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1000-Year Eggs with Bitter Melon
This recipe takes two unusually flavored foods and combines them in a cold salad or appetizer in a way that makes them delicious. For those of you not familiar with bitter melon, it really is naturally...
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Stir-Fried Beef with Century Eggs
This interesting dish combines century eggs with sliced beef in a stir fry that is perfectly suitable as a main dish, or as one of many dishes in a multicourse Chinese meal. Most of the flavor in the...
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Green Eggs and Ham Chinese Style
I would eat them in a car, or at a bar, or on the way to a star . . . Of course, I am talking about century eggs! But I am getting Seussy because this recipe pairs the pidan with a savory, delicious...
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Fried Rice with Thousand-year Eggs
We are nearing the end of our exploration of Thousand-Year Eggs (for now). There was just something congruous (perhaps logarithmic?) about offering 10 recipes for 1000-Year Eggs that really floated my...
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Thai Pork with 1000-Year Eggs
This next to last recipe for 1000-Year Eggs might be my favorite way to prepare them. It is savory, spicy, and hot, and the Thai basil lends a wonderful lightness to both the pork and the eggs for a...
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Spinach Soup with Century Eggs
We’ve come to the end of our current exploration of Century Eggs – from making them from scratch, to mixing them with other ingredients and preparing dishes with them. This is recipe number ten of ten,...
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Uyghur Big Plate Fried Chicken
This is a quintessential Uyghur Dish. Stir-fried chicken, potatoes and bell peppers in a rich, savory sauce redolent with star anise and cinnamon. Roasted cumin flavors the base of the sauce, with...
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Uyghur Five-Spice Blend
Uyghur Five-Spice Blend This five-spice mix forms the backbone of Uyghur cuisine – at least that part of it that deals with roast meats. Variations of this mix are used to flavor many Uyghur dishes,...
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Chinese Salted Eggs
Chinese Salted Eggs – Just Potted I love to be of use. It turns me on to help people and to help them figure things out. To that end, this recipe is a request from a colleague who loves Chinese culture...
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“Asian” Food in Colonial American Cuisine
When we think of the diets of our founding fathers and mothers, we imagine porridges, breads, fresh and preserved fruits and vegetables, and gently flavored roast meats. What most people don’t realize...
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Sweet and Savory Eel – Feast of Seven Fishes
I grew up in a very closely knit Italian-American community in the suburbs of New York City. Nearly everyone I knew as a child was related to me by blood or marriage. It was a world of cousins. There...
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Salted Eggs Revealed
Salted Eggs Ready to Harvest Its been a few months since I put up my salted eggs, and over the holidays I noticed that the water they were in had turned a rusty brown from the spices used in...
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A Meal Fit for Kim Jong-il
One of the difficulties in understanding history and historical works, is to imagine the world truly differently than it is today. We are so confident that our senses provide us with the, “truth,”...
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A Roman Bowl from a Mongolian Tomb
Roman Bowl from a Mongolian Noble Tomb (5th C ACE) This bowl is a fine example of pinched-glass craftmanship. It is of Roman (possibly Byzantine) origin and is believed to be dated to the 5th Century...
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Natto in Japan and Beyond
Natto, or fermented soybeans, are everywhere in Japan. There are natto burgers, natto bruschetta made with heaps of natto mixed with melted cheese or tomatoes on toasted bread, and even natto curries...
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Spicy Asian – Authentic Szechuan in Ithaca
Wherever I go, for work or for personal travel, I like to hit a good restaurant during my trip. If that restaurant can be a Silk Road restaurant, all the better. I had the chance this past weekend to...
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Spring on the Silk Road Means: Black Locust Blossoms
Black Locust Blossoms Spring has finally come to the Central Atlantic and all the leaves have opened out into a sea of green. In our area, dairy cows graze and suckle their young in fields of...
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