If you’ve enjoyed the egg bites at Starbucks, here’s how to make them at home! These egg bites have become a staple recipe in my kitchen. Sure, they’re not the prettiest egg recipe, but they’re wonderfully flavorful and silky tender. They’re a protein-rich snack or ready-made breakfast to keep in your refrigerator (they freeze and defrost well, too).
These egg bites are a fun cooking project with a few twists along the way. I was surprised to find cottage cheese in Starbucks’ ingredient list. It’s the secret ingredient that offers a lovely tang and extra protein. Once blended, the lumpy texture disappears, which explains why I’d never guess it was there.
Instead of Starbucks’ sous vide cooking method, we’ll bake the muffin tray on a rimmed baking sheet filled with a small amount of hot water. The steam from the water bath gives these bites a luscious, smooth texture. Without it, the eggs would brown at the bottom and taste more like frittata muffins. It’s a small detail that makes a big difference!
This time of year brings Seville oranges to the markets in Paris. For the past few years, I kept wondering why they were so hard to find since it’s perhaps my favorite of all jams and jellies to make, and eat. But lately, they’ve been everywhere. And I found myself busy making a lot of marmalade, which was easier since I came up with a brand-new, revolutionary technique which I couldn’t wait to share.
Since Seville oranges are rife with seeds, which makes slicing them difficult since you have to keep moving the seeds around with your slippery fingers, while trying to cut the oranges, then finding more, and fishing around deeper inside to extract more, plucking them out, etc… Each Seville orange has perhaps twenty to thirty inside.
So I thought, what if I was to squeeze the juice and seeds out first, strain them, then pour the juice back in? The seeds are precious commodities in jam-making, and get saved and used since they’re so high in pectin.
They’re wrapped in a sack and cooked with the marmalade giving the marmalade gets a suave, jellied texture. And this simple method, featured in my book Ready for Dessert, makes the whole process much easier.
You might be interested to know that Seville Orange Marmalade was created because of an error. Apparently, an Englishwoman in 1700, the wife of a grocer, was stuck with some sour oranges that were bought cheaply from a boat that was carrying them from Seville.
Since there was a storm, they wanted to get rid of their stock or oranges quickly, so the grocer bought them. But they were inedibly sour so his wife decided to try making jam from them, and viola!…Seville Orange Marmalade was invented.
Adapted from Ready for Dessert (Ten Speed) In my book, I advise letting the cooked oranges and the seeds rest overnight. That's an optional step. If you want to go ahead and finish the marmalade the same day you start it, you can.
Course Breakfast
Keyword confiture, jam, marmalade, orange
Ingredients
6Seville oranges(see Note)
1navel orange
10cups (2.5L)water
pinchof salt
8cups (1.6 kg)sugar
1tablespoonScotch(optional)
Instructions
Wash oranges and wipe them dry. Cut each Seville orange in half, crosswise around the equator. Set a non-reactive mesh strainer over a bowl and squeeze the orange halves to remove the seeds, assisting with your fingers to remove any stubborn ones tucked deep within.
Tie the seeds up in cheesecloth or muslin very securely.
Cut each rind into 3 pieces and use a sharp chef’s knife to cut the rinds into slices or cubes as thin as possible. Each piece shouldn’t be too large (no more than a centimeter, or 1/3-inch in length.) Cut the navel orange into similar-sized pieces.
In a large (10-12 quart/liter) stockpot, add the orange slices, seed pouch, water, and salt, as well as the juice from the Seville oranges from step #1. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer, and cook until the peels are translucent, about 20 to 30 minutes. (At this point, sometimes I’ll remove it from the heat after cooking them and let the mixture stand overnight, to help the seeds release any additional pectin. But it's not imperative.)
Stir the sugar into the mixture and bring the mixture to a full boil again, then reduce heat to a gentle boil. Stir occasionally while cooking to make sure it does not burn on the bottom. Midway during cooking, remove the seed pouch and discard.
Continue cooking until it has reached the jelling point, about 218ºF degrees (103ºC), if using a candy thermometer. I cook this slightly less than other jams and marmalades because the high amount of pectin helps the marmalade set up more stiffly. To test the marmalade, turn off the heat and put a small amount on a plate that has been chilled in the freezer and briefly return it to the freezer. Check it in a few minutes; it should be slightly jelled and will wrinkle just a bit when you slide your finger through it. If not, continue to cook until it is.
Remove from heat, then stir in the Scotch (if using), and ladle the mixture into clean jars. Sometimes I bury a piece of vanilla bean in each jar. (Which is a great way to recycle previously-used or dried-out vanilla beans.)
Notes
I don’t process my jams, since I store them in the refrigerator. But if you wish to preserve them by canning, you can read more about the process here.
Note: Sour or Seville oranges are called in French oranges amères and are available mid-winter in many other countries around the world as well.
I couldn’t resist bringing home all these cheeses. Could you?
When I moved to France and was doing food tours, at some point, a guest would inevitably ask, “Why did you move to France?” while we were in front of a bakery or a cheese shop. I wouldn’t say anything (which was unusual for me) but would just point at the magnificent pastries or cheeses in the window, and they’d get the message.
Also, nearly twenty years ago, during that same time in France, I was at a restaurant in the Champagne region and before dessert, was offered a plate of cheese that I still remember to this day. It was a Comté, aged for four years. The nutty, raw milk mountain cheese made in the French Alps is normally aged between 8 and 24 months. The longer a cheese is aged, the harder, drier, saltier, and sharper the cheese becomes, as it loses moisture.
When I visited the region, the fellows who made the cheeses told me they preferred the younger Comtés; they are smoother (doux) and milkier-tasting, which gave me a greater appreciation for younger cheeses, although I do like the concentrated flavors in a well-aged cheese.
Camemberts de Normandie, one of France’s greatest cheeses.
As the years passed, I couldn’t stop thinking about the four-year-old Comté that was presented to me after dinner, served as lamelles, thin wisps stacked on a plate. The medium-dry shards of cheese, with notes of hazelnuts and grass, had little crackly bits in them and were a revelation.
I was told that the amazing cheese was from an affineur (cheese ripener) named Bernard Antony, who was located in the small village of Vieux-Ferrette, in Alsace. As proof that good things come to those who wait, when an invitation arrived last month to visit his ripening caves and shop, it was a dream come true.
