Back when we were wee law students in Cambridge, B2 and I ventured out into the North End for a very Boston evening. We walked the cobblestone streets and picked up cannolis from Modern Pastry in their cheerfully string-tied boxes; we ate them on a bench in a park outside Haymarket Station, all shattering shells and clouds of pastry cream, puffs ...
dinner
stir-fried lettuce bowl with ginger fried rice and egg
We have had two big developments of our summer so far. One is that I went back to work (and we can skip discussing that) but the other is much more exciting: We moved! Somehow some people in the world thought that it was okay for this pair of silly babies to actually, honest-to-goodness own a home. Now that we're done screaming in terror over the ...
collard wontons
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. You guys, it's time. Christmas season is ...
shanghainese lion’s head meatballs, revisited
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 ...
pappardelle with lamb ragu
I'm back! It's the Friday before A Common Table ventures out in the world, therefore (1) the last Friday to preorder, if you like, and (2) the first Friday of a ton of giveaways of some of my most favorite things in the book over the next two months! From now until December, I'll be sharing a recipe from the cookbook and a giveaway every Friday ...
pho noodle salad
We are in the midst of a thoroughly January state of affairs: We got home on New Year's Eve from our trip to see B2's parents in Honolulu, where I was lazier, more relaxed, and more rested than a parent with a toddler has any right to be (God bless grandmas), and in the midst of our post-Hawaii gloom, were all promptly felled by the Great ...
super savory greens with lap cheong and garlic
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 ...
braised beef and orzo
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 ...
crab fried sticky rice with jalapeño aioli
My commute here in LA is almost the same as it was in New York, 40 minutes give or take. The only difference is that I sit my butt in a little Corolla instead of the blue-benched 4/5, and so I can no longer do either of the two things I used to do on my commutes in New York -- sleep, or read, but mostly sleep -- because I would die. For exactly 3 ...
spring pea pasta with lemon & shiso
As of a couple of weeks ago, I'm officially back at work. Unlike his mama, B3 thought the transition was a total breeze -- he sees me off to work every morning with such blasé cheerfulness that I'm wondering whether I shouldn't be at least a teensy offended. (He is, however, in a war of attrition with his Public Enemy No. 1, The Bottle, so there is ...
![The incomparable @hettymckinnon first sent me a jar of her homemade chili oat crisp nearly a year ago, at the start of the pandemic, and it was so life-alteringly delicious that I have been itching to share it with you here and on my blog ever since. Well, it has been a long wait, but the book that it is in, “To Asia, With Love,” is finally coming out stateside in a few weeks, and so I wrote up Hetty’s recipe earlier this week in anticipation. I did not know at that time what would happen in Atlanta this week, but have felt in my heart how necessary a book like Hetty’s, and voices like Hetty’s, were already—and even more so now.
Hetty writes poignantly in “To Asia, With Love” about a “third culture”–a struggle for her identity growing up as a Chinese immigrant in Australia, and the eventual “cross-pollination of ideas and techniques that are grounded in [her] Chinese heritage, yet greatly influenced by growing up in the Western world.” As immigrants, our cultural identities, and the fabric of society into which we weave, are so complicated. It can be beautiful, but it can also be messy, and events like these show how devastatingly far we still have to go. I don’t have anything more insightful to add than has already been said by so many, but I am glad more than ever for the brilliant, thoughtful voices around me to whom I can look for guidance and inspiration. Some resources posted to my profile, and if you’re looking for a spicy balm to take your mind off things, recipe for Hetty’s chili crisp (which is, all else aside, truly one of the best things I’ve ever made) is on my blog. ❤️ #stopasianhate #stopaapihate](https://tworedbowls.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)