Asian Food Lab

The best looking piece of ginger I’ve found in a long time. Not local to Provence, but only travelled a wee distance from Spain.

What makes it a good one? It has a large ‘trunk’ with only a few nodules. This makes it easier to peel and prep as you’re not dealing with a bunch of little pieces. It’s easier to get consistent pieces, whether it’s slices, slivers, or mince when you start from a chunk off a beauty like this one.

The skin is also very smooth - no wrinkles, black spots, or mold on it.

What shall I make with it?
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Today’s morning trip to the Provençal market: artichoke turmeric spread, sundried tomatoes, marinated garlic w/herbs, berries, and the most perfect radishes that I’ve ever seen.
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☀️ #ｔｇｉｆ

Somehow having a pastry every morning in France seems less unhealthy than it does back home 🤷🏻‍♀️. In fact, the breakfast table seems a little off without at least a few. Another glorious breakfast thanks to the Provençal market. Perfectly ripe figs, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries and pears. A baguette that has a thin, crispy crust, but a soft chewy center - no roof-of-mouth cuts at this table.
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I found my way to a place where I don’t need to carry a scarf, umbrella, and jacket in my bag during the summer. Also, the morning light is beautiful here ☀️
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How I made 3 vegetable dishes tonight with only one pot to clean.

Braised cabbage with leeks and shiitake mushrooms.
New potatoes (cooked in a foil packet)
Cucumber salad
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What is this ball of fire in the sky?! The sun does reach the UK, sometimes 😎.
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☀️

Today’s mostly-plants breakfast @ the cottage. A decade ago, I stopped thinking of breakfast as ‘breakfast’, and started treating it like any other meal or snack in the day. I stopped limiting myself to common Western breakfast foods, and this meant I could easily add vegetables to breakfast. I don’t typically serve raw vegetables for brekkie, as Chinese wisdom gives a thumbs down to straight-up raw foods. Grandma and mom would be aghast if they knew I served them first thing in the day. (Warm food is easier to digest.)

If we were at home I may have served some fermented pickles instead, but in my kitchen away from home, raw veggies were the right compromise this morning.

Fried rice accompanies the veg and fruit, and is a pretty amazing breakfast food that keeps bellies full when doing a day of physical activities (i.e. when entertaining kids on vacation). I added some bacon from a local farm that raises a rare-breed of pig, a couple of local farm eggs, and some chopped scallions.

Pro-tip: If you want to experience the ultimate non-Western breakfast, have a bowl of noodle soup first thing in the morning.

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Summer is here! This is our cottage for a short getaway. We will be resting, exploring, eating (always), and cooking (sometimes).

Cooking on vacation teaches us the power of constraints. The daily cooking routine can be overwhelming - so many choices and decisions to make. The mental fatigue can be more exhausting than the meal preparation itself.

When you’re not in your home kitchen, you’re constrained by the equipment of the self-catered accommodation (this is a clever British? classification that I recently learned ... and love), the local ingredients, and the empty pantry.

Although this can be frustrating, it’s an opportunity to learn what you truly need in the kitchen to prepare a decent meal. I pack a travel kit of my essentials, and I enjoy exploring local markets for ingredients.

More to come in future posts and stories of what I cook on vacation and stash in my travel kit. Also, maybe a little tour of my kitchen-away-from-home.

My 9 year old’s harvest today. I usually stir-fry everything, but these ones will be devoured raw 🥬.
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Today’s lunchbox. taught me how to make the japchae noodles and my notes from our lesson do not have specific measurements. This is how you know it’s authentic: “add a bit of this and then a a few splashes of that.”
I will attempt to create a more specific recipe to share one day, but today it was fun to just pour things straight from the bottle.
Pictured here: japchae, sweet potato with miso-ginger sauce, and stir-fry cabbage. All veggies from farm box.
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Whenever you’re bored of a leafy green vegetable, a reliable way to give it some new excitement is to add the shiitake mushroom. This is especially true if the veggie fares well when cooked for a while, like the stems and leaves of collard greens. I rarely eat collard greens, as I find them difficult to keep crisp while not making them soggy. I don’t like greens that have been cooked a long time (even if it’s in bacon or butter).

For this dish I separated the stems and leaves. I heated some oil on med-high heat, and added asafoetida, cumin seeds, and minced garlic for a brief minute. Then I added the shiitake mushrooms, a splash of water, and cooked them a few min until they were soft. I added the stems of the collards, and a pinch of salt into the shiitake juice, and cooked them covered for about 8 minutes. Then I added the leaves and covered again to cook for another 5 min.
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I am always a little hesitant to post ‘recipes’ to a dish like this because it will look overwhelming and complicated. Even though I used a bunch of ingredients, what I actually did was use whatever I found in my fridge that I thought would be tasty. And you can do the same with whatever you have on hand.

I’ve been working on some content for an online course that I’m creating (spoiler alert!), and experimenting with how to create a flexible guide to making delicious vegetables. Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated, and there are dishes (like this one) that can be very flexible. Once you have the few key ingredients, you can play and add your own flair (or clean out all those herbs that are about to spoil!).

Let me know what you think about using this format as a guide to making your own delicious creation!

✨ Ingredients ✨

Pick at least one item in each category, but you can have fun and add more to create interesting flavor combinations.

A: Starchy tuber - I used 3 large sweet potatoes, you could use potatoes or taro.
B: Alliums - I used a small yellow onion, a clove of garlic and two scallions
C: Spices - these are optional - I used a pinch of asafoetida and cumin seeds
D: Fresh herbs - I had coriander/cilantro and mint on hand.
E: Flour or starch - I used tapioca starch which can be a bit gooey. All-purpose flour would probably work well.

Salt, pepper and cooking oil.
Optional: soy sauce

(Based on my selections, this turned out to be a paleo-friendly dish).

✨ Instructions ✨

* Cut A into chunks and steam until soft. Mash and add salt and pepper to taste.
* Heat two tbsp of oil in a pan and heat any spices briefly until fragrant (don’t let them burn!)
* Cook B (minus scallions) until brown and fragrant. Add scallions at the very end for a min. Add all of this to the mash and combine well.
* Chop D finely, add to mash mixture.
* Add 1/4c of E to the mash mixture. Add a bit more if it’s runny - it should have a thick, paste-like consistency.
* Add a tbsp of soy sauce. I also added a tbsp of tamarind paste.
* Form into patties and bake at 200C/400F for about 20 minutes, or until the are crispy and brown on the outside.