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Much of what we do to be worthy humans is to help other folks and establish a sense of belonging and community. Sometimes it starts out with a cold call or email. From there a relationship begins.

Three years ago, after Ever-Green Vietnamese released, I got an email from Joyce Tang, the baker and owner of Bake Sum, a hip Asian bakery in Oakland. She invited me for a book signing and offered to feature one of my recipes. We chose the Vietnamese Mocha Cake and she replicated it beautifully, complimenting me on how my recipe scaled up well for her commercial bakery needs. She put her own spin on the cake by adding a Vietnamese coffee Swiss meringue buttercream.

I had a fun afternoon hanging out at the bakery and meeting folks. Bake Sum impressed me with how it exists as a hub for anyone interested in Asian American flavors. Joyce and I got talking about a potential book project so she could share her journey and recipes.

Three years later, she has a cookbook, co-authored with another friend of mine, chef, author, and James Beard Award-winning journalist Soleil Ho. With Bake Sum the pastry shop and book, Joyce realized her dream.

If you want to be on the cutting edge of what captivates and influences the cool kids, Joyce has pro-level ideas for you. Bake Sum’s recipes include classics like egg tarts and moon cakes and newfangled gochujang garlic pull-aparts, black sesame snickerdoodles, and a vegan five-spice chocolate cake that relies on an Asian baking technique to get its moist texture.

What about recipe testing bakery formulas for home cooks? If you’re cookbook curious, give a listen to the podcast that and I did with Joyce and Soleil! 🎧 👂

Then make two easy Bake Sum recipes! I’m a matcha fan so I picked these . . .

💎 Matcha Fancy Rice Crispy Treats

My sisters and I used to make rice krispy treats in the 1970s so Joyce’s recipe for Fancy Rice Crispy Treats that caught my eye. It looks grownup and fun with matcha and salty pretzels! It’s gluten-free and you can totally adapted it to be vegan. Instead of pretzels, put salted roasted peanuts in the mixture or add furikake. Get Joyce’s 🆓 Fancy Rice Krispy Treats recipe at my website.

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💎 Matcha Strawberry-Ginger Latte

Bake Sum has a fun menu of drinks and I really liked the Matcha Strawberry-Ginger Latte. It was verdant, zippy, rich and tangy — and had the colors of the Italian and Mexican flag too! The MSGL is the first recipe in Bake Sum! It’s easy to prepare and as Joyce describes, “This drink looks and tastes like California in a cup, filled with pastures of green and tons of strawberries.”

✅ From Joyce: Use in-season strawberries if possible. If you use frozen berries, add a bit of extra sugar and lemon juice to balance flavors. If you don’t have a matcha bowl, a small bullet blender will work; however, you’ll end up wasting a little bit of the precious green elixir.

✅ From Andrea: I cheat by using an electric milk frother to make matcha fast. As for matcha powder, I regularly drink Tenzo Tea and Kirkland brand.

Matcha Strawberry-Ginger Latte

Makes 2 drinks

Ingredients

Strawberry-Ginger Puree

• 1-inch | 2.5 cm knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced

• ½ cup | 100g sugar

• ½ cup | 113g water

• 1 cup | 155g strawberries

The rest

• 1 teaspoon matcha powder

• 2 tablespoons water

• Ice cubes

• 2 cups | 454 g oat or cow milk

Instructions

Make the strawberry-ginger puree: In a small saucepan, combine the ginger, sugar, and water and simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes, or until the ginger’s bright yellow color starts to become dull. Remove from the heat and cool for a few minutes until it is no longer hot to the touch.

In a blender, combine the strawberries and cooled ginger and its syrup and blend until it’s pourable but still a bit chunky. The ginger should be minced into fine pieces. (The puree can be made ahead and stored in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.)

Assemble the matcha lattes: Sift the matcha powder into a chawan, or matcha bowl, and add the water (see Note). Use a chasen, or matcha whisk, to start whisking vigorously back and forth in a straight line (not in a circular motion). Continue until the whisk has started to produce microfoam.

Pour the strawberry puree into the bottom of two 12-ounce (355 ml) glasses, then top with ice. Fill two-thirds of the way up the glass with the milk of your choice. Pour the just-prepared matcha over the top. Stir and enjoy as soon as possible.

💎 Enter to win a copy of Bake Sum!

Bake Sum has 75 recipes total so there’s lots more to explore. I’ve got a copy to gift one of you lucky PTFS subscribers!

Bake Sum Cookbook Giveaway lowdown:

• The prize: One (1) copy of Bake Sum: Asian American Pastries, Breads, and Other Treats (value $35)

• Eligibility: You must subscribe to Pass the Fish Sauce, be 18+ years of age, and have a valid U.S. shipping address.

• Giveaway end date: Wednesday, October 21, midnight PST.

• Selection and notification method: Based on the number of comments, I will randomly draw a winner and notify the person by email.

• ⚡️ To enter: ❤️ Like this post AND leave a comment (e.g., What’s your favorite classic or modern Asian-y sweet treat? What’s your favorite Asian bakery? What ingredient(s) signal ‘Asia’ to you?) 👇👇👇

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💎 Coming up . . .

Joyce’s recipes got me all nostalgic so I’m taking a walk down memory lane this Sunday with an updated take on a Viet-Chinese snack. Join us behind the paywall, if you have not!

See you on Sunday,

After some lively discussion about ratatouille in a recent newsletter, I thought it would be fun to ask my friend Kat, aka; The Vigneron’s Wife, who lives in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France, with her French husband, winemaker Benjamin Darnault, to share with us how she prepares this iconic French dish in a guest post. Whenever we visit the region, Kat and Benji, as her husband is known, often invite us for lunch on their stunning terrace overlooking the vineyard. On our last visit, Kat, who is originally from Australia, made a delicious ratatouille with vegetables she picked up at the local market in Olonzac, one of the best in France, and the flavors were stunning.

You’ll notice Kat uses quite a bit of olive oil, which is perhaps one of the reasons why it’s so good. (An Italian friend once told me, “Olive oil isn’t used just to keep foods from sticking. It’s a flavor.”) I hope you enjoy this guest post, and recipe (and photos), from Kat! - David

When I was a kid in Australia, market shopping was a treat. Every Friday night, I’d go with my parents to Adelaide’s Central Market. Dad was obsessed with Italian charcuterie, Mum loved the fresh fruits and fried Asian dishes, and I’d find myself carrying a bag of steaming roasted beer nuts, hot in my hands with burning, salty fingers, trying not to lose Mum and Dad in the crowds.

The market was packed to bursting with people and noise, vendors yelling bargain prices, excitement in the air for the weekend. Stall after stall was awash with colour and all sorts of aromas drifting to my nose. My parents bought most of our household’s food at the local supermarket, but this was our thing: to head into the city and treat ourselves to exotic produce you couldn’t often find anywhere else. The Central Market was our happy place.

Fast forward to today, and I still do a weekly market shop, but it’s thousands of kilometers from my childhood home, in a small rural village in France called Olonzac. If ever you’d told me I’d be living in a remote region of France and shopping at an outdoor market on an ancient square, that 12-year-old Australian kid would never have believed you. And yet here I am, and I’ve been coming to this market now for over 25 years.

So where is Olonzac exactly? It’s a village in the heart of the Minervois, a historic wine-producing area of southern France. People have been making wine here for thousands of years, since the Romans inhabited the area. Part of this region was formerly known by the name you might be more familiar with, the Languedoc-Roussillon - which lines the Mediterranean coast and is close to the Spanish border.

The Olonzac market is approximately 12km (7½ miles) from the village I live in, and it’s where I do the bulk of my food shopping. Every Tuesday morning, vendors from around the region set up their stalls: fresh fruit, vegetables, cheeses, meats, small goods, eggs, fish, bread, flowers freshly picked from up in the Montagnes Noires (Black Mountains). The selection of produce is amazing.

I love this market for its food. There’s a big mix of stalls selling products from all over the region, but for me the finest, most delicious produce is what’s grown in local gardens by Vanessa, Valérie, Isabelle, and Lisbeth. Many of my favourite growers are women and over the years, my nervous first attempts at communication, using my hands or a nodding, embarrassed smile, shifted to small exchanges about my hometown (‘It’s sooo far!’ they would say), the weather, or what vegetables are growing well at the moment. I can’t tell you the honour this foreigner felt when I graduated to being on a first-name basis with these people!

As children arrived in our lives, next came introductions to each other’s kids - mine in a pusher (stroller), while theirs sat on the ground behind the stall, reading books, or older ones helped mum refill the cucumber bins. What a joy it is now, to have a voice in their language and share a bit of our lives with each other: to be asked how my daughter is doing, what is she studying now; is my dad well, has he travelled back to Australia; hearing Valérie’s daughter is now living in Barcelona; Isabelle’s husband is back from working in Corsica.

