Pixelated Crumb

Happy Lunar New Year! The lunar new year may have started on Monday, but the Chinese celebrate for 15 days, so why shouldn’t you? You have plenty of time to kick off the year of the dragon with this lychee martini appropriately named Eye of the Dragon.

When a rep from Bulldog Gin sent me this recipe and offered to send a sample of their gin, I could hardly say no. I had never had (or even heard of, to be fair) Bulldog Gin, but the very morning that I got an e-mail Bulldog, a coworker mentioned that she had to find some for her sister’s cocktail party because it was her boyfriend’s favorite gin. My interest was piqued, so I was pretty excited by the time I got the package from Bulldog with my sample.

Bulldog Gin is distilled with dragon eye (also known as longan, a tropical fruit found in South and Southeast Asia) along with the traditional juniper and other botanicals and is without a doubt the smoothest gin I’ve ever tried. It can easily be drunk neat, but if this drink is any indication, it’s also delicious in mixed drinks. It’s perfect in this lychee martini, with its citrus and floral notes layered with the dragon eye and juniper.

Lychees, if you’re not familiar with them, are a popular tropical fruit in Southeast Asia with a fresh, perfumy flavor that is hard to describe. They’re larger and slightly firmer than grapes with a reddish rind and a marble-sized seed inside. I’ve never had the pleasure of having fresh lychee (I hope to change that in May when they’re in season in North America), but even canned, lychees are delicious, refreshing morsels.

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Well, it’s August now and it’s gonna be a hot one. I grew up in Washington, D.C., a city where all the locals know enough to flee for as much of August as they can to avoid the sickeningly hot, sticky days (and nights). Did you know that D.C. was actually built on a swamp? Most tourists don’t seem to know, because they all flock to the city in August, the hottest, stickiest most miserable month you could spend there. You’d think that growing up with such humid summers that I would be used to humidity, but I’m not. I hate it. I’d take a 105 degree day in the desert over 95 degrees in 90% humidity. For just that reason, growing up I spent my summers at an amazing wilderness expedition camp based out of Thoreau, NM.

Now that I’m older, things are considerably more complicated. I keep hoping some grant will pop up that will pay me to go on vacation for all of August, but until then, I have bills to pay, which means a job to work. To make matters worse, I’ve been working from home since my knee surgery because I can sit more comfortably and don’t have to walk as much. The problem is that, unlike the office, we don’t have air conditioning. This is inevitably the point when Joseph would interject to say we do have AC, so I will clarify. We have one window unit that we have literally used twice all summer (as in two consecutive nights during that heat wave a couple weeks ago) because it’s so expensive to run. Sigh. How I miss you, AC.

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Meet my new favorite salad: the Chinese chicken salad from Ellie Krieger’s The Food You Crave. It’s a stunning salad bursting with vibrant purple, green, and orange and it’s got all the right textures going on with juicy mandarin oranges, crispy napa and red cabbage, and crunchy water chestnuts.  The tangy soy ginger Chinese/Pan-Asian inspired dressing has the perfect blend of spiciness and sweetness that ties the whole salad together perfectly.

This is the salad that we made over Memorial Day weekend to try to balance out all the ice cream, strawberry rhubarb crumble, garlic fries with garlic aioli, and dim sum we had over the weekend (because frankly, it is completely impossible not to overorder and overeat when you order dim sum). Salads are one of those things that often seem like they should be healthy, but then you find out how many calories are in the Cosi Signature Salad (627!!) which first horrifies you, then leads you to wonder if anything is actually healthy. Continue reading

It’s somewhat ironic that my husband, who is Filipino, loves to cook so much – especially Asian food – and yet he never cooks Filipino food! My mother-in-law makes amazing Filipino food, including pancit, chicken and pork adobo, sinigang, and my absolute favorite, lumpia. Joseph says that he doesn’t cook Filipino food because his mom’s food is so good, it’s just easier to go home for good traditional food.

That changed recently when we pulled Memories of Philippine Kitchens off the bookshelf. It’s a beautiful coffee table style cookbook, filled with mouthwatering photos, touching narratives from Philippine kitchens, and a cultural history of Philippine foods. It’s unfortunate that Filipino food isn’t more popular in the United States, because it’s good! Frankly, I’d take lumpia over  a Chinese spring roll any day and my mother-in-law’s version of longaniza (basically chicken or pork sausage in a delicious tangy barbecue-like sauce) is so good I dream about it. It saddens me that most of my friends are completely unfamiliar with these foods because they’re really missing out. You should have seen my parents, sister, and brother-in-law flocking to the kitchen when we brought them food from Joseph’s mom at Christmas.

I love Thai food, but I would gladly sacrifice one of the hundreds of Thai restaurants in Boston for just one Filipino restaurant. Unless you live in California, you’re likely going to have to head to your kitchen and pull out some pots and pans to get some good Philippine food.  There’s only one Filipino restaurant in all of New England, and while it’s good, it doesn’t come close to my mother-in-law’s food (and no, I’m not just trying to kiss up). Brooklyn has an outstanding Filipino restaurant, Purple Yam, which is owned by the authors of Memories of Philippine Kitchens, but it’s a little far from Boston to go just for dinner.

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