winter’s night meal!

Happy New Year, all! It’s been a while since I’ve posted in here — apologies for the long hiatus! It was a whirlwind end to the year, with the two of us moving into a new place (and subsequently moving out of two city apartments), getting a new car, and all of the holiday happenings thrown into the mix. It’s been fun settling into the new place, hanging up our pictures, making room for our plants, and re-designing our living space to make everything feel cozy and warm (especially now that we’re spending a lot more time at home).

Rest assured, we’ve still been cooking (and cocktail crafting) a ton, so keep an eye out for more upcoming posts about some of the new dishes and drinks we’ve been making. In fact, one of my favorite things about our new place is the kitchen — it’s much bigger, with ample cabinet space and a big lovely counter that’s perfect for kneading bread and food prepping. Since cooking was such a big part of 2020 for us, we closed out the year by cooking a fancy homemade meal (risotto with asparagus and peas, seared bacon-wrapped scallops, and a big ol’ lovely chocolate cake — because, why not?).

Cheers and best wishes to you all for a happy 2021!
Ash

Having lived in both New York City and Chicago, it’s hard to pick a favorite type of pizza — I love a good slice of thin-crust pizza from Rubirosa, but also appreciate a lovely slice of deep dish pie from Giordano’s. Warm, cheesy, herby carbs are good in most forms. While we were stuck inside for most of the early part of quarantine, Jacques and I started experimenting with making our own pizza, using the King Arthur Crispy Cheesy Pan Pizza recipe as a starting point. The dough has to be prepped a day ahead of baking, but the wait is well worth it for what is a perfectly pillowy, soft interior, with a crispy, slightly crunchy exterior. Our very first pizza was pretty basic, with just mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil; and since then, we’ve experimented with adding grilled peppers, onions, pepperoni, herbs, and other hard cheeses. It’s quickly become the perfect go-to meal — before our long weekend runs, or just anytime we’re craving some good ol’ comfort food.

Making pizza ourselves has given me a new appreciation for what goes into making a good pizza (patience, good quality ingredients, a lot of love), and a deeper appreciation for taking the time to perfect a process. Everything from kneading the pizza dough and waiting patiently for the rise, to coating the cast iron pan with the right amount of olive oil and setting your oven time just right, makes a huge difference in the end product. You can see the changes from your first pizza, to your second, to your third.

What I love about making pizza is not just learning the art of the process, but also getting to experiment with different toppings and flavor combinations — the trick is to think of ingredients that pair well and enhance the overall flavor of the pizza (i.e. basil and caramelized onions, or pepperoni and sweet red peppers), without overdoing it or crowding your pizza with two many toppings (often, simplicity is best!). We still love ordering out pizza from our favorite local pizza places, and especially when it’s a style of pizza we can’t replicate at home (i.e. brick-oven-made), but it’s nice to now have a trusty recipe we can turn to at home. Hope this inspires you all to try making your own pan pizzas — they’re simple, delicious, and best homemade.

Happy September, happy cooking, and happy eating!

Ash

Growing up as an Asian American kid in Boston, our meals were always a variety of Western food (pasta, pizza, roasted vegetables, casseroles), and Chinese cooking (mapo tofu, steamed fish, soup, stir-fries). While I loved (and still love!) both equally, it was Western cuisine that I first learned to cook — learning how to boil the perfect al dente pasta, sauté garlic and olive oil until just right and fragrant, be patient with caramelizing onions, and knead pizza dough for the ideal rise. Chinese cooking, which was often always in my dad’s wheelhouse, always seemed fairly daunting, with all of the spices, and sauces, and techniques that I never got to learning. Plus, I felt like I needed a fully stocked kitchen (full of those spices and sauces and cooking tools), which I often never had on hand. I was always more than happy to have my dad’s home-cooking whenever I visited home, but it was something I never tried to master myself.

Fast forward to my early 30s, and at last, I have finally begun to experiment with more Asian cuisine. Part of this is due to our discovery of the loveliest little Japanese market about half-a-mile away from our apartment. We made our first trip there early on in the quarantine period, and immediately we were hooked — so many delicious and inspiring ingredients and produce all packed into a tiny little store. It was the perfect way for us to get creative with cooking at a time when everyone is at home cooking. Ever since, we’ve been going back to the mini market on average once or twice a week (sometimes multiple times a week) to pick up new goods with which to cook: spicy sauces, special noodles, fresh fish, and lovely produce. We now even own a wok, steamers, and a sushi-rolling mat. It’s been fun experimenting with all of the varied ingredients and cooking tools we now have on hand, and I love letting my dad know every time we prepare a new dish using ingredients or techniques that are familiar to him.

Above: Korean beef bowls with sautéed bok choy, cashews, and steamed carrots.

Above: Fresh ramen with pork belly, egg, corn, and scallions.

Above: Japanese barbecue eel with tamago egg, seaweed salad, steamed carrots, and sliced cucumber.

