HotPot No. 1

The Inaugural Issue: January 2021

Welcome to HotPot, Cooks Without Borders Premium Members monthly newsletter!

We are honored you subscribed and excited to share with you our first issue! Here’s what you can expect from HotPot:

Spotlight

Each month, HotPot will preview something we’re excited about cooking, eating, exploring and learning about in the coming weeks— things we expect to be covering at Cooks Without Borders with new stories, cookbook reviews and recipes. (That’ll be Chinese cooking for January, in anticipation of Lunar New Year, which begins February 12 — more on that shortly!)

Live Q&A

We’ll also preview our special Live Q&A for the month — that way you can do some background cooking, reading and eating in advance, so you’ll get the most out of your interaction with our guest. For January, The Woks of Life will be our guest. (More on that soon as well!)

Also look forward to . . .

After that, we’ll let you know what we’re thinking about, reading about, cooking and covering, such as:

• In Season: What to look for in the markets

• Cookbooks: Soon-to-be published or recent releases

• Trendable: Cool (or maybe uncool!) emerging things we’ve spotted

• Holidays and Happenings: What’s going on in the world or on the calendar that’s inspiring our cooking

• Middle Cabinet: A cool new tool or piece of cookware we’re in love with or coveting

• Flavors Developing: Inside dope on a recipe we’re working on, maybe even a recipe we’re still tweaking in case you’d like to participate and weigh in on it

Next, we’ll round up delicious reads, promising recipes and other worthwhile cooking stories from around the web during the previous month in Worth a Look— so you don’t miss anything delicious. 

And finally, we’ll announce the time and day for the Simmer Session with Leslie, the free-form live video chat where we can talk about whatever’s on your cooking mind. Mark your calendar!

This month’s Simmer Session With Leslie: Tuesday., Jan. 19, 11 a.m. - noon CST (9 to 10 a.m. PST, noon - 1 p.m. EST).

RSVP to leslie@cookswithoutborders.com - put SIMMER in the subject line

And now, to this month’s HotPot . . .

Spotlight on Chinese Cooking

This time last year (pre-pandemic, which feels like an eternity ago!) I started taking a deep dive into Chinese cooking — the results of which have barely made a blip on Cooks Without Borders as yet. 

The months-long obsession began because I was thinking about turnip cakes — one of my favorite dim-sum treats. Made with daikon, these rectangular white slabs studded with pork and vegetables should be pretty easy to make at home, I assumed. Not so fast! I had trouble turning up a great recipe for them, so went to work developing my own. After two or three tries I had something delicious, but the steps to get there were so involved — grating daikon, stir-frying fillings, jerry-rigging a steamer, steaming the things, baking to dry them out, then cutting, unmolding and pan-frying. Delicious — but ridiculous! 

I also worked on a recipe for Shanghainese drunken chicken — a dish I’ve always enjoyed in restaurants and thought deserved some attention. I was pretty happy with dish I developed, but Thierry and Wylie (my husband and son respectively, in case you’re new to the CWB family) proclaimed it to be awful. I set that aside, too.

Finally, I stir-fried a lot of mustard greens, because I was finding beautiful ones in the Asian markets — that was a success, and I have a recipe somewhere I should probably post (where is it?!) Stay tuned for that.

In the course of researching these dishes, I came across a super-cool website, The Woks of Life — a cooking site produced by a family of four, two Chinese-American daughters (Sarah and Kaitlin) and their parents (Judy and Bill) from Beijing. 

We’ll be writing about the site, the family behind it and their recipes this month, and then Sarah Leung will be the featured guest for this:

Cooks Without Borders Members Exclusive Q&A No. 1 featuring:

The Woks of Life — Sarah Leung

Thursday, January 28, 5 to 6 p.m. Central Time (3 to 4 p.m. PST; 6 to 7 p.m. EST)

We’ll be talking to Sarah about topics such as: 

• What to make to celebrate the Year of the Ox at home

• How to choose, season and maintain a wok

• Wok hai — that elusive quality known as “breath of the wok” — what is it, and whether it’s possible (or desirable) to achieve in a home kitchen

• How to set yourself up to easily make restaurant-take-out-style Chinese food at home

• Dim sum culture and what dim sum treats are worth making at home

• Anything you’d like to ask Sarah!

RSVP here to receive a link (your ticket)!

👇👇👇

Cookbooks: Sensational New Chinese Titles (and one older one!)

During this month and early next, in the lead-up to the holiday, we’ll also be cooking from — and writing about — three exciting new or upcoming Chinese cookbooks (and one older one):

Nom Wah Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from 100 Years at New York City’s Iconic Dim Sum Restaurant

We’re excited about this fun and entertaining volume by Wilson Tang and Joshua David Stein, published in late October. We’ll be exploring recipes for har gow (with home-made wrappers!), sui mai, char siu and more.

Xi’an Famous Foods: The Cuisine of Western China, from New York’s Favorite Noodle Shop

Also published in late October, this book by Jason Wang has made a long list of 2020 best books lists, including the New York Times’ and Eater’s.