Brin d’Amour cheeses ripening.
Cheese shops (fromageries) do their best to store cheese under proper conditions; some cheesemakers send their cheeses to affineurs, whose specialty is carefully ripening unfinished cheeses. They know exactly how each cheese needs to be treated, from the correct temperature and humidity levels in the caves, to what to brush or rub on the outside of the cheeses as they are ripening, and when.
The jovial Monsieur Antony grew up in a family of farmers and started ripening cheeses in 1981 at his family farm, which is now his well-known shop and ripening caves.
This is still a local, family-owned business, and Monsieur Antony tends his six cheese cellars along with his son, Jean-François.
The shop was in full swing with cheesemongers talking to customers, helping them select the right cheeses, then carefully wrapping each one up to take home. The showcase was filled with spectacular cheeses. There were quite a few that I’d never seen before and was happy to try.
There were others that were familiar to me, such as the Brin d’Amour (below), that look quite different (and a lot better) than the ones I was used to.
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After I put my dropped jaw back into place, we were led toward a tasting room, where we were presented with a roundup of perfectly ripened cheese, ready for our dégustation.
The cheese at the bottom was Saint-Nicolas, a partially aged cheese that had a delectably creamy tang due to the sheep’s milk used to make the cheese. The one next to it, with the rounded edges to its left, was an Abbaye de Cîteaux. Sometimes these kinds of washed rind cheeses can be rubbery, like Morbier can be, so I generally avoid them. But this was the most surprising cheese on the plate and was even better than perfect. It was divine.
Moving on to the next one, the small block of golden yellow cheese was a twenty-month-old Comté Réserve. Comté is one of the most popular cheeses in France, and Jean-Francois (Monsieur Antony’s son) told us that, in his opinion, twenty months was the ideal age for Comté.
Another cheese was a Tomme de Savoie, a sort of catch-all term for a number of cheeses from the Savoie, that the Antony website says “doesn’t mean much anymore.” But like the Abbaye de Cîteaux, when you get a good version, you taste what the other tommes are missing. And this one was going on my mental list of cheeses to bring home.
There was a small wedge of a truly remarkable Camembert de Normandie. Like “tomme,” the word camembert is applied to many cheeses that look like the real deal, but there are just a handful of producers left of Camembert de Normandie. Always look for “de Normandie” after the name if you want to get the real deal in France, made from raw milk and molded by hand.
Most Camemberts de Normandie are slightly musky and funky (in a good way), but this was a whole different category with powerful flavors of wild and dried mushrooms. It had an extra-strong creaminess thanks to the milk used to make the cheese, which comes from Normande cows, known for their especially high-quality milk.
I don’t buy Camembert too often since it’s so rich, and a good one starts oozing out shortly after you cut it - which is why they sell special boîtes to store ripe Camembert in. So when I do buy one, I get the best I can find. And while I thought bringing one home was a good idea, after it was gone two days later, I wish I’d bought at least a second one.
Because we were in Alsace, of course there was a slice of Muenster to taste. But I was still euphoric from that exceptional Camembert de Normandie and looking forward to the next cheese, the Comté I remembered from decades ago.
Yes, it was time to revisit the Comté Hors d’Age (Comté without age). They mentioned how aging this cheese up to 48 months can pose some challenges, namely a loss of moisture and higher salt content. Their knowledge of cheese ripening really shines in this elegant cheese, which keeps the character of Comté but deepens it. This was also the most expensive cheese that they sold, but all the work that goes into it definitely pays off.
The perfect pairing with cheese is wine, with cider and beer also being fine accompaniments. Alsatian wines are some of the best you can drink. And no, they’re not all sweet.
In fact, most are dry. But because that perception still exists today, a wine scale is posted on the back labels of Alsatian wines, which rates the wine from dry (sec) to sweet (doux).
Alsatian wine scale from Jancis Robinson.com, which has written more extensively about it here.
Alsatian wines are also notable as they’re sold by the cépage (grape variety) in France, rather than by the region. Few people in France know the grapes that go into, say, a red Burgundy or a white Muscadet from the Loire, but because of their Germanic influence, wines from Alsace are labeled by the grape variety and often sold in elongated bottles, called flûtes d’Alsace.
Because it goes so well with cheese, their shop sold quite a few wines, but sommelier Fabrice Langlois, who worked the night shift before our trip (and somehow managed to make the 7:20am train), came with a backpack rattling with incredible bottles of wine. This one was my favorite:
Following the “what grows together, goes together” theme, this Trimbach Grand Cru riesling was especially good with the Alsatian cheeses.
In addition to “Alsatian wines are sweet,” another myth that needs to go away is that red wine goes with cheese. There are a lot of subtle flavors in cheese and a tannic, heavy Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, can obliterate those flavors.
Even in France, the cliché of “red with cheese” is still strong. It reminded me of a passage in restaurateur Keith McNally’s memoir, I Regret Almost Everything, that I just finished. He talked about reading Don Quixote because his friends told him it was one of the best books ever written. And he hated it:
“I waded through the thousand-page ‘classic’ without enjoying a single page, but for the next thirty years told everyone it was a masterpiece. I said this not because I loved the book, but because I was supposed to love it.”
If you really do like red wine and cheese together, great! But if you want to go with red, I might suggest trying something with less tannins, or a softer, slightly sweet wine like port or sherry, which pair beautifully with many cheeses.
Another myth is that cheese doesn’t pair with seafood, which as anyone who’s had a tuna melt knows, isn’t true. But a pairing I wouldn’t have thought of were these oysters.
Chef Saintagne worked his magic on them, broiling up the oysters, gratinéed with slices of Camembert de Normandie, and dotted with toasted croutons on top. The salty, briny oysters were an incredible pairing with the rich cheese. They reminded me why it’s good to keep an open mind, rather than just following along with what everyone else says. Otherwise, I would have missed these oysters, which I might even try making at home.
After our extensive cheese and wine tasting, we visited the caves where the cheeses are ripened. As a side note, you often go to tastings and people just…taste, and leave a lot behind on the plates. When were were done, every plate was completely cleaned.
