In the U.S. tomorrow, we’re observing Martin Luther King Day to commemorate an outstanding civil rights leader. It’s a federal holiday so hopefully, things will be quiet. Eight years ago, Rory and I went on a civil rights tour of the American South. It was a somber experience but also empowering, especially with our stops in Atlanta, GA. Highlights included the MLK National Historic Park, the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change established by his wife, Coretta Scott King, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Dr. King was baptized and later went on to serve as co-pastor with his father, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr.
As compelling as those places were, none rivaled the moving experience in Memphis, TN, at the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum is located at the site of the Lorraine Motel where Dr. King was assassinated.
We’re living in uncertain times, but whenever I think about the challenges that Dr. King faced, his legacy gives me strength and hope for our nation.
On a lighter note, I took inventory of this newsletter and realized that in 2025, there were over 90 PTFS dispatches. I’ve been brainstorming ideas for 2026 but but also want to know about your culinary interests for this year.
The 2025 newsletters covered a lot — from travel and product reviews to food history, health, and recipes. Many of the recipes were low-meat and vegetable forward, or meaty with a vegetarian version. That’s the PTFS vibe — we aim to cook for a variety of moods and dietary needs. We’re a community of people who want to know more than just the usual. We are curious.
To refresh your memory of the kinds of content we had in 2025, here’s a quick run through.
Japanese ginger carrot dressing harkened back to Los Angeles in the late 1980s for me. It’s such a good, workhorse dressing to keep for refreshing noodle salads or crisp greens. Right now, its sunny orange-gold color makes great use of winter’s sweet carrots. And, I didn’t know the interesting history behind the dressing until I investigated it for PTFS.
Beef short rib vegetable pho showcased how you can build a tasty pho bowl by combining short ribs with flavorful vegetables. It’s less fussy, more convenient and economical, and tasty. Freeze extra for future pho.
Wok-Kissed Pho with Beef and its kin, the tofu-mushroom version, are super takes on a northern Vietnamese pho. The easy cooking methods yields fabulous, deep flavors. You rarely find this pho outside of the Hanoi area but every pho lover should know about it!
Vietnamese Tamarind Shrimp (or Tamarind Tofu) employ a fruit that’s emblematic of Saigon’s botanical history. The result are the tangy, umami, mildly spicy flavors of southern Vietnam.
Crispy panfried noodles and crispy panfried rice noodles offered techniques for craveable noodle pillows that you can top with a succulent stir-fry. What’s made at restaurants seldom satisfy my need for truly crispy noodles!
Mapo tofu macaroni and cheese is a casserole that you can easily prepare for a family meal or a pot luck. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner.
Charsiu ribs and pork steak are two recipes that let you choose between gnawing (ribs) or just diving in (steak!). They’re weeknight recipes for quick meals.
Charsiu tofu has the tender richness that’s dare I say, kinda like pork belly, but it has none of the fat. It’s flavor-packed so it’s as good as the pork version!
I put the above list together in the late afternoon and got very hungry. So many good recipes came out of 2025. There were a lot from prior years too. One of my goals for 2026 is to create a master list of recipes that you can easily browse alongside doing a regular ol’ search.
Back to planning for 2026! Looking forward to the next 12 months or so, what would you like to know more about and cook up — literally and figuratively?
The beginning of the year is such a groggy time for me. I still feel like I’ve not fully awakened or something. To help dispel some of the lethargy, I spent a few cathartic hours pruning out in the garden. Things don’t look great now but hopefully, as the weather warms up, things will green up and or fill out. Tending to the edible plants is my job (we have a low-key gardening service for the rest of the yard). I remain carefully optimistic, despite my negligence.
A number of you found the tropical fruit information to be of great interest. Ellyce asked about how to grow ginger well on the mainland. I asked my friend Chan for tips and she quickly offered great insights. Check out Chan’s tips in the comments section of last week’s aloha midweek gems; I pinned our conversation to the top of the comments section!
As for how pineapple grows, I found a couple of photos from last week to show you how that Sugarloaf had grown before I harvested it.
Yes, you just then replant and there’s a new plant to make another pineapple!
💎 Co-gardening to share resources and harvest
My neighbor, Adrienne, is a superb gardener. She also has full sun. When one of her lemon trees didn’t work out, I suggested that we co-grow an Italian lemon and a Southeast Asian calamansi tree. Between the two of us, we also have Meyer lemon, Bears lime, and makrut lime.
I bought the trees locally (they’re grown by Four Winds, which ships too) and Adrienne planted them and tends to them. She loves cocktails and calamansi’s unusual tart-sweet (think lime x tangerine) flavor is good for that. I use calamansi for nuoc cham dipping sauce and other Southeast Asian dishes; I also squeeze the juice into soda water for a fizzy drink. Calamansi (Citrus × microcarpa)is often seen in Filipino cuisine but is also native to other parts of the region, including Indonesia and Taiwan.
It’s only been about 3 months but the little calamansi put out fruit already!
Only about 1 1/4 inch wide, calamansi is rare so what I was able to harvest is extra special. If you’re tight on space or if you don’t have the right growing conditions for something, team up with a neighbor!
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💎 Food processor reviews
Last year when we were recipe testing the Thai cookbook, Jen in New Zealand shared that the food processor she uses most is a smallish one, though she also has a bigger capacity machine. Jen is a very good cook. I asked my friend Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks and she also has a smallish machine. Were they onto something? Is bigger always better when it comes to processors?
So I got a small processor, then I got another. I’ve been using them all — including big boy and the minis - for about 6 months to figure out what works best for home and why. I just wrote up my assessment on the website. I was surprised by the performance of a $40 processor, so much so that I also made a casual video to show you that it’s worth considering. Check out the new food processor buying guide.
💎 Chicken pho for healing
Several friends on the East Coast have reported getting a terrible flu around New Year’s. If you’re in the same boat or are nursing someone back to health, make a pot of chicken pho. Make chicken pho using my Instant Pot chicken pho recipe or the long simmer, more traditional version of phở gà. Both are excellent and it just depends on your equipment. When I’m unwell, the aromatic chicken pho broth and squiggly noodles are extra comforting.
💎 Say 👋
If you see me out and about, don’t hesitate to introduce yourself to me like Meg did this week at the Santa Cruz farmer’s market. We were both shopping for oranges and yes, the weather here this week is heavenly!
Next up — think about what you want to learn and cook in 2026. Paid subscribers — this will be your chance to seed what we do at PTFS this year.
Dakgangjeong, extra crunchy on the outside, tender inside, and coated in a sticky, sweet-savory sauce.
Boneless chicken cooks faster and stays super crispy, making this dish perfect for parties or a special snack at home!
If I told you that today’s recipe is for dried-out brownies, I wouldn’t blame you if your finger was hovering over the keyboard, ready to click away. Look, I like soft, moist, chocolatey brownies as much as the next guy. (Perhaps even more.) But this is one of the most surprising recipes I’ve come across, and one that I wasn’t expecting to like as much as I did.
It’s from a new book, 108 Asian Cookies by whose subtitle will likely resonate with quite a few of you: Not-Too-Sweet Treats from a Third-Culture Kitchen, and I was intrigued by the idea of Asian cookies.
Flipping through the book, I found that quite a few of the recipes are variations of Western favorites, which is where the third culture comes in. There are Linzer cookies accented with yuzu, Lace cookies get drizzled with miso caramel, Thai basil perfumes Chocolate sandwich cookies, and Red velvet brownies are spiced up with doubanjiang, Chinese fermented bean paste.
I’d bookmarked a few recipes but the Chocolate brownie brittle with candied walnuts stood out, partially because I had all the ingredients on hand, and partially because I’m drawn to crispy foods, even when the moniker is applied to brownies. I couldn’t imagine how a crackly, uber-thin brownie could satisfy my chocolate cravings. I like very dark chocolate desserts yet wasn’t sure something as thin as a coin could give me the same pleasure as a dense, chewy brownie. But I was proved wrong.
My first batch, with candied pecans.
My first reaction to them, coming out of the oven was, “Um…okay…” The brittle looked like dried-out shards of chocolate batter.
Then I took a taste and wow — was that good!
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Like a number of recipes in the book, this one called for a tablespoon of Japanese whisky in the brownie batter and a tablespoon of miso in the glazed walnuts. I’m not sure if I could discern a difference if I omitted that small amount, or maybe my palate isn’t as acute as other people’s. But you can take matters into your own hands and Kat offers up bourbon as an alternative to the Japanese whisky, which I didn’t have on hand (but I’ve got plenty of other whiskys), and I do have white miso, which I swapped for the red miso called for in the walnuts. But I also tried the candied walnuts with soy sauce in place of the miso, which works, too.
I tend to use dark cocoa powder (Valrhona or Cacao Barry extra brute) when I bake because I don’t believe you can have too much chocolate flavor. But when you use it, things’ll come out darker, and you risk people seeing your pictures and saying, “Hey, that’s burnt.” I’m not sure if comments like that are meant to be helpful, or what. But if you don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s probably best not to say anything.
