Tofu is a gentle food that has oddly generated both fear and confusion. Since writing my Asian Tofu cookbook, I’ve fielded lots of tofu queries. People typically need clarification about: What tofu is Whether tofu is bad for health How to remove water from tofu (1) What is tofu? Is tofu a processed food? Is tofu fermented? Tofu is made from 3 ingredients — dried mature soybeans (not immature edamame!), water, and coagulant. With a very high protein content, soybeans are the vegetable that’s closest to being like an animal! Tofu is prepared like cheese but the milk is rendered from ..read more

Yes, there are reasons why the revered Mediterranean Diet needs a new name. It started with the Sunday New York Times. My husband set aside this special section pullout for me to peruse: Assembled by Well, the Times’ health and wellness department, the pullout aims to be a handy guide to cooking and eating the Mediterranean diet for a healthier life. Unless you have super keen vision, you’ll need help with the subtitle: "How the time-tested Mediterranean diet can offer real benefits, with recipes to help you get started." I’m all for that, but got peevish upon reading page 2: It’s agg ..read more

Where do I get recipe ideas? From all over. Much of my career has been about presenting classics in doable but not dumbed down fashion. I believe in understanding foundations before riffing. I love classics and icons but also appreciate well done twists on the ultra familiar.  Last year someone on Instagram told me that after eating a Vietnamese bolognese at the Le family’s The Pig and the Lady in Honolulu, she made my bò kho beef stew with star anise and lemongrass from Vietnamese Food Any Day, cooking the beef to extra tenderness so she could hand shred it and serve the whole shebang o ..read more

Watercress used to be easy to find at American supermarkets but nowadays, I mostly buy it at Chinese or Viet markets, or I grow it. The spicy greens are called rau cải xoong in Vietnamese; “xoong” halfway mimics cresson, French for watercress. Viet people make salad with watercress, favoring it for the salad portion of shaking beef, for example. We also drop handfuls of watercress into a pot of quick canh soup, where it releases its spicy, pungent flavor to flavor and perfume the broth. Watercress can be hard to grow in warm areas, which is why I was surprised to see it at markets in Hawaii ..read more

Japanese cooks deep fry extra well and karaage embodies their simple techniques and pure flavor. I've been looking for an exceptional recipe and found one in Love Japan by Sawako (“Sawa”) Okochi and Aaron Israel, the chefs and owners of Shalom Japan in Brooklyn. Their unique blending of Japanese-Jewish-American foodways (shaved bonito cured lox! matzoh ball ramen! okonomi-latkes) were captured in a terrific book co-authored with Gabriella Gershenson. Why is this Karaage Recipe Great? Sawa's recipe is based on her mom's. The Okochi's addition of egg to the marinade differs from other recipes ..read more

Soft and chewy, these matcha cookies are delightful to make and equally fun to eat. You serve them as is or use them for ice cream sandwiches, writes Sawako Okochi in Love Japan, a cookbook she authored with her husband Aaron Israel and collaborator Gabriella Gershenson. Sawako and Aaron are the chef owners of Shalom Japan, a restaurant in Brooklyn that cleverly merges the foodways of their heritage to create their unique Japanese American sensibilities. Their book released in 2023 and is full of fresh flavors and personal stories. The photography was done by Yuki Suguira. This cookie recipe ..read more

Many people associate Sriracha with Vietnamese food because the hot sauce is present at many Viet restaurants. Truth be told, Sriracha is of Thai origin and the hot sauce enjoyed in Vietnam is called -- tương ớt (chile sauce) and it's friendly spicy. You can buy it easily in Vietnam and I used to cart some back with me on visits to the Motherland. However, you can also make it easily. Today, I'm sharing with you my easy recipe for Vietnamese hot sauce, which was published in my latest cookbook, Ever-Green Vietnamese, which spotlights tasty, creative ways to use vegetables in the Vietname ..read more

Autumn harkens persimmon season but it can be fleeting. If you buy persimmons, they can be expensive. How to make the most of the fruit? I like to use firm Fuyu persimmons for refreshing salads like this one and this one, dressed with lots of herbs. But with the Hachiya variety, which are too astringent to eat unripe, I prefer to bake with them. I've seen fancy persimmon pudding recipes but an easy going cookie can make two persimmons go a long way! Looking through my books, I noticed a fluffy, cakey cookie recipe in The Red Truck Bakery Cookbook by Brian Noyes. His bakery is in Virginia and ..read more

Jump to Recipe Sweet and slightly hot pickled ginger isn't just used in Japanese cuisine, and neither is it for sushi only. It's made in East and Southeast Asia and eaten as a snack, added to salads, and even thrown into stir-fries. This is a Cantonese-style recipe that's based on one in Eileen Yin-Fei Lo's 1988 cookbook, New Cantonese Cooking. The only hard thing about making pickled ginger is finding the ginger. You need young ginger, which is a seasonal item at Chinese and Japanese markets in the early fall and spring. Start checking the produce sections in September and April, for example ..read more

The name -- corn milk, may sound odd. Is it a typo? What is it? Corn milk -- often called sữa bắp in Vietnam, is a creamy, refreshing, and slightly sweet beverage. It is incredibly tasty for something that employs just a handful of readily available ingredients (mostly corn and water!). Sữa bắp is an enticing refresher that I’ve enjoyed in Vietnam and abroad. You may have spotted sữa bắp at casual joints, delis, and bakeries. I first noticed a sign for it at a tiny pho shop in Hanoi's Old Quarter. Corn milk and pho? Why not? As with a lot of Vietnamese foods, corn milk is flexible. It ca ..read more