I eat pho -- chicken or beef -- almost every morning at the restaurant.
My first bowl was in Paris 30 years ago. It brought instant devotion. Hot steaming broth with wafts of ginger, anise and clove, slick rice noodles, slices of rare beef, and flanking the bowl was a plate of what is called "table salad" (sa lach dia in Vietnamese), a heaping platter of additions, like fresh herbs, bean sprouts, greens, lime and chiles—this is the essence of North Vietnam's Pho (pronounced "fuh") soup. Entire restaurants are built on this one dish and all its variations.
This is a cake that should come with a warning: Only proceed if you love molasses. If you do love molasses and its dark, bitter sweetness, then proceed immediately, and with haste. This cake is dark, fudgy, damp and rich. It's like a chocolate cake for people who don't like chocolate.
Portobello mushrooms have a meaty quality that makes them a healthy stand-in for the steak that you might expect to find in this kind of Chinese-style stir-fry. (But you can add some sliced steak, if you wish.) Broccolini is great for stir-frying because its thin stalks cook quickly. Don't confuse it with broccoli rabe, which it resembles -broccolini is much milder. This stir-fry also gets a non-Asian seasoning of thyme, which works beautifully with the other flavors.
If you're new to stir-frying tofu, start with this marvelous marriage of land and sea. It is easy and the ingredients are readily available. The results showcase how tofu can absorb the flavors of its companion ingredients while becoming velvety. Include the peas for bright color and a little sweetness. The shrimp shell stock gives the dish a real seafood taste, tester Johanna Nevitt remarked.
Ingredients
If we were musicians, we'd write a torch song about ginger and lemon, a match made in heaven. And though we've been drinking fresh lemonade as long as we can remember (Coca-Cola was taboo at 83 East Bay Street), we never thought to make a cold fresh-ginger lemonade until recently. Now we're making up for lost time. This drink is easy to make, super-refreshing, and happens to be a kick-ass mixer with bourbon and tequila, so those of you who are of age should mix up the Ginger Lemon Drop and the Lemon Gingerita variations that follow.
This is summer finger food — a big pile of shrimp that you peel and eat with your fingers only needs lots of napkins. Shrimp stay juicier when grilled in their shells, and the short marinating time heightens their character. Serve them hot, warm, or lightly chilled with Cucumber Stick Salad.
I like to use sockeye salmon for this dish -- its firm flesh and rich flavors are perfect for steaming
These are wonderfully messy shrimp that were meant to be eaten with fingers, chopsticks or forks. Since this stir fry is so good cold on a salad of mixed greens, I've provided for leftovers in the recipe.