It has been a privilege getting to know these women and their lives. The market has not only given me access to, and a knowledge of, incredible local products, it has given me a sense of community in our region. In an entertaining and discreet way, it has also been a great gauge on how my French is evolving - or not! (still have a looong way to go). One more thing: it has forced me to appreciate things at a slower pace. Queuing up and waiting is all part of the process! To be honest, on some days it can be a little frustrating - and if you are rushing to get back to your desk, simply out of the question.

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But if you have the privilege of time, waiting for the butcher to prepare a farm chicken for Madame Vidal can lead to a conversation about which local doctor is taking new patients; lining up to pay for your tomatoes will allow you to hear which teacher at your kid’s school is leaving, or be given a good tomato recipe from the Monsieur in front. You can glean all sorts of VIP information.

Another French product that I have a very personal connection to is wine. Yes, of course, it goes without saying that I like drinking wine! But basically why I live here is because I am married to someone who makes wine here. It’s a long story, and a very long time ago (29 years), but I married a Frenchman after an exceptionally short time together. We had met in Australia, went our separate ways, then decided to rendezvous one year later, in South Africa.

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I joined Benjamin working a harvest in Paarl and within the first week, we decided to get married. One month later, we celebrated our wedding over lunch in an outdoor cafe in Cape Town, with two strangers who had also been our witnesses.

As far as everyone at home knew, I was still ‘backpacking’ with my French fling and the next stop on our itinerary was France. No one in the world knew we were married, and landing together on Benjamin’s parents’ doorstep was nerve-wracking. It was my first-ever time in France, I didn’t speak French, and here I was, living with people I’d just met, who were my in-laws.

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I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty, just to say I stumbled over more than a few faux pas, like telling my mother-in-law who didn’t yet know she was my mother-in-law, ‘je suis chaude’ on a hot day. I was desperate to prove to these French people that I was a nice person (and a decent daughter-in-law), but nothing impressive came out of my mouth - and what did, was often wrong.

Eventually we announced the news of our marriage to both families (not good news for everyone…though Dad eventually budged at ‘winemaker’), and the next step in our grown-up life was to find work. Via a good family friend, Benjamin landed his first ‘serious’ winemaking job in the Languedoc. We gathered our belongings from each hemisphere and set up house together in the Minervois, for Benjamin’s new position as a chief winemaker in the village of La Livinière.

Benjamin Darnault Wines

It was an exciting place to land. The Languedoc-Roussillon is a major wine-producing area of France, and a beautiful region with spectacular natural landscapes and a lovely, gentle climate influenced by the Mediterranean, conditions perfect for vineyards. We live, literally, surrounded by grapevines and nearly everyone has some kind of connection to vineyards or to wine; wine/viticulture is the most important agricultural industry in the area.

Just to give you an idea of the scope, the wider Occitanie region - which includes our Languedoc-Roussillon - produces around 10 million hectolitres of wine in a typical year (FYI, that’s how we measure wine production - roughly a billion litres). That’s a lotta wine! Benjamin has been making wine in this region for over 24 years now, and I am in awe of how much he has learned and created since our first days here, expanding his knowledge of the ‘terroir’, as they say, and increasing his focus on organic and biodynamic farming.

It has been an adventure…to say the least, getting to know this region together. We arrived as twenty-year-olds, the young ‘foreign’ couple (Benjamin coming from the Charente region is as much a foreigner as me) - and now it is home.

Thanks to David’s kind suggestion, something I would like to share with you from our home, is my recipe for ratatouille. This traditional southern French dish captures all the things I love about here: the colours, the seasons, the flavours and time spent shopping and cooking fresh produce. With the end of summer and the season for local tomatoes and eggplants coming to a close, I reckon it’s a good time for one last ratatouille. It is perfect for serving to your family and friends, while enjoying some slow time around the table, along with glasses of good (preferably local) wine.

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Ratatouille

Serves 6

“Rat-a-too-ey”. The name is a mouthful, but what a delicious mouthful it is.

Nothing evokes Summer in the south of France more for me than this traditional French dish. At this time of year, local markets like the one in Olonzac are laden with bell peppers, eggplants, zucchinis and tomatoes. The colours are sublime and just thinking about cooking a ratatouille conjures up images of the potagers, the gardens where the vegetables are grown, and big old cast-iron casserole pots full of all these fresh Summer vegetables simmering on country kitchen stoves.

Here for you is my version of a ratatouille. And yes I say ‘my’ version, as there are many! While the ingredients are nearly always the same, the cooking methods differ (many French people = many opinions): vegetables cut big or small; diced or sliced; separate frying or fry together; oily, not so oily; fresh tomatoes or tinned...

There is no right or wrong way, it’s up to you (as I keep reminding my French husband who tends to peer over my shoulder!!). My version has changed over the years - I used to spend a lot of time preparing my eggplants - salting, rinsing, drying, and frying each piece to a golden colour before adding them to the pot. It was a lovely looking result, but SO time-consuming. And so much oilier. I now add them directly to the pot, unsalted and uncooked. I also cut my vegetables larger, which gives them a fleshier texture. You know what you are eating - unlike cutting them so small, you render the vegetables unrecognisable. The larger cut also helps maintain a level of firmness. I now only use fresh tomatoes instead of grabbing canned ones.

Ratatouille is a lovely choice for accompanying roast lamb and grilled pork sausages,* or served at room temperature or cold with crusty bread and a green salad. It is also a great leftover sauce to pour over pasta with grated cheese, which was my special way of serving vegetables to our daughter when she was ‘anti-vegetables.’ I’d like to add that she always ate her vegetables when presented this way.

*We often buy Saucisses de Toulouse (Toulouse sausages). They are made from roughly 75% to 80% coarsely minced lean pork (such as shoulder) and 20% to 25% pork belly or fat and seasoned with salt and black pepper. - Kat

- Approximately 200ml (~3/4 cup) extra-virgin olive oil

- 2 large onions, halved, then sliced roughly, about a .5cm (¼-inch) in thickness

- 6 red and green bell peppers (or capsicums or poivrons, often referred to as sweet peppers), seeded and roughly cut into 3cm (1-inch) slices

- 4 medium eggplants (aubergines), sliced and quartered into about 2cm thickness

- 5 to 6 medium cloves garlic, finely chopped

- 2 bay leaves

- 1 sprig of thyme

- salt and freshly ground black pepper

- 1 teaspoon minced fresh or dried chillies, less or more as desired; the chile adds a lovely lift

- 4 medium zucchinis (courgettes), cut lengthwise into chunky 6cm long pieces (if you can find yellow as well as green zucchinis, this adds a lovely colour to the dish)

- 4 to 5 medium tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped or pulled apart

- Big handful of basil, about 6 sprigs with leaves

method:

In a large cast-iron pot, heat 3-5 tablespoons (60-100ml) olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of the pot with a shallow pool of oil. Add the onions and fry over low heat until soft and golden, stirring occasionally.

As the onions become soft and golden, add the bell peppers, eggplants, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, salt and pepper, and chilli to taste, and pour over some more olive oil, about 3 tablespoons, enough to give it a glow-up! Stir well and increase the heat to medium. Cook for 20 minutes, with lid on, stirring occasionally to help the vegetables meld.

Reduce the heat to low, keeping the lid on, and cook over gentle heat for approx. 20 minutes.

Add the zucchinis and tomatoes, pour over approx. 2 tablespoons olive oil, and stir well. Place the lid back on and continue cooking for approx. 30 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.

During this time, check every 10 minutes or so and give the vegetables a stir, being gentle so you don’t break up the zucchinis and eggplants too much.

to serve:

Adjust the seasoning to taste and scatter torn basil over the top. Please make sure you have some Dijon mustard handy too! It’s a delicious touch having a dollop on the side of your plate. Plus a good chilled French wine (red or white, you choose) ready to serve alongside. If you are able to find a Benjamin Darnault wine, even better!

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This hearty lentil curry recipe is perfect on a cool day. Featuring tender lentils and plentiful veggies, it’s nicely spiced with curry powder and cumin. Curious about the spice level? I’d classify it as mild. The dish is lightly creamy thanks to some coconut milk, but not heavy.

Make this curry when you want to warm up and eat your vegetables as the same time. I tested this recipe five times with a variety of vegetables and love the final combination of onion, bell pepper, carrot, potato and cauliflower. You could treat it as a light main dish or a vegetable side dish.

If you’re a fan of dal makhani (the classic Indian lentil curry) or lentil soup but want to try something different, give this dish a try. It yields quite a bit, so you can freeze individual portions for later in the season.

