Have you ever eating at a Hmong restaurant? Me neither, at least not until recently when I stumbled across not just a restaurant, but a mall targeting the Hmong of the Twin Cities. I’ve been curious about the Hmong people for a while, having suffered through war and hardships and to relocate halfway round...
You know how you discover something, and then you suddenly its as if by magic you see it or references to it pop up everywhere? Or maybe you become hyper sensitive to it once you heard about it, well that’s pandan leaves for me right now. I had heard of pandan leaves before but...
Mendocino County is as breathtaking as ever, but we recently stumbled across something that took us by surprise. My mother-in-law, who accompanied us on this trip, had heard of a restaurant called 10,000 Buddhas that intrigued her and she wanted us to go there for lunch. She said it was a Buddhist restaurant close...
Hands down, one of my favorite herbs is basil, there is just something about it that adds a bit of zing or flavor that I never get tired of, and I am a firm believer that just about anything you add basil to is better as a result. Having only married into a family...
I recently had a revelation – We’ve been robbed! Robbed of some incredibly tasty opportunities, I know I am not alone in that for most of my life I ate one kind of dessert banana. Oh yeah, I’d sampled other bananas when I traveled, and was blown away by how sweet and tasty it...
As a child, I had an overwhelming curiosity about the (H)mong*. For the life of me, I could not figure out why of all the places in the world, they picked Minnesota. Frankly, I was a bit dumbfounded by this choice. Nothing against Minnesota. I still am a Minnesota girl at heart, but growing...
The history of soy sauce is a bit like the sauce itself, kind of murky. What is consistent is that the precursor to soy sauce is something called jiang. Jiang was a method of preservation popular with the prehistoric people of Asia involving preserving meat and fish with salt. This process produced a bi-product,...
I’d been cooking with fish sauce for a while and knew well its potency and pungency, but until I broke a bottle and liberally doused myself and had to suffer through folks quickly backpeddling to give me “breathing space” did I really get it – this stuff is strong – really, really, strong! No wonder the Vietnamese...
Fish sauce are ubiquitous even though we may not always be aware of where they pop up – take Worcestershire sauce for example, or the Italian Colatura di Alici. In Asia, these sauces are considered core components in cooking and the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam all have their own versions of this wonderful condiment....
Raw fish has found its way into many cuisines, and recently after reading a post on poke, I played a bit of a game with myself of trying to think of as many such dishes as I could. My only rule being,that no heat was involved, but “cooking” in acidic mixtures make the cut. Per...
