mains Archives - Two Red Bowls

collard wontons // a common table giveaway!

11.30.2018

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.

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!)

pappardelle with lamb ragu // a common table giveaway!

10.19.2018

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 here and on Instagram, and you’ll have a week to enter before the winner is announced, along with a new giveaway.

pho noodle salad

01.18.2018

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 California Flu of 2018. Well, more accurately, I was felled by the Great California Flu of 2018, B2 was mildly sick, and B3 was sick for exactly one night before bouncing back to his same exuberant self, charging around the house while casting me mystified looks and wondering why his mom was being such a baby.

crab fried sticky rice with jalapeño aioli

07.19.2017

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 days I filled this void in my travels to-and-fro with music from my own playlists, before I got tired of my apparently very limited musical taste, and then for a few more weeks it was music on the radio, before I got tired of their slightly less limited ones. So now I’m at a happy medium of NPR (I have officially become my dad) and the wonderful world of podcasts.

cafe mami’s yaki beef & tofu

03.15.2017

Last weekend we had a couple of exceptionally wonderful friends come all the way from snowy Cambridge to visit us and meet Luke for the first time. Their visit was especially well-timed, not least because B3 was at his chattiest and chubbiest, now that he has 4 1/2 months under his belt (although he was also at his sleep-training saddest come nighttime — sorry, guys), but also because we had a beautiful, sunny weekend here in California, with the kind of weather that I hear is in short supply in Cambridge right about now.

all of the alliums fried rice, from molly on the range!

09.21.2016

I think fried rice may have been one of the first things I learned from my mother and grandmother in the kitchen. I imagine it must be like Sunday gravy in that every family has their own little way of doing things, though I don’t know that ours was so much a heirloom recipe as just an easy, quick, and comforting way to get food on the table: for us it always began with eggs and a generous pinch of salt, whisked vigorously with chopsticks and scrambled into small wisps in a screaming-hot wok. These were set aside to make way for diced white onion, sauteed until translucent, green peas, most often straight from a bag in the freezer and thawed in the wok, and some form of cooked, diced meat (usually, in a moment of fusion before fusion’s time, bits of deli sliced honey ham), before it all got stirred up with rice, salt, and pepper, to be kept warm in the wok over low heat, crackling softly, until a crispy crust formed on the bottom and everyone got seconds, thirds, and fourths.

tomato-braised eggs and creamy baked polenta

09.07.2016

Earlier this summer, I spent a few glorious hours in Venice at The Tasting Kitchen in what felt like an endless parade of dream brunch fare. Before this I’d never had any kind of chef’s menu or omakase-type meal, but a group of us opted for their tasting menu (because that seemed like what you should choose at a restaurant similarly named) and it was a culinary romp that makes me wish I could splurge on that kind of treat all the time: a smorgasbord of baked goods to start, with tender, butter-yellow biscuits, dense and moist breakfast cakes studded with fruit or dark with spices, and sticky pecan buns drenched in syrup; little lox and cucumber sandwiches in crunchy, unabashedly buttered toast; omelettes tucked neatly around tomatoes and creamy avocado; perfect parfaits (redundant?) with sweet sliced plums and berries on top.

mentaiko spaghetti

08.17.2016

In the last week or so, in what seems to be the norm for this time of year, B2 and I have been basking in a much-needed respite from a couple of busy months at work. Mostly this has consisted of me procrastinating all my non-urgent responsibilities by streaming the Olympics for most of the day (while B2, by comparison, texts me at 11am that he has done everything he needed to do and is wondering how “to be more productive”), before zipping home and landing on the couch in comfy clothes while the sun is still high in the sky. We’re spending our long evenings mostly enjoying our quiet, bright apartment, marveling at how it’s possible we can already be in the third trimester, and trying really hard to get B2’s hand on my belly in time to feel B3 bopping around like a caffeinated frog (somehow harder to do than it should be with all of the punch-dancing and caroming back and forth that he’s doing each day).

chickpea alfredo with watercress and chives

04.05.2016

The thing about alfredo that plagues me is the same thing that might be said about cacio e pepe, or macaroni & cheese, or carbonara — they’re dishes that I adore with all my soul, all cheesy, carb-y deliciousness, but that I eat woefully infrequently, because I somehow always talk myself into something with a little more greenery or a little more protein (and then I wish I went for the alfredo). Imagine my delight when a recipe came into my life that offered both the satisfaction and bliss of a rich alfredo and the substance of a more protein-packed alternative — instead of cream and cheese, it turns out that soaked cashews (protein!) and chickpea flour (more protein!) can combine with a little nutritional yeast, garlic, and salt and pepper to form, pretty simply, magic. A chickpea alfredo is practically no-cook and all-blender, comes together in a matter of minutes, but is silky-smooth, every bit as creamy as a traditional alfredo, yet simultaneously lighter and more filling. Add in a little watercress and chives for brightness, and even B2, who usually has eyes only for pizza, was so into this rendition of a restaurant classic. Who knew?

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