When I first started cooking with quinoa in 2008, I was living in Beijing and needed a change from the noodles and rice that I was eating every day. Quinoa had just started to be widely covered in magazines and food blogs, but wasn’t virtually impossible to find in Beijing. I finally found organic quinoa [...]
Tag Archives | Tomatoes
Tomato Egg Drop Soup + New Video
Love egg drop soup? For the second video in the new Appetite for China Cooking Videos series, I decided to update this post with a fun visual guide on making egg drop soup with tomatoes. Let me know what you think! I first made tomato egg drop soup in 2008 while living in Beijing during [...]
Baked Eggs with Saffron and Cumin
I first made these baked eggs with cumin and saffron when I lived in Shanghai a few years ago. I had recently become obsessed with cumin, after eating at many Muslim Chinese restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing that specialized in cumin lamb dishes. Of course, at home, I wanted to use cumin as much as [...]
Sweet and Sour Tomatoes
I first made these sweet and sour tomatoes in April of 2011, right after finishing a huge chunk of my manuscript for my cookbook. In search of a light and easy side dish, I tried out this great recipe for a sweet and tangy tomato salad. A year and a half later, it’s still a [...]
Stir-fried Tomato and Eggs
It’s another sunny March day here in New York. I’ve found myself wanting to spend more time working by the windows instead of working in the kitchen, which is in the interior of my apartment. So in celebration of an early spring, here is a light yet delicious Chinese comfort food dish from the archives [...]
Cantonese Tomato Beef
Cantonese tomato beef is one of those dishes that make me nostalgic for Hong Kong. They can be found on the menus of western-style cafés all over the city, next to other east-west classics such as wok-fried spaghetti and macaroni with canned meat in Chinese chicken broth. While it’s also a fast dish that families [...]
Barley-Stuffed Tomatoes
I had plans. Big plans that involved a ton of peanut and sesame oils, chilis, mala peppercorns, and high wattage wok usage. During Golden Week, one of the 2 times a year all of China is off from work and I’m completely free of teaching, I was going to cook up a storm. But I’m [...]
Eggplant, Cumin, and Black Bean Salad
I am a huge fan of cooking with whole spices. Ground cinnamon can never substitute cinnamon sticks in a braise. Ground Sichuan pepper doesn’t have the same punch as whole or crushed peppercorn. And I’m prone to ignoring a recipe’s call for ground cumin, when whole cumin has been the friend that never disappoints. The [...]
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