For the first try (shown farther above), the brownie brittle came out quite dark due to the cocoa powder and looks almost burnt, but wasn’t. 😅
The next time I gave it a go with regular Dutch-process cocoa powder (Bensdorp), below, and they came out a little lighter. (Note: I took the pictures on different days and the light here changes almost by the hour. So there are some differences due to that, too.)
In addition to the rich chocolate color, the chocolate flavor came through loud and clear. The chocolate chips scattered about gave it an extra boost of chocolate, and the lightly savory nuts were just as delicious on their own as they were on the brittle…and thankfully the recipe makes extra, so you can toss them into a winter salad. Baker’s Bonus: A few of the nuts may fall off the brittle when you break it up, with the caramel fused to the batter, which are especially tasty to snack on.
Bravo to Kat for introducing me to this brittle. Not only that, but friends who came by and grabbed a bite loved it too. I’m not a fan of the word “addictive,” but I’m going to use it here because in this case, I know what I’m talking about and won’t shut up about it.
This chocolate brownie brittle has lots of chocolate flavor, even though the batter has only 2 tablespoons (12g) of cocoa powder. The chocolate chips on top also dial up the chocolate flavor, but I’m a sucker for anything with candied nuts on it as well, and this brownie brittle ended up checking lots of boxes for me.
In her book, Kat calls for Japanese whisky in the brownie batter, and red miso with the candied nuts. I tinkered and tested it with various ingredients and substitutions, and if you don’t have red miso, you could use white miso or soy sauce, or leave it out and just stir in a good pinch of salt when mixing in the nuts with butter and sugar. For the Japanese whisky (or bourbon) in the brownie batter, I made it with a teaspoon of pure vanilla extract, and it came out very well, but a tablespoon of rum or brandy would work too.
I also gave the recipe a go with pecans in place of the walnuts, which work just as well. Whichever you use, you’ll end up with more candied nuts than you’ll need for the brittle; leftovers can be tossed in awinter salad or enjoyed as a snack.
Candied walnuts
2 cups(220g) whole shelled walnuts
1/4 cup (50g) sugar
2 tablespoons (30g) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes, at room temperature (very soft)
1 tablespoon red or white miso (optional, see headnote)
1 tablespoon whisky or 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (see headnote)
1/2 cup (85g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
Flaky sea salt, such as Maldon or fleur de sel
To make the candied walnuts, preheat the oven to 350ºF (175ºC). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
Put the walnuts in a medium saucepan, cover them with water, and bring the water to a boil (this reduces their bitterness). Drain the walnuts very well in a strainer, shaking off as much excess water as you can. Put the walnuts in a medium mixing bowl and add the sugar, cubed butter,miso (if using), and sesame seeds. Stir vigorously until the butter and sugar are melted and the nuts are well coated.
Spread the nuts and any liquid on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for a total of 18-20 minutes, stirring the nuts every 5 minutes, making sure that you mix in the nuts from the edges of the pan, which will start browning first, toward the center, so they all toast evenly. When done, the nuts should be lightly browned. There may be some syrup on the pan when the nuts are finished. If so, stir the syrup into the nuts as they cool so it coats the nuts, which’ll firm up as the nuts cool.
(The nuts can be made a few days in advance and kept in an airtight container at room temperature.)
To make the brownie brittle, reduce the heat of the oven to 325ºF (160ºC). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
In a small bowl, whisk or sift together (if the cocoa powder is lumpy) the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate medium bowl, whisk the egg whites until they just start to hold their shape when you lift the whisk, but are still a little sloshy; don’t beat them until stiff.
Whisk the sugar into the egg whites in four additions, then stir in the melted butter and whisky or vanilla. Fold in the dry ingredients with a flexible spatula. Spread the batter on the prepared baking sheet so it’s in a thin, even layer (a small, offset metal spatula works best for this). You want to end up with a rectangle that measures about 14 x 10 inches (35 x 25 cm). Top the batter with about 1 1/4 cups(115g) of the walnuts (or more, if you want) evenly spaced over the top, then the chocolate chips.
Bake the brittle until it’s baked through and crispy, 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet, then sprinkle with flaky sea salt and break into shards.
Storage: The brittle will keep for 3-4 days in an airtight container at room temperature.
Years ago, a woman in Vietnam emailed complimenting me, I think. She wrote that my food was old fashioned. She also wrote that food in Vietnam has modernized a lot. Her email made me realize that for many Vietnamese refugees, cooking the food of our heritage is a nostalgic act. We cook to recall the past and feel grounded in who we are because at the end of the cooking, we get to enjoy familiar flavors, even if we feel somewhat alien in our adopted country.
My family cooked up a lot of quê hương (hometown) nostalgia while I was growing up, but we also adapted things to establish roots here in America. As I wrote earlier, my mother was on a pâté chaud journey to master homemade puff pastry, a major Viet-Franco achievement for a good home cook like her. The savory pastries were a favorite in Saigon, where we once lived.
If you missed the pâté chaud backstory, this recent post will fill you in!
We were so well fed that we got chubby. Then my mom started looking for ways to eat healthier without compromising the foods we loved.
Her solution? She pivoted to creating mini pâté chaud — diamonds of crisp pastry filled with her aromatic filling. They were portion-controlled 2-biters that didn’t get you into trouble, unless you ate too many. Instead of enjoying them as a regular breakfast item, our family served them up as a nosh with drinks. We enjoyed them at Christmas and other indulgent celebrations. She trotted them out of the freezer to impress guests at parties.
I’ve stuck with the minis over the years because it’s a sane and healthy-ish way to enjoy pâté chaud. There’s less pastry and more filling and it’s super easy and fast to prep.
Many Vietnamese cooks abroad still make the traditional round shape but I’ve also spotted squares and half circles too. Modern pâté chaud may contain the traditional pork filling or feature beef or chicken. I’ve seen vegetarian pâté chaud too.
Given all those iterations, I created three recipes for you to play with pâté chaud. Below you’ll find the following:
A mini pâté chaud recipe plus instructions for making different shapes
Two filling recipes to craft meaty or vegetarian (or vegan) pastries
Process shots plus a how-to video to guide your journey
FAQ for buying, making, and working with puff pastry
Freezing and reheating tips
The pastries are fun to make and even more fun to eat. My brother in law could hardly tell the difference between the vegetarian and meat ones!
I’m hoping that at the end of all this, you’ll be confidently and joyously baking up a platter of something like this:
Nostalgia cooking can be good because cooking up memories can lead to adaptations and innovations. Let’s make pâté chaud!
Curious cooks, readers, and eaters fuel Pass the Fish Sauce. For the full low-down on pâté chaud history, where to buy them, and now, how to make them, join us a paid subscriber! You’ll gain all that information, 100+ recipes, and sponsor my work. I value your support at any level. Your generosity matters. A LOT.
I’m freshly back from Australia, where I celebrated my cousin’s wedding, spent time with family in Melbourne, escaped to Tasmania, and rang in the New Year in Sydney. Every time I visit, I somehow fall a little more in love with the country and the people. It’s becoming a pattern. A very pleasant pattern.
My biggest folly this trip? Packing. I confidently assumed “summer in Australia” meant I could live exclusively in shorts and breezy shirts. The weather had other plans. It turned out to be cooler than expected, which meant I spent part of the trip mildly underdressed and dramatically layering whatever warmer pieces I could find, looking like I had packed for three different climates and committed to none.
At the risk of sounding delightfully unadventurous, I don’t have any extreme, cinematic goals for 2026. I’m not climbing Everest. I’m not jumping out of planes. My ambitions are gentler, but just as heartfelt: I’d love to finally take a bonsai class, start a personal photography project I’ve been putting off, get better at my Lagree Reformer workouts (which I fell in love with last year), read more books, and spend a little less time staring into the glowing rectangle in my hand pretending it’s “research.”
Small shifts, soft goals, and hopefully fewer packing mistakes.
On a much more sobering note, we lost the incredible and deeply generous Chef Elle Simone Scott this week. I had the privilege of meeting Elle during my very first days at America’s Test Kitchen, and even in that brief window, her presence left a lasting imprint on me.
Elle was the first Black woman to join the ATK show, and for so many people, she was not just a familiar face on television, but a symbol of possibility, belonging, and excellence. When I met her, she greeted me with an ease and warmth that immediately put me at home. She was open, encouraging, and genuinely invested in helping newer voices find their footing, their confidence, and their place.
In a kitchen—and an industry—that can often feel intimidating, Elle led with kindness. She made space. She lifted people up. And she did it all while carrying her own quiet strength. She will be deeply missed, and her impact will live on in the many people she encouraged, inspired, and welcomed in.
Chorizo and White Bean Soup
Inspired by Goan and Iberian flavors, this is the kind of soup that smells like you’ve been cooking all day, even though you absolutely have not. Smoky chorizo releases fat-soluble flavor compounds into the pot, creamy white beans thicken the broth naturally with their starches, and a final hit of greens and acid wakes everything back up so it doesn’t taste like winter fatigue in a bowl.
In other words, it’s comfort food engineered for maximum flavor efficiency.
