I’ll be honest — the last couple of weeks haven’t been my most intentional in the kitchen. Life happens, and sometimes dinner just means protein and vegetables, full stop. Even for someone who genuinely loves to cook, there are weeks where the inspiration just isn’t there. Add in the fact that I’ve been trying to lean out a bit, and most of the food I want to make is the exact opposite of what that goal calls for.

But excuses only go so far. I did manage to cook a few genuinely fun dishes this week — two of them from The Wok — which brings me to 14.53% recipe completion. Progress.

Gyudon (pg. 235)

This looks like a mess, but don’t let appearances fool you. This bowl is pure, simple comfort food at its best. I added tsukemono (the red pickled daikon in the photo) hoping for a hint of brightness to cut through the richness, but it didn’t quite land. Tsukemono is more salty than what Westerners typically think of when they hear “pickled.” The dish needed acidity, not salt, to cut through the richness of the beef and eggs.

Wonton Noodles (an experiment)

I had a container of homemade wonton filling sitting in my freezer and, like many of us, I’ve been watching those viral dumpling lasagna videos on Instagram. That got my brain spinning. Why not wonton noodles?

The noodles I found gave me a genuine laugh — marketed for dan dan noodles, but the package also proudly declared them “Asian Spaghetti.” I don’t know if that’s a translation quirk or a pitch to Western shoppers, but either way, the noodles are fantastic. I used the same ones from a vegan noodle dish a few weeks back. This time around, I stir-fried the filling, tossed the noodles in, and sauced everything with my go-to dumpling dipping sauce — black vinegar, soy sauce, and Lao Gan Ma — with a touch of cornstarch to thicken it up.

The only thing I’d change: I went a bit heavy on the meat, which threw the balance off. Delicious all the same, although I’ll probably just stick with dumplings in the future.

Pad See Ew with Chicken (pg. 372)

Pad See Ew is one of those recipes that makes you wonder why you ever order it out — once you’ve made a great version at home, it’s hard to justify spending so much on such a simple dish.

The hardest part is keeping the rice noodles from fusing into one tragic clump. This was also my first time working with full sheets of rice noodles that I cut to size myself, which felt like a small but satisfying milestone.

Pi Day Pizza (3.14)

March 14th means one thing in this house: pie. We went the savory route this year — a simple marinara topped with shaved pecorino romano and parmigiano. Nothing revolutionary, but simple usually means better.

Will it unseat the marinara pizza I had in Naples? Not even close. But it’s got me thinking. The dough is where I want it to be — I’m convinced the gap is entirely in the sauce. That’s the next puzzle to solve.

This week took a mostly Korean turn, as we had tofu that needed to be cooked. The recipe I landed on was Korean Style Spicy Braised Tofu (The Wok, pg 501). I’ll come back to that dish in a moment, but I will say The Wok isn’t focused on a single cuisine, so to round out a Korean meal, I needed to add some banchan to the mix. I decided to cook a few things from one of America’s Test Kitchen’s new books, UMMA. This book is phenomenal, as you will begin to see as I cook more and more from it. Let’s start with the tofu.

This may easily be my new favorite way to eat firm tofu. You blanch the tofu in hot water to get the pores to open up and then braise the slices in a spicy gochujang sauce. It has a kick, but it isn’t too much, and the umami that the sauce brings takes the dish to a new level. I’m taking a break from Korean food for a week or two, and I still wouldn’t mind making this one again. I will say that I think this dish feels forced for The Wok. Kenji López-Alt has you place the slices up the sides of the wok and rotate them into the sauce, but that makes no sense to me when you can just use a nonstick skillet and slow-braise the slices on a flat surface. I cannot for the life of me understand what the wok adds or does better for this dish. Regardless, the recipe is a chef’s kiss.

UMMA is an amazing cookbook. It’s put together by one of ATK’s social media directors, who is Korean. The cookbook is a love letter to her mother and her mother’s recipes — she worked with her mom to develop the book. I opted for two banchan to go with the tofu.

Seasoned Spinach with Gochujang (UMMA, pg 54). This dish was SO GOOD, especially with white rice. Besides the tofu, I found myself coming back to this dish over and over throughout the week. Both this and the next dish use an ingredient that was new to me: Korean plum syrup. If you find a Korean recipe that calls for this and they give you a substitution, just go find the real thing before you make the dish. The tartness and sweetness it adds has a flavor that is unique and familiar at the same time. It makes the dish.

The last Korean dish for the week was Dotorimuk Muchim (UMMA, pg 62). This is a salad whose base is acorn jelly. The recipe calls for making your own jelly, but I will admit to cheating and buying it from the market. One of the benefits of having a mostly Korean grocery store near you is having access to fresh deli ingredients like this. The texture is somewhere between a custard and boba — very refreshing, with a slightly nutty taste — but I believe it is primarily about the texture. The flavors of this dish were dominated, in a good way, by the interplay of the plum syrup and the spicy, herby flavor of the sesame leaves.

The last dish I made this week was one I’ve made before: Ants Climbing Trees (The Wok, pg 382). This dish is named for the way the bits of ground pork cling to the noodles. I tend to push things on the protein side, so admittedly this has more pork than the recipe calls for. One of my favorite flavor profiles is mala, the hot numbing flavor so unique to the Sichuan province of China. This is a cravable dish. I will say that I made a bit of a mistake this time and didn’t quite drain the noodles enough before adding them to the pork and sauce, so the sauce ended up a little thin.

If there’s a takeaway this week, it’s that the best meals can sometimes come from mixing your sources. The Wok brought the braised tofu and the Ants Climbing Trees, but it was UMMA that turned dinner into a full Korean spread and introduced me to Korean plum syrup in the process. Cooking through one book is great for building skill, but branching out is what keeps you curious. It’s how you stumble into new favorite ingredients and avoid the rut of making the same things on repeat.

Some weeks are all leftovers and low motivation. Others end with pizza dough in your hands and a blazing-hot oven in the backyard.

I really need to get better about taking pictures of things that aren’t part of my “projects,” like working my way through The Wok. That becomes especially obvious in weeks like last, where leftovers carried us through a couple of days or we just didn’t feel like cooking.

Valentine’s Day was a break from the current norm, with pizzas fired in the backyard Ooni. During COVID, Friday night was pizza night—every week, for over a year. I’ve made pizzas from all over and eaten pizzas all over, but I still think my backyard pies are easily in the top five I’ve ever had. I’m also a sucker for a good Detroit-style pizza… homemade, of course. I’ve been seriously neglecting my pizza game lately and decided this past weekend that I need to do better. I’ll try to sprinkle in more sushi and dim sum while I’m at it.

While I didn’t get pictures of the pizzas, I did work through a few new recipes this week. The first was Velvet Chicken with Snap Peas and Lemon Ginger Sauce (pg. 78). This recipe appears early in the book and is meant to get you focused on the velveting technique. Maybe it’s the baking soda, but this process yields meat so incredibly tender that you’ll never fully recreate restaurant-quality results without it. The water method only takes a few minutes, and I can’t recommend it enough.

This particular dish was especially interesting. Lemon isn’t a common Chinese flavor, but it works beautifully here. The result is deeply satisfying while still feeling light and fresh.

The next dish was Stir-Fried Fish with Ginger and Scallions (pg. 139). Interestingly, this recipe also calls for velveting, though you don’t wash and press the fish afterward. We used frozen monkfish, which was good, but I think I’d try a different white fish next time. This dish comes together incredibly quickly and doesn’t make a large portion—it’s really just fish, ginger, and scallions—so plan on something like broccoli on the side, along with the obligatory bowl of rice.

The final dish of the week, Easy Stir-Fried Noodles with Mushrooms, Carrots, Basil, and Sweet Soy Sauce (pg. 350), was hands-down my favorite. It’s relatively quick, easy, and makes a ton of food. I doubled the vegetables, kept the noodles the same, and added tofu for protein. I also ended up doubling the sauce, knowing the tofu would soak it all up and wanting to make sure the noodles were well coated.

I did burn a few noodles to the pan—I clearly overcrowded things, and it was tough to keep everything moving and avoid sticking—but the new wok recovered admirably. The dish has a nice bite from the chili paste and subtle five-spice vibes from the sauce. It uses kecap manis, an Indonesian sweet soy sauce cooked with spices like star anise and cinnamon. I searched everywhere at HMart but ultimately used the book’s recipe to make my own. This is a vegan dish that makes you forget it’s vegan.

Finally, I’m not quite ready to do a full review of the new wok, but so far I’m loving it. In terms of general performance, the biggest difference I notice is how little food sticks. You really notice it when it’s time to clean up—everything, whether it looks burned on or not, just wipes right out. The double nitride process on this thing is no joke.

I’m hoping to capture some slow-motion video of a food flip soon, which also feels much easier with this wok thanks to the taper of the pan and its lighter weight.

Dearest gentle reader,

OK, maybe a little too much Bridgerton this last week. I was down for the count last week end, so this week will be a little more full than most. Interestingly, several of the recipes this week didn’t really require using a wok. I’ll start there.