Our most recent “new” dish was Chinese barebecue pork belly (char siu), cooked down in the oven with a sweet and sticky exterior. We used strips of pork belly, and marinated them for several hours with hoisin sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey, brown sugar, garlic, and Chinese five spice powder (a combination of star anise, fennel seeds, Szechuan peppercorns, cloves, and cinnamon). We paired it with a cauliflower fried rice. The result was delicious! It reminded me of the very char siu I used to have when I was younger.

I hope this inspires you all to go back to your roots and learn (or expand your knowledge of) the cuisines that you grew up with as kids. Happy cooking, and exploring!

Ash

It’s late July in Washington, D.C., which means we’re in the thick of the city’s hot-and-humid summer stretch — daily temperatures in the 90s, despairing battles with heat, and a constant mission to find shade. Over the past couple of months, we’ve found ourselves not only adjusting our running schedules (trying to start out as early as possible in the morning to sneak in some cooler temps) and relishing the A/C in our apartment, but also just generally craving cooler meals and drinks. While the wintertime evokes warm and hearty oven-based casseroles and pot roasts, the summertime has us yearning for cool, crisp salads, and plenty of fresh fruit and veggies. As a result, we’ve been experimenting with different kinds of refreshing and fun salads, cool fish and pasta dishes, and creative charcuterie boards.

Above: A fresh salmon poke bowl with avocado, edamame, carrots, cucumbers, radishes, and roe.

Above: A light and lovely cold crab, celery, and shallot pasta dish, with a side of homemade olive focaccia bread, and fun refreshing cocktails.

When it comes to salads, we’ve been experimenting with using different fruits and veggies as the base. Though we often imagine a green leafy bowl when we think of salad, a lot of the new recipes we’ve been trying this summer use an alternative veggie or fruit as the base (i.e. watermelon, feta, and mint salad; celery salad with dates, almonds, and parmesan; creamy dill cucumber salad; and crunchy Asian slaw, to name a handful). It’s a great way to try out new combinations and make good use of the variety of fresh produce this time of year. A lot of these salads also combine some element of sweet with savory (i.e. watermelon with feta) and add extra crunch with nuts and seeds. The end product is a fresh, flavorful, and fun dish with good texture and taste.

Above: Watermelon, feta, and mint salad, with homemade French gougère cheese puffs.

Above: A summer salad of peaches, arugula, proscuitto, pecans, and mozzarella.

As far as charcuterie boards, the best thing is that there is no set recipe or structure to follow — you can use whatever you have on hand in your fridge (i.e. sliced meats, cheeses, olives, nuts, fruits, etc.) and whatever suits your tastes that day. Charcuterie boards also take very little time to put together, and make for a fun « choose your own adventure » meal. I usually like to incorporate whatever fresh bread or baked good I made that week (i.e. homemade bread, or cheese puffs).

Hope this gives you all some inspiration for meals to stay cool and refreshed this summer. For more, check out my What I’ve Cooked page.

Happy eating, stay cool, and enjoy!

Ash

I remember my first trip to Levain Bakery in New York City — the excitement of walking down the steps into the tiny basement-level bakery on West 74th Street, the heavenly smell of freshly baked cookies wafting past the counter and filling the room, and the satisfaction of leaving with a warm, gooey, delicious mound of joy. It was my first trip to the iconic bakery, and it surely wasn’t my last. In the years since, I’ve probably made dozens of trips to Levain, trying all of their cookie variations (chocolate chip walnut is my favorite!), and even some of their non-cookie baked goods. It helped in part that my first apartment in New York City was on the Upper West Side, just a short walk away. But even after I moved lower down in Manhattan, I would continue to make trips back up — picking up a sweet treat here and there, introducing the place to friends from out of town, and grabbing gifts for family and friends before heading home for the holidays.

There’s no doubt that there’s a whole lot of nostalgia and joy wrapped up in the bakery. Now that I’m no longer living in New York, I was incredibly happy to discover a recipe for their iconic cookies. I baked a first batch for my sister’s birthday this weekend, and they turned out just as I remembered — soft, gooey, chocolatey, and delicious. If you’ve ever fallen in love with Levain cookies as I have, I highly recommend you give this recipe a try; and even if you’ve never tasted a Levain cookie, all the more reason to introduce these lovely desserts to your home. They’re perfect on their own, and even better with a cup of coffee or tea.

Happy baking!
Ash

Last year I wrote about my dream of having an herb garden, despite the difficulties of living in a city and not having very much land or space to do so. A year later, I’m happy to report that we now have the beginnings of a lovely little windowsill garden. What began as a couple of potted plants has now grown into several potted plants, a box of little seedlings, and a full planter box. We’ve happily spared no inch on the windowsill. Now that we’re cooking a lot more, and trying to be more creative with what we cook, it’s been a huge plus to be able to have a variety of fresh herbs on hand. It’s also been a fun quarantine project, between planting new seeds and watching their growth, and picking out different herb varieties to add to our collection — which now includes three kinds of basil (sweet, purple, and thai), two kinds of mint (apple and mojito), parsley, chives, cilantro, thyme, and scallions.