My Shanghai: Recipes and Stories from a City on the Water; on sale March 2.

Betty Liu’s delicious personal tour through her native city will be published just after Chinese New Year (its original pub date has been pushed back a couple of months), but hopefully we’ll be able to preview a recipe or two this month.

Every Grain of Rice

Fuchsia Dunlop’s book is not new, but very much worth owning if you don’t already have it and want to cook Chinese. I’ve been cooking from it for the better part of a year, and will drop a review this month. 

In Season: Winter Greens and More

Note: This list is by no means exhaustive!

Beets — Try them pickled, or wrap each in foil (don’t bother to peel), roast till tender at 425 degrees, pull off the peel with your fingers, slice, dress with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and enjoy
Blood Oranges — Peel, slice into circles and use in a salad with raddichio and arugula, or make our Blood Orange Panna Cotta with Blood Orange Compote

Bok Choy of all kinds — Here’s our recipe for Baby Bok Choy with Garlic Cloves, or make a Quick Bok Choy and Radish Kimchi

Brussels Sprouts — Roast ‘em, with or without pancetta, or shave and make slaw (with kohlrabi, maybe!)

Celery — Make an elegant little Celery, Endive and Crab Salad. Or quarter the hearts lengthwise and braise them in chicken broth; use the leaves to flavor soups and garnish a hundred different things (deviled eggs!)

Celery Root — To make celery root purée, peel and cut in eighths, cook till tender in milk, purée until smooth, add butter and a little warm milk. Or for a make one of our favorite French apps, Céleri Rémoulade

Chinese Mustard Greens — Did you know there are 4 kinds? See The Woks of Life story below in resources

Collard Greens — Braise them with ham hocks and onions, as in this Serious Eats recipe by Daniel Gritzer

Daikon — shave or grate and use as a garnish, make Asian pickles or pickled salad, cut into thick discs and braise in dashi

Grapefruit — Peel and eat, make marmalade

Escarole — Braise in chicken broth till tender, serve with Italian-y pork chops, or use in winter salads like this one or this one

Kale —Make a salad, julienne and toss into a soup, or include in a mix of sautéed Wylie’s Greens or Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

Kohlrabi — Shave and make a slaw

Kumquats — Pop ‘em in your mouth, peel and all; candy them for a cocktail garnish, or slice and make marmalade, like David Lebovitz does
Mandarins (Clementines, Satusumas, etc. — what used to be known as “tangerines”) — Peel and eat. We’re plotting a clementine tart recipe; will keep you posted!

Meyer Lemons — We love this sauce from Steven Satterfield’s Root to Leaf: Quarter a Meyer lemon, put it in a blender with a peeled garlic clove, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 4 tablespoons good olive oil and blitz till smooth. Use with fish or veg, or swirl some (leaving it streaky) into our Pea-Ricotta Dip (you can omit the recipe’s zest)

Mizuna — Include tender baby leaves in salads, use bigger ones in soups or sautéed greens
Napa Cabbage — Kimchi!

Parsnips — Peel, toss in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast; braise then purée with celery root or turnips; always include one, if possible, in Joan’s Chicken Soup

Savoy Cabbage — Roast with chicken thighs and turnips

Tokyo Turnips — Braise and glaze them, or sauté them with their greens, à la Daniel Gritzer at Serious Eats

Turnips — We like to have one or two on hand this season in case we feel a Sunday Souper Soup coming on. Also include them in Chicken and Lamb Couscous, or roast them with chicken thighs and Savoy cabbage

Trendable: Is Jim Lahey’s No-Knead Bread Poised for a Comeback?

Sourdough baking exploded into a craze during early pandemic. Star pastry chef and author David Lebovitz had this to say about it on Instagram:

“When people asked me what I named my starter, I mentioned on Instagram that mine was called ‘I walked to the bakery.’ As a home baker, I love baking at home, but I leave bread … duties to the local bakery. Not only do they do a great job, but going there is part of the ritual of daily life in France, which is a nice part of the day.”

I sat on the sidelines as well, lucky during the first 6 months of the pandemic to enjoy loaves baked by my talented friend Dan, who’s been fine-tuning his incredible sourdough powers for years. (Alas, he, his loaves and my dear friend Michalene, Dan’s girlfriend, have moved out of state.)

Unlike Lebovitz, I don’t live in a city where stopping by the boulangerie is part of life. Since Dan-the-baker has left, I have to drive somewhere if I want decent bread. A good bread bakery is about to open a few blocks away from us (yay!), but until it does, I thought it was a good time to pull out my old copy of Jim Lahey’s My Bread and play around with his ground-breaking no-knead loaves. They don’t have the beautiful complexity of sourdough loaves, but they’re so much better than what I can otherwise get, and they’re pretty easy to achieve. 

Years ago I used to make his Basic No-Knead Loaf, a rustic white, crusty, long-fermented boule, with great results. But these days I want more whole grains, so I turned to his recipe for Pane Integrale.