Continue to the recipe...

The post Lentil Curry appeared first on Cookie and Kate.

This crunchy, light fennel and orange salad features thinly shaved fennel, fragrant chunks of orange and a refreshing mix of both lemon and orange juice that complements the aromatic fennel. It makes a great side dish for light and hearty dishes alike! A Recipe for Citrus Season When summer berries, stone fruit, and watermelon recede […]

Fried milk (炸鲜奶) is a Cantonese dessert that just melts in your mouth. It’s a soft custard-y pudding bite that solidifies enough to coat in coconut flakes and fry until warm and toasty. Its light sweetness will be nostalgic for many of you!  How Do You Make Fried Milk?  Fried milk starts with a simple […]

I’ve had a wonderful week in Nepal, starting in Kathmandu, before heading north to Phaplu and staying at The Happy House with friends. We visited monasteries, hiked, drank hot lemon ginger tea, which I’m confident all of us are going to make a habit of drinking when we’re back home. We fêted a friend for his 70th birthday, and did some sound healing, which uses sounds and vibrations from gongs and singing bowls to relax and balance our energy. It’s our last day and I’m amazed by everything we managed to do, and eat, in one week.

At the two monasteries we visited, one requiring a 3-hour hike up a mountain, we prayed with the monks, who served us yak butter tea.

A local guide told me that she wasn’t a fan of it, and in the north of Nepal, they brew it a lot stronger than what was served to us. I took a few sips and it had a salty-funky taste, reminiscent of clam juice. I didn’t mind it but decided to stick with the lemon ginger tea.

While riding and walking around the country, someone in our group asked why so many houses were painted blue. “That’s the only color that’s available,” our guide told us. While other buildings are sometimes painted red or yellow, if you’ve ever spent hours looking at hundreds of paint samples, trying to decide what’s the exact perfect shade of beige for your bathroom, I like the idea of there just being one color, and that’s what you use.

At one of the monasteries they did a dance for our friend’s birthday, with two people working in tandem in a costume, to prance around the courtyard.

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The kitchens in the monasteries were quite rustic affairs with cauldrons and pots simmering away over wood fires.

Most of the kitchen staff, understandably, didn’t want their pictures taken. But most were huddled around bowls, sitting on the floor, taking a break. The monks ate sparsely and one was even licking his bowl so thoroughly, it probably didn’t need to get washed afterwards. (Although I’m sure they did.)

You might not think of cheese when you think of Nepal, especially when you come from a country with over a thousand cheeses. But the cheeses I ate in Nepal made me want to bring a wedge home.

Most of them were made with cow or yak milk, or a combination of both. I didn’t see any goat or sheep’s milk cheese, but perhaps they have them. The ones above tasted similar to Emmental cheese, and one was slightly smoky. Both were delicious.

My favorite, though, was the yogurt, the best made with buffalo milk. If you’re one of those people who doesn’t like skin on their pudding or yogurt, please feel free to give it to me. Sometimes the yogurt was a bit coarse and curdy, other times it was made with cooked-down milk, so it was rich and creamy. We get good yogurt in France, but with apologies to mes compatriotes, the yogurt in Nepal is next level.

Condiments are another thing you’ll find on Nepalese tables. You can see some at the very top of this post. Some are made with Sichuan peppercorns, which sizzle when you bite into them; other condiments are pickled garlic, spinach, and fermented vegetables. Meat is mostly an accent in the foods we ate, not the main course.

Although one exception was this cocktail…

I was told to check out Barc, which is on one of those “50 Best” lists in the cocktail bar category. Barc is located on the top floor of a shopping mall in Kathmandu, and it took us a moment to find the front door, which we eventually did, and sat down to try some cocktails.

The cocktail menu toggles between sweet and savory, and the one above, The Spicy Shukti, was an experimental cocktail, which the server told me as he gently warned me away from it. The drink is made by infusing buffalo jerky with whisky, vermouth, cocktail onions, and tomato, and after a few sips, I couldn’t drink anymore; it was way too meaty for me. It was a nice try, though (but maybe a little more experimentation is needed…) The waiter replaced it with a flight of Aylā, a fermented rice distillation, which ranged from a glass of the unaged clear spirit, to other glasses infused with spices, aged in oak, and betel leaves.

We were bigger fans of the food, rather than the cocktails, which included an excellent chicken fried rice with garlic, above, and spicy, pan-fried momos (dumplings), which were some of the best we had in Nepal.

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Meals in Asia don’t end with cakes or sweets, as they do in other cultures. In Nepal, Milk Cake is popular, made from cooked-down milk. Some contained grains, such as flour, and others had nuts in them. They were all quite good and trekkers like to snack on them for energy.

We also visited a rustic farmer’s market in Nayabazar, a small village near where we were staying. We got there pretty early, and things were in full swing.

Sellers sold everything, from the chiles and tamarillos above, to Asian pears, bitter melons, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash. The region isn’t wealthy and some farmers come just to trade ingredients, not buy them. In fact, I don’t know if I saw any money changing hands while we were there.

I fell in love with these marble-sized red chiles called dalle Khursani, which are the base of an especially good hot sauce that’s on almost every table in Nepal. They have a particular flavor that was a bit citrusy, and are fairly spicy, but the heat is smooth, rather than abrupt.

It was served with almost everything,

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At the market, there were some really cute goats and Suzanne Goin, who’s the chef/owner of A.O.C. restaurant in LA, didn’t want to look at them since we thought they were going to meet their maker, right then and there. But we were relieved they were just being sold, or traded, at the market for farming, not feasting on.

My time at Chez Panisse didn’t overlap much with Suzanne’s time there, but she did tell me when the group of us who worked at CP stayed up late one night laughing together and spilling some tea about our time there, that she was afraid of me.

I don’t know why she was afraid since I’m so nice and she’s such a dynamic chef. No one else had any problems with me, but Suzanne and I had a good laugh about it. And I’m glad she’s over it 😆…and we can be friends.

(She actually told me she was afraid of me because I was in the pastry department since we were psychologically separated from the other cooks in the restaurant. Even though we were in the same kitchen, we were doing our own sweet thing.)

After heading back to where we were staying, we divided up into groups for the final hike and overnight camping at the top of a mountain. The hardier folks in our group would do the steep walk while others would ride part way and do that last part by foot, which was the only way it was accessible.

With the higher altitude, hiking was a bit more challenging to me than biking around Paris, so I opted for the slower route, also so I could savor the scenery. We’d taken a pretty substantial hike a few days before that was over three hours long, and if there wasn’t a meal at the end of it, I may not have made it to our destination.

Perhaps the most curious thing we had to eat in Nepal was bhang, a drink with a curious name, whose primary ingredient is cannabis. I later found out that Bhang is the word for weed, in Nepal.

Because I’m a law-abiding citizen, I did ask a local if it was legal and she sent me the above menu from the 1970s, with a message that it is (although the decriminalization of it is actually recent). Anissa Helou, a friend who was on this trip, said farms often have plants, and they feed the leaves to the goats. I wasn’t sure how strong it was, so I focused mostly on the milk cake served alongside.

By the time you read this, I’m heading back to Kathmandu, and then returning home. Thanks to everyone in Nepal for their exceptional kindness and graciousness. The Nepalese people have been so welcoming and friendly, and discovering their foods and culinary culture has opened my eyes, and stomach, to a cuisine that I was unfamiliar with. Namaste!

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As many of you know, several communities in Nepal were recently hit by devastating flash floods. If you’d like to make a donation to the official relief efforts, you can do so at this link:

Official Nepal Relief Fund website

September through February is “soup season.” But as someone born in a tropical country, I have to tell you this — it’s soup season year round in Vietnam. Temperature doesn’t matter much.

Pho sure, we eat brothy soups for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A proper Vietnamese family meal includes a simple soup (canh) loaded with vegetables plus a stir-fry or braise, a green vegetable side, and lots rice. I don’t eat Viet soups or proper Viet meals everyday but I do regularly prepare simple brothy soups for lunch and dinner.

I can use instant bouillon and canned broth, BUT the soup has amazing life-giving qualities whenever I have homemade chicken stock on hand. My routine is to make a batch of Instant Pot chicken stock on Monday to use throughout the rest of the week. (I pick Monday because that night, we take the trash out so it’s easy to say bye-bye to the detritus.) My recipe uses lots of scraps, chicken feet, and vegetables and takes about 1 hour, most of which you — the cook, do nothing! The result is golden, slightly gelatinous, and practical.

In northern Vietnamese, stocks and broths are called nước dùng (“nook zdung”), which can be lyrically translated as “useful liquid”. When tasty and rich, it functions as a foundational base, root, trunk, a building block. Having good stock around is akin to having lots of culinary capital to dole out for easy flavor returns! It’s liquid gold.