Shirataki noodles are amazing. Great texture, they absorb the flavor of whatever you use them for, and they are all fiber, meaning no carbs and no calories. Of course we have to ruin that by saucing it up with spicy chili oil, sesame paste, and some sugar. Regardless, these were absolutely delicious and I could honestly eat it just about every day. Spicy Shirataki and Cucumber Salad (pg 335) is definitely one of those dishes that is going in the rotation. I didn’t buy cucumbers as I already had some, but unfortunately they went bad before I could use them. This was one of those moments where I am starting to see my experience kicking in and I can “feel” the dish. I had some leftover Takuan, Japanese picked radish, from the previous week’s sushi night. It worked perfectly fine as a substitute. This dish comes together in less than 15 minutes.

Cheese Congee with Bacon, Charred Corn, Scallions, and Cilantro (pg 258) is another dish that I forewent the wok in favor of using my pressure cooker. I love congee and I personally believe the pressure cooker is the easiest method for making a great one. This had bacon, cheese, and charred corn. This made a super good breakfast. I doubled the recipe so I could have breakfast all week, but it was too much food and I sadly had to toss a good third of it. Best served with a fried egg on top, making this feel similar to grits or savory oats.

The last dish that I made without the wok was the Sesame Chicken Noodles My Way (pg 338). I’m a sucker for noodles and especially ones that remind me of dan dan noodles. The combination of peanut butter, sesame, soy sauce, and a little kick makes one of the most comforting flavors. The only part of this that really called for using the wok was poaching the chicken, but I used the pressure cooker to cook a whole chicken. This gave me extra chicken to use for salads and other things throughout the week. This came together faster than dan dan noodles, so I highly recommend giving it a try. I went with bucatini noodles, which were a little thick, but totally worked. The recipe calls for spaghetti or fettuccine noodles.

Since I’m cooking my way through Kenji’s book, I decided to treat myself and buy his new work. It’s made in conjunction with Our Place and probably cost too much for what it is, but what it is is excellent. I’ll have a deeper review when I’ve had time to make a few more dishes in it. I decided to be bold and make the first dish I cooked in it eggs. The double-nitride finish makes it non-stick without using toxic coatings, so this was the ultimate test. I did get some VERY light sticking as I cooked, but it washed right out with some running water. Nothing was actually stuck.

This was my first time making Home-Styled Tomato and Scrambled Eggs (pg 165). I have to admit that I don’t find it visually appealing. Any time you scramble eggs with a liquid, they get this chunky look that just doesn’t do it for me. That being said, it was really delicious and made for a perfect post-gym breakfast, served over leftover rice.

Red Curry with Mushrooms, Pumpkin, and Tofu (pg 587) was my attempt at giving a little variety to a week so heavy with noodles and meats. I’m a sucker for a good curry, especially Thai versions. There is a beautiful balance of spicy, sweet, salty, and sour that is rare in most cuisines. Because this one has you start by cooking down coconut cream (from the top of the coconut milk can) and curry paste, I decided to use my old wok. I was worried about it all sticking. I actually made this before I made the eggs, otherwise I wouldn’t have worried about it in the least. This recipe also let me use up the other half of the kabocha squash from last week. Learning that you don’t have to peel kabocha squash has been an absolute game changer for me. This dish comes together in no time and is satisfying in the way that only a great soup or stew can be.

Finally we finished off the week with two heavier meat dishes.

Red Braised Pork Belly (pg 607) is maybe one of the most insanely delicious things you can make with such few ingredients. It goes to show that you don’t need a lot to make a great dish if you start with something great and give it lots of time to develop. Braising is probably one of the most underrated techniques in modern cooking. No one wants to take the time, but it’s oh so worth it.

Ginger Beef (pg 120). Another incredibly easy, but delicious dish. The only thing I would change next time is to focus on cutting the beef a bit thinner to keep it from being chewy. This was 100% my mistake. The snap peas and herbs add a ton to this dish.

Considering that I was down for almost half a week, I didn’t get to spend as much time with the new wok as I would like, so hopefully I can make up for it this week. I’ll try to include a review in next week’s newsletter.

Yours truly, <- I had to get in one more Bridgerton reference.

Mark

Yes, you can use a wide bowl, but this simple tool really does make a difference. The wood has a subtle cedar aroma and helps pull excess moisture from the rice, allowing it to cool quickly without turning mushy. Here’s the spread. We also added some inari and I made a quick miso soup.

This week I worked through four more recipes from The Wok. We started with Pad Kra Pao (pg. 112). I’ve made this dish using a number of recipes (my favorite is from Hot Thai Kitchen), and I’d say Kenji’s version is solid. I especially liked the addition of green beans. I substituted ground chicken for the beef, and unfortunately my egg stuck to the pan a bit, so I lost some of those crispy edges. I also made the Prik Nam Pla to season everything at the table.

Next up was the Japanese Mapo Tofu (pg. 600). This is really quite good, but very mild and slightly sweet. Mapo tofu is easily in my top ten favorite dishes, but specifically the Sichuan version. While I enjoyed this, I don’t see it becoming a regular in the rotation. That said, I’ve probably made it three times since owning this cookbook, so maybe I like it more than I’m willing to admit.

That same evening I made the Kabocha Squash with Miso and Sake (pg. 199). This one is absolutely going into the rotation. It’s delicious, a bit salty, and packed with umami. I had no idea you could cook kabocha squash with the skin on, but it works beautifully, adding texture while saving a ton of prep time. I started eating it alongside the mapo tofu, but quickly found myself stirring it directly into the meat and tofu to give the dish more punch. This is a fantastic side dish.

Finally, Crispy Fried Tofu with Broccoli and Garlic Sauce (pg. 506). Full disclosure: I didn’t follow this recipe exactly. We weren’t in the mood to stink up the house by deep frying, and earlier in the day I’d seen a video of someone crisping tofu in a waffle maker. I really wish I’d taken photos of this step. While it’s obviously not the same as wet-battered, deep-fried tofu, it still delivers a great crispy texture and absorbs sauce beautifully. Even better, the waffle maker creates little pockets that collect sauce.

I used Costco frozen broccoli, so there was no need to pre-boil—just a quick microwave in the bag—and the whole dish came together fast. I did make my own fermented black bean sauce, which I highly recommend if you can find fermented black soybeans. They last forever in the freezer.

Overall, a very productive week. It’s holding true that I can manage about four recipes per week, which officially puts me at 6.70% completed.

Kenji López-Alt, the author of The Wok, recently released a wok that he spent over a year developing with Our Place. It’s expensive, but given how much time I’ll be spending with a wok in my hands this year, I treated myself. Hopefully it arrives before next weekend. I’ll share a proper review in a few weeks after I’ve really put it through its paces.

I’ll admit that one of my guilty pleasures is cooking competition shows. I’m not a fan of the ones built around backstabbing, mean-spirited hosts (I’m looking at you, Gordon Ramsay), or contestants scheming against each other. But there are some real gems out there. The Great British Bake Off, Top Chef, Morimoto’s Sushi Master, and Culinary Class Wars are among my favorites. I just finished binging season two of Culinary Class Wars, and it was epic. As someone who cooks primarily Asian dishes, I’m thrilled to see more shows from that part of the world being made available to Western audiences.

I didn’t plan it this way, but for whatever reason this also ended up being a very Korean-focused cooking week.

The first dish I made was Stir-Fried Kimchi Pork (pg. 91 in The Wok). Maybe I was just in the right mood, but this one really hit. The slight funk from the kimchi, the umami richness of the pork, and the heat from the kimchi and black pepper were perfectly balanced. I ate this for lunch almost all week, and even now I find myself craving it.

Next up was Gireum Tteokbokki (pg. 212), with one small modification. The recipe doesn’t call for Spam, but I wanted to turn this into more of a meal than a snack. As expected, it worked perfectly. I sliced and stir-fried the Spam first, removed it from the wok, then followed the recipe as written, adding the Spam back in near the end when the sauce went in. This is certainly not the healthiest dish in the world, but it makes an incredible breakfast the next day topped with a fried egg.

I also picked up some napa cabbage and made Stir-Fried Napa Cabbage with Vinegar and Chiles (pg. 204). Like nearly every recipe in this book so far, it was really good. That said, it didn’t pair especially well with either the kimchi pork or the tteokbokki, so it mostly sat in the fridge for a few days until I could serve it alongside other dishes. It does work nicely with rice and an egg as a simple breakfast. I’m not sure how often I’ll make this one, but if you like cabbage, you’ll enjoy it.

I ended the week with Sweet and Sour Chicken (pg. 75). It never fails to amaze me how much of a difference velveting makes in the final texture of meat. The chicken was incredibly tender. The combination of peppers, chicken, pineapple, and cashews creates a wild mix of flavors and textures—umami, sweet, and sour all at once. It was so good that I had leftovers for breakfast this morning. I added a bit of sambal oelek for some extra heat, and next time I’ll be adding it to the whole batch. There will definitely be a next time.

My takeaway lessons from this week:

1. Velveting is absolutely worth the effort. Do not skip this step.

2. Be careful when planning multiple dishes. Leftovers are inevitable, and strong dishes like tteokbokki don’t always pair well with milder sides.