There are so many wonderful benefits to growing herbs. For one, you don’t have to worry about running to the grocery store ad hoc to pick up herbs you need for different recipes; you can simply walk over to your windowsill and fetch some (which is especially convenient during this time). There is also the added benefit of not worrying about the perishable bag of herbs you bought from the store going bad in your refrigerator; when you have herbs steadily growing in your home, you can just go grab what you need for your meal, and not worry about having to quickly use the rest. On top of all this, there is the wonderful benefit of herbs giving you a reason to experiment with different flavors, and to use your fresh herbs to take your meals to another level. I am a strong believer that (almost) all meals are made better with herbs.

Above: Cod with tomato and herb butter, made lovely with lots of fresh parsley.

Whether it’s adding parsley or basil to fresh pasta, or topping your tacos with a sprinkling of cilantro, or chopping chives to throw into an omelette, or enhancing your cocktails with some mint, there are so many ways you can combine herbs into your dishes and drinks; and you can also make some really lovely sauces, soups, and pestos. While herbs aren’t always the centerpiece of a meal, they are the incredibly important supporting actors that make the leading actor in a meal that much better. In addition to enhancing the taste of a dish, herbs also look super lovely on any plate, and add a level of detail that really makes a meal sing.

Some of my favorite herby recipes of late include: rosemary focaccia bread, cod with tomato and herb butter, Thai spicy basil fried rice, parmesan-crusted chicken, savory scones with goat cheese and chives, and cilantro lime slaw. But this is by no means an exhaustive list, as I’m now driven to add fresh herbs to almost any dish I can (and happily so!).

Above: Homemade focaccia bread, topped with plenty of rosemary, parsley, tarragon, and basil.

I hope this inspires you all to start your own little herb gardens. The beautiful thing about starting a mini garden is that there is no set structure and there are no set rules to follow — you can grow any number of herbs or varieties, and you can do so in your yard, on your windowsill, or in any corner of your countertop where sunlight touches. You can also limit your collection to just one or two herbs (basil or parsley, or whichever herbs you use most frequently), or expand it to a large variety. Now is the perfect time to experiment with fresh herbs with all the extra time at home, so give it a try and have fun with it!

Happy cooking, and much love,
Ash

I’ve always viewed cooking as an art — the creative mixing of ingredients, flavors, and textures to build even just a single bite, or a full-course meal. When I cook, I feel both like a scientist and an artist, combing what I know goes well together, and experimenting with new combinations to achieve (what I hope will be) something delicious. The way that an artist combines her paints, a cook combines her ingredients. With the extra time at home these days due to the largely worldwide stay-at-home orders in place, I’ve had more time to experiment in the kitchen (my ‘art studio’) and really expand the art meets food idea in new ways, and most recently, through focaccia bread (my ‘canvas’).

When I set out to build my first focaccia garden, I wanted to make sure first and foremost that the end product would taste good. As much as I love presentation and appreciate a lovely looking meal, I value taste above all (if it tastes good, I’m sold; if it looks beautiful, that’s a bonus). Because focaccia is an olive oil-rich bread, I turned to herbs (parsley, rosemary, chives, and tarragon), colorful veggies (baby bell peppers, cherry tomatoes, and red onions), and a variety of olives that would all marry nicely together into a lovely, delicious bread.

When it came time to assemble the ingredients, I tried to think as an artist would, varying colors, textures, and shapes. I drew inspiration from all of the beautiful flora we’ve been seeing on our neighborhood walks, and tried to mix up the variety.

The end result was both beautiful and delicious, and made for some lovely snacks, soup accompaniments, sandwiches, and flatbreads (topped with mozzarella, basil, and sliced tomatoes, and popped in the oven, yum). The best thing about building a focaccia garden, though, is that there are no rules. You can use whichever ingredients you have on hand, and you can design something simple or elaborate. The mixture of olive oil, herbs, and roasted veggies is perfect in any combination. So go forth, and create!

As always, happy cooking, stay healthy, and be well.

xo Ash

Nothing says comfort like a lovely bowl of warm, cheesy carbs. Carbonara is a dish I often love to order out at restaurants because its simplicity really showcases a chef’s attention to detail and perfection of preparation. While the dish itself is really only a handful of ingredients — pasta, egg, hard cheese, cured pork, and black pepper (sometimes with an added kick of garlic and parsley) — there is so much nuance to the dish: the pasta cooked just al dente so it stands up to the sauce; the crispiness of the cured pork adding the right amount of saltiness; the silkiness of the egg and cheese sauce tossed just right so it doesn’t curdle; and the added garlic and parsley finely chopped to perfection to garnish. It’s a dish I’ve always admired eating out, but never really tried making at home.

With the extra time at home these days, we’ve had ample opportunity to try and re-create some of our favorite dishes at home — learning some new techniques and trying out some new ingredients in our kitchen. Carbonara is one of those dishes — along with pad thai, chipotle chicken quesadillas, soy-glazed salmon, and other favorites. I’ve started to share some of my favorite home-perfected recipes in my ‘Currently Cooking‘ section, and hope to continue to post new recipes here as I write them. These are recipes that I’ve learned and adapted over time, and hope you get to enjoy too! Also for a longer list of recipes I’ve tried from other bloggers and cooks, check out the ‘What I’ve Cooked‘ section of my blog. Happy cooking, stay safe, and be healthy! xo.