You can find the full recipe over at America’s Test Kitchen — and I highly recommend putting it into heavy weeknight rotation while pretending you planned it days in advance.
Apparently I’m not the only one who loves polenta cake. The Italians like it so much that it’s called Amor Polenta. Which means “Polenta Love.”
Well, at least that’s what I thought it meant, because amour in French means “love.” And I assumed that it was the same in Italian. (Another reason for finally getting on that life-long ambition to live in Italy and learn Italian.) But for now, checking in an Italian dictionary, I found out that “amor” means “sake.” (As in, for the purpose of.) So I’m not sure how it got its name, but this cake makes a pretty good argument for the sake of whisking polenta into a cake.
I’m one of those people who is completely crazy for anything with cornmeal, from corn bread to even a kind of kooky polenta ice cream that I’m sure no one else has ever made, because I used a completely obscure polenta that very, very few people can get their hands on. But I felt compelled to make it, for the sake of using up a little bag of that polenta that I had.
Fortunately, polenta is available just about anywhere. I like to buy stone-ground polenta, which has a crunchier flavor. But you could use instant polenta for this cake, normally something I avoid. But I found myself with a bag of it and was looking for ways to use it up. And here’s where the rest of it landed.
Like many Italian cakes, which are unlike American cakes, this is not a buttery bomb of richness. True, there is butter and a few eggs in there. But the great flavor comes from ground almonds, which tend to make the cake much moister the following day as the nut oils soak the crumb, which is one of those baking terms (unlike amor) that pretty much seems to be what it is talking about. The polenta adds a bit of a savory quality to desserts, which draws me to use it a lot when baking.
This cake is a great snacking cake and I tend to walk around my apartment several times during the day, somehow landing frequently near the cake, where a serrated knife just happens to be stationed alongside. Ready and waiting to lop a slice off.
In addition to a collection of polentas, I found myself with a collection of eaux-de-vie on hand. Some were gifts, others were picked up on my travels. A few are anise-based, which pair nicely with polenta, and chocolate. I have a ginger one that is great when summer fruits are in season, like peaches, nectarines, and apricots. And the long bottle in the front right, the eau-de-vie of lees that I got in Switzerland, after I found out how good raisins in lie (eau-de-vie made from leftover grape yeast, and other stuff that falls to the bottom of wine vats post fermentation) was, after gorging on cauldrons of fondue.
As astute readers can see from the fill line of the bottle, that project never came to fruition. (I’m too busy trying organize my polentas and eaux-de-vie. And plotting a way to live in both Italy, and France.) But I did add a few shots of orange liqueur (not shown), which gave it a little boost of flavor. Not enough to be perceptible. But like that bag of instant polenta I’ve had for a few months, I was always conscious that it was there. You can use any kind of liqueur that you want – maraschino, limoncello, absinthe, kirsch, or even anise liqueur.
As much as I like this as a snacking cake, it can be dressed up with a fruit compote. I sectioned some tangerines, navel oranges, and pink grapefruits, drizzled a little honey over them, and served them alongside the cake. I had planned to spoon some warm sabayon over the cake and fruit, but decided that I had too many other things to do. Namely, get cracking on using some of those bottles of liqueur that I’ve been hoarding.
For this cake, using fine-ground polenta or instant polenta will result in the smoothest texture, although whatever is available will work. I’ve made it with coarse polenta too, and enjoy the crunch. Almond flour is available at specialty stores, Trader Joe’s, and online. If you can’t find it, grind 7 1/2 ounces (215 grams) sliced blanched almonds in a food processor with the flour until the almonds are pulverized.
Although cakes like this don’t always need adornment, I did glaze it with a dribbly orange glaze that firms up and gives the top a citrus-scented fruity crunch. For those wanting to skip the liqueur in the cake, you can leave it out and increase the almond extract to 1 1/4 teaspoon. For the glaze, you replace the liqueur with orange juice.
Ingredients
For the cake
8ounces (225g)unsalted buttercubed, at room temperature
scant 1cup (180g)sugar
zest of 1 lemon
3large eggsat room temperature
2tablespoonsliqueur or eau-de-viesuch as orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or Cointreau), kirsch or grappa
3/4teaspoonpure almond extract
3/4cup (125g)finely ground polentaplus additional for preparing the pan
4teaspoonsorange liqueur(such as Grand Marnier or Cointreau)
Instructions
Butter a 9-inch (23cm) loaf pan. Dust the inside with polenta, and tap out any excess. (Note: The pan I used has a nonstick finish. If you want to make sure the cake comes out nicely you may want to cut a rectangle of parchment paper and fit it into the bottom of the pan after you prepare it, especially if using an unfinished loaf pan.) Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC).
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar and lemon zest at medium-high speed, until it’s light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. (You can also make this in a large bowl, beating the butter and sugar by hand.)
Add the eggs one at a time, stopping the mixer after each addition to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix in the liqueur and almond extract.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the polenta, ground almonds, flour, baking powder, and salt, until there are no lumps. Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the creamed butter mixture, just until well-combined. Do not overmix.
Scrape the batter into the pan, smooth the top, and bake the cake until it is golden brown on top and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out almost clean, perhaps with just a few crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool on a rack for about 30 minutes, then run a knife along the outside of the cake to loosen it from the pan and tip the cake onto the rack. Let the cake cool completely before icing.
To glaze the cake, mix the powdered sugar with the orange juice and orange liqueur until the glaze is thick, but still runny – not too watery, but as thick as a milkshake. If necessary, add a bit more sugar if it’s too thin, or add a bit more liquid if it’s too thick. You can try smoothing a bit over the cake to see if it’s the right consistency for drizzling and dripping down the sides before glazing the entire cake.
Spoon the glaze over the cake, encouraging the glaze to run down the sides by nudging it towards the edges with the back of the spoon or a metal spatula.
Notes
Serving: When the glaze has firmed up, serve slices of the cake with a favorite fruit compote, such as fresh citrus segments, caramelized pineapple, poached pears, or sliced and sugared peach slices (peeled) or nectarines.Storage: The cake will keep for up to five days, if well wrapped, at room temperature. The cake will be noticeably moister the day after baking due to the oil in the nuts. It can be frozen for up to two months.
Not everyone thinks of citrus fruits as “winter fruits.” But that’s when oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, tangy lemons, and enticing limes are often at their peak. And that’s a good thing because there’s nothing that brightens up any season – but especially winter – better than a classic French lemon tart.
Any bakery in Paris will have a Tarte au citron on offer. Some are on the sweet side, others tart. I like my lemon tart, well…tart, for sure and when I search for lemons at my market, I choose the plumpest, juiciest ones I can find. Fortunately, good lemons are available just about anywhere, so anyone can make this tart. Most of us don’t even have to wait until winter!
I juiced my lemons, cracked some eggs, and got to work on the tart.
For the base, I used Paule’s pastry dough, which is so easy to make and hasn’t failed me yet. It’s delicious and buttery, and goes particularly well with the delicious lemon topping.
I cooked the filling, a sunny, luscious lemon curd, on the stovetop with the fragrant zest of the lemons, then poured the warm filling through a strainer to make it as smooth as possible.
One could pipe whipped cream on it or top it with meringue. To do so, let it cool and spread or pipe whipped cream over the top or serve a dollop alongside. If you want to give a go at meringue, check out my Lime Meringue Tart recipe or the marshmallow topping that I use on my Pumpkin Pie with Marshmallow Topping.
Both are delicious, but just as it is – or as the French say, nature – is just fine with me.
I recently updated this recipe to increase the amount of filling and I dialed down the sugar a bit due to frequent questions about reducing sugar in recipes. You can taste the filling in step 3 and if you'd like it sweeter, add up to 1/4 cup (50g) more sugar
If you find that you have a bit too much filling for your tart shell (they seem to vary), any remaining lemon filling that you don’t use can be spread on toast, fresh biscuits, or scones. You could substitute fresh lime juice for the lemon, and if you have Meyer lemons, reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup (100g). You can use a favorite tart dough recipe, or the one I’ve linked to.
Ingredients
1cup (250ml)freshly-squeezed lemon juice
grated zest of two lemonspreferably unsprayed
3/4 cup (150g)sugar
12tablespoons (170g)buttersalted or unsalted, cut into cubes
In a medium-sized non-reactive saucepan, heat the lemon juice, zest, sugar, butter, eggs and egg yolks. Have a mesh strainer nearby.
Stir until the butter is melted, then whisk the mixture continuously until the mixture thickens and holds its shape when you lift some of it up with the whisk and it visibly mounds up when dropped back down over the rest of the mixture in the saucepan. It should just take a few minute.
Pour the warm lemon curd though a strainer into a bowl (or directly into the tart shell), scraping with a rubber spatula to press it through.
Smooth the lemon filling in the prebaked tart shell and pop it in the oven until the curd is just set. It’ll take about 5 to 6 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool before slicing and serving.
Aloha from a 2.5 hour layover at the Maui airport!
I was going to skip this midweek gems but I learned so many things about tropical produce this week that I had to share them with you in a quick recap.