⭐ Bernard Antony Cheese Tasting in Paris ⭐
Starting on March 13th, 2026 and extending to the end of April 2026, “tour de France” cheese-tasting platters will be offered at Alain Ducasse Baccarat bar à vin, Bar Midi-Minuit for 35 euros, with the option to add a wine pairing by Sommelier Fabrice Langlois. (Bookings and more info here.)
We didn’t catch all the names of the cheeses (frankly, there were a lot), but often it’s best to go to a cheese shop and see what looks best or most appealing that day and make your selection then. That said, the shop has a page on their website in three languages that identifies and describes many of their cheeses.
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After visiting the caves to see the ripening cheeses, because I live in Paris, I’ve learned how to get — and remain — at the front of a line, no matter how many people are behind me. Fortunately, trying to cut in line hasn’t made it to Alsace, but because I am bien élevé (well-raised, and well-mannered), I let someone in our group go ahead of me.
He ended up buying at least as many cheeses as I planned to, but I was happy to be next in line, as a lengthy line was forming and snaking out the door, since they’d just reopened after their lunch break.
I’d never heard of Sonlomont, a cheese from Switzerland that I think is the same as Tome de Lomont, but happy to be corrected. They gave me a taste, which confirmed that I needed to bring a block of that home.
There was also this Tomme de Chartreuse, which didn’t contain any of the famed liqueur, but was made in the mountainous region called the massif de la Chartreuse. Following in the steps of “what grows together, goes together,” I’d imagined the mountain cheese with the semisoft texture and milky flavor would go well with the liqueur.
I made a mental note to bring a wedge of that home, but somehow, I forgot to ask for it, which I realized on the train back to Paris. That was also a shame because I was having drinks with friends from Chartreuse later that evening in Paris, which ended at 1:20am. (It was a long day!)
Monthais sur Feuille is one of my favorite goat cheeses, ripened on a chestnut leaf (feuille), which absorbs some of the humidity. While you can find this cheese at many fromageries, theirs is exceptionally good, made by a “passionate and incredibly gifted producer.” It’s nice to see them calling out the work and effort of producers they work with, since at Fromagerie Antony, cheese is a collaborative process. They follow the whole process, from milking the cows, to curdling and molding the cheese, and finishing it in their cellars.
A few years ago I got picked on for making Tartiflette without Reblochon, the classic cheese. But I saw the high prices for it outside of France, and because, in reality, a lot of times in France, Tartiflette is made with othercheeses, sometimes labeled as “Le Fromage pour Tartiflette” (without a speck of Reblochon in its ingredients). I decided to let people know they can make it with other cheeses, as it’s done in France.
That said, if I lived near Fromagerie Antony, I would get my Reblochon there and make Tartiflette with that. Actually, if I lived nearby, I’d get all my cheeses there. Unfortunately, it’s a little too far to do my cheese shopping, but at least I had the good sense to bring enough cheese home to last us a few weeks…even if it didn’t.
If you want to visit, cheese tastings are available to the public by reservation here, with at least a one-day notice. Their website also offers information on lodgings in the area as well as taxi services. Getting there from Paris requires a train tripand a taxi or rental car.
(When driving, their website notes that navigation systems don’t always take you to the right village, even if you enter it correctly in a GPS system. They suggest you follow this Google Map.)
Firecracker chicken is an Americanized Chinese takeout dish consisting of crispy chunks of batter-fried chicken and a sweet-spicy sauce. While my parents once owned a Chinese takeout restaurant, I had never encountered this dish until recently. After trying it at a large fast casual Chinese takeout chain, I decided to create my own version! A […]
It’s been a brutal work week because we’re sending Cooking Thai to print very, very soon. This weekend, chef Pim and I are reviewing the book for the final time. Authors work with a team of folks to produce cookbooks, and given that there are countless moving parts (ingredient measurements, instructions, photos, page number references), mistakes may be made. At this stage, we scrub and polish and then practice the art of letting go.
It’s always an exhaustive process at the end but this time, I feel extra energized. That’s because now more than ever, there is incredible openness and interest in Asian cultures. I credit that to phenomena like Korean pop stars and Japanese anime.
Recently, there’s “Chinamaxxing” — a social media trend that has young American TikTokers wanting to ‘become Chinese’ by getting into things like practicing qigong, cooking congee, stocking up on groceries at Asian markets, and wearing slippers around the house. They want to be their “Chinese baddie” best because this is their “Chinese time of life”. (Remember the 1980 hit song, Turning Japanese by the Vapors? It did not result in women running out to buy kimonos.)
The rise of Chinese soft power, mostly among Generation Z, is an unexpected 180-degree turn. It’s uplifting but also ironic, given that there’s been a certain level of suspicion of Chinese goods and services for a long time.
Here at PTFS, we’ve discussed things like the fervent Prop 65 warnings on Asian ingredient labels. A few years back, shared his insights on people’s concerns over French made-in China cookware to empower consumers to thoughtfully choose.
And, remember when some folks nicknamed Covid-19 as “kung flu” and how the pandemic caused a surge in Asian hate crimes and discrimination? Those were good times, right?
Way before the pandemic, looking Asian could be viewed negatively. About fifteen years ago, as Rory and I were taking a walk in our neighborhood, a group of young men drove passed and one of them leaned his head out the window and screamed, “Go back to China!”
I reflexively stopped, raised my middle finger to give them the bird, and screamed back, “Fuck off! I’m not Chinese! I’m Vietnamese!” I stood my ground with minimal fear because we were across the street from a friendly Black-owned barbershop. We could run there for help, if needed.
The car briefly stopped before the young men took off. They surely forgot about the incident. For all I know, in 2026, they may be looking to live their best Chinese lives.
There’s plenty of analysis of Chinamaxxing from TIME magazine and also some humorous-not-so-humorous advice from the South Morning Post, the leading newspaper outlet in Hong Kong, China. I’m usure what to make of the current Chinamaxxing meme and trends, but I do hope that it results in genuine greater cultural appreciation.
Chinamaxxing also got me thinking about my own interests in Chinese culture, which started in college when I decided to minor in Chinese languages and culture. I eventually scored a fellowship in Hong Kong, traveled to China and partly built my food writing career on researching and writing about Chinese food.