Above are my recent midday soup forays — the chicken stock, which I keep in a pot and portion into a small saucepan for lunch. A bunch of watercress went in one day. When I was developing last week’s Viet rotisserie chicken noodle soup recipe, I used that broth for a lunch with bok choy one day. The next day, I dropped in some tofu, napa cabbage, and mushroom. Bring it to a boil, simmer very briefly, and voila! — lunch is ready!

With the stock handy, you can splash a little into a stir-fry and not think twice about opening a can or diluting instant bouillon. I keep canned broth and bouillon paste around but if there’s a chicken carcass, skin bits, and veggies, I’m making chicken stock! Add chicken feet and it’s gelatin rich and oh soooo good. Get my go-to chicken stock 🆓 recipe on the website. The instructions are for the Instant Pot, pressure cooker, and stockpot so you have no excuse!

Whatever your technique, have some liquid gold on hand in the fridge or freezer. Your Vietnamese Rotisserie Chicken Noodle Soup will be extra excellent.

A tasty, healthy Hainan Chicken Rice

You can also use that stock or broth for this week’s PTFS recipe — Hainan Rotisserie Chicken Rice. I’ve eaten the renowned version at Singapore hawker centers, where the chicken is gently poached and the resulting light cooking liquid is used for making the rice, which is served with the chicken and a bunch of different sauces with varying amount of ginger, chile, and green onion. It’s good but subtle and a bit heavy.

Hainan chicken rice is typically a project dish. My new recipe is a one-dish meal that you can pull off with minimal fuss. In the above photo, the components are:

• Rotisserie (or roast) chicken allows you to have succulence and crispy skin! (Not everyone is a poached chicken lover.) Buy the bird already cooked or roast it yourself with a simple salt and pepper seasoning. (Shout out to , the former editor-in-chief of Cooking Light magazine, for suggesting this idea and saying I could borrow/steal it!)

• Ginger-garlic rice is arguably the star of the dish. Thanks to a whole grain hack in ’s new How to Cook Everything Vegan (written with ), I was finally able to make Hainan chicken rice with brown jasmine rice! You can load it with crispy rice bits if you want (I’ll tell you how!). Feel free to just make the rice to serve with other dishes. In the recipe below, I’ve also got instructions for using white jasmine rice.

• A vegetable-laden soup that’s wholesome and more flavorful than the light broth served with traditional Hainan chicken rice.

• Four (4) easy sauces — rich ginger sauce, ginger-scallion sauce, chile-ginger sauce, and ginger-soy sauce. My recipes just requires stirring a few ingredients together! Make at least 2, if not all of them.

Below in text and in a dowloadable PDF, you’ll see a five (5) recipe package for: Hainan Rotisserie Chicken Rice and all the sauces. Additionally, look for the brown rice hack explainer so you can apply it elsewhere, advance prep tips to help you avoid getting cranky, and tweak suggestions so you can play around with the recipe.

Because you are smart cooks, I know you’ll use these five recipes as building blocks for other dishes in your rotation!

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I have tested and tweaked this Spaghetti Bolognese over the last 3 years. It’s richly meaty with a mixture of beef and pork, with layers and layers of flavor. It’s become my personal Sunday sauce—my “I need to feed people and make them feel loved” recipe. Dare I say, it’s exactly what you want in […]

This sheet pan red curry chicken is the kind of recipe that feels like it shouldn’t be this easy. Under 10 ingredients, one sheet pan, and a can of Thai red curry paste doing the heavy lifting while you do… not much. Chicken thighs go golden, crispy-skinned, and full of flavor, while the butternut squash […]

Let’s get cozy with cornbread and chili! I’m so excited about how this cornbread recipe turned out. It’ll be my go-to from here on out. It has the same irresistibly crisp edges and subtle brown butter flavor that I love in my honey butter cornbread recipe, but magically tastes even more like corn.

This wholesome cornbread is gluten-free because it uses almond flour instead of regular flour. It’s an easy and nutritious swap that yields amazing cornbread. Does it taste like almonds, you ask? Not at all—the cornmeal is the star of the show here.

If you’re simply curious to try it, or looking for a gluten-free or lower-carb cornbread, this recipe is for you. I hope it becomes your new favorite, too.

Continue to the recipe...

The post Gluten-Free Cornbread appeared first on Cookie and Kate.

Pineapple Chicken is a little bit sweet, a little bit spicy, and full of tender velveted chicken and juicy pineapple chunks. Why Does Pineapple Feature in Chinese American Recipes?  This Pineapple Chicken is a retro Chinese American stir-fry dish that, depending on where you live, you may not see too often.  But once upon a […]

It was an opportunity that was too hard to pass up. A good friend was celebrating his 70th birthday and decided to do it in Nepal. I’d never been to South Asia and Kathmandu had always had a bit of a mystique to me. India is still on my bucket list to visit, but I’ve been holding off on going there until I could go with an Indian friend, who knew the lay of the land and who could explain all the customs and cuisines to me. You could use up a continent of water understanding them all with an AI chatbot, so I won’t do that.

And I’m also sitting in a hotel room while everyone else is asleep, sipping instant coffee from the hotel minibar at 4:40am, using the feeble internet connection, to upload some pictures to share. So sorry about any typos or lapses in knowledge about Nepal and Nepalese cuisine, which I’m trying to fill as I go along here. This was a relatively last-minute trip, so I should have crammed and studied up with some books on Nepalese cooking, but there really isn’t a better way to understand a country than through its food, and that’s what we did.

After a night of flying, we arrived pretty early, so unloaded our luggage at our hotel and hit the ground. The people at the desk warned us about walking around, saying it was a little dangerous. I wasn’t sure if that meant we would get mugged, but in the end, their concerns were for our safety due to the chaos of drivers and motor scooters coming at you from every which way. Apparently crime in Nepal is very low, but doing things like crossing a busy street can be harrowing due to a riot of traffic, so you might feel like you’re in a pinball machine, avoiding the flippers, if you walk around. (In Paris, we have food delivery drivers on bikes who seemingly have no idea about the rules of the road, and other cyclists who whiz through red lights, to worry about.) I felt very safe and while I’ve only been here a few days, everyone has been very kind.

At our first meal, the waiter gave us some guidance on eating with your hands. I’ve been out in Paris with my friend Beena Paradin, who gave me some tips, but it’s a talent I’ve yet to master.

I also took a chance on ordering dhido, a buckwheat dumpling of sorts, which came out in a big, gooey lump, drizzled with ghee (clarified butter). I can’t say it was my favorite thing that I ever ate, and the super-nice server told me it was best eaten by tearing off a chunk and dipping it in the sauce, then swallowing it without chewing. Since it had the texture of mochi, which people choke on in Japan, I decided that it may not be the best way to eat it. And talking to locals later about dhido, I realized it wasn’t everyone’s favorite. But they gave me kudos for trying it!

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Hello October!

I hope you had a good week, despite the general levels of angst that seems to float about these days over the economy, AI, and so much more!

I’m not quite ready to crawl into a cave because there’s a lot of optimism out there. For instance, our neighbors have been starting families and their young are full of life, curiosity and hope. I also find solace in people doing good things in the culinary world.

Food and Wine magazine released its 2026 Best New Chefs list, and I contributed the write up on Kiln, a two-Michelin star restaurant in San Francisco. I wasn’t prepared to enjoy the 20-course tasting menu but it was super flavorful and not fussy. Chef John Wesley is also a remarkable person with incredible talent. Moreover, FW’s picks includes The Paper Bridge, a Vietnamese restaurant in Portland, OR, owned by Quynh Nguyen, a Hanoi-native, and Carlo Renardi, her American husband. Check out the BNC 2026 listing to see what may be near you!

If you subscribe to , its new issue #35 celebrates women at the forefront of home cooking. Yours truly is in the issue (contributors were asked: “What tastes like home?”). CB selected Cooking Thai as an outstanding fall cookbook and included Pim’s kabocha squash coconut custard dessert recipe.

And, my local Bookshop Santa Cruz announced that our book sold very well last month. 🥳 You may still get signed copies there or at Omnivore Books in SF.

What to cook right now? Some dishes are evergreen like my Vietnamese fish salad (gỏi cá), which Gail recently made with cod cheeks and reported stellar results, including the leftovers!

On the other hand, certain dishes are seasonally appropriate. October is part of the shoulder season. Summer warmth lingers in the day while autumn cool creeps in as the golden light fades. The two recipes I’m sharing this week help you straddle and enjoy the best of both seasons and make the most of what you’ve got.