We’re en route back to the mainland from Kauai, where we stayed with our friend, Chan, at her home. She loves to experiment and grow a wide variety of tropical fruits and vegetables. I have no idea what most visitors do in Kauai but we harvest food from her land, process it, improvise, cook it up, eat and and hang out. That’s our Hawaiian vacation routine.
💎 Pineapple cycle of life
A couple years ago, a friend gifted a Sugarloaf pineapple to Chan. Its white, super sweet flesh was extraordinary. When we cut it up, she said to save the crown. Why? To grow a pineapple plant. The next day, she showed me how to plant it. Since then, she’s expanded her pineapple project to about 150 plants.
I had no idea how pineapples actually grew. It’s a weird plant, spiky and almost cactus like. The fruit grows from the center. I missed past harvest season at Chan’s but this year, we spotted one pineapple ripening. The pineapple was so heavy that it made the plant lean. So much stress on the plant! That’s normal, Chan said.
When you buy a pineapple, its stem end is always super hard. So, I asked if we needed a knife to harvest the pineapple.
“No, just twist it off!,” Chan said. I did and it broke free with little effort on my part.
This big boy weighed 5-6 lbs. It’s a white pineapple, a Kaua’i Sugarloaf. The flavor is very sweet, hence the name. We could have left this on the plant for 2 more days but Chan and I could not wait. Pineapple does not ripen further after harvest.
Of course, when she trimmed the pineapple, Chan saved the crown and replanted it! She also planted the crown of a pineapple we bought at Costco! Why not experiment, reuse and see what Nature gives you?
Try the Sugarloaf if you come across one; it’s pricey but highly unusual. We ate most of it raw, dipped in chili pepper salt (for less heat, use Korean gochugaru pepper flakes). Some of the fruit went into a shrimp canh chua, a southern Việt bouillabaisse that you can make from my recipe here.
I’ve bought plenty of fresh and dried turmeric and ginger but have never harvested the rhizomes before. This is how we did it at Chan’s.
We ended up having three times more turmeric than what was in the basket you see. Everything is washed — with a jet spray from a hose, multiple rinses in water, plus scrubbing with a toothbrush.
The ginger was sliced (thickness doesn’t matter so long as it’s consistent, Chan says), then dehydrated overnight. The skin was thinnish so we mostly left it intact.
As for the turmeric, there were 3 kinds— orange, white, and blue (black). We juiced it to drink and freeze. “Erewhon charges $12 for a tiny bottle of this!” Chan said.
New to all of us, the velvety blue/black turmeric was incredibly bitter, like a super bitter pill. I couldn’t get past a tiny taste and diluting it didn’t lower its potency much. Curcuma caesia is primarily used for medicinal and spiritual purposes. Now I know why!
What to do with the beautiful solids? Why not dry them to grind up for tea and food? We lined dehydrator trays with parchment (snip holes in the paper for ventilation), then dried the turmeric overnight.
Early this morning, Chan packed up baggies of the dried aromatics for me to take back to the mainland. “Tell the airport people that you have dehydrated vegetables,” Chan advised.
This time of year, rambutans are ripening resembling Dr. Seuss-like ornaments on dark leafy trees in Kauai. You reach up into the tree and pick red or orange-red ones whose color signal ripeness. We got a decent amount and ate them raw as fresh fruit — biting into the skin to cut into it then using our fingers to remove the exterior to reveal the white, juicy flesh. They were deliciously sweet, even the not-yet-ripe ones.
You can use a knife to cut around the equator of the rambutan. That would be more civilized. But mostly, we just bit into them. Yes, we washed the fruit first!
As for that basket of plantains. There was a full bunch of bananas that needed to be harvested before the island’s wild chickens got to them. We boiled the yellow ones — I trimmed the ends and and left the skin on, until they were tender, about 20 minutes. That’s Caribbean style cooking and it was fun. I also used the banana for a Vietnamese coconut and tapioca sweet soup called che chuoi, which is usually made from regular, sweet bananas.
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The flight is boarding so I’ve got to run. See you this Sunday for the pate chaud recipe.
Who knew that cabbage soup could be this good?! This bright and light recipe is a lovely spin on classic vegetable soup. If you’re trying to get back to healthy eating after the holidays, this warming cabbage soup is an inexpensive wintertime alternative to leafy green salads.
Cabbage soup may have originated in Eastern Europe, but this recipe offers simple Italian flavors. It starts with carrots, onion and celery cooked in a generous drizzle of olive oil. Once those are tender, we’ll add fresh garlic and dried oregano, followed by chopped green cabbage.
You can use an entire small head of cabbage in this soup; it shrinks as it sweats excess moisture and becomes silky soft as it simmers. Crushed tomatoes and lemon juice add welcome acidity, bringing this simple soup to life!
Moving to a foreign country has been in the news a lot lately. But it isn’t always what people expect it to be and it’s not always easy, which I can attest to. (Although it may have been a little easier for me if my name was George Clooney.)
When I see the phrase “Live like a local!” I wonder if people really want to go to city hall to renew visa paperwork or change their internet provider in a foreign language, which in America requires you to just drop off your modem at your provider’s nearest storefront, while in France, it’s a six-month affair. And, you have to pay to quit.
When I sent my old cable box back, they had to verify that every single cable was included, even though it was 15 years old and I have no idea what they do with them. But a friend didn’t have one and got charged €200 ($240), so I made sure I had everything…and I documented it all with photos and a certified mail receipt. (Even then, after 6 months when I didn’t get my deposit back, I had to hound them for it, providing - yup - photos and a copy of the certified mailing; only then did they finally refund it. Lesson learned after many years here!)
I’ve learned a lot living here after nearly twenty-five years and while moving from one country to another poses challenges wherever you are, France has a lot of unspoken rules of conduct and etiquette, and it’s not known for its “ease of use”…shall we say. Although I was stunned when a very nice woman from the citizenship office called me to say that I made a mistake on one of my forms and wanted to confirm that it wasn’t right so that she could change it for me. France has a way of surprising you.
Not being able to easily return things (and indifferent, at best, customer service) is one of the hardest things for Americans to adapt to. When I was in French class, shortly after arriving in France, the teacher went around the room and asked people what they didn’t like about France. Most Americans in the room replied, “Lack of customer service,” which the teacher confirmed was what Americans usually said, when asked.
Some people who come here have a hard time adjusting. So much so that an organization, the Franco-American Community Center in Paris, used to have a program called Bloom Where You’re Planted, a one-day event with speakers to help newcomers learn about, and integrate into, life in Paris.
Topics covered were health care questions, cultural issues, mental health, accounting and taxes, and immigration issues. For some reason they asked me to speak, perhaps to lighten the mood?…which I did by talking about some of the goofy things that happened to me, or that I did, so people would feel more at ease in their new home and realize that they weren’t the only ones going through a challenging transition.
At Home in Paris explains the complexities of life in Paris, including on the métro.
After I spoke, I took questions from attendees and found out that some people didn’t want to be in Paris. (In spite of what you see on social media, moving abroad can be very lonely, no matter how many pictures people post of croissants.) In some instances their spouses were transferred here, so they had to move their whole family (and lives) abroad. Many were baffled at cultural differences. Others, like me, were at transition points in their lives and looking for a new beginning or somewhere else to settle. Somehow, we all ended up here.
Some had had bad interactions, such as a curt shopkeeper, or they’d been shoved out of the way on the métro. It was especially hard on them because they couldn’t talk to their friends about their emotional difficulties since people would invariably say, “But you’re in Paris!” This was before Emily in Paris arrived, but if anyone expects Paris to be like that, please let the rest of us know where all those hot French guys, who somehow speak perfect English — are.
Aloha from the island of Kauai! The dramatic weather (rain, breeze, and sunshine can be experienced within 15 minutes) here hasn’t deterred us from going out and enjoying nature. We’ve harvested most of the produce we’ve eaten at our friend’s home. Today, I used a meat cleaver to chop a banana tree to get at a bunch of fruit! It’s what you have to do to encourage the plant to regrow, my friend Chan said. Who knew??? Aside from the food, Kauai has plenty of laid back charm as well as humor.
I’m still in vacation mode but still wanted to wish a very happy 2026. Before moving forward, let’s take a look back at some of the best PTFS dispatches of the year. I learned a lot from your engagement with the articles and recipes.
When I started out with this newsletter, I didn’t know how much enthusiasm there would be for lite food history. This year, I leaned in a little more to provide extra tidbits of knowledge so that you can piece together how flavors, techniques, and culture evolved over time. There were three noodle stories, because who doesn’t enjoy noodles? And untangling their history is both fun and interesting!
I had no idea how the longish geeky articles would sit with you but you liked them! Modern life unfolds so fast nowadays that it’s easy to overlook the textures and nuances that make food extra tasty. One of the most fascinating dishes I researched last year was Japanese carrot-ginger salad dressing. I wanted something easy, healthy and delicious to add to your salad repertoire and in the process, reported on its fascinating background.
