Posts

Peanut butter cookies are usually a big disappointment for me. Peanut butter cookies tend to bake up very dry because of the way that the peanut butter affects the cookie texture. And that's a huge shame, because peanut butter is so delicious on its own!

Fried rice is one of my favorite meals to make. It’s the perfect clean-out-the-fridge dinner, and it’s quick and so easy to cook. Growing up, my grandparents would make egg fried rice with leftover pork or even ham and frozen mixed vegetables.

When I was young, we used to get takeout from this one place in Chinatown (I don’t know the name, sadly.) I specifically remember this one dish I loved: their stir-fried shrimp and eggs.

Unlike chives, which you’d normally think of as an aromatic, garlic chives are treated like a vegetable and used in stir-fries, dumpling fillings, and more. My favorite way to cook them is very simple, just quickly stir-fried with some scrambled eggs. The chives bring a refreshing, delicious flavor to the dish, and it’s absolutely delicious! It’s also so quick to whip up for dinner on a busy day.

Banana bread is a classic bake, and it definitely got more popular during lockdown! My dad makes an awesome banana bread that I'll always love, but I was looking for a moister banana bread. I combined this banana bread recipe with a recipe for coffee cake (because who doesn't love streusel?) and the combination was stellar!

Creamy, spicy, savory, coconutty…this soup is possibly one of the best things I’ve ever made. My family definitely agrees – whenever I make this, it’s gone in a day! It’s a great comfort food for winter and also great to make in the summer, since I always crave spicy food in the summer. I love this soup so much!

Mooncakes are a symbolic dessert traditionally eaten on the Mid Autumn Festival. They are decorated with elaborate stamped designs and characters on top. Mooncakes are traditionally baked pastries with a rich filling. The pastry layer is akin to a soft cookie, while the filling can be savory or sweet. Traditional fillings include lotus seed paste with salted egg yolk, red bean paste, mixed nutes, and jujube or date paste.

I love jambalaya. It’s traditionally not pescetarian, so I swapped chicken for mushrooms and used vegetarian sausage to make my version. I also used brown rice instead of white rice, since that’s my family’s favorite type of rice. It also adds body to the jambalaya, so I prefer using it, even though it isn’t traditional. Since I don’t usually have the patience to cook the rice on a stovetop, I used my instant pot instead to make it.

A big cheeseboard is also the perfect appetizer at a holdiay party! I always used to see all these photos of fancy cheeseboards on Instagram and Pinterest, and I’d wish I could make something similar. There are a few steps to making a cheeseboard, which I cover in this guide.

I love pasta alla vodka, but it does require two pots – one to boil the water, and one to mix the sauce. I was craving a good tomatoey pasta the other night, and I happened to have the idea to try a one-pot version, where the pasta cooks in the sauce (please don’t come for me, Italians.) The pasta turned out delicious, and it was so easy to make that I knew I had to put it in a recipe!

I know this probably sounds weird, but ratatouille + shakshuka is a surprisingly good combo. If you’ve never heard of ratatouille before, it’s a French Provencal vegetable stew typically made with the freshest of summer produce – zucchini, tomatoes, eggplant. Shakshuka is a dish of eggs poached in tomato sauce, which has many variations that can be found around the Mediterranean and Northern Africa.

Salmon is a popular and easy dinner to make. A common way to make it is roasting it in the oven, which I used to do all the time. Except the problem is, I kept ending up with overcooked salmon, because the oven was too hot. And using the oven is such as hassle – you have to preheat it, and defrost the salmon, and what not.