Make a swank take on a Thai icon 🍃 🌶️

First up is a premium take on pad gaprao, the go-to stir-fry for many people in Thailand. The Thais eat it about once a week, according to an article that Pim found while we were writing Cooking Thai. (Sorry, pad Thai!) I asked her for a recipe and she returned with a masterful one featuring juicy, seared beef steak cubes that are shot through with the garlicky, punchy heat that makes Thai food sultry and exciting. Lots of basil functions as a seasoning, not a garnish.

Pim cheekily named her recipe Bougie Pad Gaprao because the typical rendition uses ground meat. If you have the book, the main recipe is on page 233 followed by three (3) variations on page 234. For those of you who don’t yet have the book, I’ve shared our recipe and pro tips — including smart basil swaps — on my website. Pad gaprao is on rotation at our house. It comes together fast so get the 🆓❣️ pad gaprao recipe to experience Asian basil are at its peak.

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Use leftover rotisserie chicken for shortcut Viet-Chinese noodle soup (mì gà tiềm) 🍗 🍜

While there’s a hurry to savor summer herbs, we’re also looking to hibernate a bit with cozy soup. There’s plenty of time to simmer for hours during winter’s depth. For now, I’m still into quickies and hacks.

This week, I needed to deal with leftover rotisserie chicken. The store bought bird saved my cooking life last Sunday when I was too tired to cook from scratch. Its comforting roasted flavor, convenience and affordability rescued me. But what to do with the leftovers? Yes, you can make a sandwich or salad but those dishes often blatantly remind you that you’re still eating the same bird. Day-after rotisserie chicken can be dry as a cotton ball and hard to swallow.

Not wanting to discard more than half of the bird, I transformed its flesh and all the scraps into a Vietnamese-Chinese noodle soup. It took about 45 minutes and transported me to a family friend’s Chinese barbecue shop in San Diego. Mr. and Mrs. Tan owned the shop that my parents frequented. While the adults talked, I scarfed down Mrs. Tan’s specialty — mì vịt tiềm (“mee VEET tiam”), a braised duck Vietnamese egg noodle soup with a rich, spiced broth. It’s a specialty of the Chinese diaspora in Vietnam, particularly the one in Chợ Lớn, Saigon’s Chinatown neighborhood.

Mrs. Tan gave my mom her recipe, which I used to create the recipe for my first cookbook, Into the Vietnamese Kitchen. That twenty year old recipe on page 220 remains my favorite iteration but it’s time consuming to prepare. Who wants to roast duck or go find one? When traffic is perfect, the closest Chinese barbecue shop is 45 minutes away! And nowadays, what’s sold at those shops as roast duck is anemic.

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Wanting a cozy shortcut and aiming to use up my rotisserie chicken, I cooked up this shortcut version with chicken. This 45-minute Mì Gà Tiềm hack transforms the chicken into a remarkably fun and special treat. The flesh moistened up, but most importantly, the results made me forget that we were eating humble leftovers. Rory dreaded eating rotisserie chicken dishes but he perked up when I served him a bowl of this noodle soup.

When you make this shortcut Mì Gà Tiềm (“mee GAH tiam”), you’ll realize its many virtues.

• It uses every bit of the bird for a potent broth. Use your roast chicken leftovers, if you want. Rotisserie chicken isn’t the only game in town. 😆

• If you don’t have enough meat, at least turn the leftover scraps into tasty broth. Add mushroom, tofu and napa cabbage and you have quick and easy soup for lunch.

• Use Chinese egg noodles, rice noodles, soba, or ramen. Instant ramen is fine.

• Employ fresh or dried mushrooms, depending on the time used.

Below you’ll find the recipe in text and a downloadable PDF. Plus you’ll have all my recipe development notes for you to tinker with.

Ok, the clock is running and you’re hungry. Let’s make this noodle soup!

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Beef with Garlic Sauce is a savory, garlicky, saucy stir-fry that hits all the best notes of Chinese-American takeout. Tender beef, crisp vegetables, and a glossy brown sauce with just enough tang and a hit of garlic, it’s a one-pan meal with meat and vegetables that comes together in about 30 minutes! What Is Garlic […]

Something I’ve noticed is that in the summer months, when we’re visiting friends in and around France during July and August - when summer fruits are at their absolute peak - everybody has a bowl of pears and apples in their kitchen.

It strikes me as odd that in the midst of apricot, cherry, melon, strawberry, peach, and nectarine season, when the most outstanding fruits of the year are at the markets, people are eating apples and pears. A sign popped up at my local natural food store that said, “Finally, apples and pears!” It’s as if people have been waiting patiently for the end of summer so they could have apples and pears.

In spite of crazy heatwaves this year, summer is my favorite season, mostly due to the fruits. But I’m not the only one who’s ever dreamed of an endless summer. So did Californians in 1964…

But they changed the title of the movie in France, from Endless Summer to Wave Chasers.

In France, people are excited about the rentrée, when people come back after summer vacations and celebrate being back by having parties and get-togethers. There’s something to be said for people who wait all year for their summer vacation, then celebrate when it’s over. Maybe it’s my California roots, but I wish summer would never end. I like wearing short-sleeve shirts and sandals, and eating outside, although the mosquitos followed everyone back and even the two “buckets of doom” I concocted failed to curb them.

I love summer and wish it would never end, and if I’m being honest, coming back took me a few weeks to catch up on everything. I try not to do anything during my summer vacation except read, eat, drink, swim, and relax, but I do forget that the rest of the world isn’t France (or Europe, for that matter), where summer vacations are taken seriously. Yes, people at the beach are still scrolling, but no one seems to be spending a lot of (or any) time answering business emails, at least in my orbit.

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I did my best in September to hang on to all the lovely summer fruits, but soon will succumb to apples and pears, since there are lovely, aromatic Williams pears at the markets, fragrant quince, and wooden crates of heirloom apples, perfect for making French apple tarts.

Get Ready for Dessert!

David Lebovitz on Apple Podcasts

A few thoughts and stories that caught my eye recently:

• A New York City vintage cookbook store owner landed in jail over a line dispute, which gave us a brief respite from all the influencers on social media complaining about the $60 loaf of rye bread in New York. My take is, like a $16,000 Hermès handbag, you don’t have to buy it. On the other hand, I agree with a baker who posted that they didn’t want bread to become a fancy commodity, as coffee did, being sold in precious little bags at high prices.

  But to the people who were amused by a Lidl truck advertising their $3.99/loaf of bread outside the Soho bakery, you can’t compare a loaf of industrially made bread to a loaf of handmade bread. I worked in a bread bakery exactly one night, and I almost didn’t make it through the whole shift. It’s very hard work.
  
  I know people are on a budget, but I’ve tasted Lidl bread and, sorry, but it’s not very good, imho. Fortunately I live somewhere where bread is considered a right, and more affordable. And I agree that $60 is a lot for a loaf of bread but, thankfully, New Yorkers can buy terrific bread from bakeries, such as She Wolf, Frenchette, Runner & Stone, La Cabra, and Lost Bread, that are a fraction of the price. And while I’m not someone who thinks you have to DIY everything, you can make your own bread without spending a fortune.

• Speaking of lines, Paris seems to be all about lines these days. I wanted to try a newish shop that opened up, selling jambon-beurre (ham and butter) sandwiches. But when I rode my bike by it the first time, which was 40 minutes before they opened, people were already lined up. Two of my favorite sandwich shops, which I wrote about in 2011 and 2014, now require a wait as well, thanks to social media…and serving delicious sandwiches!

  
  While it’s true that the two aforementioned sandwiches are worth waiting for — which is coming from someone who waited thirty minutes in Copenhagen for a cardamom bun that was scrumptious — I miss walking into a place, chatting with the owner or the clerk for a few moments, i.e., human interaction, and leaving with a nice sandwich for lunch.

  

  Fortunately the other day, after seeing the lengthy queue at Parizot, I decided to stop by sandwich stalwart, Chez Aline, for a jambon-fromage. Frequented by locals, it also happens to be in my neighborhood. The owner was locking the door as I pulled up, but offered to make me a sandwich. She was out of baguettes so made it on a round roll. I do prefer baguettes for sandwiches, so maybe I will give Parizot a go another time. One draw is they apparently offer a cornichon relish, which sounds delicious. On the other hand, I could just make my own.

• Although I haven’t experienced it, a few people online have been talking about an arnaque (scam) involving taxis in Paris. Apparently some people said after they paid for their taxi by credit card, they found their card had been charged thousands of dollars, claiming the driver likely switched credit card machines, and not using the one they’re supposed to use.
  