Why go out of my Vietnamese lane? China is geographically and culturally connected to Vietnam through migration, politics, war, language, and yes, food. The relationship between the two countries has not always been a happy one, but understanding China helped me to better understand my Vietnamese heritage and history.
A temple in Hanoi, Vietnam. Note all the Chinese characters because Vietnamese was once written in a Chinese-character based language system.
For instance, when I was in my twenties, I hung out with Teresa, a gal from Hong Kong whose father used to be film director. Their family lived in Monterey Park and Teresa introduced me to a wonderful Chinese-Islamic restaurant, where I fell for dishes such as fragrant stir-fried lamb spiced with cumin and lots of green onions and a thick, crunchy sesame scallion bread. To this day, I love to eat the two together, stuffing the stir-fry into the bread and wiping up the sauce with even more bread!
Over the decades, I’ve tried all kinds of recipes for a fabulous rendition of the bread recipe and this past Friday, to get my mind off of book proofreading, I made it again and landed on my best rendition yet. Get the sesame-scallion bread recipe and make it sooner than later to enjoy its tender chewy, nutty, rich flavors.
Because Vietnamese and Chinese languages are linked in many ways, when I learned that the sesame scallion bread (zhīma dà bǐng) was a type of bǐng (餠, the Chinese word for bread, pancakes, pies, and certain other doughy foods), I was able to wrap my head around the Vietnamese notion of bánh, a very broad category of food that includes bánh mì, cookies, cakes, dumplings, crepes and other starchy foods.
When I started out writing about food, I befriended Chinese Vietnamese chefs too. The late chef Charles Phan of the Slanted Door was Chinese Vietnamese, for instance. So are my pals, chef restaurateurs Eric and Sophie Banh of Monsoon and Ba Bar in Seattle. Chinese people have been in Vietnam for a long time, so much so that there are countless people who identify as Chinese Vietnamese. They mostly see themselves as Vietnamese but can speak Cantonese and or Teochew.
Knowing about and being able to prepare and share Chinese cuisine is part of Vietnamese culture. In the early 1960s, when my dad was provincial governor in Phan Thiet in South Vietnam, my mom planned dinners that included Vietnamese, Chinese, and French dishes. She employed two cooks — one of whom was nicknamed Chú Năm Bếp (Uncle of Five Kitchens). Mom described him as a charming, talented man whose could cook practically anything; the five kitchens reflected his mastery of five cuisines.
Those factors and many others contributed to my affinity for Viet cha gio fried imperial rolls and bun rice noodle bowls as well as for Chinese fried wontons, lo mai gai sticky rice in lotus leaf, and wonton noodle soup. Hybrid foods like bo kho — the beef stew with star anise, lemongrass, tomato and carrot has southern Chinese Vietnamese roots and is considered an iconic Vietnamese dish. It has evolved over the years and cooks have taken to serve in many ways but it’s still Vietnamese at heart. I felt confident with turning the classic stew into a quick bolognese-style bo kho sauce to enjoy with wide rice noodles or pappardelle pasta. (Along the same vein, what would stop you from putting some in a banh mi roll because or use for a Viet-ish sloppy Joe. Just some suggestions!)
Chinese-ness in unexpected savors
So when I researched and wrote about the history of pho, it wasn’t a surprise that Chinese cooks and language were part of the story, which also includes the French colonials too. I’d always wondered if there was a Chinese pho recipe. ’s cookbook on Yunnan cuisine answered my question with its Chinese beef pho recipe, which you could add pickled mustard greens to, if you want. (The Red River flows from Yunnan eastward through Hanoi and out to the Gulf of Tonkin, so of course there are connections!)
Pho is highly elastic as I’ve written in The Pho Cookbook so you can play around with it with recipes like the beef short rib and vegetable pho. My traditionalist mother may think it’s weird but I like the recipe’s vegetable component, lower cost, and easy cooking in a pressure cooker or Instant Pot.
And, if you survey global cuisines, you’ll see how far Chinese foodways have migrated. Consider how widespread ingredients like tofu, soy sauce and rice noodles are. Chinese la mian noodles begot Japanese ramen. Wok cooking went to Peru and birthed Chifa cuisine and lomo saltado which then went back to Asia and eventually into Vietnam, where it yielded a beef stir-fry served atop fried potatoes. (Make my delicious umami-rich tofu and French fries iteration.)
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Finally, if you shop at a Chinese market or online at Weee!, check the frozen food section because you may find frozen peeled Chestnuts from China. As noted in an earlier newsletter, American chestnuts grow on Chinese trees. So you can purchase the Chinese chestnuts, know about their history, and use them in Chinese ways like the Red-Cooked Chestnut Chicken and Braised Chestnuts with Napa Cabbage which hail from Shanghai. These are no longer fall or winter dishes. They can be enjoyed whenever, if you get your paws on frozen Chinese chestnuts!
Today’s world is incredibly economically, politically, and culinarily interrelated. If you consider all the ways that China influences our lives, there is a certain truth to what China calls itself in Chinese: 中国 (中國; Zhōng Guó), which literally means the Middle Kingdom, the center of the world.
As a Vietnamese person who’s gone the extra distance to understand Chinese culture, do I want to become Chinese?
No way! I’m too feisty and proud to relinquish who I am. However, by cooking and looking around to connect the dots, I know that I can be a Chinese baddie on my own terms. I hope you find these insights and ideas to help you add to your knowledge base, if not just sound awesome to a young person. 😆
Back to proofreading the book. Thanks for being here.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard of vin jaune, the primary ingredient in this cocktail. For years, the wine wasn’t available in the U.S. due to the size of the bottle: 62cl. Called a clavelin, its particular shape references the amount of wine that was historically left in the standard 70cl bottle after its 6+ years of aging. The wine that evaporates is called the part des anges, the angel’s share.
Winemakers in the Jura region, between Switzerland and Burgundy, where vin jaune is made, refused to change the size of the bottle to conform to U.S. standards, but it’s finally been cleared for legal sale in the U.S.
Even though it’s been cleared for export to the States, vin jaune remains an outlier in the wine world. In the Jura, some wines are intentionally oxidized, called sous voile. Unlike conventional wines, during aging, the oak casks for sous voile wines aren’t topped up, leaving room for a veil (voile) of yeast to form on the surface of the wine. That yeast is called the flor. Sous voile wines aren’t to everybody’s taste, and it’s easy to confuse their flavor with flawed wine. I like their more complex tastes, but for those who aren’t expecting it, they might think the wine is spoiled.
