It is 2020 and We Are Food Blogging, Baby!

You have probably seen this pizza before online because everyone is making it. I first saw this beautiful pan pizza on my friend Marian's Instagram. Then I saw it being made over on my friend Nick's Instagram. And then my friends Ian and Kristen's socials. It seemed daunting at first because all I saw was the prep time: 18 hours. But once I mustered up the courage and time to do it, I realized how EASY it was and how DELICIOUS the end result was. I have made plenty of homemade pizzas in the last few years but this one yields both a caramelized crust (thanks to the cast iron and generous portion of mozzarella) with a soft and fluffy dough (turns out, cold rising for days is worth it!) Ingredient-wise for the dough, you probably already have all of it in your house:   2 cups (240 grams) all-purpose flour 3/4 teaspoon fine salt (I use fine sea salt) 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast or active dry yeast 3/4 cup (170 grams) lukewarm water 1 tablespoon (13 grams) olive oil For the toppi...

One of the biggest things I am trying to be better at is stretching my produce to last as long as it can. Unfortunately, I do not have the space to compost and my building isn't included in those brown compost bin pick ups that the city does. However, I still wanted to find a way to do something with some of my vegetable scraps. So while I saw many folks making beautiful broths with their chicken bones, I decided to do the same for my vegetables! A box of veggie broth can go for $4-5 here but if I can make it for free with what I already have, it seemed like an obvious small and easy project to do.  My biggest pro-tip is just putting all your scraps into a one-gallon Ziploc bag and have it hang out in the freezer until it's full. This will yield you at least 2 liters of broth, which you can store in the fridge for up to one week, or in the freezer for a month. My freezer broth has date labels so I know when to use it by!  Here are some vegetable scraps you can throw in: Garl...

Sometimes, say during a pandemic, you are in a corner store and you spy stacks of corn tortillas on the shelf. You stock up on them because you’re trying to reduce the frequency of your shopping trips — and because tortillas are a way of life.  But some of them go stale before you get to them. Don’t be sad. This is the perfect time to make migas.  "What are migas?" you might ask — especially if you are my spouse from the East Coast. I think of migas as a kind of Tex-Mex cousin to chilaquiles, another dish that I love (and obsessively eat). They both make magic out of stale tortillas, creating that most tasty food texture of crispy-gone-soggy . Though they're similar in that way, they diverge in the details.  Both often have eggs, but whereas eggs are a key feature of migas, they're merely one option for chilaquiles. The star component of chilaquiles — the thing that can make it or break it — is the sauce. Migas is less intimidating to make because you can ...

For many years, anytime I threw a house party — for a birthday or a housewarming or just because — I'd make a jello mold and pull it out of the fridge later in the evening to surprised oohs and ahhhs. Nobody expects a jello mold. My mom, a true child of the 1950s and 60s when jello salad was all the rage, rarely cooked anything that didn't come from a box when I was a kid, but she'd gladly spend hours perfecting her extravagant jello molds with multiple flavors and layers of walnuts, mandarin oranges, and sometimes even sour cream. While I'm not quite as meticulous about my jello creations as my mom was about hers, I've tried to carry on this strange tradition in my own way. I never got around to buying a proper mold, so instead I've adapted a tin cake mold for the job. Rummaging around my cupboards in this time of social distancing, I spied a box of almond dofu (basically Chinese jello) and a can of fruit cocktail, which conjured up visions of the dessert...

Growing up in a biracial household meant that I ate a wide swath of delicious foods throughout my childhood and teenage years. I took for granted at times just how skilled of a cook my mom is - she's a white lady from a working class, suburban town in Jersey, and she somehow makes Korean food good enough that when my Korean friends would be over or I'd bring a Korean girl I was dating home to eat her food they'd all gawk at how delicious it was.  Really, my mom can make almost anything (fried chicken being her one achilles heel), but one of my favorite things she makes is, believe it or not, her meatloaf. I love it when it's hot out of the oven, dripping with fat and redolent with the smell of bacon and ever so slightly burnt ketchup. It's even better the next day between two slices of toasted bread as a sandwich, and is a good way to use up some the eleventy billion loaves of sourdough you've attempted to make during quarantine. I was craving both mea...

I will admit that there are days when cooking seems like the hardest thing. The prep, the planning, the washing, the standing. It can get to you if you are doing it three times a day, every day. But sometimes I do just want to be in the kitchen, even if I am not actually doing any cooking, only because my apartment is small and I like the change of scenery.  Enter: boba, or bubble tea. The actual tea part is what I will be talking about because there is absolutely no way I am emotionally and mentally prepared to take on making tapioca balls BY HAND (although, if you are that person, this recipe sounds good !). The key is some good tea leaves and some time. What you'll need (for two servings):  3-4 tea bags of tea (I either do a Chinese red tea or a Jasmine green tea) 1/2 cup of milk (I use oat milk when doing a heavier tea and whole milk when doing a lighter tea. why? Preference!)  1/2 cup simple syrup 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup of boba (I use the WuFuYuan ...

Sometimes I come across a food so good my immediate reaction is to ask -- angrily, and to no one in particular -- why was this kept from me?! This is how I felt after making gözleme, a Turkish stuffed flatbread, tonight. I'd never heard of it before. My sister sent me a recipe from RecipeTin Eats and we cooked it together over video chat. After trying it I found myself asking: why aren't we all eating this all of the time? Why hasn't this swept across food Instagram in one million Tasty-style videos? It's like a quesadilla mixed with a scallion pancake mixed with a Hot Pocket, but like, in a good way. The recipe starts with a suspiciously easy dough. After only 3 minutes of kneading in my mixer and 20 minutes of rest, the dough handled beautifully. I could roll it out to a thin layer without it sticking or tearing. The dough, though thin, was sturdy enough to hold the filling (leftover creamed greens with an added egg and cheese). Next, I pa...

