Category: Cook

Without the benefit of long trips to remind me to deal with ingredients lurking in the freezer, declared this week to be Tip-the-Freezer week. Tonight: pot pie with fresh pea pods, next in line for the wok. I previously prepared the pie filling in the wok

Tonight I’m making one-pot comfort food: chicken and brown rice. I rarely stray from these three types of rice when cooking: sushi, Arborio, and short-grain brown.

This weekend I’m cooking with ingredients I’ve never used before. Today: Thai eggplant. Tomorrow: oxtail.

Picked up gai lan, Chinese broccoli, from an Asian supermarket. My new favorite vegetable has a stronger, slightly more bitter taste than regular broccoli. We stir-fry the stalks for a while, then add the rest. We might include garlic, fresh ginger, sugar, shoyu, and fish sauce.

Today: The Arrival of the Reamer. It replaces a chipped glass juicer left behind by a roommate in 1976.

Satisfied a craving for comfort food on a snowy day: made a somewhat rustic meatloaf with my new, favorite, secret ingredient: Asian fish sauce. The glaze is not-so-secret: all-American ketchup.

I baked a big pot pie, he cleaned up, more pot pie for dinner on Tuesday.

Leftover mushroom risotto reappeared as patties, elevated by a salad from warm places.

I’m staying in, giving my brain a rest for a few days. Today’s excitement: the final countdown, just under five hours to go, 28-hour tonkotsu (pork bone broth). If I can’t go to Japan, then Japan can come to me