Other wines from the Jura are topped off with additional wine as they age, keeping the barrel full, called ouillé, and those wines tend to taste more like conventional wines. Because wine production in the Jura is low, the wines tend to be harder to get outside of France, and are more expensive. So I nudge visitors to France to give them a try while they’re here.* Why not?
Vin jaune means “yellow wine,” which refers to its rich golden color. It has a very distinctive nuttiness with notes of dry wood, green apples, lemon, burnt sugar, and maybe even spices. Because it’s made in the same region as Comté cheese, there is no better cheese pairing than Comté and vin jaune. It’s perfect.
Better known than vin jaune is elderflower liqueur, which is now everywhere, prompting it to be dubbed the ketchup of bartenders. The sweet liqueur is a popular addition to spritzes and glasses of bubbly. And while people tell me they don’t like sweet cocktails (neither do I), cocktails often need a touch of sweetness to balance the other ingredients, such as lemon juice and stronger spirits.
When I was writing my book Drinking French, bartender and bar owner Joseph Boley gave me a bottle of another French-made elderflower liqueur, which was featured in his cocktail in the book, and told me it’s the same thing but half the price. I’ve been using it (as you can see) and no one’s pointed out any difference.
Every year, there is a vin jaune festival in the Jura called La Percée du Vin Jaune. I’ve always wanted to go but a friend who worked in the region told me it’s a lot of drinking and there are a lot of people; their website said 33,000 attended last year. The festival takes place in February, when it’s pretty cold in the Jura. However, I found a recipe that they published (above), the Fl’or du Jura, that I can enjoy in the crowd-free, cozy comfort of home.
Like one of my favorite cocktails from Drinking French, the Yellow cocktail, the Fl’or du Jura combines a few seemingly disparate ingredients that come together in one cohesive cocktail. You may have to track down a bottle of vin jaune to make it, although I tested it with sherry and it was just as delicious. It’s also lower in alcohol than other cocktails since the wine and elderflower liqueur are less than half the ABV as gin, whiskey, and rum, but it’s filled with flavor. À santé…!
*Some restaurants in France offer vin jaune by the glass, often listed on the menu under after-dinner drinks since it’s drunk with dessert. In his excellent book, The Food & Wine of France, , in the chapter on vin jaune (subtitled The Virtue of Rancidity), he notes about vin jaune: ”On first trying it, many people dislike it.”
Vin jaune is delicious in this cocktail and may not be what you expect when you first try it, on its own, but it does grow on you. If you get a bottle, it’s remarkable with Comté cheese or a similar nutty-tasting mountain cheese, such as Gruyère or Beaufort. Once opened, the bottle will keep in the refrigerator at least a month.
My idea of the perfect cookie is one that’s easy to make in small batches so that they can be enjoyed at freshly-baked peak perfection. And it ought to be light enough so that one or so cookies can satisfy your sweet desire without leaving you feeling weighted down or guilty. I think I found it in this not-too-sweet delightful Chinese walnut shortbread cookie that you can experiment with and take in many directions. Meeting a myriad of needs, it’s kind of a silver bullet.
I’ve been thinking about Asian sweets to share with you because in our 2026 paid subscriber survey, a number of you asked for healthy-ish sweets that are low in sugar and can be made gluten-free, vegan, etc. I thought about those requests and landed on this Chinese walnut cookie, which as you can see, may involve sesame seeds, if you like!
Walnut cookies are popular in northern and southern China, which explains why they are well known in Mandarin and Cantonese (and I’m sure other dialects):
Mandarin: 核桃酥 (Hétáosū) and 桃酥饼 (Táo sū bǐng)
Cantonese: 合桃酥 (Hup toh soh)
The second character, 桃. roughly means “shortbread,” rather than “cookie”. When Rory tried this cookie, he said, “Oh, it’s a yummy shortbread.”
He ate one and felt happily satisfied. This cookie tastes indulgent but it contains fiber and protein, and is relatively low in sugar and fat. Spurred on by his positive response, I experimented with small batches, changing up the nuts and toppings to yield a recipe that you can scale up for a party or freeze for future baking.
Why walnuts? What about almond cookies?
Most of us know of Chinese almond cookies which have been popularized abroad but the traditional Chinese Lunar New Year cookie features walnuts. These walnut cookies supposedly date to the Tang Dynasty (618–907 C.E.) and a guild of potters and ceramicists. As the story goes, one of the potters dealt with a persistent cough by eating walnuts, which he crushed and added to a biscuit-y dough and baked atop the hot kiln surface. The other potters picked up on the tasty, healthy idea and as their wares spread around the country, so did the cookie.
Walnuts are rich in symbolism. For instance, there’s a Chinese notion that eating walnuts ensures happiness in the new year. I’ve also read that because walnuts look like brains, they also symbolize knowledge and good health.
It all sounds like a joke but in actuality, walnuts have been scientifically proven to be good for many things, including heart and gut health. They also figure into the cMIND diet to fend off dementia. Walnuts are a win-win-win food.
At Chinese markets and online, you may spot walnut cookies but I assure you that baking them yourself from this easy recipe using fresh, quality ingredients will make you much happier than if you bought them. Your home will also smell divine and you’ll better ensure good luck, wisdom, and health in this Year of the Fire Horse!
Below you’ll find:
The walnut cookie recipe in full text plus downloadable PDF
A table of swap suggestions that enables you to plug and play to make the cookies gluten-free, vegan, without refined sugar, without nuts, with seeds, or with extra fiber
Lots of bonus ingredient and technical pointers in text and photos so you have plenty of guidance to easily make my recipe yours
A quick note: After this recipe is sent to you, it will be added to the PTFS recipe index. It’s not a perfect index and has to be manually updated. For instance, I just noticed that I forgot to add the Peking duck recipe! Thanks for your patience.
Pass the Fish Sauce is 100% supported by curious cooks, readers, and eaters. Join us at any level. Pitch in as a paid subscriber to help me drive this bus! Thanks for considering.