3. Don’t try to cook too many dishes at once. By the end of the week, you may find yourself forcing meals just to avoid wasting food, which can lead to some strange combinations. When planning for the week, cook the most perishable dishes early and let sturdier ones carry into the weekend or the following week.

Four more dishes from The Wok completed. I’m officially 4.47% of the way through the book.

Next week is going to be a little bit more all over the place, but tonight we’re doing make your own Temaki hand rolls. Now... off to the Japanese grocery store.

Up this week was:

• Kung Pao (Gong Bao) Shrimp – Seafood, pg. 147

• Sichuan Blistered Green Beans – Vegetables, pg. 181

• Soy Glazed Mushrooms – Vegetables, pg. 183

• Japanese Beef and Potato Stew – Simmering and Braising, pg. 532

One thing I really love about this cookbook is that the author, Kenji Lopez-Alt, has thoroughly researched and tested every recipe. The instructions often include ways to mimic the results you would get from a professional, high-heat wok in your home kitchen. The recipe where this stood out most to me was the Sichuan Blistered Green Beans. It is really difficult to actually blister the green beans and cook them through in a home wok. To fix this, he has you start by tossing the green beans in oil and salt and giving them time under the broiler. The actual stir-frying of the green beans is quick, because they are basically partially cooked through.

Another interesting aspect of this dish was the use of a substitute for yá cài, preserved mustard greens. My local H Mart does not carry them, and I didn’t have time to go to 99 Ranch, so I went with Kenji’s recommended mix of sauerkraut and capers. No kidding—it works perfectly fine as a substitute, especially if you live in an area where you can’t get real yá cài.

I also made the Soy Glazed Mushrooms, as I had bought a huge pack of them at Costco a couple of days before. These were fine and made a nice side, but nothing to write home about.

Finally, in that first meal was something I could eat every week: Kung Pao Shrimp. Kung Pao is versatile, as you can easily use whatever protein you want, including tofu. I went with cashews instead of peanuts and couldn’t have been happier with the results. The shrimp were perfectly cooked, and that little bit of má là from the Sichuan peppercorns, along with the heat from the chiles, was great. Next time I may add a touch more heat, but with shrimp it would be really easy to overpower the flavor.

According to Wikipedia, the origins of the dish are a little unclear; however, it is believed to be named after the Qing dynasty official and governor of Sichuan province, Ding Baozhen (1820–1886). His title was Taizi Shaobao, one of the Gongbao, or Palace Guardians. The dish was first created as a chicken dish, which is still the most popular version today. In Chinese, the dish is called Gōngbǎo jīdīng, with the “ding” being a reference to his surname. In a rather punny twist, the word ding can also refer to small cubes, such as the shape of the chicken in this dish. There is also a variation of this dish from the neighboring Guizhou province, and some records suggest the dish may have originated there. Regardless, I’m happy that Kung Pao became something so popular in the U.S. It’s inexpensive, quick, and delicious.

The last dish I made was a Japanese Beef and Potato Stew. The Wok is spectacular for a number of reasons, especially for not limiting the food to just Chinese cuisine. I’m a huge fan of Morimoto’s Japanese Chicken and Dumpling Soup, and this recipe brings many of the same flavors while being quite different at the same time—and it comes together much more quickly. I used Hondashi rather than making my own dashi broth. I know, I know—but it’s delicious, time-saving, and cost-effective compared to buying kombu and bonito to make it from scratch. For a weeknight soup, just use the Hondashi. Save the real thing for the weekend when you have more time. The noodles in this dish are shirataki noodles, which contain no digestible calories. They add a lot of great texture and slurpability to the dish. I will most definitely be making this again.

That was it for this week. We had a ton of leftovers and some salads that we didn’t want to waste, so I only made 4 of the 180 main recipes in the book. That got me to 2.23% completion. I’m going to have to step it up if I want to get through this before summer.

Work is weird these days. I can’t go into details, but suffice it to say that my trajectory is unknown. I love technology. Beside cooking, it’s the one obsession I’ve held firm to over the last 25+ years. The industry is changing, and while exciting, it’s also scary. Businesses are reducing costs and operating leaner than ever. In times of uncertainty, we often strive for something we can hold firm to, taking the opportunity to really lean into the things we can control—things like this blog and my dedication to making myself the best home cook that I can possibly be. While I am admittedly ADHD as heck when it comes to activities and hobbies, if I had to say there was my ONE THING, it would be the culinary world.

My plan for this year is to be more systematic about my approach. Last year, I really burned out on cooking from around the world. While I enjoy all foods, I found the exercise was taking me away from cooking the foods I really love to eat: Chinese, Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese primarily, though I also like the occasional run of Korean. I also LOVE cookbooks. I have over a hundred print books, and I have no idea how many digital copies. Cookbooks give me the opportunity to read about and explore other cultures through their food, even when I can’t physically be there.

My focus for the first part of this year is going to be wok technique. I recognize I can’t get the true wok experience in my home kitchen, but neither can most people—at least in the West. The question is: how good can I get, even with the limitations? My plan is to use J. Kenji López-Alt’s book, The Wok: Recipes and Techniques, and try to work through every recipe. I’ll be tracking my completion status, but I won’t necessarily capture or report on some of the side recipes for making things that are used in other recipes, such as the pickled chiles. What is especially good about this book is the focus on technique for the home cook and exploring the use of the wok throughout the different cultures that have it as a central cooking vessel. It plays right into the foods I like to eat and the way I like to cook.

I tend to overload myself with projects and disparate interests, so rather than declare a secondary focus, I think I’m best off playing the “other” by ear. Currently, I am thinking of working on both dim sum and sushi. I love the idea of sushi and definitely want to get to the point where I feel comfortable putting together a decent dinner, but it is expensive to make and something I burn out on pretty quickly. It’s also a lot of rice. Rice is my favorite food, but my wife is quite a bit more carb-sensitive than I am, so it’s not something I am going to be able to serve all the time. Dim sum is just, well, wonderful. Freshly made dumplings swimming in chile oil have got to be one of the best things you can put in your mouth.

Lastly, I want to find a way to get involved with the broader culinary community. Certainly, part of that will need to be online, but I would love to find a local group that I can meet up with and share this wonderful obsession.

Of course, I’ll write about all of it here. Let’s kick things off by leaving you with a couple of pictures of what I made for a quiet New Year’s dinner at home. Being from the South, I had to bring in the classics of greens, peas, and cornbread.

We added some chicken for protein. I spatchcocked it and rubbed herb butter between the skin and the meat, then roasted it. Unfortunately, I tore the meat a little pulling it off the pan with metal tongs. I don’t know how I timed it so well, but the meat was extraordinarily tender. Frankly, this is one meal that really doesn’t need the addition of a protein, but the herb butter gave it a holiday feel that fit nicely with the rest of the meal.

If you read last week's newsletter, you know that my passion for pastry has been reignited. Last weekend, we headed straight to the farmer's market to see what berries were in season. The fates were with me as it happened to be right in the middle of Hood strawberry season. This only lasts for a few weeks each year. These delicate, sweet, and juicy strawberries are some of the best I've ever tasted. In fact, they are so deeply *strawberry* in flavor that they almost seem artificial. It also happens to be rhubarb season, so strawberry rhubarb pie it is.

Of course this called for homemade vanilla ice cream.

I'm seriously going to have to step up how much I walk every day if I plan to not gain 600lbs. Not being deterred by guilt just yet, I baked a chocolate pie with salted caramel ice cream this weekend. The ice cream wasn't quite firm enough yet, but I my patience ran shorter than set time. As I posted on Instagram, this combination triggered a slightly religious experience. For a moment there, I thought I saw God.

Not everything can be sweet, so I wanted to share my take a one of the most comforting comfort foods I eat on the regular; congee. If you follow my instagram, you probably saw a picture of congee from Cozy Congee PDX. My fascination with this dish started while working through the regional dishes of Guangdong Province, China. It crescendoed into pure obsession when I tried the Portuguese version, incorporating cilantro oil as a topping. Since then, I've been making this dish every couple of weeks, a batch being just large enough to have for lunch throughout most of the week. I've adapted a couple of recipes I have found online in a manner that results in an incredibly simple to make, yet delicious version of this iconic dish.

While the cycles of pressure cooking take a little time, there is very little active time in this recipe. It is equally great for a lazy Sunday afternoon or busy work from home Tuesday. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Instant Pot Chicken Congee

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• knob of ginger

• green onions (2-3 for the broth and extra for garnish)

• 3-4lb whole chicken

• 1 cup Jasmine rice

• 2+ cups of spinach or other similar leafy green (optional)

• Other garnishes as desired, such as a soft-boiled egg, chili crisps, fried shallots, green onions, or cilantro

Instructions

Start by cooking the chicken and making the broth.

1. Thinly slice the ginger and cut the green onions into large sections. Place in the bottom of the instant pot.

2. Put a trivet in the bottom of the instant pot and fill with enough water to be just short of touching the metal of the trivet.

