celebrations & gatherings Archives

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.

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.

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.)

buttercream roses and rose buttercream

08.14.2018

Believe it or not, these pretty little buttercream roses were piped by yours truly. For someone who is all thumbs and, at best, has a passing knowledge of how to decorate a cake, this is a feat indeed–and it’s all thanks to a dynamo of a friend and her marvelous book, Coco Cake Land, which is coming out today! I truly cannot be more excited.

cookies and christmas pjs

12.20.2017

Hi! In less than three days, we’re jumping on (or, more accurately, “squeezing a toddler and many bags and a stroller and a car seat onto”) a plane and heading to Hawaii for the first time since our two-bowl household became a three-bowl one. There are aunties and uncles and cousins for Luke to meet for the first time, beaches to explore, galbi to chew on, and to say we–and even more, his grandparents–are excited would be an understatement. Our fellow passengers are probably less excited, though they don’t know it yet. (If you have any tips for entertaining a 14-month old in an enclosed space for five hours, I welcome them and our seatmates will thank you.)

super savory greens with lap cheong and garlic

12.06.2017

We are now solidly into the magical stretch between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that no-holds-barred span of weeks that I typically use to indulge all of my wildest cookie and hot cocoa and cinnamon roll whims, and yet, much to my dismay, I’ve spent most of it so far thinking about, not chocolate or candy canes or marshmallows, but vegetables. In particular, these leafy greens. I am as surprised as you are.

braised beef and orzo

09.21.2017

Do you ever, once you’ve made it through a pile of scary deadlines and come out the other side, just kind of melt into a blob for a week or two, one that can sit semi-upright in an office chair and guzzle coffee and maybe make ill-advised purchases of overpriced throw blankets but otherwise accomplish none of the tasks that are still remaining but that are simply not yet due? No, just me? Well, it is definitely me right now. I cannot promise that any of this will make any comprehensible sense. You have been warned.