I wrote a mini series about the Vietnamese diaspora and the article that captivated people most was a story about my family’s departure. When we got to America, one of the foods that was on rotation in my mother’s kitchen was char siu (Chinese barbecue pork). She relied on a marinade mix but I’ve long mixed up the marinade from scratch, which overtime, enabled me to push the envelope a bit to char siu many things.
In 2025, my goal was to help you char siu on a weeknight so that you may quickly get at the salty-sweet-rich flavors of iconic Cantonese barbecue. In the process, I came up with a new vegan take plus two meaty options. Go forth to char siu in 2026. It’s evergreen and year-round favorite.
Long ago, I wrote a proposal for a Vietnamese American museum that included an exhibit of the items that refugees escaped with, after the fall of Saigon in 1975. That proposal went unrealized but I do hope that my story inspires other people to record their journeys.
Curious cooks, readers, and eaters fuel Pass the Fish Sauce. Pitch in to keep it running strong this year! Become a paid subscriber to access all content, seed ideas, and enjoy class discounts. I welcome your support on all levels. Your support makes a big impact.
Vegetables drive my food and dining choices now more than ever. I’m thrilled that you’re on board for this, too. It doesn’t mean an all-or-nothing approach. I love my meat but less often and in smallish quantities nowadays. The trick is to slide in veggies without wiping out the true flavors that define the soul of a dish. At the same time, I wanted to craft versatile recipes that you can easily tweak to satisfy your tastes and needs. The tamarind deep dive included one of my favorite southern Vietnamese dishes, done with seafood and veggies or tofu and veggies.
And, there’s a time and place for project cooking but weeknights is not one of them. In 2025, I offered you two of my favorite hacks.
Finally, you PTFS subscribers seed many ideas for content. For instance, John asked about prop 65 warnings, and that led to this article about the California legislation that impacts so many ingredients we reach for on a regular basis.
My resolutions for 2026 are to cook up more fun and engaging things for you. After Cooking Thai goes to print, I’m hoping to do more online classes too!
I always welcome your suggestions so please don’t hesitate to email or DM me with an idea (or two!). Thank you.
For a country with a reputation for being slow to change, France has certainly been changing in several ways. The restaurants have gotten a lot better, and more diverse, since the days of gloom and doom, when French cuisine was in decline, coffee was referred to, in French, as jus de chausette (sock juice), and chain bakeries (yuck) were being pitted against artisan boulangeries.
People who don’t live in France often don’t like to hear that France is changing, but change isn’t bad, especially when things change for the better. Sure, no one has figured out how to keep the electronic kiosks at customs at Charles de Gaulle airport in working order, which makes you miss the few humans who worked at the kiosks before. (Even though that never seemed enough, either.) Nor has the repairman come to fix our heat; only two of the eight radiators in our apartment are working right now. (This week the temperatures dropped below freezing.) And rather than a Joyeux Noël message from my accountant, she sent me a request for loads of paperwork…on Christmas Eve. Bah humbug, or however you say that in French. (They do have Père Fouettard, who punishes children who are bad with a whip. But no word if they have someone like that for heating repairmen who don’t show up.)
On the other hand, we do have over 1000 kilometers (620 miles) of bike lanes in Paris, which is credited for cutting pollution in half. There’s a new wave of chocolate boutiques in Paris, and we’re in the middle of a bread renaissance, with more and more boulangeries baking great-quality bread, often with heritage grains and slow fermentation methods.
Almost a decade ago, in “Challenging the way the French think about bread,” baker Alice Quillet of Ten Belles bread remarked that when they opened, French people were outraged they didn’t make baguettes. But with the marge (profit margin) on a baguette averaging 8 to 10 centimes, it’s no wonder that some bakeries aren’t keen on making or selling them.
The breakdown of the cost (and profit, 10%) of a baguette in France.
While I love a good baguette, I’m really excited about what bread bakers are baking up in Paris right now. As bakery owner Benoît Castel recently said, “We’ve never eaten such good bread as we are right now”…and I agree.
Pumpkin seed bread from Brigat’ and corn-turmeric bread from Polka
Bakeries in France are considered a vital part of life in France and during the Covid lockdowns, bakeries were exempt, as they were considered “essential” businesses. (As were tobacco stores.) Bread is considered a right in France, hence the low prices for baguettes, which range from about €1 - €1,60 ($1.20 - $1.90), although the owner of Du Pain et des Idées shocked people by charging €4 for a croissant and €4,30 for a chocolatine (pain au chocolat), around three times what other bakeries charge, arguing that the price of the ingredients and the labor justified the price.
I feel spoiled and it’s easy to get blasé about having access to good bread. Some favorite bakeries I frequent: Landemaine, Poilâne, Terroirs d’Avenir, Brigat’, Sain, Ten Belles, Archibald, and Mamiche, which is the only place in Paris that I’ll wait in a line that long. And no, I don’t have any clout or get any special favors — like getting to jump the queue — around here.
As another example, I put my name on the waiting list in early December for a panettone from Christophe Louie. I’ve been a fan since he started making them and visited his private workshop, which he kindly gave me a tour of, before he opened his own bakery in the Marais. I put my name on the waiting list to be notified when more would be available but didn’t get any notifications. I was in the neighborhood and stopped by to see if my charms could move me up a few notches.
No dice. (Although I don’t wish a visit from Père Fouettard on him.) So I got a panettone fromBrigat’, which was excellent, even though a Debbie Downer online tried to dampen my excitement, saying there shouldn’t be any almonds on a panettone. I couldn’t bring myself to pick them off and throw them away.
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In spite of it being a little chilly around here, we’re also doing our best to make it through winter and Romain keeps reminding me that, as of last month, the days are now (supposedly) getting longer.
I’m not packing up my gloves, scarves, and down comforter quite yet, but am enjoying winter cooking. One of my favorite things to make when it’s cold out is braised duck. A lot of French cooking involves braising, cooking foods at a gentle simmer until they’re tender and succulent, like this one.
There’s nothing more foolproof than braised duck legs, which are actually thighs…as Debbie D. might point out. But if someone wants to take on the English language, and all the quirky translations, be my guest. Like, why is an entrée in French a starter, whereas in American English, it’s the main course? I also once tried explaining to Romain that in English, green beans cut on the diagonal are called “French-cut.” I got a perplexed look, similar to when I offered him a pretzel filled with peanut butter from a bag a friend brought me over from the States.
The most challenging part may be finding the duck thighs. But if you can’t find them, you could use chicken and swap out white wine for the red, which would probably work better with the milder-flavored chicken. You’d also want to reduce the amount of time since chicken cooks faster than duck.
I have a braised duck with prunes recipe here that I braise in the oven…
…but this time around, I cooked them on the stovetop. I seasoned the duck thighs with salt and pepper, and browned them in a bit of oil, skin side down. If you’re thinking ahead, salting the duck a day or two in advance improves its flavor.
Once browned, remove the thighs from the pot, add a splash of decent red wine from a bottle, scrape the delicious bits off the bottom of the pan, then add the duck back, along with the rest of the bottle of wine. I like to add thyme, bay leaves, garlic, and orange peel, but you can use whatever you’d like.
Add enough water to cover the duck thighs (if cooking chicken, add enough water to cover them halfway). Bring the liquid to a boil, then reduce it to a very low simmer and cook gently, covered, until the thigh meat is very tender. Figure about three hours. I did add some peeled pearl onions and cubes of rutabaga an hour before the duck was done.
The duck can be cooked the day before, then cooled and refrigerated, which allows you to skim off excess fat before rewarming it. But it can be enjoyed right away, or kept in the braising liquid for an hour or so, until you’re ready for dinner. It’s good with mashed potatoes, if you’re not adding root vegetables to the pot, or wide noodles.
January is the most challenging month in Paris, with the cold weather keeping most of us inside, and everyone is missing the days when we could sit on a café terrace and have a glass of wine. Smoking must make people hardier than I thought since les fumeurs remain steadfastly outside in sub-zero temperatures, puffing away.
Yes, there are smoker’s mittens…
We did get to warm ourselves by a fire for my birthday, which came at the end of December. A lot of businesses close in Paris that week so people can take a break, which is nice, although our favorite places are also closed, which makes going out for dinner a little challenging. So we headed out of town. You can read a bit more about where we went, below…
To end the year, we celebrated my birthday at Le Doyenné, the beautiful restaurant and guesthouse owned and run by chef James Henry and chef Shaun Kelly, who’s in charge of the potager (garden), located about 45 minutes from Paris. I’ve been meaning to go since they opened, but somehow never found the right time or date to have dinner there. But when I noticed a room available on my birthday, I booked it, along with a table for dinner.
We arrived by car in the late afternoon, just as night was getting ready to fall, and took a walk through the gardens before dinner. Most of the garden was in repose, with hardy vegetables like mâche, kale, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts holding their own in the cold. Shaun gave me a tour of the various rooms and cold chambers in the kitchens where winter squash were stored; berries, seaweeds, and other fermentations were doing their things in glass jars; charcuterie was drying; and bread was rising for the restaurant. (James worked at Tartine in San Francisco and Ten Belles in Paris, and is known for his breads.)