3. Salt the outside of your chicken and place in the instant pot, breasts-side down.

4. Cook on high pressure for about 25 minutes.

5. Let the instant pot depressurize naturally, remove the chicken. You won't use all of the chicken for this recipe, so feel free to put some aside. I like to save the breasts for other uses and use the leg and thigh meat. Shred or chop what you plan to use.

6. Strain out the broth and set aside. Quickly rinse out the instant pot, but no need to clean it. Just get rid of any sediment or leftover ingredients.

Make the rice porridge.

1. Rinse 1 cup of Jasmine rice and place in the instant pot

2. Add the preserved broth from the previous step (you should have about 1 pint)

3. Add around 4 cups of water, depending on how much broth you had from the previous step.

4. Cook on high pressure for 15 minutes.

5. Let the pressure release naturally, then take a whisk and stir the rice. You want the rice to break down and almost emulsify with the water, but no so broken down that you can't tell it is still rice.

6. Add your leafy greens, if using, and stir until wilted.

7. At this point you can use it as is, topping the rice with the chicken as you serve it, or add the shredded/chopped chicken back into the pot. I like doing it both ways, but for ease of warming up later, I tend to prefer adding the chicken into the rice at this step.

Serve in a bowl and garnish however you prefer. My favorite way is to slice some green onions and add a large drizzle of chili crisps.

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If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that personal culinary identity is something I've struggled with. I don't know why it matters to me. Part of being a home cook is the freedom to make whatever you want, whenever you want. Still, I feel an intense draw toward going deep into something when it comes to cooking. Maybe it's the fact that my career has led to a place where I'm a generalist and the kitchen is the one place I feel like I have the most control.

Last week, we had company in town for a dance event that DeAnna was putting on. I got the chance to be more intentional about cooking for a few days and was overall pretty happy with what hit the table. While chatting over dinner one evening, one of our guests asked what I would do if I had to choose one cuisine or category of food to focus on, as if I were intending to open a shop. Previously, I would have said pizza. I mean, I had already put together an idea for a pizza and salad restaurant. However, I realized in that moment that I didn't think that was still my answer. I somewhat jokingly mentioned a cookie food truck would be fun. The conversation moved on to other topics, but that question has lingered with me since.

On Saturday, we dropped our final guest off at the airport and DeAnna and I spent the afternoon visiting a few places I have been wanting to try. We went to a culinary bookstore, had lunch at an awesome new congee restaurant, and visited a friend's kitchenware store. Sometimes I spend a little too much time at home and forget just how amazing a city Portland is for foodies and cooks. It is deeply part of the culture here, where waiting in line at your favorite brunch spot is part of the experience.

There was one more stop that I had been wanting to try, Lauretta Jean's Pie Bakery. Words will fail me here.

The outside of the shop reminds me a little of Bouchon Bakery. It has an ultra cute awning that screams bakery, drawing you inside like a pull toward the light. A promise of a better life inside. The front window is filled with cakes and pies, merely a teaser for what is to be found once you pass through the door.

The inside presents you with even more options. For a moment we found ourselves overwhelmed and debating whether we should get a third piece of pie so that we could try more flavors.

Here's where I am going to get a little woo woo.. I finally had that moment that you read about in chef memoirs where they had that one meal that clarified everything for them. They knew they wanted more. They finally understood themselves better.

Sitting there with coffee and pie triggered this connection for me, to identity, to heritage, and to a realization that, for me, cooking is more than a hobby. It's part of who I am as a person, my expression of being in this world. Being a bit ADHD, I can collect hobbies like stamps, but it was instantly clear that cooking and food is my one thing. Everything else is "just for fun" (or money).

I've been sitting with this in my head since walking in the door of Lauretta Jean’s and I've realized that ultimately it's about country cooking; dishes that otherwise would be at home on the dinner table anywhere in the world. Foods that evoke a sense of place and comfort, being as much about how they make you feel as what is in the dish or how it’s made. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the occasional fine dining experience, but often I've found the simpler meals leave me far more satisfied at the end of the night.

What really struck me was something I've known, but have been internally struggling with since getting more serious about exercise and health.

I'm a baker. Don't get me wrong, I love savory foods and I cook savory far more often than I bake; I mean, you gotta eat. But as far as true enjoyment goes, it's a fresh loaf of bread, a tray of cookies, a cake on a stand, or a warm apple galette with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that creates a sense of contentment within me. I will have to find a balance, yes... but it needs to be balanced.

I do plan to study Patisserie as gaining those skills will only make everything I do better — so don’t be surprised if you see cute little pastries pop up here and there. But, ultimately, I want a dining room full of people helping themselves from family-sized dishes, talking and laughing, and wondering how they will fit in dessert, knowing they WILL fit in dessert.

I'll leave you with the two pieces of pie we ate. The first is Blueberry Victoria (pie AND cake!). The second was a chocolate chess pie with honeycomb on top. Both with the obligatory cup of coffee.

Hey friends, it has been a while. I debated whether or not to write this and even more so on whether it is something I should share, but I think it’s important if for no other reason than to give myself some accountability. Maybe one of you reading this also get something from it. There is a lot of fear and stigma around the topic of addiction, but my guiding principle for 2025 is to live more bravely. I just finished reading This Naked Mind and at the end the author suggest sharing your story, so I’ll lean into the fear and put it all out there.

I started drinking at 18 years old, in my first week of college. It was about being social and fitting in. Alcohol took the edge off and made me far more care free (and stupid) during my first real experience of being away from home. It was amazing, fun, and dangerous. My school work was greatly impacted and I quickly found my way into joining the Army reserves. That experience may be the thing that saved me from myself, instilling a discipline that I didn’t realize I needed, but so desperately did. I got myself back on track physically and mentally, and developed the confidence in myself that has led me to have intensity and drive throughout the rest of my life. But, I was young, thought I was invincible, and went right back to a few bad habits.

Fast forward 30 years and I realize I’ve had a roller coaster ride with alcohol. I’ve gone through periods where I would fit into the category of “not a concern” all the way to getting a side eye and the doctor asking if I needed help stopping. Yes, that really happened. My takeaway? … I learned to be a little less honest in my annual physical. Last year I did Dry January and felt amazing on January 31^st, only to justify to myself that it was OK to have a couple of drinks. I went 30 days, so of course I had it under control. I set rules for myself (a clear sign there is a problem), but within a month I was back to mid-week drinks, using a gym rest day as an excuse for that Tuesday night couple of beers. Over time, I realized that I was looking forward to the weekend, not because it meant more time away from the computer or working on hobbies, but because it meant I could spend more time drinking and watching movies, embracing the oblivion of disconnecting from reality for a few hours. The lie I told myself was that I was just unwinding after a hard week, relieving stress as it were.

While I wouldn’t classify myself as a heavy drinker, the reality is that I had developed a problem of using alcohol as a way to disconnect from the stress of life. The problem was that I found it was disconnecting me from the good in life as well. You don’t have to hit rock bottom to realize you have a problem. Thankfully, I’ve been mindful enough to recognize my pattens and know that I was on the way to a place I didn’t want to be, a person I don’t want to be. Several months ago, I set a goal for myself to be more present in my day to day, but between drinking and recovering from doing so (it began taking days to recover from even one or two nights of drinking), there was no chance for me to have the presence I wanted to achieve. Sadly, I also realized my dopamine paths were fried and I was no longer getting the same pleasure from my hobbies. In my head, I wanted to cook more, to make more music, to read more books, but ultimately the activity itself was unfulfilling. I could feel my cognition slowing and my motivation slipping away.

A few weeks ago I made the decision to do a Dry 90 challenge for myself. After last year, I knew that I needed to go longer than 30 days if I was going to establish a new habit of moderation. I set January 1 as my in-laws would be here through the holidays and there was no way I could be dry during that time; they drink quite a bit. I called it my week of debauchery. Within just a few days I was feeling terrible and pretty much felt the way the entire week. I drank way too much, every day, and honestly I am glad I did. Waking up in a fog every day, only to do it again, showed me exactly the life I have zero interest in living.

I have decided it is time to stop completely, and for good. No more alcohol, no more intoxicants of any kind. I want to be present, to lean into my hobbies (such as cooking and posting more here) and career, and to stop undoing all of the good things I do to improve myself with things that are completely antithetical to my goals.

So there it is. This isn’t a sober living blog, so I promise not to inundate you with a ton of content like this, but Home Cooked Happiness means cooking up our best life. I’m realizing more and more every day what exactly that means.

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DeAnna left to teach in Germany about a month ago. Just before she left, we had both noticed that my energy was down and I was getting annoyed at little things that would happen and being a little too quick to overreact. That’s really weird for me. She mentioned that I needed to get back to my meditation practice, something I know brings great benefit to my overall ability to be present and accept things as they come without snap reactions. Work was getting stressful and I was pressuring myself to keep cooking as much as possible. I was so tired at the end of the day there was no space for making music or reading without falling asleep. I admit that I haven’t always had the best coping mechanisms, so my alcohol intake was also on the rise, something I had done an OK job of getting back down after the shut-in binge that we called COVID. On the plus side, my workouts were going great, although I couldn’t go more than about 3-4 days before I needed a rest day to recover. 

