From the category archives:

Party Recipes

Shrimp Stir Fry with Sugar Snap Peas – Snow & Sugar Pea Garden Monster

March 15, 2010

There’s an uncontrollable beast on the North end of the garden and it actually comes in two forms: sugar snap peas and snow peas. Our spring peas are like serpants, clinging to everything they can get their tendrils on. Once they latch on, pea flowers shoot out and within 3-4 days, we have fresh peas to munch on. As a matter of fact, the warm sun is encouraging way more pea growth than we can ever imagine so it’s snow pea and sweet pea recipe overload!

Pea tendrils, flowers

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Beet Greens and Goat Cheese Crostini- Eat your greens

February 25, 2010
beet greens recipe goat cheese

Our biggest apologies to all you friends who are still frozen under snow or drenched with rain. This post isn’t to gloat about our wonderful sunshine and blue skies, but rather, it’s about reminding you to enjoy eating your beet greens. Although, it doesn’t hurt to brag about our warm weather to you all cause it could warm-up you cold weather folks a bit! (but if you’re an outstanding tele-skier like Jen Yu, then you’ll want to be buried under snow!)

When spring arrives (like right now for us), or soon to arrive,…

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Vietnamese Caramel Braised Pork Belly Banh Mi – Nail Shop Eats #4

February 17, 2010
banh mi recipe

The leaning tower of pork belly banh mi: not for the light hearted

I’m not a comedian, nor was I trying to be one when I spoke frankly about my mother’s Nail shop cooking escapades. Like I’ve always said, my mother is a culinary fool, a manic of a woman who lives to feed her family of 6 kids and our extended family of neighborhood friends. She’s been known to get even more carried away and feed her nail shop clients homemade noodles and fish sauce while they’re getting their pedicures.

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Creamy Hot Stove-Top Crab Dip for the Oven-Less

January 27, 2010
Stove Top Crab Dip

I’m often impatient in the kitchen when it comes to having to use the oven to bake a simple dish. Just the thought of having to pre-heat the oven makes me cringe at the waste of time and energy it takes to create a simple meal. It’s a relief for me to be able to adapt a dish that is traditionally baked in the oven to be cooked on the stove. My impatience enjoys the fact that it doesn’t have to wait for the oven to warm to temperature and honestly, I just love…

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Somen noodles w/Sweet Soy-Ginger Sauce -Takashi’s Noodles

December 14, 2009
Somen Noodles

Since our remarkable trip to Japan in August, we’ve been craving Japanese noodles with a vengence. We ate all the udon, somen, soba and ramen our stomachs could handle in 9 days and it was an amazing experience and education in the history and culture of Japanese noodles. We never got tired of slurping our way through Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka. Each region’s noodle specialties were all so different, delicate and highlighted some magnificent regional flair. Coming back home, we were looking for a cookbook that shared some techniques on making hand-cut noodles because of  one…

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Fruity Pomegranate Salad with Savory Soy Vinaigrette

November 29, 2009
Pomegranate Salad

I have my little red seasonal joys, those tiny flavorful things that are plentiful this time of year—-pomegranate arils! These juicy, tangy, sour, sweet pops of flavor are such perfect accompaniments to salads. It’s amazing how simple additions can change the whole dynamic of a salad. When my salads feel lost and lacking, I love adding fresh fruit for that missing piece of the puzzle. In Autumn and Winter, I feel so fortunate that our pomegranate trees dangle huge red orbs in our face, reminding us that pomegranates can be enjoyed in a bundle of frilly…

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Olive Oil Dinner Rolls with Caramelized Onion & Gorgonzola

November 23, 2009
Dinner Rolls with Onion & Gorgonzola

Woe to the dinner roll.  So plain and boring.  Dinner rolls piled in a basket to stave off hunger before the “real meal” arrives or  utilized as a gravy clean up tool throughout the feast. It’s the wallflower of the dinner table.

It is time for the dinner roll to stand and say “Notice Me!”  Let mashed potatoes and green beans be the boring ones.  Introduce the feasting masses to dinner roll eye-rolling goodness and show ‘em you’ve got soul and pizazz.  Announce your bad-ass bread presence with authority with Olive Oil Dinner Rolls with…

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Creamy Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe & Full Picture Tutorial!

November 18, 2009
Potatoes Au Gratin Recipe

With Thanksgiving just a drop of a leaf away, it’s time to start planning the feasting menu. Since Diane and I are always working the day before and the day after, we stay local and spend Thanksgiving with Diane’s family.

The menu is a classic ethnic Thanksgiving, where traditional dishes are entwined with cultural ones.  Turkey, stuffing, potatoes, cha gio (eggrolls), nuoc cham for everything, bun bo hue. Diane’s mom takes care of the Vietnamese dishes & we’ll do the American (although sometimes we’ll help a bit with the Viet, too).  There is…

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Baked Brussels Sprouts w/Parmesan Cheese – Haters to Lovers

November 10, 2009
Baked Brussels Sprouts and Parmesean Cheese

This is an open letter to anyone whose never quite caught on to the delicacies of brussels sprouts.  I urge you or anyone you know who hates brussels sprouts to make this baked brussels sprouts gratin recipe because it will make any haters into lovers. I am *almost* so convinced this dish will be a hit on your holiday table that I’m willing to *almost* bet something on it! Let me go through my valuables and see what I can lay down as a bet and we have a deal.

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Roasted Potatoes w/ Fried Sage, Brown Butter – A Healing Memory

November 1, 2009
Sage Brown Butter Potatoes

I’ve often wondered what value my Ethno-botany days at the University have on my current career now. Back in my college days, I dreamed of finding the cure to cancer via medicinal plants, to live in the rainforest with native cultures and learn their traditional methods of healing through local plants. I romanced the idea of healing the world, to be the Medicine Woman, to climb big tall trees and scale the mountain tops, just like Sean Connery.

Now, I photograph pictures of restaurants and screaming babies. Go figure.

When I…

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One Pot, Stove Top, Creamy Mac and Cheese – My decadent revolution

August 9, 2009
Macaroni and Cheese Recipe

I’m calling for a mac and cheese revolution.  For those sweltering Summer days when cranking up the oven means turning our kitchen into a sauna, or for those times when I don’t want to be a dishwasher, but still want to have a satisfying home cooked meal, I need a meal that can be cooked fairly quickly and efficiently. I know Todd and I aren’t the only ones who come home from a hectic work day and ask that one universal question “What are we going to cook for dinner?”

Enter the…

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