After our walk we curled up on the sofa with glasses of wine by the fireplace, until the sommelier stopped by with the wine list to ask us what we wanted to drink with dinner. We mostly drink white wines these days, but for a change, she helped us pick a nice red wine that was from a favorite producer in the Jura. It was great to see a wine list with good wines at a range of prices, from €39 to several hundred, and the list leans heavily into low-intervention (or natural) wines.
Visiting the vegetable cellar with Shaun.
Then we moved to the cathedral-like, glassed-in dining room, which was a bit chilly when the sun went down (I would have taken my dinner by the fire!). Dinner began with a parade of hors d’œuvres, which included two thin slices of incredibly good charcuterie; fresh scallops sitting on a dab of raw cream, with pickled wild mushroom juice and bits of Meyer lemon on top; as well as an array of crudités, raw vegetables that had been picked that day from their garden. We loved everything.
I wish I could tell you (and show you) how good this butter was, which was shot in low light, but we were too busy eating it to think about adjectives to describe it. But wow, was that good…
The next course was an onion tart made with pink onions fromRoscoff, in Brittany, and wild mushrooms, held in place by a little ricotta, with a sauce spiked with the lightly oxidized wine from the Jura, vin jaune. Following that were a few slices of barely cooked dorade with seaweed, spinach, and pomelo. (Their citrus comes from a producer in the south of France.)
Then we had a flavorful plate of duck (yes, duck is popular in France in the winter…), which came with radicchio and squash from the garden, and a gratin dish of pommes boulangère, slow-cooked, well-bronzed potato slices. We skipped the optional cheese course since it was a lot of food and went right to dessert, which was a chestnut tart - and included a candle - as well as Jerusalem artichoke ice cream, made with topinambours from the garden, and ruby grapefruit sorbet.
After herbal tisane by the fire, we headed to bed, and woke up to a spectacular breakfast buffet that featured everything from housemade croissants and ham and cheese pastries,minicanelés, apple-quince sauce, yogurt and granola, to thin sliced ham from their cellar, smoky grilled bread with some of the best butter I’ve ever tasted, along with homemade bitter orange marmalade, fresh carrot juice, and lots of dark coffee.
It was quite an experience and I was sorry that I had waited so long to go. Le Doyenné is quite a special place and while so many places are boasting about their farm-to-table fare, it was reassuring to be somewhere where the connection and commitment were direct and immediate, and real.
More of that amazing butter (in better light) at breakfast.
After hitting the boutique, where they wrapped up a loaf of bread for us to take home — the butter, unfortunately, wasn’t for sale — we headed back to Paris.
If you want to go, you can get to Le Doyenné from Paris by taking the RER C, then a taxi or Uber for the short trip (about 5 minutes, they said) to the restaurant. Or you can get a taxi or Uber for making the trip from Paris if you don’t have a car. (I checked the Uber app while we were there to see the price, which was €45 one-way on a Sunday afternoon, but prices fluctuate.) They have detailed instructions for getting there here.
If you go for dinner, which lasts around 2 1/2 to 3 hours, it’s probably best to either stay the night or get a ride back to Paris. It’s possible to do lunch as a day trip. Rooms run between €265 and €340 per night, which includes a fantastic breakfast. It’s a bit of a splurge, but if it’s your birthday, maybe you can justify it? ☺️
Maybe I’ve saved the best for last? (Or buried the lede…) But I’ve got a new book coming out this spring, a completely revised version of The Great Book of Chocolate. When I first wrote TGBOC in 2004, there were maybe three bean-to-bar chocolate makers in the United States, and now there are over two hundred. So much has changed!
You can now get high-quality chocolate chips and cocoa powders at supermarkets, and there’s a huge variety of chocolates available at every price point. And some companies are even experimenting with non-cacao chocolate substitutes, which I tested and wrote about in the book, along with my results baking with them. As an added bonus, I include a beautifully photographed chapter and guide on where to find the best chocolates in Paris.
The information about chocolate has been completely brought up-to-date, and I added lots of new recipes to the book. They include a rich dark Chocolate olive oil spread with flaky sea salt, Individual warm chocolate cakes with runny, salted butter caramel centers, Triple (or quadruple) chocolate cookies, Vegan chocolate marshmallows (don’t turn your nose up - they were approved, and loved, by a French policeman!), Turkey mole, and a sophisticated Chocolate Negroni from the world’s best cocktail bar.
I recast and revised the other recipes, such as the Chocolate-cherry buttermilk scones and a decidedly French Gâteau au chocolate, as well as the Homemade rocky road and the ultra-dark Mocha pudding cake.
What was once a slender volume on chocolate has grown into a full-size book with beautiful new photographs from award-winning photographer Ed Anderson with food styling by George Dolese and Elisabet der Nederlanden.
Happy Holidays and then some. I hope you’ve not had to spend too much time returning gifts to the store. I’m skipping the upcoming Midweek Gems because we’ll be traveling. Happy early 2026!
But folks, we’re still in 2025, which marks the 50th anniversary of when my family left Vietnam. For that reason, certain foods are top of mind. I’ve been thinking a lot about pâté chaud, a puff pastry snack that has a long history in Vietnam and with my family.
In Vietnamese, we call these treats bánh patê sô — not too far off from the French pâté chaud. I’d like to close out the year with the iconic favorite because it’s a great lens for viewing the modern Vietnamese experience.
Pâté chaud — just imagine the rich, crispiness!
I’ve been researching their history and working on new recipes for them. However, I am not yet satisfied with what I’ve got, despite having baked through three boxes of pastry dough! And the history of the pastries themselves turns out to be more interesting than I had initially thought.
So, I’m going to share what I’ve found out about pâté chaud in this dispatch plus where to buy them. In a couple weeks, when we’re back from vacation and I’ve had a chance to do another round of testing, I’ll share the recipes so you can make your own versions.
January 11, 2026 UPDATE » My Pate Chaud recipe is now available!
My family fled Saigon in April 1975 with few material possessions, but we did bring many food memories with us. One of them was of patê chaud, savory puff pastry hand pies filled with a country-style pâté or meatloaflike mixture. Involving culinary skill plus butter and wheat flour, bánh patê sô were considered a luxe breakfast item in Vietnam, to be enjoyed hot to showcase their crispy pastry shell. The literal meaning of pâté chaud is “hot pastry pie”.
1930s Saigon
Typical Saigon residents went out for them at fancy French-style bakeries, like Givral, which made all-butter puff pastry. Lesser versions relied upon margarine, my mom recalls. Founded by Frenchman Alain Portier, the bakery called Givral opened in 1950 across the way from the Continental Hotel made famous in the Graham Greene novel, The Quiet American. However, bánh patê sôhad been in Saigon since around 1930, prepared by clever cooks and entrepreneurs such as Mrs. Pham Thi Truoc, who had a shop specializing in the pastries.
Near the Opera House in Saigon, this postcard image shows the Continental Hotel on the right. Givral bakery is across the street in the curved corner building on the left.
By the time my mother migrated to Saigon from northern Vietnam in 1954, a result of the Geneva Accords that split the country into two, Givral was the place to purchase French pastries and baked goods like patê chaud, cream puffs, eclairs and yule logs. Vietnamese people who opted to go southward felt that North Vietnam was conservative and limiting. South Vietnam was freewheeling, liberal and full of new ideas and foods.
Pâté chaud is mostly a Saigon specialty. I’ve never spotted it in the northern city of Hanoi or central city of Hue when I visited there. In the early 1960s, Mom, her girlfriends and even my cousin, Bich Tu (who was a teenager then), were rolling out puff pastry dough at home. Butter was expensive and you had to source good wheat flour with enough gluten, my mom said.
Puff pastry needs a relatively cold environment for the dough to behave and develop the hundreds of layers of laminated dough. I have no idea how cooks in tropical Saigon, where the weather is either hot or hotter with humidity, could patiently make pate feuilletée (puff pastry in French). But they were able to do so because they were curious, determined cooks.
Our family arrived at Camp Pendelton Marine Base in Southern California in May 1975 and the temperature was likely in the low 70s. Mom said that the dry, moderate climate was dreamy; she missed her father and sisters but didn’t miss the weather. She had her notebook of recipes, one of her prized possessions that came with us when we left Vietnam. But it didn’t contain a recipe for bánh patê sô.
Soon after we settled into our new home in San Clemente, my mom began to make puff pastry from scratch and baking up dome-shaped bánh patê sô. She knew the recipe by heart and relied upon Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking for technical guidance.
As a result, as an elementary school kid, I ate pa tê sô for breakfast, reheated in a toaster oven until the exterior was crisp and the interior was blazing hot! There was liquor in her beef and pork filling so the first bite often gave me a whiff of alcohol. I’d gobble it up and go off to school, oblivious to how different that breakfast was to what my peers had eaten. I also didn’t realize how unusual it was for a home cook like my mom to make puff pastry over and over again.
But that’s what Vietnamese people are like – obsessively working to polish a skill, to mimic and master a foreign notion, and to make it their own.