  First up, you can always pay for a taxi in cash, and exact change (or close) is best if you want to, because they rarely have change. (G7, the most reliable taxi service in Paris, has an app you can hail a cab and pay through, if you want to go cashless.) Second, before you accept a credit card transaction, take a look at the screen and verify the amount. Third, after you pay, ask for a fiche (receipt). Official taxis in Paris are required to accept credit cards, in spite of some of them saying otherwise 🙄. And they are required to have meters that will show the fare.

  Favorite Paris Restaurants

  Lastly, everyone in France is familiar with paperwork (believe me…), and it’s very common to ask for, and get, a printed receipt. So ask for one. If you don’t get a receipt, take a screenshot of the meter or credit card machine screen if you can and one of the taxi license number, too, in case of a dispute. There’s a website in France, which is also in English, to report fraud and scams. You can submit a report here.

• It was just a matter of time, I supposed, that there’s now a butter shop in Paris, which is on my list of places to get to. The owner seems like a nice guy who joked that influencers were sending him offers to get paid a few thousand dollars to promote his shop, which apparently is already crowded, thank you very much. (But more lines?!) But since French butter is so good, what a good idea to open a whole shop devoted to it.
  
  Just an fyi: This store-brand butter won the taste test in Que Choisir, France’s version of Consumer Reports. There are fancier brands out there, but if you want to live like a local, that’s a brand many French people buy.

• I did a YouTube interview with Fabien Pelissier of Fab Expat, who helps foreigners with visa, insurance, relocation support, and other issues that arise when moving here. I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube, especially in the comments, but —yikes. Someone criticized Fabien’s French accent (um…he’s French), and another said I wasn’t a chef, which was news to me, because while my memory isn’t what it used to be, I remember being the pastry chef at two restaurants and consulting pastry chef at another. (And have the leg and back problems to prove it.)

  

  Another said I didn’t know what I was talking about, when I talked about French macarons, made with egg whites and nuts, which share similarities with American macaroons, which are also made with egg whites and nuts. The almonds used in French macarons technically aren’t nuts, and coconuts aren’t either, but they can be considered nuts.

  Italian Almond Cookies

  I don’t argue with people online, but macarons aren’t originally from France; they arrived here from Italy. The Italian ones were likely inspired by cookies or small cakes from the Arab world. Today, French bakers in many regions make their own version of macarons from almonds, until Ladurée starting making Parisian macarons, sandwiching two macarons together with buttercream or another filling.

  

  This website claims coconut was added in France, which made the cookies easier to ship since coconut stayed fresher than almonds. While they don’t refer to them “macarons” in France, the French make cookies called rochers au coco or congolais, which are similar to American macaroons, but not sure if selling “American macaroons” next to “macarons parisiens” in a French bakery would go over very well.

  Another theory I heard is that when Jewish European settlers came to America, they couldn’t find almonds, or some say, because almonds weren’t kosher, they used coconut. But as someone told me about what happened hundreds of years ago, if you weren’t there, you can’t be sure.

  
  Almost everything we eat can be traced back to somewhere else, so I’m not sure what the point of battling with each other about these things is. I often say, you never know how many things you’re doing wrong until you put it on the internet. On the upside, I had such a great time with Fabien that I’ve invited him to be a guest on my podcast in the future. If you have a question you’d like me to ask him about moving to or living in France, let me know in the comments.

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In other news, our two favorite contractors are moving back to their home countries. It’s interesting talking to them, to see what they miss and why they’re going back. My first French teacher, at my first French classes shortly after I arrived in France, said to start a conversation (in French), he asks people in his classes what they miss most about home, and Americans always said the same thing: customer service.

That’s improved a lot in France* and while frustrating, the French seem to be right about making things difficult to return. But we loved our painter, who redid our kitchen floor, which wasn’t properly sealed the first time. (An example of not-great service.) He was super nice and we often had coffee together, and I even gave him a few jars of Fig jam, since he grabbed handfuls of the figs I picked in Provence when I offered him one. So I knew he’d like the jam.

Fortunately he’s also super honest and promptly returned the money that was accidentally wired to him, twice. In France, people get paid by virements, bank transfers, which are very common for transactions here, but there are a bunch of steps and security questions to go through to initiate one. What’s most challenging is that you need to enter the twenty-seven numbers of the recipient’s IBAN in the bank form on app or website, and if you get one digit wrong, someone else is going to be very happy to find an unexpected windfall landing in their bank account.

Other contractors would have…well…we already covered that in my book, L’Appart.

In addition to having to find another place in my kitchen for a shiny new cocotte, I’ve got lots going on this month. I’ll be traveling a bit for a friend’s 70th birthday, which promises to be a lot of fun, and I’ll get to see friends that I worked with at Chez Panisse, and others. I’m also planning another trip to Japan in the spring so am looking at options for that. And even more important, Romain’s birthday is next month, so I’ve reserved seats at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower, which he’s been bugging me to try. (He’s a sucker for a view.) I ate there back in 2008, when they had a different chef. So it’ll be interesting to see how it’s changed.

Lastly, every year my friend and I treat ourselves to a fancy restaurant in Paris for our birthdays, which take place in December. Last year we trudged through a snowstorm that left waist-high drifts of snow on the sidewalks of Paris for a lovely meal at Alliance. In previous years we did La Tour d’Argent, which was great, save for a snafu with a wine that was past its prime.

And the year before, it was lunch at Le Clarence, situated in a gorgeous 19th-century mansion. So any suggestions that you have for a celebratory lunch that feels special, let me know. It’s never too early to start planning a great meal…

-David

Favorite Fall Desserts

By the time mid-October rolls around, I’m firmly back on team apples and pears. Here are some of my favorite recipes for using them, and more:

Inspired by the tart at a bakery that won the Best Apple Tart in Paris award, this tarte normande takes its name from the hint of apple brandy used in the filling, and of course, the apples, which Normandy is famous for. My version is just as good as the bakery’s, if I do say so myself. And you can make it at home, wherever you live. (recipe here)

Yes, you can make the same whisper-thin tarte fine aux pommes that is on offer at French bakeries. People often stop in to buy a slice for a snack or a whole one to take home for dessert. If you can roll pie dough, you can make the crackly-crunchy quick puff pastry. And if you’re anything like me and not great at entertaining, double the dough recipe and freeze half to make a tarte for future fêtes. (recipe here)

One of my searched-for posts on my website is How to poach pears. Poaching pears is a super-simple way to add flavor to the fruit. However, if your pears aren’t as delicious as you’d hoped, poaching will infuse them generously with flavor. Poached pears only get better when stored in the poaching liquid, so do-ahead folks will rejoice. Having a batch of poached pears in the refrigerator also means you’ll have an instant dessert when sliced and served with a scoop or two of ice cream or sorbet.

Check out The Great Book of Chocolate!

If you pair them with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and a ladle of warm chocolate sauce, you’ve got the French classic, Poires belle Hélène. You can also serve slices alongside French chocolate cake. In case you haven’t noticed, the French have a thing for poached pears and chocolate, and so do I. (recipe here)

Finding cranberries in Paris makes you feel like you’ve landed on the holy grail. When I see them at the markets, fresh, I scoop them up as fast as I can. (Apologies to other Americans in Paris, looking for cranberries.) They go remarkably well in Cranberry upside down cake, an American classic that marries the tangy orbs with a shimmering brown sugar topping, which is my favorite part of this cake. The delicious layer of buttery cake below, well…that’s the icing on the cake, so to speak. (recipe here)

If you find yourself with an overload of apples — lucky you! Perhaps you’ve got a tree or know someone who does. If so, Apple jelly is the perfect way to use them. I was visiting friends in Brittany who have a few apple trees that are adjacent to their house, and was piling as many as I could into baskets to bring back to Paris. When a neighbor came by and thought I was stealing them, I told him I was friends with the owners of the tree, and was going to make jelly with them, he smiled and said it was -“une bonne idée!”

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This apple jelly requires no peeling, no seeding. You just just chop ‘em up and cook them up. Another friend in the countryside and was eyeing his medlar tree that he’s promising me the fruits from. If you can get your hands on those curious fruits, here’s a recipe for Medlar jelly.)

Apple jelly tip: If you have a farmer’s market and there’s someone there who sells apples, or you don’t want to get accused of stealing someone’s apples, you can sometimes score apples that are discounted due to dings and dents, which are called à cuire (to cook) in French. Smart shoppers search for those. (recipe here)

Ed, who photographed my last four books, gifted** me a bottle of St. George Spiced Pear Liqueur, whose beguiling spicy flavors prompted me to come up with the Far from the tree cocktail. True to its name, the spirited liqueur packs a seasonal mouthful of spices in each sip, making it the perfect cocktail for fall. As the holidays approach, top it with sparkling wine or cider for a festive touch. (recipe here)

When Jacques Pépin came to work with us in the pastry department at Chez Panisse, he introduced us to his Apple crunch tart, which was so good, it went on heavy rotation on our dessert menus. At some point, we ditched the top layer and called them apples galettes. While galettes are now a dime a dozen, I thought I’d bring back the OG and discovered that the crunchy topping was definitely something I missed. Serving it without a scoop of ice cream is definitely a miss, too, so don’t forget it. (recipe here)

It’s no secret that I love thrifting in flea markets and brocantes. And I don’t want to brag, but I’m pretty good at it. (Actually, if you saw my stockpiles, you might say that I’m too good at it.) In France, you can find amazing things at these, like vintage baking dishes in my favorite cookware color, bright orange, sold for a song.

