Quite literally, đồ chua means “sour stuff” — or Vietnamese pickles, in this case. It was a staple in my parents’ house while growing up, and eventually became a staple in my own grown-up house. It’s a very Vietnamese thing and reminds me of all the wonderful home cooking from my childhood. I can eat [...]
En La Cocina
This is one of my favorite times of year… The season that straddles spring and summer, when the days are long and warm and my lemon tree is bursting with bright yellow ornaments. These sunshiny days simply beg for the clink of ice cubes in a mason jar and the cold sip of a fresh [...]
It’s Saturday. And tomorrow is Sunday — Cinco de Mayo, to be exact. That means you still have all day to collect the ingredients for this fiery cocktail that’s sure to light up your weekend fiesta! First, we have agave: 100% agave tequila (I prefer the bold, biting flavor of blanco for this recipe) and [...]
Every season, I let a few of my radish plants flower and seed. Some I leave to collect seed for next season, and some I leave to harvest the pods. Amid this tangled mess of vines is a handful of daikon radish plants — plants that had grown over 4 feet tall, full of little [...]
I can’t get enough of chimichurri. After trying it for the first time in an Argentinian restaurant over a decade ago, I found myself slathering the tangy condiment on nearly everything I ordered, from bread to potatoes, churrasco to empanadas. I started buying my favorite version of it from a local carnicería and for years [...]
In my kitchen, space is a premium. Not only are all the drawers and cabinets filled to capacity, but so are the counters (what precious real estate we could dole out to our appliances) and even the vertical space above our heads (by way of two hanging pot racks). Adding to the problem was the [...]
Before we moved into our present home, we lived in a 2,000-square-foot loft in an urban neighborhood. Our kitchen took up over 200 square feet of that open space with cupboards and cabinets galore, and an island counter that was so massive, friends joked about having go-go dancers groovin’ on it while we hosted dinner [...]