Curious cooks, readers, and eaters fuel Pass the Fish Sauce. For the full low-down on pâté chaud history, where to buy them, and soon, how to make them, become a paid subscriber! You’ll gain all that information, 100+ recipes, and sponsor my work. This content takes days to develop and I appreciate your support at any level. Your generosity matters. A LOT.
I hope you are enjoying a wonderful day wherever you are, however you are celebrating life and all its blessings. Thank you for being here.
My 2025 e-card contains snapshots of scenes from this week, including my mom’s welcome home dinner for Rory and me. She served us stuffed whelk (ốc nhồi) with lemongrass and ginger sauce and fried imperial rolls (chả giò). It was wonderful to enjoy such a relaxing feast after a day of driving and negotiating holiday traffic.
I took over from there to give Mom a rest, though she’s always willing to be my sous chef. Cooking together is very special for my mother and me.
What was on our Christmas Eve menu? Roast chicken with porcini butter, sticky rice and chestnut dressing, buttery chestnuts, roasted Okinawa sweet potato, stir-fried blooming cauliflower, chanterelle gravy, and of course, my homemade fruitcake (which has been marinating in liquor for over a month now!).
Things kicked off with my mini pâté chaud which is featured in the last photo on the bottom right. It’s my modern take on an iconic Viet-Franco snack. I’ve been playing around with it for years and my family and friends have been taste testing the latest vegetarian and meaty versions. Someone has to do it, or else I’d be as big as a house. Details coming on Sunday!
It’s almost the end of 2025 and I can probably guess that you’re feeling a bit like me right now. Somewhat overwhelmed as the year draws to a close. A little tired, but with enough enthusiasm for the current and upcoming holidays and parties. It was nice to get away to Japan before the sprint to the finish. And I am hoping Santa puts a Japanese WC under our tree. Okay, we don’t have a tree…but maybe I’ll get one for my birthday, which is a few days later.
We’re staying put this year. A friend offered his house on a sunny French island, where the temperature is currently 80ºF (27ºC), but Air France wanted €3000 ($3500) for each of us to get there, squished into an airline seat for the 13 1/2-hour flight, so we took a pass. Home is pretty nice around the holidays so I’m not too upset. Even better, lots of people leave Paris to visit family in their maisons sécondaires, so it’s rather quiet. We are going to do an overnight out in the countryside, which is my birthday treat to myself. (Although Romain is coming along too!)
One of the best things that happened this year was I released a new book. Writing a book is a two-year project, from getting all the recipes tested and written, to taking the photos and designing the final book. I was really fortunate to have an excellent group of people working on the project: my main editor, the copy and production editors, proofreaders, and book designer, as well as the two remarkable food stylists and food photographer who came to Paris for three weeks to shoot the book. Thanks team!
I’m planning on making either the Marjolaine or the Lemon semifreddo from the book for Christmas dessert. My little Meyer lemon tree in our backyard only has one lone, ripe lemon on it — except I just noticed bird had attacked it 😟 — but I spotted Meyer lemons at a new, produce-oriented grocery store near me (you can also get them in France here), and scooped them all up.
I guess the birds wanted a taste of Meyer lemons, too…
So need to decide which one to make…or should I make them both?
It’s been really nice to see such enthusiasm for my book, Ready for Dessert, and I thought I’d share a roundup on where it’s been.
And….I just want to also take a moment as this year draws to a close to thank everyone who is a paid subscriber to the newsletter. Making the switch from an ad-supported platform to a reader-supported one has been the right decision, and I like how this has become a comfortable community, rather than just a website of people clicking by.
So thanks to everyone of you who subscribes to the newsletter — free and paid — and looking forward to keeping in touch in 2026!
If you’re not a subscriber, subscribe here…
(If you’d like to upgrade to a paid subscription, you can do so here.)
Also…thanks for everyone who featured Ready for Dessert in their newsletter and in print. A few newsletters are partially paywalled but you can read the interviews and Q & As on most of them without (or before) subscribing:
A reader recently wrote to me about the recipe for Croquants (page 251) in Ready for Dessert, wondering if the one teaspoon of batter per cookie was correct. I assured her that was the right amount; the cookies are meant to be small, about the size of a silver dollar. In France, cookies of this size might fall under the moniker of croques-télés, which refers to snackable candies or sweets that you might eat while watching television.
Before I moved to France, I bought these little French cookies by the bagful when I’d find them in the U.S. They were expensive but were everything I wanted in a cookie: crispy, crunchy, nutty, and a touch salty. While I can now buy them in France, they’re easy to make. You just stir the ingredients together, plunk little dabs on a baking sheet, and bake them.
It’s important to chop the nuts in large pieces, roughly the size of small peas. Even though the nuts will take up seemingly precious space in the little teaspoon you’re measuring the batter with, the batter will spread quite a bit and it’s nice to bite into big pieces of nuts when eating these cookies.
Oh, and yes, you can bake them a little larger. Feel free to do so, if you wish. They’ll probably need an extra minute or so in the oven, until they’re golden brown across the top. But I’d never say no to more of anything, when it comes to cookies.
1 cup (200g) sugar
5 1/2 tablespoons (50g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (60ml) egg whites (from about 2 large eggs), at room temperature
Pinch of salt
3/4 cup (90g) almonds or hazelnuts, toasted and very coarsely chopped
Preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. (Silicone mats tend to steam cookies a bit, so I prefer to use parchment paper for these.)
In a medium bowl, mix the sugar, flour, egg whites, and salt until well combined. Stir in the chopped nuts.
Drop level teaspoons of the lumpy batter, evenly spaced apart (about 2 inches, 5cm), on the baking sheets.
Bake the cookies, rotating the baking sheets in the oven midway during baking so they bake evenly, until the cookies are light golden brown all the way across the top, 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheets.
Storage: The batter can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one week before baking. The baked cookies are best, and crispiest, the day they are made, but can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a Thanksgiving dinner in Paris that was the same from year to year. One year a friend hired a chef and dinner was served all plated up, in the kitchen. Another year I volunteered to make Thanksgiving dinner and ended up cutting the turkey into small pieces and braising it. Since I was cooking for twenty+ people, that was the only way a turkey would fit in my French oven, which at the time was so small that I could barely squeeze a chicken into it.
Another year I was staying with friends in Provence and we were shocked when the bird that we pre-ordered from the local butcher came already stuffed, by the butcher. I was tempted to scoop his out and cook the bird with the stuffing mix we’d already prepared, but he’d done such a beautiful job of sewing it up with butcher’s twine that we cooked the turkey as is, and it was incredible.
Thanksgiving is a holiday that’s traditional, of course, for Americans (Canadians have their own Thanksgiving), but French people don’t really “get” it. And to make the meal, you have to go on a scavenger hunt, tracking down all the fixings, like cranberries (nope, the airelles at Picard aren’t the same thing…let’s not pretend that they are), sweet potatoes (hold the marshmallows, at least for European guests), Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, and whole turkeys, which you often have to pre-order, and if you live in an upscale neighborhood, they can cost a small fortune.
Oddly, when I went to look up the price of a turkey, for some reason, Pierre Hermé was listed as the 2nd best place in Paris to buy a turkey. That’s news to me! (And probably to pastry chef Pierre Hermé…)
It’s a holiday about gathering around the table with familiar foods and turkey is not high on most French people’s list of things they prefer to eat. That said, the dinde fermière, heritage free-range turkeys, in France are delicious. But once Romain discovered stuffing (la farce), he was hooked.
This year I was invited to a dinner and was tasked with making an American dessert by my French-American hosts. Since the theme was américain, I decided I should use American ingredients and dug into my stash of King Arthur flour, Guittard cocoa powder, aluminum-free Whole Foods baking powder, and Arm & Hammer baking soda to make my dessert.
At the top of the stack of books that came out this fall is ’s new one, Dorie’s Anytime Cakes. I had bookmarked her recipe for portokalopita, a Greek orange cake that I fell in love with in Tinos, but a cake made with filo dough didn’t seem like a T-Day dessert. So I’m saving that for when someone invites me over for a Greek dinner. Hint hint…
I have a few devil’s food cakes in my repertoire but was intrigued by Dorie’s because it’s baked in a bundt pan, which is also très américain (although there are kugelhopfpans in France). I have a few bundt pans I brought back from the States and decided to use the one with the deep and intricate design.
Devil’s food cake is historically made with natural cocoa powder, which hasn’t been Dutch-processed with an alkaline ingredient, so is generally used along with baking soda as a leavening agent. The reaction of the two can give the cake a reddish hue,* hence the name of the cake. Dorie recommends using Dutch-process cocoa powder in her recipe, so I stuck with that. To stay in the rouge vein, I used Guittard cocoa rouge cocoa powder, which has a reddish hue, but feel free to use your favorite cocoa powder here, Dutch-process or natural.
While Romain watched me gather the ingredients for making the cake, he wondered why I was putting the dry ingredients in a sieve. I told him it was to disperse them, especially the lumpy cocoa powder.