There are are many answers to Noah's question of what to do when you have too many eggs . On a whim, I had placed an order with a farm wholesaler but they never confirmed my order. Alas, times are topsy turvy and I didn't think much of it. After our weekly grocery run, I get an email saying my delivery would happen today. I had ordered 30 eggs from them and we had just bought 24 at the grocery. We now had...too many eggs. Baking is a good way to use eggs but what about for meals? Behold, the egg salad sandwich. Humble in its cookery but delightful in flavor. It was a go-to for me on picnics growing up and provides a sense of comfort now. Egg salads are also infinitely customizable. I had originally planned on going with Los Angeles bakery Konbi's infamous egg salad sandwich , which requires a dozen eggs BUT milk bread, which I have not made in awhile (due to lack of motivation). My boyfriend had made some sourdough bread yesterday (yes, we also have made our own ...

If you've been wondering why TikTok seems more palatable these days, it's because droves of now jobless millennials have overrun the micro content platform . Faced with quarantine and nothing better to do, what was once the digital denizen of lipsyncing teenagers and the cosplay community, has now been overrun by the Myspace generation, looking for a new outlet while we await the end of the world. That might explain why the latest hot thing to come out of TikTok isn't a new dance craze, but something far more domestic and mundane: a very fluffy coffee. While the name Dalgona refers to a type of Korean honeycomb toffee, its origins are actually derived from "beaten coffee" commonly drank in South Asia . I remember my cousin Marium beating up her coffees in the middle of study breaks  or us sneaking down to the kitchen late at night during summers at our grandfather's house in Karachi for a little caffeine fix.  It was easy- instant coffee gr...

For the last couple of days I've been feeling a... tingle in my throat. Maybe imagined? I don't know. I can't tell. So anyway, the thing I want to head off a cold is always my mom's chicken soup. I'm in Taiwan, and I'm also finally out of mandatory two week quarantine. That doesn't mean that I'm wandering around a lot for fun, though. To be frank, I find the outside world incredibly frightening, even though Taiwan supposedly has it under control and contained right now. But who knows?? It only takes ONE person to spread it around because they want to eat at the buffet, right? So I've been going out minimally, mostly for groceries that I hose down with alcohol spray as soon as I get home. Anyway, yesterday I went out to Nanmen Market which is one of two wet markets near my apartment. Yes, I have TWO. One that is a traditional open air market that is crammed in the maze of alleys behind a bunch of store fronts and is only bustling early in ...

Last Tuesday, a friend died unexpectedly. On Wednesday I sat in bed until noon. When I finally got up, I opened my fridge, surveyed its contents, and seeing the container of leftover white rice, I decided to make Spamsilog. First, I smashed some garlic cloves and chopped them, then heated the pieces in olive oil. When the garlic turned fragrant, I dumped the old rice into the pan, breaking up chunks to make garlic rice, similar to the way Brian blogged about it . With a wooden spatula, I turned the rice over and over, pressing down on it sometimes. The longer you wait, the crispier the rice becomes — a reward for patience. A ways into the frying, I thought to add some green onions and hastily snipped a length of some that had been re-growing in a jar. As the rice cooked, I asked my spouse H to slice Spam. I always keep a can of Spam in the pantry, though I don’t eat it much these days. It’s there for emergencies. Now it felt like an emergency. As I browned the slices of Sp...

What a privilege it is to go to the grocery store whenever you want. To pop in just for the one or two things you need to get to execute a recipe perfectly. To have the money to do so, as well! In any case, it has been a creative puzzle to try to find adequate substitutes in my own kitchen and pantry for a meal, especially at the last dregs before you do  have to make that one big grocery haul a week (or two). As I was scrounging around my kitchen, I came upon one can of chickpeas and one lemon. I knew I had some dried pasta left (although I only had one serving of gemelli and one serving of rigatoni) and the last few stems of parsley that I was able to stretch out for three weeks. Then, I remembered a Melissa Clark recipe that included all of these ingredients, and a wave of excitement rushed through me. We can make a very delicious, very easy lunch! Yes, I had to substitute fresh rosemary for dried thyme and basil. Yes, I had a bowl with two different types of pasta s...

It was my third year in college and I had just experienced the most painful, hurtful breakup of my young life. I had been dating a girl for just under a year when I learned from her roommate that she had been cheating on me for almost the entire time we had been together. I had my suspicions, of course, but never any proof, not really, at least not proof I was willing to examine with any kind of depth. My heart has always been a fragile thing. Her roommate told me the last straw for her was when I had dropped by with some banh mi from the Lee's Sandwiches next to campus. It was an unplanned visit, and my girlfriend had the guy she was cheating on me with hide under the bed in her room while she took the sandwiches from me and then made an excuse as to why I needed to leave. The next day her roommate came to my place and told me what had happened. I called my girlfriend and broke up with her, and then went for one of those aimless walks reserved for those in deep pain. It ...

(I was supposed to artfully drizzle some cream at the end but it looks like a disaster, which is fine because we don't have to rely so heavily on aesthetics around here!) There is something soothing about making, cultivating, or growing an ingredient to use for several recipes--especially during this time. My boyfriend has already used some of the scallion we have been growing in my kitchen to make soft scrambled eggs! And right on time, on day five, my basil has finally sprouted! And for the Paneer Butter Masala, Meera Sodha's recipe from Fresh India , we decided to make our own paneer! We used the same recipe that Cale blogged about  but since we are not blessed with a tofu press, we used a colander, cheese cloth, and a 2-quart dutch oven to press. Still VERY easy! What I also love about this recipe is that you can find a lot of things in your pantry already: canned tomatoes, frozen peas, lots of spices, the herbs you've been storing properly , etc. I did...