This Meatball Chili is my make-ahead-keep-in-reserve dinner this month. Each December, I focus on baking cookies, breads, and cakes, pickling herring, making pâtés, and curing meats for our traditional Scandinavian and Ukrainian Christmas celebrations. Other meals throughout this month are often thrown together at the last minute from leftovers and pantry ingredients. This year, I …
Ukrainians love soup — hot, cold, meat or vegetable-based. It’s served daily in homes and restaurants regardless of season. Borshch, the quintessential Ukrainian soup, is a culinary staple recognized worldwide and inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2022. While borshch is consumed year-round, cooler weather restores the taste for …
I would not have enjoyed this Khmer Rice and Pork Soup (transliterated as borbor, bo bor or babor), and other Khmer dishes but for a lenient Cambodian border control agent. On one of our trips to Thailand, an unscheduled opportunity cropped up that was too tempting to pass up. A local TV ad touted Bangkok …
I recently enjoyed Yucatecan Grilled Pork –poc chuc (which means “toast over wood coals”) at a restaurant serving regional cooking (comida regional) in Playa del Carmen on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. The complex salty-sour flavors of this dish was quite a surprise. After having visited several Mexican regions and its restaurants for many years, I thought I’d …
Several years ago, as I was searching through youtube’s food videos in the middle of the night during a bout of insomnia, I stumbled upon a Pizza Rustica recipe on Silvia Colloca’s Cook Like an Italian channel. What caught my attention was that this pizza was not the usual red-sauced, mozzarella-covered disk, but a crispy-crusted …
Sou Fassum is a sublime stuffed cabbage, a creation of French peasant cuisine. I found it while researching alternative methods of stuffing cabbage. I knew I had to try it as soon as I saw it. Stuffed cabbage rolls, a classic comfort food, were a beloved dinner of my immigrant childhood. We had them at …
Sou Fassum –Sublime Stuffed Cabbage, French Style Read More »
This Pulled Pork Vindaloo with Indian Coleslaw on Naan combines the pulled pork preparation of America’s South with the flavors of Goa, an Indian state located along the west coast on the shore of the Arabian Sea. Recently I hankered for pulled pork, a dish I hadn’t prepared in a long time. As I fantasized …
Pulled Pork Vindaloo with Indian Coleslaw on Naan Read More »
The most interesting experiences often arise from serendipity. I recently shared a kitchen and an evening of Ukrainian cooking with 31-year-old Evgeniy (Zhenia) Klopotenko, winner of the 2015 Ukraine’s Masterchef contest, a graduate of Paris’s Le Cordon Bleu culinary school, a Ukrainian TV personality and producer of jams and marmalades. Young Zhenia is a trained …
Revitalizing Ukrainian Cooking with Masterchef Evgeniy Klopotenko Read More »
This Spicy Rice Cakes with Pork and Vegetables stir fry resulted from an exploratory shopping trip. I love experimenting with new ingredients, especially from different ethnic cuisines. I refuse to get into a food rut, recycling the same menus repeatedly and I am fortunate that Weldon enjoys trying out new tastes. To get new meal …