Food Minia

Every year from mid spring to late summer I eagerly await the appearance of dark-green خرفه (purslane) sprouts in my backyard, vegetable garden, flower borders and in between the cement cracks. The often under-appreciated and ignored purslane has always been a favorite of mine. You can throw a handful of fresh purslane in almost any dish and make it taste better with its slightly tart and

I already had a trip to France and Italy planned when I found out I would need to be in Madrid the following week for work.  So after some quick thinking and planning, I managed to extend my time in Europe for another week and head out to Madrid a few days early before the meeting! It was my first time in Spain, and I wanted to make the most of it.  My friend Sarah Ruth (the one who taught me my favorite brownie recipe ) joined me from Sweden, and we managed to hit a lot of the capital and even took a day trip to the nearby town of Segovia.  Some highlights of the trip: Eating chocolate con churros every day for breakfast!  We liked going to El Brillante for the authentic Madrileño experience and learned about purros there, which are basically, bigger, fatter churros that really remind me of Taiwanese you tiao .  We also tried them at Chocolatería San Ginés since everyone says they have the best ones, and I did like them more because they were less greasy and th...

I was so excited when I received an electric bubble waffle maker from my brother and sister-in-law for my birthday last year.  I had visions of making the eggettes I used to get from NYC's Chinatown and SF's Genki and maybe even making a puffle cone a la Cauldron Ice Cream or Monkey King Tea (below).  But after trying the recipes I found on-line for eggettes and puffle cones (basically the same recipe) I'm still not satisfied with the results.  I even played around a little with the ingredients but nothing I made recreated the aroma, texture, or taste I was looking for. Not to be deterred, I decided to experiment with some other batter-based foods I had made before.  First up was pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) .  Since some of the eggette recipes used a little tapioca flour, I figured it would be fun to try an entirely tapioca flour based batter in the bubble waffle maker.  The results were incredible! The bubble waffle maker was able to encapsulat...

I got to go to Bangkok for a meeting last week and went a day early so I could explore the city a bit on my own first.  Besides visiting the temples, enjoying the view and drinks at Sky Bar, shopping at Siam Paragon, and getting massages for 270 baht ($7.50!) an hour, I also took a cooking class at the Silom Thai Cooking School .  I chose a Sunday morning class because I liked the proposed menu:  tom yum soup, green papaya salad, pad thai, massaman curry, and mango sticky rice . The class was very well organized;  first we took a bus to a wet market to pick up the ingredients and then we walked to the classroom which had three different sections:  one for food prep, one for cooking, and one for eating.  Most of the ingredients that we used were already pre-measured for us, so there was only a minimum of chopping and stir frying but enough that we felt like we were actually cooking!  We also got a go at the enormous mortar and pestle to make the papaya ...