Crispy pork belly chronicles
I can’t recall anymore when I had my first crispy pork belly meal, but I will never forget where I had the best crispy pork belly. Decades separate these two events so, …
Food Tales
To understand food and its cultural and social significance, it is often necessary to go beyond recipes and cooking tips. This section includes a comprehensive guide on ramen broth, a history of mac and cheese, a dive into the (mostly Western) misconception that sate / satay is peanut sauce and how chocolate evolved to become the (second?) most popular Valentine's Day gift.
What is panipuri?
A snack and common street food in India, panipuri consists of crispy hollow flatbread filled with potato mash moistened with tamarind chutney and drenched in spiced …
Japanese donburi and the rice bowls of Asia
Donburi, put simply, is the Japanese version of the Asian tradition of serving an entire meal in a bowl. How many kinds of donburi are there? Countless. But here are a …
Are you an intuitive cook or did you acquire cooking skills over time?
I’m sharing this story to let you know that even if you couldn’t fry an egg properly until you were an adult, it doesn’t mean that you’ll never be a good cook. You can. I …
The three best sandwiches we’ve had
By sandwich, of course, I mean bread with filling. The bread can be a bun, slices of loaf bread or flatbread including tortilla. Right. My definition of a sandwich is …
The lowdown on Japanese beef: Wagyu, Kobe, Matsusaka… what’s the difference?
Whenever I hear (or read) someone say that Kobe beef is THE STANDARD and far superior than wagyu, I go HUH? Kobe beef IS wagyu so how can something be better than itself?
What is omurice? Is it Japanese, Korean or Taiwanese?
Omurice, or omelette rice, is a Japanese rice-and-egg dish that fuses local cuisine with the Westerner’s love for ketchup. Annexation and war brought it to Korea and …