I’ve got a post coming up this month about all these AMAZING cheeses…
I had an official meeting last month to get my French ID card renewed. In spite of a reputation that doesn’t involve being efficient, the French government can surprise you as more and more public services go digital. Some of those services, however, now require a sleeker digital French ID card to access them. Unlike in places like the U.S., a driver’s license in France isn’t acceptable as an official ID. In most cases, you’ll need to present your French ID or passport as acceptable proof, and no one wants to carry around their passport all the time.
Things don’t always go smoothly, though. I’d been trying to renew and replace my card on the website since last April, filling out the lengthy information form with everything, which includes where your parents were born and on what date. A Swedish friend who moved here was perplexed when he had to do that for his Carte Vitale, the card for his health insurance. “Why does it matter when and where my parents were born? The card is for me.”
You kind of get acclimated to stuff like that and it vexes the locals, too. (Although they’re used to it.)
But every time I hit the “Send” button, I got an error message and had to start all over. I probably tried twenty times before finally giving up. At the beginning of 2026, I decided to start all over again. When it still didn’t work, I called and the woman on the phone said that I needed to use le navigateur Edge.
I knew of Chrome, Safari, and Firefox but never heard of Edge, and when I typed it into my computer, a spammy web page turned up. I was baffled that a website would only function if using a browser that no one’s ever heard of, that doesn’t even have its own website. After a thirteen-minute conversation, she offered to make an appointment for me. In a country where information is currency, and non is often the default, it was like the gates of heaven opened up and decided to let me inside. (I often think they make things hard on purpose so that when you do succeed, you forget about everything you went through before it and fall in love with the country all over again.)
I picked an early appointment, wisely, so the office wouldn’t be backed up when I got there. The convocation (appointment notice) I received said that if I was late, my appointment could be canceled…but also it could be canceled if I was early. (Yes, French people find these things funny, too.) Bakers are always on time but often, early. Which I was. However, they waived the penalty and told me to take a number and a seat.
In photos for official purposes in France, you need to look as unhappy as possible. If there’s any hint of happiness, your photos (and entire file) will be rejected, hence me doing my best to look like a hardened criminal.
I’ve been to enough of these meetings to know that one mistake - a stapler used instead of a paper clip, a bit of a tooth showing in a photo, you didn’t bring your mother’s birth certificate, professionally translated and stamped by the town hall where she was born, dated within 3 months of your meeting(VitalChek becomes your best friend, but you do hold your breath waiting for the documents to be mailed to you, only exhaling when they are actually in your hands) - your whole file, the one you’ve been working on for a year, can be rejected.
I am a pro right now and had everything in order. To make matters even better, the guy behind the desk was lovely. (And so was the woman at the front desk, who didn’t kick me out for being early. I felt like buying her a box of chocolates.) I did make one mistake, though: I thought Paris was a ville (city) but it’s also a commune. I thanked the fellow for correcting it, and he replied, “That’s what I’m here for.”
A friend later suggested he was an actor, but even though it was cold, grey, and rainy in Paris that day, I left my meeting that morning in a particularly heightened state of euphoria. I was going to celebrate by tackling the local Ikea, but then I thought about it and…nope, that would be pushing it.
Last month a bunch of friends descended on the city for WineParis, a huge trade show for people in the wine and spirits industry. Not only did I get to see a lot of friends and make some new ones, I got to try a lot of wines. At one tasting (above), at Paris Wine Co., I think there were over two hundred bottles open for tasting.
One of my favorite cocktails, a riff on the Martini called an Alaska.
I also went to an event at the Chartreuse store in Paris, a place that flies under the radar for some people. Located close to where the monks got the original recipe in 1605, which took them another hundred years to figure out how to make, the shop is a must-stop for Chartreuse fans and lovers. They have all the bottles you’re looking for in stock, plus a display of vintage bottles and herbal teas made from mountain herbs; guided tours, tastings, and cocktail workshops are also offered.
Last month was also Pineau des Charentes month, or as one might call it, “The French apéritif that more people should know about…but don’t.” It’s one of my favorite French apéritifs and was another reason I wrote Drinking French, to give lesser-known bottles a shout-out so people weren’t stuck on Lillet. (Which few people in France know about, or drink. The one time I ordered a Lillet at a café, I was brought a glass of le lait - of milk.)
I got to meet some really cool people and make new friends while working on that book, which is a bonus when you’re writing a book on a totally different subject than what you’re usually writing about. I’ve kept in touch with Amy and her husband, Jean Pasquet. He comes from a family that’s been making cognac and PdC for generations, and his wife, Amy, originally from North Carolina, was folded into the family business and now is the head of the organization, Comité National du Pineau des Charentes, which promotes the drink internationally.
So when we met up for dinner for pizza at Oobatz, I brought a vintage bottle of PdC (in the middle, below) that I found at a bric-a-brac store in the south of France.
A bottle of Pasquet’s 18-year-old Pineau des Charentes and their excellent organic Cognac, next to my bottle of vintage PdC.
Jean estimated my vintage bottle to be from the 60s, which didn’t seem that old, until I did the mental math and realized the bottle was sixty years old. I’d brought it to the restaurant and let the staff and sommelier taste it, since I think vintage spirits are meant to be shared.
The rest of last month marked us getting closer to spring. February is always a crapshoot in terms of weather, and mood. January is the hardest in Paris since it’s grey, cold, and the days are short. But by the end of February, it gets lighter earlier, and days stay light longer. My Meyer lemon tree has a few flowers on it as well as a few little lemons poking through.
I got a lot of, um, conflicting input about how best to get the most fruit — pick off and discard one-third of the immature lemons to let the others mature, pick off two-thirds of the immature lemons to let the others mature, don’t do anything and let the tree decide, etc. I’ve tried different strategies over the years, and none seemed to be better than the other. In the end, I got two lemons last year but fingers crossed this year I’ll get a few more.
Everything else in the garden got attacked by slugs last year and thanks to an overload of input, I tried absolutely everything (yes, from beer to nematodes to copper to eggshells), but a fellow with a huge, mostly organic garden in the countryside admitted to me that the only way he found to kill slugs was via a non-natural solution. So I was relieved that it wasn’t just me.