Something needed to change and this month of being by myself was the perfect opportunity to go for it. A retreat of sorts. For the last month, I’ve been meditating regularly, have all but quit drinking alcohol (other than a couple of drinks while hanging out with some great friends on a video call), and cleaned up my diet considerably. It kind of started when I decided to make tacos the first week after D left. I started with carnitas and a few sauces. 

I used an heirloom masa from Masienda. Honestly, I liked corn tortillas before this, but this was next level. I have a full on love for them now. Since I had made 10 that first weekend, I used a few for breakfast and made huevos rancheros. Pro tip, their masa is expensive direct and even on Amazon, but you can buy it in-store at Whole Foods for about $3 less per bag.

OK, here’s where things get interesting. I thought this was pretty clean and I was feeling pretty good, but it didn’t take long for the fattiness of the carnitas to become too much. I’ve struggled with eating fatty foods since having my gall bladder out a few years ago and my ability to cope with the pork was overriding my ability to appreciate the amazing flavor they had. I just couldn’t stomach it — literally — by a few days in. I wasn’t done with tacos and D had also bought me the white corn masa from Masienda, so I decided to keep going the next week but focus on leaner meats. I made lamb barbacoa and grilled 5 pounds of pollo asado. I marinated the chicken for two days in a homemade sauce. Sadly I don’t have pictures of the pollo asado, but here’s the lamb. The chicken I ended up eating mostly with fresh veggies, rice, or on some huge salads.

The difference in how I felt that week was unmistakable. I was able to do my full 5-day routine at the gym with no breaks and my energy was up. What was happening? I suspected it was the focus on completely fresh food  and lean meats. Just as D was leaving, I had also decided no alcohol during the week, if at all. So everything was coming together as my diet cleaned up. The second week had me feeling great. I wanted to test my hypothesis and see if really changing the foods I ate would make as big of a difference as it felt like was happening.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been grilling chicken and other lean meats and eating a ton of vegetables and salads. I’ve also been closely tracking my calories to shoot for getting somewhere between 170 and 200 grams of protein in around 2000 calories a day, shy of my maintenance by about 500 calories.. In the last two weeks, not only have I been able to maintain my M-F lifting schedule, I’ve added a long walk/run session on Saturday mornings. Yesterday I did 6 miles on the treadmill while watching the USA women’s soccer team bring home the gold. This morning I woke up, had coffee, and did a million little things around the house, including meal prepping a pot of beans, green beans, 3 pounds of chicken breasts, and 2 pounds of pork chops. I seriously debated going for another long walk, but decided I need to ease into it before I burn myself out. 

Thankfully, the last couple of years of lifting have helped me lean out quite a bit, but I’m still not quite there enough for me to feel comfortable starting a small bulk to try to put on much more muscle. My newbie gains are done, so now I have to be very intentional. Regardless, I did the InBody scan a little over a week ago and I was down to 15.8% body fat. That’s incredible, for me. My goal is somewhere around 12%, then I’ll try to slow gain as to avoid adding too much body fat back on. As I’ve kept exercising and bringing that down, and as I’ve changed my eating habits to focus on lean proteins and vegetables and no eating out, my energy levels have skyrocketed. My gym performance has been incredible. My ability to think clearly and focus is improving rapidly.

I’ve never really understood people who think of food only as fuel. While I still don’t quite get it, I have a far better understanding of it now. The last few weeks have truly opened my eyes to how good I can feel and how much my nutrition plays a role in that. I don’t think I realized the difference because I didn’t have anything to compare it to. 

In a way, all of this actually served to bring me back out of a funk I was finding myself in with cooking. So, I’m not going to stress myself about getting a newsletter out each week and I’m not going to worry about what country I may be cooking from. I will try to write from the heart and show you some fun, global dishes that you can make at home. My focus is shifting to making sure those foods are as equally good for my body and mind as they are for soul. I’ve mentioned this before, but I hope to see how I can take some of the insanely delicious unhealthy dishes and make healthy versions of them (I will figure out healthy Dan Dan noodles). I know myself enough to say that healthy can’t be boring if it is something I intend to maintain long term, so hopefully hopefully those of you who were here for the world tour may still have an interest in sticking around. 

Huge shoutout to my sister who sent me a copy of The Science of Spice, last week. I’ve been flipping through it this past week and can’t wait to dive in in earnest. This is going to help tremendously as I look to use spices and herbs to take my cooking to a different place.

I will leave this week with an admission that I do look forward to when I can up my calories again. I have a beautiful book on Eastern European baking and can’t wait to try something from it. Hey, everyone needs a cheat day occasionally! Maybe I should stop following all those pastry shops on Instagram!

Sawatdee Ka,

For those Westerners with little exposure to Thai food, it’s probably a cuisine you don’t think much about. You’d likely even have a little trouble pointing out Thailand on a map. For those more familiar, Thailand offers a cuisine deeply connected to the land and its people. There is an extreme focus on balance that creates dishes that sometimes overwhelm you with their perfection in the combination of ingredients. I’ve been lucky enough to visit Bangkok and have carried a love this food back with me for the last decade.

Thailand being centered in Southeast Asia, Thai food has been influenced by,  and has influenced many of the surrounding nations. The Chinese brought noodles and introduced stir-frying. India can be directly linked to the development of curries. Northern Thailand, especially toward the west, is heavily influenced by Burmese cuisine and the use of fermented ingredients. The list could go on for a while, and I will dive more into these these in future explorations of Thai food. The last influence I will mention today will be familiar to anyone who has been reading this newsletter, Portugal. Yet again, Portugal was responsible for the introduction of chiles from the Americas, now an essential ingredient in many Thai dishes.

Where I live, in Portland OR, Thai food is found in the corner takeout places, but it has also developed at the fine-dining level. Much started with Andy Ricker, of Pok Pok fame, but has also expanded into a killer tasting menu at Langbaan and upscale Thai-Chinatown at Yaowarat. Thai food has a way of getting into your soul. In my opinion, Thai food deserves the same respect that many give French and Japanese. 

The key ingredients of Thai cuisine are lemongrass, galangal, kaffir lime leaves, basil (Thai and Holy), cilantro, chiles, fish sauce, palm sugar, rice, and noodles. You’ll also see the use of tropical fruits such as mango and limes. Dishes are a little different with regards to the protein in that you can make the same dish with a variety of proteins rather than the dish itself being associated with a specific protein. Variations may change some ingredients, but for the most part the type of protein seems less important. For instance, laab, a meat salad, can be made with any ground meat, including fish. I’ll also take a moment to point out something I consider a little unique to Thai cuisine;  they have many salads, but those salads don’t necessarily mean being based on greens. It means “dressed”. Serious Eats recently published a neat article on the different types of Thai salads, which focuses on the technique as much as the ingredients.

One of the ingredients I listed is arguably more important than any other. Can you guess which one? That’s right, it’s rice. In my quest to get a better understanding of what makes Thai food so special, I’ve started reading It Rains Fishes, by Karma Loha-Unchit. Rice is addressed right at the beginning of the book. There are five Thai goddesses who represent the five material elements of fire, earth wind, water, and RICE. You read that correctly, rice is so important to Thai people that it has its own goddess who is revered at the same level as the the core elements of life. Mae Pro Posop is the mother goddess of rice.

The final thing I will mention before we get to the pictures is the focus on balance. Many cuisines we have looked at focus on the balance of a single meal. Koreans use banchaan in this manner and the Japanese use many different dishes to create a balanced offering. Thai cuisine does this as well, but even more so balances everything about a recipe. A single dish of food will often hit sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and bitter at the same time. The ability for a dish to contain everything, completely in balance, is the thing that first grabbed me about Thai food and the thing that really makes me curious to explore this cuisine as far as I can go with it.

OK, onto the food. This week I focused on ‘pad’ dishes, meaning those that are stir-fried.

Eggplant with Thai basil. Admittedly, this looks a bit of a mess. I think a lot of it is the eggplant getting mushy and a high fat content in the ground beef, of which I used too much. I would like to try this again with ground pork and Thai eggplant. Regardless, it was delicious. I served it with prik nam pla, a condiment made from lime juice, fish sauce, chiles, garlic, and shallots. It makes everything it touches better with bit of heat and acid. It really helped cut through the richness of the dish.

The second dish is pad kra pao. Basically a stir fry if ground meat with chiles and holy basil. Holy basil is very hard to find here, so Palin of Hot Thai Kitchen suggests using Italian basil as a substitute; the flavors being much closer than Thai basil. It’s excellent with prik nam pla and a fried egg on the rice. This is easily one of my favorite Thai dishes, period. It’s simple to make and hits every part of the tongue.

The last dish I made for the week (Deanna was out of town, so I only ended up cooking 3 things due to the amount of leftovers) was pad see ew, one of my favorite Thai noodle dishes. It translates directly as “fried with soy sauce”. While shopping for the ingredients, I was unable to find fresh wide rice noodles, so I had a super-chefy moment and decided to sub them for Korean rice cakes. In my head, I thought the chew that they offer a dish would be an interesting change up. I know it isn’t traditional by any means, but I will absolutely make it again this way. It was just perfect. It was also with this dish that I discovered that I have finally seasoned my wok enough that it can fry an egg without sticking. I consider that a personal success.

