If you’ve yet to try Chinese sausage (also known as lap cheong, lap chong, or lap xuong), you’re in for a real treat. Sort of similar in flavor to the king of bao fillings — char sui — but saltier, these dried pork sausages add a punch of flavor to fried rice, taro cake, lo mai gai (lotus leaf rice), and other delightful Chinese dishes.
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Beans and lentils are two of my dietary staples; fiber- and protein-rich, versatile, and inexpensive, there’s not much these humble legumes can’t do. I typically keep a few cans of cannellinis, chickpeas, and black beans in the pantry for quick-fix dinners, like rosemary-garlic chickpea soup and broccoli white bean soup, but most of the time I prefer to cook them myself using a slow-cooker.
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Nowadays, most of what comes out of my kitchen are savory everyday things like bean soups and kale salads, but baking was what first piqued my interest in the culinary world. I still enjoy it — there’s something so magical about transforming butter, flour, and sugar into a treat so much greater than the sum of their parts — but it’s more of an occasional, whimsical thing. (One cannot live on sweets alone.) Cut-out sugar cookies, like these hearts, are a long-time love of mine, one of the first things I remember baking.
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Typically, I’m very skeptical of things dubbed “best” or “perfect”. My perfect is not necessarily your perfect, and worse, these terms are so often overused by lazy writers looking to grab attention that it’s hard to trust that it’s not overblown. So when I saw that Bon Appetít was claiming a recipe with such a simple ingredient list (chicken thighs, salt, and oil) was superlative, I was both intrigued and doubtful that it could live up to these lofty claims. Well, as you may have surmised, I was wrong. Since I first tried out this technique for cooking chicken thighs, I have rarely strayed from it, as it is a pretty much foolproof.
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As one might guess after seeing the bottles of vinegar lined up on my counter, I’m very — bordering on ridiculously — fond of tart foods. So it’s somewhat surprising that I didn’t really understand the appeal of salt and vinegar potato chips until recently. But, it’s safe to say that once I got it, I got it.
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With it’s sunny red-orange hue and gently-bittersweet flavor, Aperol might seem an amaro best suited for taking the edge off blazing-hot summer afternoons. (There’s certainly some truth to that thought; when it comes to day drinking, it’s hard to top a fizzy Aperol Spritz.) But I’d argue it’s equally appropriate during these dreary winter months.
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As someone who spends a lot of time reading, I find it endlessly interesting to see what titles are on the bookshelves of others. Right now, we’re living in my boyfriend Andrew’s dad’s apartment in Manhattan — thanks, Mark! — so I’ve had some time to peruse his collection. Tucked in-between two photography books was a memoir that had long been on my to-read list: Heat by Bill Buford. A former New Yorker editor, Buford tells a fascinating story about leaving behind his position at the magazine to learn the ins and outs of Italian cooking, starting with months spent staging at Mario Batali’s Babbo.
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One of the biggest hurdles I ran into while launching this blog was choosing a name that represents myself and the type of content I’ll be sharing here. Ideas ranged from the completely-ridiculous (e.g. Yuppies Live Here, after a somewhat-accurate spray-painted tag left on our apartment) to the at-least-semi-viable (I Am a Cupcake, because, as my friend Ally says, I look like one). Finally, after weeks of anguish, I narrowed it down to two contenders, and polled my friends for advice. Now, it’s pretty obvious A Modest Feast won out, but as a tribute to the runner-up — Not Only Kale — it seemed fitting to have the first recipe I share here feature that leafy green.
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