Rice is one of those two-faced staple foods: it can either be dull and forgettable or it can serve as a lush palette to wide range of tastes and moods. In the case of southeast Asian cuisine, it’s certainly the latter. From nasi goreng (fried rice) to nasi lemak (coconut rice), people living in the [...]
An intriguing sweet flavor, sturdy packaging, and sheer weirdness–those attributes describe my idea of an appealing fruit. Rambutans and lychees (and longans, a.k.a. “dragon eyes”) get outstanding marks in all three categories. If you can find fresh ones, snap them up–they’re worth the high price. Besides, just having two or three is a fun gastronomic [...]
This false relative of parsley–sometimes called Chinese parsley–is the world’s most-widely consumed fresh herb. Cilantro is used extensively in Indian, Mexican, Chinese, Southeast Asian, and Middle Eastern cooking. Culantro, a closely-related plant, is native to Latin American and the Caribbean and is used often in Puerto Rican and Cuban cuisine. Traditional salsa, salsa verde, the [...]