The active time is very minimal: You just give the flour, yeast and salt a quick stir, add cool water, mix with your hand and let it rise 12 to 18 hours. A little nudge and tuck, another 2 hour rise, and you’re ready to bake — in a covered, pre-heated Dutch oven. If you missed this phenom the first time around, a baker’s dozen years ago, and want good bread but can’t commit to the sourdough lifestyle, do give this a try.

Just when I was diving back into this, The New York Times published “19 Recipes Our Food Staff Cooked on Repeat in 2020” and Kim Gougenheim wrote about Lahey’s classic No-Knead Bread (recipe adapted by Mark Bittman). So clearly I’m not the only one reaching back to this. (Trend?!)

Lahey’s Pane Integrale recipe called for three times more white flour than whole wheat flour, and I’ve been upping the whole wheat ratio with success (though I’m looking for a better rise with the changed ratio.) I’ve also just bought a copy of Flour Water Salt Yeast, by Portland baker Ken Forkish, of Ken’s Artisan Bakery. I’m embarrassingly behind here (the book was published in 2012 and went on to win James Beard and IACP awards), but from what I’ve read so far, it builds on Lahey’s Dutch-oven method.

We’ll be publishing a story about our modified version of Lahey’s Pane Integrale soon; until then, try the NYT recipe, or perhaps you’d like to buy Lahey’s book or Forkish’s book, or both.

Worth a Look: Pickles, Beans, Flour and Spice

Here’s a round-up of the last month’s interesting stories and recipes from around the web, in case you missed them:

• This roundup of Serious Eats staff’s favorite SE food stories of 2020 is a treasure trove. I found Mare Uyehara’s “How Bouillon Cubes Became an International Pantry Staple” fascinating. (I did wonder, though, why HonDashi wasn’t mentioned, since Uyehara discussed the 1908 discovery by Japanese chemist Ikeda Kikunae of how to extract MSG from kombu — and reported that it was Kikunae who coined the term “umami”!) I also loved Eric Kim’s story about kimjang, the communal act of kimchi making in Korea. (If the story puts you in the mood to make kimchi, here’s an easy kimchi recipe we love.) And Jacksyn Bakeberg’s “Thíŋpsiŋla: The Edible Bounty Beneath the Great Plains” tells the story of the highly nutritious edible tuber that once sustained the Lakota people in the 18th century and whose popularity is being revived by Sicangu Food Sovereignty Initiative. So much delicious stuff here!

• In an outstanding essay in The New York Times, “A Kitchen Resolution Worth Making: Follow the Recipe Exactly,” Genevieve Ko passionately makes the case that the best way to soak up another culture through cooking is by hewing to the directions without imposing our own biases, habits and preferences on it. I was so excited to read it because it’s exactly the way I approach cuisines I don’t know well — and why the recipes we publish from cookbooks we review are faithful to the originals. Ko is absolutely right: From a cultural standpoint, cooking that way is incredibly rewarding.

• Want to get an idea what I love about The Woks of Life? Read “Pickled Mustard Greens: Grandma’s Homemade Haam Choy,” written by the patriarch, Bill, Dec. 16. If you’re like us, you’ll be quickly hooked.

• “Why Almost Every Japanese Meal Comes with Pickles,” Kaki Okamura, Heated, Dec. 11. Okamura frequently writes interestingly about Japanese cooking and culture. Here she elucidates the relationship between aesthetics and health in Japanese cooking. Did you know there are some 4,000 types of Japanese pickles?

• “The Year Flour Was King,” Meghan McCarron, Eater, Dec. 21. They didn’t run out of flour during early pandemic; they ran out of bags. Includes some interesting baking stats.

• “Your Saffron Might Come from New England, Not the Middle East — Here’s Why,” Leah Koenig, Heated, Nov. 30. Sustainable, domestically grown spices is becoming a thing. Who knew?

Resources

The Woks of Life — Chinese Vegetables: Leafy Greens

The Woks of Life — Chinese Mustard Greens

The Serious Eats Field Guide to Asian Greens

The Woks of Life: The Complete Wok Guide

Wondering what to cook tonight or tomorrow or next Wednesday? Keep an eye out for our other members-exclusive newsletter — HotLinks — sent out on Fridays. I’ve been cooking up a storm (I always am!). In HotLinks, I’ll deliver to you links to the best, most interesting, most do-able, most delicious recipes that suit the season, not just from Cooks Without Borders, but from all over the web. You can be sure they work and they’re worth the time, effort and ingredients because I will have tested them. HotLinks will help you turn those pesky “What’s for dinner?” questions into delicious no-brainers.

Until then, lots of love — and Happy New Year!!! (Can we still say that?!)

Leslie

This is a members-only newsletter, requiring a paid subscription (thank you for subscribing!). If you have a friend you think would enjoy it and might want to join, please go ahead and forward it to them!

Have a comment, or want to tell us about something you’d like to see covered here? Drop me a line at leslie@cookswithoutborders.com.