Another secret is that fruit isn’t just for sweet dishes. It’s also for savory dishes, like Wine harvester’s chicken. I’m not sure of the origin of the dish but it’s easy to imagine during the grape harvest, there were so many grapes, someone got the bright idea to use some of them in the kitchen, such as in this easygoing braise. It’s filled with fall flavors and perfect with a light-bodied Riesling or a more substantial Chablis. But really, anything with grapes will do. (recipe here)

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*People aren’t fond of Amazon and Uber these days, but their arrival in France was a wake-up call to stores and taxis to improve their service, which they did. A recent Uber ride in Paris confirmed my move away from the platform due to 1) Difficulty booking one, 2) An unpleasant driver (who finally arrived…), and 3) A hefty surcharge added to the bill, which made it the same price as a taxi.

**I used this word online a while back and was told that I shouldn’t use it as a verb. See what I mean about not knowing what you’re doing wrong until you post about it on the internet? For the record, Merriam-Webster says it’s okay, and I ain’t arguing with Webster.

Our recipe for Disco Fries features crispy crinkle cut fries smothered with plenty of melty mozzarella cheese and our literal secret sauce: egg foo young gravy! These are insanely tasty and a real treat!  A New Jersey Dinner Staple For most New Jerseyans, Disco Fries need no introduction. They’re a staple in New Jersey Diners […]

Twenty years ago, I started this website because I wanted a place to share recipes I was excited about, as it’s practically coded into my DNA to be an unfettered yap about the things I love. [This is me.] The larger context was that upon reaching so-called adulthood, I’d found that while I knew how to cook, there were still so many things I hadn’t figured out, such as: how to turn a can of tomatoes into not just an okay pasta sauce, but a spectacular one; how to make really good meatballs; perfect hummus; and a crumb cake I’d want to make forever.

You’d think that 20 years and more than 1400 recipes later, I’d be closing this chapter. What could there possibly be left to know? Haven’t we kale salad-ed and tomato soup-ed and apple pie-d our way to fulfillment yet?

Well no, absolutely not. In fact, most days, I feel like I’m just getting started.

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Folks, we’re in a critical four-week window here—and no, I’m not talking about the upcoming midterm election campaigns in America. I’m talking about the garden.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, autumn is officially here, but there are still lingering warm days. That means one thing: it’s time to enjoy, harvest, and preserve your summer bounty before it’s lost to cooler, darker days!

This weekend, I’m at my mom’s house to check in with her. We’re also celebrating the Harvest Moon Festival. It’s a massive holiday across East Asian cultures—celebrated in China, Japan, North and South Korea, Vietnam, and anywhere vibrant East Asian communities thrive. (Despite being in Southeast Asia, Vietnam is anthropologically an East Asian country because it’s heavily influenced by China.)

Growing up Vietnamese, I know it as Tết Trung Thu (pronounced “Teyt Troong Too”), which literally means "Mid-Autumn Festival” but mostly identified the holiday with the annual lantern festival. I always looked forward to lighting those glossy, colorful cellophane lanterns whose frames were made of delicate bamboo. Then, we’d parade around the neighborhood holding our lanterns. Back then, the night skies in Saigon were often clear and people felt a certain happiness. The lanterns were so fun, nearly magical — well, up until when my lantern would inevitably catch on fire because I was such a klutz!

Why do you celebrating Tết now?

We’re not replacing or double dipping for the New Year. Tết means “festival” so even though Viet people say “Tết” as a shorthand for Tết Nguyên Đán (Lunar New Year), it’s not the only Tết people celebrate. In the scheme of things, Tết Trung Thu is second to the Lunar New Year. It falls during the end of the rice harvest so it signals a pause to assess all the blessings in life. If possible, you you go home to see family and celebrate togetherness. Think of it as an early Thanksgiving!

This year’s holiday fell on Friday. For a bit of cheesy fun, Rory and I went outside to check out the moon and sing “Moon River.” We repeated it last night when the moon was technically at its brightest — officially called the Harvest Moon because it’s closest to the autumn equinox. The moon will remain big and luminous for a few more days, so make sure to gaze!

Stepping outside to see the moon was a perfect excuse to get up from the dinner table, where we’d just finished an incredible meal of Bún Chả (“boon chah”), the famous Hanoi-style grilled pork and rice noodles. There was also mixed nut moon cakes, a gift from my friend Stacey, a local Chinese restaurateur.

I make this Northern Vietnamese icon my way, but my mom, who is 92, has her own brilliant, time-tested approach:

• The Cut: Mom uses only sliced pork for casual bún chả. I prefer a mix of sliced pork and pork patties for textural contrast. You can easily do both!

• The Shortcut: For ultimate convenience, she marinates the pork and keeps it frozen for weeks, trotting it out whenever she wants it. Remember, she’s 92 and still cooking! (Personally, I keep just the marinade frozen to save prep time.)

• The Heat: She slices the pork on the thicker side and broils it. Her days of grilling outdoors over charcoal ended the moment she left Vietnam in 1975. You can broil it, grill it on the stove, or cook it outdoors. In a pinch, just sear the pork on a ripping hot cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel skillet!

👉 Get the Recipe: My Best Bún Chả Recipe & Step-by-Step Guide

And, if you’re not into pork, try my Vegan Bún Chả. It’s an absolute knockout that stands entirely on its own, or you can serve it alongside the traditional pork version to please everyone at the table.

Get herby while they’re still good

Whichever version of bún chả you prepare, you’ll need a mini mountain of fresh herbs. Every herby leaf we’ve been eating at Mom’s came straight from my own garden, which looks completely jungly these days. NOW is the time to enjoy herbs at their absolute peak—before they fade for the winter or become harder to find at the markets!

When I harvested a bunch of basil this week, I noticed my Italian basil was looking incredibly scrawny. Why? Because my Asian basil varieties grew so wild that they completely eclipsed it. They have officially taken over my garden!

I don't expect you to let them take over your yard, but you should absolutely let them take over your kitchen. To help you dive in, head over to the website for Beyond Pesto: A Guide to Thai, Holy and Lemon Basil (it’s 🆓).

Use Asian basils and other herbs (get quick guidance from my Vietnamese Herb Guide 🆓) for these brilliant seasonal dishes from the blog and newsletter archives:

• Malaysian Herb Rice (Nasi Ulam) 🆓 - Uses up a mountain of fresh herbs, lime leaves, and leftover rice for a fragrant Southeast Asian treat

• Grilled lemon basil chicken 🆓 - Can be made with Thai basil, lemon basil, or whatever you have available in the garden or at the farmer’s market

• Bun rice noodle salad bowls 🆓 - Consider this the ultimate blueprint for your everyday Vietnamese food adventures

• Gingery chimichurri - An Asian-accented green sauce designed to instantly remedy mid-week dinner doldrums

• Roast Fish with Viet Tamarind Sauce - Tangy, savory, and spectacular when loaded up with fresh aromatics

• Thai-style chicken and mushroom with basil 🆓 - A quick stir-fry that also sings with fresh mint (if basil isn’t around!)

Need more inspiration? Paid subscribers can unlock our full, searchable PTFS Recipe Index, which now contains over 225 master recipes!

Alright, I’m heading back to the kitchen to see what my mom is cooking up next. Whether you’re harvesting the wild corners of your backyard or hunting for herbs at the market this weekend, I hope you pour yourself a beverage, step outside to check out that massive moon, and eat something incredibly fresh.

Happy Harvest Moon,

A simple stir-fry of scallions and peppers showcases just how delicious each ingredient is. This dish is for anyone who loves strong flavors! It’s spicy, oniony, and definitely a break from our usual. For the Spice Lovers Let me tell you, this unassuming-looking dish is not for everyone thanks to its heat! Plenty of oniony […]

I’ll admit that entertaining isn’t my strong suit. I wistfully look at cookbooks that break down exactly how to plan a dinner party, sharing multicourse menus that promise you can do it all in one afternoon. And by the time guests arrive, you’ll have changed out of your T-shirt and sweatpants, wearing your best outfit, and enjoying drinks and appetizers with guests, knowing that everything in the kitchen, which is all cleaned up, is ready to serve. You’ve done it. All you need to do now is to enjoy yourself.