We’re not out of the woods yet, but as pears and fall fruits fade away at the markets, I pulled some figs out of the freezer and made a delicious fig galette with frangipane. I used the recipe from Ready for Dessert…
…swapping out the apples in the recipe in the book with fig halves.
Everyone who’s bought the book has been super happy with it - yay! - but if you haven’t joined the in crowd of people who’ve gotten their copy, there’s a recipe on my website that you can use.
Yes! That was fresh asparagus, along with a poached egg, that I was served last night in a restaurant here in Paris.
While I patiently wait for strawberries and spring fruits and berries, and celebrate the arrival of asparagus, I’m going to cross another place off my bucket list: Taiwan, where I’m heading later this month.
A friend who has an ice cream shop in Paris filled myWhat’sApp with pins for places to go, and eat. I’ll be seeing a friend whose family lives there, so letting him take the reins, but looking forward to all the delicious foods I’ve been reading about in Taiwan — although I may pass on the stinky tofu. I do like durian, a fruit which has a particular fragrance that’s off-putting to some and revered by others, so maybe I’ll give the tofu a try…
Some of the differences between moving to and living in the UK vs. Netherlands vs. France, in terms of bureaucracy, health care, and finding an apartment. (via )
[Sidenote: I’d say that’s likely true outside of Paris, but quite a few updated bistros and brasseries have opened in Paris that are quite good. Unfortunately, some of the lower-pricedbistros andbouillons haven’t maintained their quality or standards.]
I am on Netflix. I am still wrapping my head around that sentence.
Right before Thanksgiving, I got a call from Dan Souza at America’s Test Kitchen asking if I’d be interested in co-hosting a new version of In the Test Kitchen. I said yes to the chemistry test, which is exactly what it sounds like: a chance to see if everyone clicks. A few weeks later, I flew to Boston to test it out.
In early January, I got the call. I was officially going to be part of this new show. And it was going to be on Netflix.
I was thrilled. And if I’m being honest, a little terrified too.
In the Test Kitchen is led by Lan Lam, alongside my fellow co-hosts Bryan Roof and Lidey Heuck. From the very first day of filming, everything settled into place in a way that felt easy and natural. Each episode takes a deep dive into a single food, using three recipes from the test kitchen to explore technique, preference, and perspective. We agree, we disagree, and we talk through why. The show is built on opinions, after all.
In the very first episode, we tackle chocolate chip cookies. A topic everyone thinks they know well, until you start pulling it apart. We each come to it from a different place, and that tension is where the conversation gets interesting.
I hope you enjoy watching the show as much as we enjoyed making it, and that you’ll keep tuning in as new episodes drop on Netflix.
The wildest part of all has been the messages. Hearing from family, friends, and readers who have watched the show in India, Australia, New Zealand, the U.K., and across Africa has stopped me in my tracks more than once. That kind of reach still feels surreal. The video is exclusive to Netflix, but you can also listen to the episodes on the Apple and Spotify podcast apps.
Thank you for being here and for sharing in this moment with me.
A glimpse of the wonderful team who make this show possible and take such good care of us, plus a little extra behind the scenes.
The Quiet Failure of One-Pan Chicken Dinners (and How to Fix It)
Roasting a chicken with vegetables feels efficient. It looks sensible on paper. In practice, it is where optimism goes to die.
There are too many variables. The size of the chicken. Its awkward shape. The mix of vegetables. And the bigger question. How do you get everything to cook at the same temperature, at roughly the same rate?
The breast cooks faster than the legs. The vegetables release water. The oven turns into a compromise machine. Nothing quite fails, but nothing really succeeds either. You end up in a murky middle where everything is fine, and nothing is great.
The fix is not better ingredients or more skill. It is sequencing.
Chicken and vegetables want different things from heat. When they share a pan too early, both lose. This recipe solves that by coordinating when and how each component meets the oven, without adding extra steps or requiring you to hover.\
By flattening the chicken and controlling its contact with the pan, you let the oven do the boring work. Instead of a heavy brick, which I do not have at home, I fill my Dutch oven with water — it’s much heavier. The extra weight applies enough pressure to flatten the bird evenly. The chicken browns properly. The vegetables roast in rendered fat. Everything finishes at the same time, calmly, and it’s a win.
The flavors here are Thai-inspired, one of my favorites. Bold, aromatic, and built on fat, heat, and acid.
Somehow, despite how impossible it seems (to me, a person who has neither aged nor matured a day), it’s been almost twenty years since I first told you about my family’s favorite coffee cake. It’s tall, plush, crisp with a flaky layer of cinnamon sugar on top, studded with a quilt of chocolate chips and is downright, well, adorable when cut into cubes because they’re a little wobbly. When one tumbles, it shakes off a little pfft of cinnamon sugar, like a pup coming in from today’s blizzard. It’s perfect. It needs no changes or updates.
Last weekend, I took my very first bánh chưng class at Alma Backyards in Compton with my friend Rie McClenny, hosted by the Bánh Chưng Collective, to celebrate the Lunar New Year. Until now, I’d never eaten bánh chưng—let alone tried making it.
If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a Vietnamese steamed rice cake filled with sticky rice, mung beans, and a generous slice of fatty pork, all wrapped into a neat little parcel using banana leaves. The wrapping is meditative. The tying? Absolutely terrifying. Releasing the bundle from the mold felt like letting go of a newborn. I was convinced the whole thing would collapse the second I loosened my grip.
Thanks to some very patient, very wise instructors, nothing fell apart—and I somehow walked away with four little cakes. I brought them home and steamed them in my electric pressure cooker, which felt like a small personal triumph.
Elsewhere on the internet, the algorithm decided I needed to learn about a tiny baby monkey in Japan named Panchi-kun. He was abandoned at birth, given an IKEA monkey for comfort, and initially rejected by the rest of the troop. I don’t know if I’m so invested because he reminds me of my own cat, Drogy (also abandoned, also tiny but a little terror), or because I am deeply susceptible to cute animals with backstories. I adore him and want nothing but success for his tiny monkey life.
While I am not, sadly, a viral internet sensation like Panchi-kun, I did have a pretty special moment of my own last weekend: I made my debut on America’s Test Kitchen’s flagship show with Bridget Lancaster on PBS. A true full-circle moment for me. If you missed the episode, you can watch it online—though if you’re outside the U.S., you may need to get a little creative with a VPN.