Ten years ago, my wife and I had the great opportunity to visit Bangkok. We have more pictures somewhere, but for this post I’ll show a handful highlighting some of the food we ate while we were there. 

When I contemplate the world’s great cuisines, Japanese is right up there at the top. Like French food, Japanese dishes are heavily technique driven. The interesting thing is that Japanese dishes are both simple and deeply complex at the same time. Japanese culture embodies the idea of shokunin, mastery at one’s profession, being an artisan. When focusing on food, these artisans aren’t just good cooks, they are true masters at their craft. A movie that highlights this well is Jiro Dreams of Sushi, a documentary about Jiro Ono,  the now 98 year old sushi master of Sukiyabashi Jiro, a previously three Michelin starred restaurant. — Side note, they lost their rating because the stopped offering reservations for the general public. Now you have to go through the concierge of a luxury hotel to get in. — Jiro just retired from daily operation of his restaurant in 2023, at 97 years old.

I say all of this to highlight that my exploration in Japanese cuisine this week is at a very surface level, particularly highlighting the way a modern family might eat at home. These are going to be the way people who aren’t artisan cooks would make a meal for the family, a quick lunch or dinner that is satisfying and simple in preparation. We’ll call this week Japan, part 1, because it is a cuisine that deserves the time and attention of far more than a week of cooking can offer. 

Most recipes this week are directly from Morimoto’s Mastering the Art of Japanese Home Cooking. I cannot recommend this book enough, especially his Chicken and Dumplings recipe.

I started the week by making what is more representative of Japanese breakfast than dinner, but everyone likes breakfast for dinner, right?

Broiled salmon, seasoned only with salt, green beans with toasted sesame and soy, white rice, and miso soup with tofu and wakame seaweed. This was my first time broiling salmon and honestly it may be my favorite way to eat it now. I picked a pretty fatty center-cut for this dish, rather than the filets that are more common in the Pacific Northwest. The real surprise in this dish was actually the green beans. They were simply boiled and then tossed with toasted and ground sesame seeds mixed with a splash of soy sauce.

The next dish was chicken and eggplant with miso. This was a bit more complex because I had to fry the eggplant medallions first. Honestly, if I were to do this dish again, I would likely roast the eggplant rather than fry it. The oil that the eggplant absorbed was released when combined with the chicken and, while absolutely delicious, far too oily. In a proud moment, however, I was able to use a good bit of red miso that I personally made from scratch a few years ago. It has a deep umami and sweetness that is hard to balance in every day dishes, so I was excited to get to use it.

The next few dishes I made were mainly focused on the idea of Donburi, rice bowls with various topics. I LOVE RICE and I am not ashamed to admit it. This was what my wife described as “Mark Food”. It is basically proteins, and sometimes vegetables, on top of rice, often served with a sauce of some type.

My first Donburi was oyakodon, chicken and eggs. This is a sleeper dish. It is extremely easy to prepare and utterly delicious. There is a sweetness to the light sauce that you almost poach the eggs in, comprised of dashi, soy sauce, mirin, and a touch of sugar. I’m excited to try this one again, focusing on pulling it off the heat before the eggs are quite so done.

I found a wonderful hangar steak at the market last weekend, so I also made sutekidon, steak with a spicy teriyaki sauce. I do want to stop for a moment and just say that if you are at all into Japanese cuisine, do yourself a favor and do not buy teriyaki sauce. It is simple to make and taste better than anything you are going to get from a jar. This one includes a little tobanjan, a spicy Chile bean paste that is easily found at any Asian market. I tend to always have some on hand as it is a key ingredient in Sichuan dishes. Admittedly, I overcooked the steak a little. It was still tender and worked great with the spicy, sweet teriyaki. I served it with some quick cucumber pickles tossed in the same toasted sesame seasoning as the green beans,

Next up was pork yakisoba. I made this for lunch, using fresh yakisoba noodles and a premade yakisoba sauce. Hey, even Morimoto said to use a jarred sauce for this. Again, simple to make and delicious. Honestly, it was so good that I could probably eat it every day for weeks before I got tired of it. The first version I made (pictured) was with pre-sliced pork belly. I made again for dinner the next night and used chicken. I went a little heavy handed on the bonito flakes, which gave it a smoky flavor. The pickled ginger brightened the dish up and gave it some balance.

Finally, we topped off the week celebrating my birthday at my favorite restaurant. I’v been lucky enough to eat at some incredible restaurants, Michelin starred or otherwise, and Nodoguro is without a doubt my favorite. I’m lucky enough to live in the same city and highly suggest trying to get in if you find yourself planning a trip to Portland. It can be tough as you have to watch for when the tickets open up each month. We were incredibly lucky that they had last minute openings on my birthday. Here are a few pictures from our evening. The theme of this dinner was hand rolls and started with a couple of dishes prior to the hand rolls being served.

Yes, I ate one of the oysters before I thought to take a picture.

Finally, my amazing wife found what has to be the perfect birthday card for me. She gets me. :)

This week isn’t about a specific country or dish. There won’t be pictures of amazing dinners I’ve made the last few weeks. It’s a post about reflecting on where I am and where I want to go. More specifically, what that means for the next few months. I want to take this week to be the real person behind this blog and highlight the struggle that many of us face; the struggle of wanting to live our best life, both in health and in experience.

Being a capable home cook, and even more so a foodie, isn’t always a positive. It comes with some downsides that you don’t often hear people talk about. Eating out at many restaurants is disappointing. I read amazing reviews and try a place to find the food is just OK, tainted even more so by the rising prices that restaurants need to charge just to struggle to stay in business another week. It also means that I get bored eating the same things over and over, so dinner in my own house is complicated by the desire for new and exciting. This was very much the impetus for Home Cooked Happiness and my exploration of world cuisines. I’ve learned so much about myself through this process and have had the opportunity to try so many wonderful things that I otherwise would not have experienced. Unfortunately, chasing deliciousness also means consuming things that oppose my health and fitness goals. Fat is flavor, after all.

I’m turning 47 in just a couple of weeks and weight has always been a battle for me. I was a chubby kid, a skinny teenager, gained my freshmen 15 (or maybe 20), lost it again in the Army, gained it again after, lost it in my 30s, and started gaining it back after moving to Portland. A decade ago, I was absolutely hooked on training MMA and even though I was in my thirties, I was able to eat pretty much whatever and still burn it off. That trick doesn’t work in your forties. About a year and half ago I started lifting weights and again found myself completely captivated by this physical outlet for myself. I’m carrying more muscle than ever in my life and at the same time battling some of the injuries that start coming with age. For every new lifter there is this window of time where you can eat normally and lose fat while building muscle. It’s amazing, but it doesn’t last. Sadly, I’ve run out the clock of my newbie recomposition window and find myself carrying more body fat than I want. The funny thing is that I’m not that heavy, but lifting gets in your blood and in your mind. Seeing the muscle come on drives the desire to see more, to be healthier, and to be my best self in the Autumn of my life. I told my wife that I want to be that jacked fifty year old that people do a double take when they learn my age. To get there, I know some things need to change. My fitness goals need to take a more central role in my kitchen, as they already do for me in the gym.

You may have noticed that the last month or so I’ve had gaps between posts. Some of it was busyness, but some of it was me needing a break to eat more cleanly.  Starting this coming week, I’m going to be spending the next couple of months cutting until I can get to a body fat percentage that I’m happy with. As a result, my posts will change from highlighting a specific country each week to exploring more healthy foods from around the world. I’ll still be tagging posts with country names, so in the future it will still be possible to search for a country and zone in on the posts related to those cuisines. What it won’t be is me posting pictures of cottage cheese and broccoli. Food is important to me and finding a way to eat healthy within the parameters of my cut, while still feeding my soul, is paramount to my ability to sustain a healthy lifestyle. I’m going to highlight the dishes that are fresh and refreshing. I don’t particularly enjoy Mediterranean food (I’m sensitive to nightshades), so I expect to spend more time diving into Japanese cuisine and exploring more Vietnamese dishes. I’ll be looking for those places where the vegetables are plentiful, the proteins are lean and healthy, and the people live beautifully long lives. It’s a divergence from where I have been headed to where I want to go, at least for a little while until I have better set the path in front of me.

I promise it will still be delicious and feed both your body and your soul, just in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you need a nap afterwards.

Korean food may be my least favorite East Asian Cuisine. There, I said it. It’s not bad, not by any means. Individual dishes can be wonderful, but as a cuisine I find it to be one-note and unbalanced. I know people will argue that banchan bring the balance and a Korean meal is really about finding your own balance through the combination of these side dishes, but only once during the week did I have a single dish that I felt like was close to having the balance I crave enough to make on the regular.