Some books have the nerve to insist that there’s nothing better than getting everyone to come into the kitchen, grab a wine glass, and “join in the fun” of preparing dinner. I’m a dictator in the kitchen and don’t want anyone in there with me, if they’re just there to “have fun.” We’ve got dinner to work on…and there’s a reason they call it “work.”

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When someone’s coming for dinner, the panic starts a few days before, planning the menu, and the shopping. Because I am insane (I realize insane + dictator may not be a very appealing combination for potential guests, but these days, here we are), there is one store where I get onions and garlic, another where I buy my lettuce, and another that has the kind of plums I like, that will be ripe by the time I need them.

I get a sustainable seafood delivery once a week, so that needs to be organized and ordered in advance, if fish or shellfish are on the menu. If I’m going to serve meat, I either get it at my local natural food store, which sells meat that’s responsibly raised, and they only have it on certain days. If they don’t have it, I hoof it over to the butcher shop that’s a twenty-minute walk, but it’s worth it because the guys who work there are très beaux, and when you walk in, they dazzle you with their extra-friendly welcome, so it’s worth the trek. The meat isn’t bad, either.

Even if I’m just serving a simple appetizer, a main course, salad, cheese, and dessert, I start first thing in the morning while Romain is huddled over his coffee, wondering what that crazy man in the kitchen is doing. By the time dinner rolls around, to be honest, my goal is to go to bed. Since it’s Paris, people arrive between 8 and 8:30, and I try to get dinner on the table by 9, although we have friends who don’t serve dinner until 10pm or later. By then, all I want is to be horizontal.

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Sometimes I have to make dinner when friends come to Paris, because they don’t heed my advice that reservations nowadays need to be made at least a week in advance, especially if you want to eat out on Friday or Saturday night. Most just want to be a free man (or person) in Paris, unfettered and alive, but even if Joni Mitchell just walked into Septime, the toughest reservation in Paris, (or Serena Williams walked into L’Oiseau Blanc), they wouldn’t get a table.

So when a good friend was coming for dinner recently, and yes, it was on a Friday, and the three restaurants I was hoping to get into were, of course, fully booked, I offered to make dinner.

I made a batch of hummus after I picked up a jar of chickpeas at the natural food store, then rode my bike over to Utopie to pick up a poppyseed-hazelnut baguette, and grabbed some small eggplants at one produce store to grill, a head of lettuce at the other produce store that had the lettuce I like, and a few slabs of tuna at a new poissonnerie in our neighborhood (which involved a very interesting and lengthy discussion with the owner of the shop, whose wife is Japanese, who explained why he keeps the best grades of fish in the refrigerator, which keeps the fish fresher, not on ice like they normally do at seafood shops). Then I stopped at the fromagerie to get some cheese.

The upside is that when you have really good ingredients, which I’m (obvs) picky about, you don’t have to do a lot to them. One entertainment-friendly cue I have embraced is always having ice cream on hand, in this case, Fig leaf ice cream and Plum sorbet, so dessert was mostly done. I roasted some figs that I’d picked in Provence, which I plucked from one of the bags I’m storing in the freezer, but needed something to go with dessert.

I have plenty of cookies in my repertoire, but I’m embarrassed about the high stack of cookbooks on my desk that I’ve bookmarked with recipes I want to try. One book dates as far back as 1976, so I’m pretty behind.

One newer book was Will This Make You Happy, which bills itself as a “narrative cookbook” (think: memoir), by baker Tanya Bush about navigating her life as a budding baker. This includes a disappointing, yet informative…and formative, internship in Tuscany, working at a cooking school, and hopscotching through rocky relationships. She eventually finds her footing in baking, and her book has recipes such as Soba Cha Panna Cotta, Dark Chocolate and Coconut Birthday Cake, and Toasted Croissant Ice Cream.

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I didn’t have a lot of time to spare and was intrigued by her Spicy Olive Oil Ginger Cookies, partially because a spice cookie is welcome with any fruit dessert, and partly because I had all the ingredients on hand, so I didn’t have to do any shopping.

An intriguing thing about these cookies is that they use olive oil rather than butter, so you don’t have to wait for butter to come to room temperature and can make them right away. They do need time to rest in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes, but then, you just roll them in sugar and bake.

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After I baked the cookies and they cooled, I tasted one. I was a bit déçu that I didn’t find the spices punchy enough, and was wondering if I needed to make the recipe again, dialing up the spices.

I reread the recipe, which called for a generous 2 tablespoons of ground ginger and 4 teaspoons of cinnamon. That gave me a chance to use the very special, and very expensive, cinnamon I got in Taiwan, although I did swap a teaspoon of ground cardamom for the nutmeg, so maybe that was the culprit.

But the more I dug into the cookie, the better it got. And by the time dessert rolled around that night, the flavors were spot-on and the spice level hit its stride. Even better, the next day, I found that the flavors developed even further, making the cookies extraordinarily delicious, with just the right level of spiciness. And the chewiness increased as well. After all that panicking, things eventually worked out and they were the perfect chewy, chunky, spicy cookie.

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Spicy Olive Oil Ginger Cookies

Makes 12 cookies

Adapted from Will This Make You Happy by Tanya Bush

The original recipe was written in metrics, and that’s what I used when making these cookies. (I’ve included Tanya’s conversions here.) More and more people in the U.S. are baking with scales, which provide more consistent results. If you don’t have a scale, consider getting one.

My Favorite Kitchen Scale

Tanya’s instructions said to flatten the cookies to 3 inches (7,5cm) in diameter before baking, but I prefer them a bit thicker and flattened mine to 2 inches (5cm). If you like thinner cookies, go ahead and flatten them to her dimensions.

Turbinado sugar (called cassonade in French) are free-flowing, large crystals of natural sugar, which add a marvelous crunch to anything they touch, including these cookies. But you can roll the cookies in granulated sugar if you don’t have turbinado.

The cookie dough

150g (3/4 cup) granulated sugar

50g (scant 1/4 cup, packed) light brown sugar

90g (1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon) light or mild molasses

65g (5 tablespoons) extra-virgin olive oil

1 large egg, preferably at room temperature

1 large egg yolk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

280g (2 1/3 cups) all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons ground (dried) ginger

4 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon ground cardamom or a scant teaspoon of ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

50g (1/4 cup) chopped candied ginger

For baking and finishing the cookies

60g (1/4 cup) turbinado or granulated sugar

Flaky sea salt, such as fleur de sel or Maldon (optional)

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or by hand in a large bowl, mix the granulated and brown sugar, molasses, and olive oil on medium-to-low speed until combined.

2. Add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and beat on medium speed until they’re well incorporated.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, ginger, cinnamon, baking soda, cardamom or nutmeg, salt, and cayenne pepper. With the mixer on its lowest speed, gradually mix in the dry ingredients. Stop the mixer midway through, and use a silicone spatula to make sure any dry ingredients at the bottom of the mixer bowl are getting incorporated. Remove the bowl from the mixer and mix in the candied ginger.

4. Cover the bowl and chill the dough for at least 30 minutes. (The dough can also be refrigerated for a few days.)

5. To bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 325ºF (165ºC). Line a baking sheet (see note, below) with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.

6. Spread the turbinado sugar in a shallow soup bowl or small dinner plate. Shape the cookie dough into 12 equal-size rounds, each about 55 grams, or a scant 1/4 cup.

7. Roll six of the cookies, one at a time, in the turbinado sugar, covering them as thickly and completely as possible, and place them equally spaced apart on the baking sheet. Use your hand to flatten the cookies so they’re about 2 inches (5cm) in diameter.

8. Bake the cookies on the middle rack of the oven, turning the baking sheet midway during baking so the cookies bake evenly. The cookies are done when they’re light-to-moderately golden brown across the top and puffed up. In my oven, a baking time of 10 minutes was right. If you want them a bit more firm, you can bake them for 12 minutes.

9. Remove the cookies from the oven and bang the pan on a sturdy countertop once or twice to slightly flatten the cookies, so they are no longer domed. Sprinkle the cookies with a little flaky sea salt, if desired, and let the cookies cool for a few minutes, then transfer them to a cooling rack.

10. Allow the baking sheet to cool completely, then bake the remaining six cookies the same way.

    

    Spicy Ginger Olive Oil Cookie Recipe

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Will This Make You Happy

Note: On a standard American half-sheet pan, which is about 13 x 18 inches (33 x 46cm), you should be able to get six cookies on the baking sheet. I baked these in my compact oven so used a European-size baking sheet pan, which is smaller than American baking sheet pans, and baked five cookies on the baking sheet, as shown in the photo in the post.