Blog - Two Red Bowls

baby bowl: round 2!

03.31.2019

Hi from Clara Young! Just like that, it’s already been a month–four weeks of vanilla-scented newborn cuddles, milk drunk faces, swaddle blankets and Lilliputian diapers. Like her brother, she came into the world with a head full of hair, a button nose, and powdery soft cheeks. She has perfect little oval fingernails (on spidery long fingers, my bad) and funny long toes (also my bad), a bow mouth instantly recognizable from all her ultrasounds, and a comically intense stare. Right before she nurses she gets a manic expression that is, I’m pretty sure, exactly how I look when presented with an extra-large pizza. She’s been full of big open-mouthed reflex smiles since day one, and even a few reflex laughs?! To say we are smitten is an understatement.

a lunar new year round-up

02.05.2019

Happy Lunar New Year!

A snapshot of the new year around here: This prescient lady’s comic series keeps popping up on my social media feeds and, as we’re heading into the last few weeks of B4’s residency in Casa Mama, I have to say she’s onto something. B2 has been doing even more around the house with Luke than usual, despite being busier than ever at work, and even with that, the difference between this point in my pregnancy with Luke and the current state of affairs is comical. Last time I was busy drizzling glazes on Bundt cakes and posing with platters of scones the few weeks before Luke made his appearance. This time around, we’ve all been felled with a bug he brought home from preschool, and pretty much all I am doing is my best imitation of a beached whale, lying on the couch buying Magic Beans and going fishing, and just managing to shuffle to the kitchen to make a 30-minute pot of shortcut dduk guk for the new year. I’m the inspiring stuff moms are made of.

2018

12.31.2018

Can it really be 2019 already? We’ve spent our last week of 2018 on the couch or in the kitchen (or scattering toy trucks from one end of the house to the other, one guess as to who is doing what), thoroughly unwinding and nonstop eating and generally super enjoying ourselves, and I hope you have been too.

jianbing strata

12.21.2018

There is room yet for cinnamon rolls and cookies and hot chocolate on our Christmas morning breakfast spread, and I have plans aplenty to make all of these between now and Tuesday. But this strata, a little bit eccentric but a lot a bit amazing, has just muscled its way onto the table. I vaguely recall first learning of jianbing, the street cart phenomenon originally from Shandong and Tianjin, from Mandy at Lady and Pups–apparently, more than three years ago!–but it wasn’t until last fall that I first tried it in person, in all its saucy, spicy-and-savory-yet-a-little-sweet, chewy-yet-crunchy complexity.

butterscotch mochi bars // a common table giveaway!

12.14.2018

It’s two months of A Common Table giveaways! From now until December, I’ll be sharing a recipe from the cookbook here and holding a giveaway of one of my favorite kitchen treasures used in the book every week, and you’ll have a week to enter before the winner is announced, along with a new giveaway. This post is in partnership with Pyrex. As always, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

The time has come–it’s the very last A Common Table giveaway. What a couple of months it’s been! It has been so incredibly special seeing the book in your hands, all the things you’ve made, and reading all your stories and kind words. I can’t thank you enough for sharing with me and for making this a dream come true.

collard wontons // a common table giveaway!

11.30.2018

You guys, it’s time. Christmas season is here! B2 and I are firmly in the “Christmas-music-starts-with-the-last-bite-of-Thanksgiving-dessert” camp, so Frank Sinatra is currently crooning in the background nonstop, our tiny carted-over-from-Brooklyn faux tree is set up in our living room, the lights are up (B3 starts every morning by running into the living room saying “Lights? Lights?”) and I could not be happier. If this were not cozy enough, my tragic aversion to coffee and tea in the first and second trimesters is finally letting up–joy!–so I’ve been guzzling all the very sweetened very diluted lattes my pregnant nose can handle.

a thanksgiving round-up and some (non-cookbook) news

11.20.2018

It’s a baby musubi–for a baby musubi! Now that A Common Table has been out in the world for almost a month (phew), I can finally tell you all about this little secret we’ve been holding onto. B4 is on the way! This time, we’re having a little girl–and we could not be more excited. Or bewildered. How does one raise these “little girls” you speak of?

chinese scrambled eggs & tomato // a common table giveaway!

11.17.2018

It’s two months of A Common Table giveaways! From now until December, I’ll be sharing a recipe from the cookbook here and holding a giveaway of one of my favorite kitchen treasures used in the book every week on Instagram, and you’ll have a week to enter before the winner is announced, along with a new giveaway.

I originally found Hannah at Speck & Stone more than three years ago, probably through someone’s beautiful photos of her rustic stoneware, and ever since a big box of her gorgeous pieces arrived, they’ve graced my table and this blog in nearly every post (I could link to them all but then we’d be here all day!) not to mention the cover of A Common Table itself. For someone as clumsy as I am, buying handmade ceramics is a tricky business. I’m always tempted to save them for special occasions, tucked away where I can’t smash them (lest this happen) but Hannah’s sturdy yet beautiful pieces have become a mainstay at our meals despite all my uncoordinated tendencies. The bowl in these photos, especially, has proven itself to be pretty much the most perfect bowl I never knew I needed–the ideal size for everything from dishing up sides for a crowd to an extra big bowl of something cozy to enjoy on your own. And now Hannah has made two just like it to give away this week! This goes for all the giveaways over these couple of months but I wish I could win about five more for myself.

shanghainese lion’s head meatballs // a common table giveaway!

11.09.2018

It’s two months of A Common Table giveaways! From now until December, I’ll be sharing a recipe from the cookbook here and holding a giveaway of one of my favorite kitchen treasures used in the book every week on Instagram, and you’ll have a week to enter before the winner is announced, along with a new giveaway.

These lion’s head meatballs are one of the handful of recipes in the book that was originally on my blog. It was one of the very first, actually, posted nearly five years ago to the day! And whenever I’ve been asked what my favorite recipe in the book is, I’ve had to say it’s this. First, and perhaps most importantly, it’s just one of the most delicious things I’ve ever made: The meatballs are a marvel, tender, light, and juicy like little clouds that practically melt into your rice. They’re burnished brown on the outside from a quick fry, then steamed over an impossibly tall pile of bok choy until the greens wilt into a flavorful heap under the juices from the meatballs, so you get a full meal with a side all in one. They’re one of my favorite winter meals, one we used to make in the depths of Brooklyn winters while the world outside was frosted white, and they’re so good that they’ve become one of the most made recipes I’ve ever posted (and, to my utter surprise, even won a contest once!)

asian pear and jasmine crumbles // a common table giveaway!

11.02.2018

It’s two months of A Common Table giveaways! From now until December, I’ll be sharing a recipe from the cookbook here and holding a giveaway of one of my favorite kitchen treasures used in the book every week on Instagram, and you’ll have a week to enter before the winner is announced, along with a new giveaway.

My earliest memories of Asian pears are from my grandparents’ kitchen in a concrete high-rise in bustling Shanghai, sitting around an old, worn table under fluorescent lights after a long flight from the United States. Asian pears are meant to be eaten peeled, and I can still see the ribbons of peels as they curled off my grandmother’s paring knife, seamless, swift, and unbroken, piling around the slices as she set them before us. (To my mother’s dismay, this is not a skill I have ever mastered.)