When I lived in San Francisco, I was a member of the Bakers Dozen group, an informal association of bakers and people who like to bake at home.
At one of our get-togethers (which were heaven, being in the company of a hundred other bakers who loved to talk about things like sifting for an hour), the late baker Marion Cunningham, who was never shy about offering her opinion, chimed in with: “Well, do you have to sift is like asking: ‘Do you have to wear shoes?’”
Which is a good question.
A few years ago I ran into an acquaintance at a local bakery. When we took out our phones to exchange contact info, I looked down and noticed that he wasn’t wearing shoes. Kinda perplexed, I asked him about it and he said that he stopped wearing shoes a few years ago. I wondered aloud if he was concerned about all the grit and glass, not to mention the 💩 on the sidewalks, and he said it didn’t bother him.
And as for shoes, I’m going to continue wearing mine in Paris. And here, I did sift.
I baked the cake in my stylish bundt pan, which, woe was me, didn’t want to let go of the cake. (I can’t say I blame it…) That’s the trouble with some of the more intricate bundt pans; they look cool but don’t work for every cake.
So I remade the cake in a less-complicated bundt pan and it released just fine. I happened to be texting my friend George that day, who was one of the food stylists for my book Ready for Dessert, and he told me that he uses Bak-Klene on intricate bundt pans and nothing ever sticks. He graciously had left me a can of it, but I forgot about it in my cupboard. Next time.
(Some bakers make a baker’s goo, mixing together flour, vegetable shortening, and vegetable oil, and use that to grease cake pans. I haven’t tried it but apparently it’s a game-changer.)
Dorie’s book lives up to its name and is filled with recipes that you’ll want to make anytime. The cake was a hit, and you don’t need to wait until Thanksgiving to enjoy it. You can be an angel and make it for your friends or family whenever the mood for an all-American chocolate cake hits.
When you assemble the cake, you might think that the cake pan doesn’t seem filled with enough batter when you put it in the oven. But it will rise considerably while it bakes. Like most chocolate desserts, err on the side of underbaking rather than overbaking. Check the cake before the recommended baking time.
If you don’t have a bundt pan, a tube pan with smooth sides and a hollow tube in the middle will work. As mentioned in the post (thanks George!), the best pan coating is baker’s nonstick spray, the kind that has flour in it, such as Baker’s Joy or Bak-Klene, which is available at Webstaurant, Amazon, and Williams-Sonoma.Nordic Ware recommends not using regular nonstick spray on their bundt pans, which causes buildup and degrades the coating.
Dorie recommends topping the cake, after it’s glazed, with rosettes of whipped cream and either maraschino or amarena cherries, or chocolate sprinkles or shaved chocolate. I kept it squarely in the chocolate direction but if I wasn’t bringing the cake to a party, I’d serve it with ice cream.
For the cake
1 1/3 cups (180g) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (45g) unsweetened cocoa powder, preferably Dutch-process
To make the cake, spray the inside of a 10-cup bundt pan with baker’s spray (see the headnote), or grease it with butter or shortening, making sure to get it into all the crevasses, then dust the pan with flour, tapping out the excess.
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (175ºC).
Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or by hand, beat the butter and sugars on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Stop the mixer midway and scrape down the sides to make sure the ingredients are mixing evenly.
Turn the mixer down to medium speed and add the eggs one at a time, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides. Once the eggs are incorporated, mix in the vanilla and melted chocolate.
With the mixer on its lowest speed, add one-third of the dry ingredients, then half of the milk. Add half of the remaining dry ingredients, mix in the rest of the milk, then mix in the last of the dry ingredients. With the mixer still on low speed, mix in the very hot coffee. Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the chopped chocolate by hand with a flexible spatula.
Scrape the batter into the prepared cake pan. Rap the pan gently on the counter a few times and smooth the top. Bake the cake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out almost clean, with moist crumbs attached, about 35 minutes, but check it at the 30-minute mark, or before.
Let the cake cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes. Unmold the cake on the wire rack and let cool completely before glazing.
To make the glaze, place the butter, chocolate, and corn syrup in a medium bowl. Place the bowl over a small saucepan of barely simmering water, stirring it occasionally until the butter and chocolate are melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat and let cool for a minute or two to thicken slightly, enough so that it can be spooned over the top of the cake, but not too runny that it will all run down the sides and off the cake.
Pour or spoon the glaze over the top of the cake, using a butter knife or offset metal spatula to encourage it to flow down the sides.
Storage: The cake can be stored for up to two days at room temperature, if well-wrapped.
*When I was in pastry school here in France, one of the chef-instructors said to add a little red food coloring to chocolate batters to enhance the color of the chocolate. Just an FYI.
Addendum
Just a footnote here on bundt pans. These are the two that I own:
The one on the left is an oldie, but goodie that I bought at a stall at the market in Paris. The one on the right is a newer on from Nordic Ware. I had trouble getting it out of the one on the right, and used the one on the left for the cake in this post.
As mentioned above, my esteemed food stylist friend says that he always uses a baking spray with flour in it on bundt pans, and they pop out easily. That was echoed a few days ago when I was talking to baking expert Brian Hart Hoffman, founder and editor-in-chief of Bake from Scratch magazine, who shared that sentiment and said to always use baking spray with flour in bundt and fluted pans, not regular non-stick spray.
Confession: I may have used non-stick spray on the pan on the above right a few times, as well as run it through the dishwasher - another no no, which may be why cakes stick in it sometimes. Nordic Ware has a video about how to wash a bundt pan.
As a treat, Brian brought me two of the cake pans he designed for Williams-Sonoma, below, so I can start afresh with my shiny new fluted tube pans. And this time, I’ll treat them right!
Now introducing… the wintery side dish or vegetarian main dish that you didn’t know you needed! You’ll love how it comes together with one pot on the stove and one pan in the oven.
This festive green and red dish features roasted Brussels sprouts cooked to crisp-tender perfection with fresh cranberries, which become so lovely as they bake on the same pan alongside the sprouts. Add chopped pecans to the pan toward the end of baking to toast them.
Once your components are done cooking, combine them in a bowl over cooked wild rice blend. Finish it off with crumbled goat cheese, plus a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and maple syrup. The flavors remind me of my popular Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Cranberries & Pecans, but you can eat this one as a standalone meal. It’s a winner.
I’m down under for a very special reason. I’m spending time with family and celebrating my cousin’s wedding, all in the middle of summer. Which means, yes, there has been a lot of ice cream. I don’t get to see my family nearly as often as I’d like since we live so far apart, so anytime there’s even the slightest excuse to gather, I’m on a plane without hesitation.
Before I left, I set a small kitchen experiment into motion. My very young Buddha’s hand tree surprised me with two large fruits this year, and I found myself unsure of what to do with them. They’re often candied, turned into marmalade, or used for extracts, but I wanted something simple and a little playful. So I chopped both fruits and tucked one into a jar of tequila and the other into tequila with sugar, planning to leave them for a month. Just 24 hours later, the tequila had already begun to take on the natural pigments from the citrus. I’ve hidden both jars away in a cool, dark corner of the kitchen and can’t wait to see what greets me when I return. It could be a disaster. It could be magic. We’ll find out.
This is my final newsletter of the year, and I’ll see you on the other side in the new one. As this year comes to a close, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for being part of this community. It is such a privilege to see you cook from my recipes and share them in your own kitchens. I hope you’re able to take a little break, spend time with people you love, and also steal a quiet moment just for yourself.
Special Holiday Offer From America’s Test Kitchen
My friends at America’s Test Kitchen created a special holiday to share with my readers. Access over 30 years of ATK recipes (including mine) and reviews with a free one-month subscription and then 37% off your first year with my exclusive link.
Rocky road has always felt like a dessert built from joy and improvisation. Its origins stretch from 19th-century Australia, where chocolate, nuts, and marshmallows were mixed to make use of imperfect ingredients, to its rise as a beloved ice cream flavor in the United States during the Great Depression, when texture and generosity turned restraint into indulgence. However it traveled, the rocky road became shorthand for comfort, abundance, and that playful feeling that anything delicious could happen in one bite.
These bars keep that spirit alive while quietly sharpening the flavors through science. Dark chocolate forms the backbone, bringing bitterness that makes every sweet note feel brighter. Marshmallows soften the snap and create those familiar pockets of chew, while dried apricots and pineapple add concentrated fruit acids that lift the richness. Walnuts and pepitas deliver crunch and fat for balance, and a touch of coconut reinforces the fruit with gentle, toasty aromatics. Chilling the slab sets the chocolate to a clean snap and lets the flavors release in layers rather than all at once.
There is no baking required, no need for precision, and no wrong way to cut them. These bars are meant to be shared, stacked high on a platter, and broken into with your hands, just like rocky road always has been.
The Flavor Files: Why These Rocky Road Bars Work
Rocky road is one of those desserts that feels nostalgic and indulgent at the same time, but what makes these bars really special is how many different flavor and texture mechanisms are happening in one bite. This is a dessert built on contrast, and contrast is one of the most potent drivers of deliciousness.
Let’s break down what is happening under the hood.
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