{mom-gifted avocados on toast, möbius strip bagels, molasses spice cookies, scarpetta spaghetti with extra fiber, peppermint pinwheel beginnings, best of good girl dinette, parm finish, dorie, spotted pig, grom, russ & daughters, smoked meat, palmiers for mom and grandpa, rei do gado eve before christmas eve, airport orange chicken, liquid nitrogen eggnog, ‘bama barbecue, sun oven brownies}
Phở Bò – Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup
This recipe for my grandmother’s pho bo has been adjusted ever-so-slightly to reflect the sensibilities of modern cooks like myself. While I’d love to have a drainage ditch dedicated to soup scum in my backyard, our current one-bedroom in Pasadena doesn’t allow for such luxuries. Additionally, I’ve swapped out the tin can for a flame-licked grill in order to char the aromatics. While I finessed some of Grandma’s cooking techniques, the soul and flavor of her pho hasn’t been fiddled with one bit. After all, perfection shouldn’t be messed with.
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Braised Rabbit with Pappardelle
After bathing in an aromatic brew of onions, garlic, orange zest, cinnamon, and red wine, the meat was fork-tender while the sauce was deeply savory with mellow citrus notes. The flavors whisked our taste buds away to the Mediterranean. Dinner was served outside on our picnic table, with snappy asparagus on the side and glasses of red wine to sip.
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This recipe comes from Chef Roy Choi of Los Angeles’ A-Frame restaurant. I couldn’t keep my hands away from the bowl the first time I tried this Hawaiian-style popcorn. Every fistful of buttery kernels brought a hit of sweetness from Corn Pops, sourness from dried pineapples, savoriness from bacon, spiciness from cayenne pepper and chili flakes, and a whole lot of umami-ness from furikake. This unlikely combination of big, bold flavors had me hooked at first bite.
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My sweet tooth was treated to squeal-worthy delights practically everywhere I traveled these past 365 days. From an edible winterscape in Chicago to the plushiest jelly- and cream-filled doughnuts in London, here are the 10 very best sweets that I had the pleasure of indulging in this year…
Doughnuts from St. John Bakery in London, England
Jelly doughnuts have a way of being either too sweet or too much of a good thing, but the ones filled with apple and rhubarb jam at St. John Bakery were perfectly sticky and sour and balanced. The custard-filled ones were lighter than expected, while the sugar-dusted dough was as ideal as I had hoped. What impressed me most was that even though the dough wasn’t freshly fried, it tasted like it had been—fresh and fluffy.
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Choux aux Sésames from Pâtisserie Chantilly in Lomita, CA
Chef Keiko Nojima’s French pastries with a Japanese flare are nothing short of spectacular. While every dessert lining the pastry counter is impeccable, it’s the black sesame cream puff that gets all the good press. Each pâte a chou shell is filled to order with black sesame-infused whipped cream, drizzled with mesquite honey, and sprinkled with soy powder. The intense and pure flavor that Chef Nojima is able to extract from the black sesame seeds is incredible—neither too much cream nor sugar cloud the main event.
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