Korean meals typically consist of rice, soup, kimchi and an array of banchan. If you are unfamiliar with banchan, it’s similar to the idea of the meze that I wrote about last week. It is common for a meal to have somewhere between 3 and 9 different banchan served with a meal. The variety of dishes is fun, even if many taste similar. With this in mind, I started by making the banchan that I would be serving with each meal through the rest of the week.  Almost all of the recipes were from Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking.

One of my favorite banchan is potato and soy. It reminds me a bit of Southern US fried potatoes, just with the flavors of garlic, soy, and sesame. It’s a little sweet and very savory.

To bring some freshness, I made a batch of soy sprouts. Soy sprouts are mildly spiced and bring a crunch. These do help cut through the generally sweet or spicy (or both) flavors you get with most Korean dishes.

Finally, as I generally like eggplant dishes, I make a steamed eggplant side.

It is here, on day one that I started to realize the same-sameness of Korean dishes. There are three main categories that I found. The first is sesame. This is the sweet, oily flavor commonly experienced first through bulgogi. Sesame oil is an ingredient very common in Korean dishes, often being mixed into a dish as a finisher, much like those in the West would add a splash of lemon or fresh herbs.  The second flavor is spicy sweet. Gochuchang (red pepper paste) and Gochucharu (red pepper flakes) are ubiquitous throughout Korean dishes. Need a kick, gochucharu; need a kick with a sweet flavor or to make a broth, gochuchang. Often dishes will have both. The final is what I would consider almost unseasoned. Simple mild broths or sides that aren’t really seasoned act as a foil to the more strongly flavored dishes mentioned above.

As kimchi is a staple of every Korean meal, I bought a Napa cabbage kimchi from H-Mart and made a milder, fresh version from scratch.

One of my hobbies/obsessions over the last year or so has been lifting weights, and stereotypically, I do tend to eat a lot of chicken and rice. The first meal we had was a spicy chicken. Normally this would be grilled, but as the weather still hasn’t turned dry and warm enough for outdoor grilling, I used the broiler. 

This is a great hack Winter cooking hack. You may have seen this same technique used for the Vietnamese pork noodle bowls. Simply line a sheet tray with aluminum foil and spread the meats out. You can put them directly on the foil, or better yet on a wire rack. Place under the broiler and turn enough so that everything cooks evenly. I like to use both a top rack to get the char and a bottom rack for cooking thicker pieces through. If the meats or veggies are thin enough, you only need the top rack.

Finally for meal one, I wanted to get a taste of a common Korean beer cocktail, called somaek. This is a mix of 30% soju and 70% light beer, normally a lager. I still had a few bottles of Tsingtao, so I used that. This was pretty good. The soju adds a sweetness and beefs up the ABV of the drink. 

Much like my love of rice, I also love noodles. I was excited to try a popular black bean noodle dish called Jja Jang Myeon. This is a Chinese Korean dish that was brought to Korea by Chinese workers from Shandong, in the late 19^th century. Over time, the dish was adapted more to Korean preferences and the sauce made darker and sweeter. It is loaded with vegetables and has a small amount of protein in the form of diced pork.

As my wife would tell you, I am obsessed with rice and rice dishes, so I was excited to try rice with oysters. This dish is very simple, in a good way. My only real warning would be to say that oysters don’t really reheat well, so make sure you have enough people to eat it all the first day. You sauté the rice in sesame oil, similar to a pilaf technique, and then add the oysters (and other flavors such as garlic), covering and simmering everything together until the rice is cooked through. It’ simple, quick, and filling. To bring a bit more flavor to the dish, you top it with a spicy soy sauce mixture. This was my second favorite dish of the week and one I would consider making again. I don’t see it going in a regular rotation, but interesting if in the mood for oysters.

Finally, my favorite dish of the week was incredibly simple. It was mild and was easily the most balanced single dish. Sautéed zucchini and shrimp. The original calls for a fermented fish paste, but Maangchi mentions that you can exchange that for fish sauce. Much like soy sauce, I always have fish sauce on hand, so I did make that substitution. Frankly, without the fish sauce I think this would be bland, but that extra punch of flavor and acidity really did the trick. This is one that I would absolutely put in the rotation.

Most Korean dishes I experienced this week (and in many experiences over the years) are simple in execution, but also rather direct and simple in flavor. They tend to be a mild oily savoriness or a punch of garlic spicy sweetness. To this end, they can offer something that is a wholly different experience than much of the foods we are used to eating in the west. I think this is what makes it so polarizing. While simple and direct, they are so focused that they are perfect for what they are. If you like it, you probably love it. To quote Bruce Lee:

 This describes Korean dishes to me. While it may not have variety, what it does, it does well. I can 1000% appreciate it for what it is, even if it isn’t my thing. 

Note, I won’t be cooking North Korean cuisine as my research points to it being similar, but with less quality and fewer ingredients. The people of North Korea suffer from a lack of food and just eating every day is more important than developing a deep culture around cuisine. I enjoyed this article from the North Korean News website. As the article mentions, quantity is more important than quality when you are just trying to get enough to eat.

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When I started this week, I mistakenly thought of Cyprus as belonging to Greece, even though it is a separate country. I specifically selected Cyprus as a fast-follow to Greek Week for that reason. Cyprus is an island country that sits east of Greece, north of Egypt, and south of Turkey. Cyprus was originally settled by the Greeks (hence the confusion) in the second millennium BC. Because of its location, it was (and is) considered strategically important in the region. While it has been occupied and ruled by many different nations, the two countries with the greatest impact on Cyprus are Greece and Turkey. The Ottoman Empire ruled it from 1571 to 1878 and the northeastern part of the island is still under de defacto rule from the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”.  

Since I just spent time exploring Greece, I thought I would specialize a little more this week and focus on this northeastern region and Turkish-Cypriot food. Every recipe this week, excluding the kefte, is from the cookbook Meliz’s Kitchen, by Meliz Berg. I borrowed a copy from the library and highly suggest doing so if you think this type of food is for you. For our exploration, I limited the dishes to those representative of the Cypriot meze. Meze is the practice of serving lots of small dishes, much like Spanish tapas or Italian antipasti and it is often served with spirits such as arak or grappa. I hope you enjoy. I certainly enjoyed my time in the kitchen getting to know this cookbook.

Much of what I made was considered a “Salad”. I suppose that’s true in the sense that they were vegetables dressed in some type of vinaigrette. I’ll start with the one that we would normally consider a salad in the United States.

This fresh green salad consist of romaine lettuce, white (or green) cabbage, cilantro, dried mint, olives, tomatoes, and cucumbers. It is simply dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, and flaked salt. It is very refreshing. One thing that has surprised me with world salads is the fresh use of herbs in the salads, especially mint. This has been common with Greece, Cyprus, and Vietnam. Herbs are sadly underutilized in Western cooking, especially in the US.

The next dish was a beet salad. I LOVE beets. I used to hate them, but somewhere along the years my palate changed and it’s one of those vegetables I could eat all the time. This was a fun one as the recipe called for 1.2 pounds of beets. I found a single beet that was large enough for the entire dish! It did take 2 hours to roast, so if making this yourself, feel free to use smaller ones or even precooked ones that you can get from Costco or Trader Joes. Much like the salad above, this was mixed with herbs and simply dressed with olive oil and lemon juice. Of all of the dishes this week, this was one of the favorites across the entire family.

This bulgur salad was actually made with quinoa. The recipe called for bulgur, which I KNEW I had in the pantry, but alas I was wrong. Thankfully the recipe recommended swapping the wheat out for quinoa for those who are gluten intolerant. I had plenty of quinoa on hand. This was very similar to a French or Moroccan style couscous, with one of the main differences being the addition of Turkish sweet red pepper paste and allepo pepper.

The final salad of the spread was a bean salad. The book uses cannellini beans, which I had tremendous trouble finding dry. I did, however, have a wonderful package of large white lima beans from Rancho Gorda. These are hands down my favorite bean, so I was excited to use them in this recipe. You start by soaking and cooking the beans until they are firm, but done. Add potatoes, carrots, and celery and simmer until everything is cooked through. Finally, mix in the herbs, onions, olives, and dressing. The interesting thing about this recipe was that the vegetables are the exact same as a stew which is also in the book. The author suggests reserving half the vegetables before dressing and using them for the other recipe. I did just that. Below is the salad and the stew that was made from the leftovers vegetables. The stew comes together in less than 30 minutes, so it’s a lovely reprise after spending so much time the day before putting together the meze.

Dips are common in meze. I purchased pita and baba ganoush from the market where I bought everything for this week, but I did make one dip from scratch. This was also a favorite for the week. The combination of the freshness of the yogurt, cucumber, and herbs with the bite of raw garlic was extraordinary.

Before I get to the final dish I made from the cookbook, I decided to put some protein on the table and made kefte. While not Cypriot in origin, this recipe from The Mediterranean Kitchen was excellent and easy. I used half and half beef and lamb.

The final dish I will leave you with this week is halloumi and olive cake. Halloumi is a cheese originating from Cyprus. It’s very salty and has a texture that is “squeaky” against your teeth. The special thing about halloumi is that it doesn’t melt. It will soften, but it never truly melts. It’s perfect for grilling and serving plain or serving in a dish. This cake uses cubes or shredded halloumi both in the cake and sprinkled on top. It reminds me more of a savory corn bread, so you have to think about it being used in that way. It’s great served as a mid-afternoon snack with tea.

