Since I moved back to San Francisco over 6 months ago I’ve been sorting through a clutter of kitchen equipment and tools, scattered among seemingly endless boxes and crates in the garage. Being the pastry geek that I am, I’ve amassed a ridiculous collection of cake pans, tools, cutters, molds–you name it–so much so that…
Tag: featured
The Kolache Chronicles…or how I fell for the Czech-Tex classic
After weeks of cooking, tweaking, fine-tuning my takes on traditional Chinese favorites, I needed to step away for a bit and try something decidedly non-Asian. On my list of “pastries I want to bake” were kolaches, those puffy, tender yeasted pastries with a divot in the center usually filled with sweet cheese and fruit or…
Sweet construction…or ode to the Layer Cake
A party without cake is just a meeting. Julia Child Also, I would argue, a birthday without a layer cake is not a celebration. Okay, I know some people would beg to differ–like those who prefer pies over cake…or favor individual cupcakes to cutting a slice…or simply don’t like sweets (honestly I can’t relate). I…
Lunch Date with Grandma, Pt. 2…or is that a flying saucer I see?
Lunch date is a bit of a misnomer here. This isn’t a tale about another lunch time excursion–though Pau Pau and I had many during my childhood and young adulthood. No, it’s more a fond memory of something she frequently made me for lunch when I was little, especially on school holidays and summer vacations…
Lunch Date with Grandma, Pt. 1
I think what made my grandmother such a good instinctive cook, despite having spent a large portion of her life outside the kitchen–much of the time playing mah jhong apparently–was that she was a savvy eater who knew how to sniff out great food. It wouldn’t take her long to suss out the best market…
Sit a spell…or the pleasures of afternoon tea snacks from the Chinese bakery
One of the positive things about being quarantined and not working in an office on a set schedule is that I’ve been able to focus some (okay, a lot) of my creative energy on cooking and baking projects, which consequently provides me with ample snacks to indulge in with my afternoon tea. In the beginning…
And now for something sweet…please
No matter how stuffed I feel after feasting on a dozen or so different types of savory dim sum, I ALWAYS make room for sweets. I swear I must have a 2nd stomach reserved just for dessert. As a child it was an almost painful exercise in restraint for me to sit through the savory…
Baby, take a bao
We’re 11 weeks into sheltering in place and it seems not only are people over self-isolation, many are done trying to bake sourdough bread–either out of frustration over flabby or dead starters, flour shortages, one too many failed loaves, or simply because warmer weather is driving them outdoors and away from their ovens. I get…
The sticky subject of rice
In early March, during the nascent days of pandemic toilet paper and hand sanitizer hoarding, mom dispatched me to buy more rice which she’d heard through the Chinese grapevine was also flying off the shelves. She was in a tizzy because that 25lbs bag in the downstairs pantry was clearly insufficient to get us through…
Art of the Wrap…or dumpling traditions
There’s this now famous scene about halfway into the box-office phenomenon that is Crazy Rich Asians (2018) where the obscenely wealthy Young family gather around an ornate dining room table of their matriarch’s impressively vast estate to make dumplings, decked out in stylish designer clothes. The scene is set up so that the elder members,…