I really quite enjoyed this week and getting to learn more about a country I knew absolutely nothing about. After another week of putting fresh herbs, especially mint, in my salads, I might just be hooked.  Do you put fresh herbs on your salads? Leave me a comment and let’s discuss!

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Greece is located in Southeastern Europe, on the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and Turkey. Nearly everyone has heard of Ancient Greece, Athens, the fierce soldiers of Sparta, and Greece as the cradle of modern civilization. Greece has seen history first hand and, much like other nations that braved the waters to explore, their culture has been influenced greatly by their interactions with surrounding nations.

Greek food is characterized by fresh, local ingredients and simple dishes.  On the one hand more similar to what we know of Italian food, and on the other influenced by Middle Eastern cuisines, especially that of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), Greek food  is a great amalgamation of these influences.

None of the dishes I made were difficult, but many of them took hours as the ingredients cooked together and made something greater than the sum of its parts. I have to admit, I like pretty food and honestly I didn’t find the dishes I made to be particularly photogenic, but everything was delicious. Common ingredients are olive oil, olives and capers, wine, grains, poultry, seafood, and herbs like oregano, dill, and mint. They are especially known for the use for fresh cheeses, particularly feta, and yogurt. 

I could easily spend weeks working my way through the diverse regions and climates of Greece, but I narrowed it down to just a few dishes I felt gave me an overview of the cuisine. 

I started with a dish called “Spicy Chicken”. The spice in this case refers to the use of spices such as allspice, not to any level of heat. This cooked in wine and tomato paste, and was served over orzo. This wasn’t a pretty dish by any means, but it was one of the favorites of the week. 

One of my favorites was Moussaka and Potato Salad. The Moussaka is a casserole with a layer of eggplant, topped with a layer of meat sauce, and finally topped with a layer of béchamel. The individual layers are cooked, then combined and baked in the oven to let it all come together. I served it with a potato salad that was dressed with fresh dill, lemon juice, and yogurt. Sadly, the dressing for my potato salad broke, but thankfully it didn’t affect the taste. While I do like dill, I felt like it was a bit much. Maybe I just used too much. On the other hand, the moussaka was so rich and savory that the fresh dill and yogurt served as a foil against it all being too rich to finish. This was an interesting dinner in that the moussaka was too loose, so neither dish looked particularly amazing, but the flavors were on point.

The final, weekend dinner consisted of an ultra brightly flavored Psilokomeni salad, octopus pasta, and walnut baklava for dessert. 

While everything was pretty tasty this week, honestly I think this salad was my favorite. It is incredibly simple, but the dressing of olive oil and red wine vinegar mixed with the brightness of fresh dill was the ultimate palate opener.  This salad alone has me wanting to grow some dill in my summer garden.

While this wasn’t my favorite dish of the week, the octopus pasta was pretty good. It was only my second time making octopus at home and I felt like I nailed the texture. The pasta was creamy and filling. I was told this one isn’t going in the rotation and on that I can agree.

Finally, we ended the week with walnut baklava. It was my first time working with filo dough, which I found surprisingly forgiving. Like everything else I made this week, the individual components are easy to put together, with a result that makes you reaffirm your appreciation for simplicity.

Vietnamese cuisine is both unique, but also influenced heavily by other cultures. Much as we saw with Macau and the Portuguese, France had a penchant for colonization and Vietnam was ruled by the French as part of French Indochina from 1887 to 1954. The influence of the French has had a lasting impact on Vietnamese cuisine with remarkable pastries and iconic foods such as the Bánh Mì.

The main thing I learned about Vietnamese food was that it’s a sleeper in that once you start trying more and more dishes, you awaken to a fresh, vibrant cuisine that is satisfying at every level, somehow subtle and bold at the same time. All recipes this week are from the cookbook Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, by Andrea Nguyen.

The first things we made was a Ginger and Chicken in Caramel Sauce. Your first thought is that this would be sweet, but I didn’t find it to be at all. The caramel is sugar and water cooked down into a bittersweet syrup. It is then rehydrated some with additional water, so while it has some viscosity, it isn’t syrupy. It was a bit of work making the caramel, but I later found that it is a very common ingredient and making a full batch payed off in saved time later in the week.

As a side, we made a lightly pickled salad of bean sprouts and carrots. This was the perfect foil to any sweetness that may have been in the chicken. I must have eaten nearly half a pound of sprouts as it was so refreshing that it lifted the entire meal.

The next night we made fresh spring rolls. These were really pretty easy and FULL of flavor, especially with the spicy hoisin dipping sauce. Inside is rice noodles, salad greens, fresh herbs, slices of marinated pork, and shrimp. As you will see, it was a great first exposure to fresh herbs being central to a dish.

Grilled, marinated pork noodle bowls is a dish that order every month or so from our favorite Vietnamese restaurant. It’s my favorite thing on their menu and hands down my favorite thing I cooked this week. The pork was marinated in shallots, sugar, and fish sauce, then grilled or broiled. I broiled mine on wire racks in my oven. It’s served with rice noodles, tons of fresh herbs and greens (pictured is mint, cilantro, perilla leaf, cucumber, and red leaf lettuce) and a sauce made of fish sauce, lime juice, and a hint of chilis. The idea is to place the ingredients out and let everyone build their own bowl.

Finally, we capped the week off with soup. This was called chicken dumpling soup, but contrary to the Western world’s idea of dumplings, this time the chicken was the dumpling. It started by marinating chicken breast, thighs, and some leftover pork shoulder in a fish sauce base with tapioca and baking powder. Then before making the soup, everything was turned into a paste in the food processor. The soup is a very simple broth of sautéed onions and water, seasoned later by a bit of fish sauce. The meat paste is formed into balls with two spoons and cooked in the broth. At the end, I added fresh chrysanthemum leaves and a ton of black pepper. The soup was subtle yet full of flavor. The texture of meatballs is the real star here. They are very similar to the fish balls found all over Southeast Asia.

I had no idea just how much I would like the food of Vietnam and I can’t wait to continue exploring this cookbook. The freshness of everything we ate this week felt like it ushered in Spring.

Join us next time as we shift to a more regionally focused series for a couple of months. We’ll be diving into the countries of the Mediterranean Basin in an effort to eat a little healthier and fresh leading up to the summer. 

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Mali, with its diverse ethnic groups, presents a cuisine that is both unique and reflective of the broader West African culinary landscape. Interestingly, because of shifting borders and sometimes nomadic cultures, I found it difficult to identify a larger number of dishes that could be considered “Malian”. There were no English-language cookbooks for me to work from that were strictly for this area, at least not that I could find. I used a few internet sources for these recipes, all of which have been linked below.

Malian food, much like the landscape of the country itself, is robust and hearty. The cuisine is built around staple grains like sorghum, millet, and rice, often accompanied by sauces and stews that are rich in flavor and texture. Meat, when used, is typically mutton, beef, or chicken. A mostly Islamic area, pork was not on the menu this week. Meat aside, one ingredient I was excited to see common to the region is okra.

The first dish I was eager to try was Tiguedege Na, also known as Malian peanut stew. This dish is made with a base of ground peanuts (peanut butter), tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and sometimes chicken or lamb. It is often served with rice. I opted for brown rice, given the nuttiness of the rice would also highlight the nuttiness of the stew. For those more familiar with Thai cuisine, It quite reminds me of Massaman Curry.

Next up was Couscous de Timbuktu. This was SPICY even with me cutting the amount of cayenne in half. Much like the peanut stew, it was hearty and filling. This was far less heavy on the vegetables and really highlighted the meats. I went with chicken, but I would love to try this with lamb. It’s served with its namesake couscous. Honestly, this dish was incredibly simple to put together and scored a “put that in the rotation” from my wife. It’s rare I get that response with something bordering on her ability to handle the spice.

For my final dish of the week, I made Okra Stew and fufu. In an effort to be more frugal with my food purchases, I used ground grass-fed venison that I already had in the freezer in place of the beef. Many people are turned off by the texture of boil okra, but I thought it added tremendous texture, thickening up what would otherwise be a watery soup. Best of all, the okra kept their crunch and were a great contrast to the soft beans and chewy venison. I served it with a microwave fufu made from green plantain and yuca. While I generally like most foods, sometimes I try something that’s a big heck no for me. I’ll try fufu again, but this version just didn’t taste good at all. I won’t share the recipe to protect the innocent. The texture was cool, like mochi, but the flavor didn’t work. We finished the soup over a couple of days, but threw the fufu out the next day.

I’m looking forward to exploring West Africa more, especially a few of the more popular dishes like Jollof Rice. I’m all about comfort food and this region has a lot to offer. Additionally, as a native to the Southern United States, much of the food I grew up on is rooted in this area.

Stay tuned for our next destination, where we grab a Guinness and celebrate St Patrick’s day with the cuisine of Ireland. If there is somewhere you would like me to explore soon, leave a comment!

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