This week’s recipe is what I jokingly call “a pantry meal that doesn’t taste like cat food.” (I say this with love—and with canned tuna.)
We start with black-eyed peas. Garlic and onion are sautéed until sweet, then chopped tomato, smoked paprika, and Urfa pepper firmly move things into grown-up dinner territory. A splash of sherry vinegar snaps everything awake just when it needs it.
The beans get spooned under crunchy sourdough toast, which does an excellent job of making this feel intentional. On top, olive-oil-packed tuna is tossed with lemon zest and parsley—rich, bright, and very much not for the cat. A final drizzle of good olive oil and another pinch of Urfa pepper, and pantry cooking suddenly feels deliberate, confident, and worthy of a plate.
The recipe is available on America’s Test Kitchen and is free to access.
I love seeing you share your excitement! America’s Test Kitchen makes several recipes from the residency available for free. You might need to enter your email so they can send you more great content, but you can always opt out at any time. I’ve been a longtime subscriber to their newsletters and have found them super valuable. I hope that helps clarify how to access these co-created recipes—we put a lot of love into them, and I’d love for you to check them out! I appreciate your support!
Happy cooking—and if you also find yourself emotionally invested in obscure internet animals, know that you’re not alone.
The Meaning of Life, these days, it’s a pretty loaded topic. Watching life unfold, it’s hard not to wonder why people do things to each other. Unless I’m missing something, we’re all in this together and it seems in everybody’s best interest to try to make things work, which is how recipes are: You take a bunch of disparate ingredients, mix them all together, and the result is better than the sum of its parts.
Most baking books follow a familiar pattern—a mix of baking tips, recipes, and in some cases, headnotes before the recipes, and chapter openings that explain the recipes and give some background about them. (Except in France, where recipes don’t have headnotes, which may be true elsewhere?)
Helen Goh is a trained psychologist who became a baker and pastry chef, and in addition to being one of the principal recipe developers for Yotam Ottolenghi, co-authored the books Sweet and Comfort with him. Helen has talked about the way baking has helped her manage her anxiety - and unlike other anti-anxiety prescriptions, baking has no unpleasant side effects. Others know her as the creator of what’s been dubbed the World’s Best Chocolate Cake…
That, and over a hundred other recipes, are in Baking & the Meaning of Life: How to find joy in 100 recipes, a book about sharing, giving, and receiving. I’ve got my eye on the Favorite Orange Cake (page 159) made with whole oranges and topped with a dreamy-looking, zesty orange icing, an airy Pandan & Coconut Chiffon Cake (page 185), and Crisp & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (page 70).
The book also prompted me to make Helen’s Anzac Cake, which appeared in a newspaper a number of years ago, and I never got around to making it. Topped with the flavors of Anzac Biscuits—coconut, oatmeal, and golden syrup—how could one not?
Helen’s Anzac Cake
As readers may have read in a recent newsletter (Feb 2026), I’ve been on a tear, cleaning out my freezers and kitchen cabinets…
I’m pretty sure that’s another anti-anxiety activity that doesn’t have any bad side effects, except maybe some guilt that you’ve let so many things get ignored or pushed back to the rear of your cabinets.
Back there, I found all sorts of odds and ends that I’d amassed over the last few years, including this smoked sugar I bought in Scotland. At the time, I wrote about it - “How could I not?” Then it languished in my kitchen cabinet for a couple of years before I finally found a place to use it.
In addition to everything from Sicilian pistachio paste to salsa negra in my cabinets, I’ve also got a problem with preserving things. I just can’t let anything go to waste. (If anyone knows what I can make with a quart jar of pickled samphire, let me know!)
Often in the summer we’ll head to the south of France and this year, the woman who runs the farm stand in the village had a wooden crate filled with chile peppers. Almost everything else was sold out by the time we got there. Her produce is beautiful and it’s popular, but you need to have patience because once it’s someone’s turn, they need to spend some quality time catching up with her :) So you can’t be in a hurry.
While most of the other crates were empty when we got there a bit too late one morning, it looked like no one had touched the chiles. When I expressed interest, she put them all in a paper bag and gave them to me.
Score!
There were so many that I ended up pickling them, using my pickled jalapeño recipe, minus the carrots, red onions, and dried oregano.
The jar of pickled peppers has been in my refrigerator for a few months, and when I spotted a recipe in Helen’s book for Pickled Jalapeño & Cheddar Scones, I realize that this was their destiny. The recipe called for a generous amount of pickled chiles, and her recipe had come to the right place. (I also used that smoked sugar here, too.)
Living in France, I often have to modify recipes for what we can get here. I was emailing with a friend who wrote a Thai cookbook and mentioned how important substitutions are, when possible, because you want your recipes to be accessible to as many people as possible (or at least I do), while still preserving the basic integrity of them.
The original recipe called for cheddar, but I decided to keep it French, since I was using French-grown chiles, and grated some mimolette, a cheese that was briefly banned in the U.S. but is now available.
As Helen notes, these scones are close to American biscuits, and let me tell you, they were soooo good. Even before baking, when I was mixing and rolling the dough, they already smelled amazing.
And after I baked them, the taste blew me away. They were spicy and cheesy and crispy and flaky. It was hard to resist breaking into one right when they came out of the oven because my kitchen smelled so good. Letting them cool slightly allows the cheese to firm up a bit, but they are absolutely heavenly eaten warm.
I’m sure there’s a snappier way of ending this post, but you’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got some biscuits to eat…
1 teaspoon flaky sea salt or 3/4 teaspoon fine salt
1 clove garlic, grated or finely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
6 tablespoons (85g/3oz) cold unsalted butter
5 tablespoons (70ml) whole milk
1/3 cup (75g) plain full-fat yogurt, plus 1 additional tablespoon for brushing the tops
4 ounces (115g) grated cheddar or mimolette cheese, divided
1 1/2 ounces (50g) drained weight, pickled jalapeños, blotted dry with a paper towel and finely chopped (you’ll have about 3 tablespoons of chopped chiles), plus 10 slices of pickled chiles
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, paprika, sugar, salt, garlic, and oregano in a medium bowl. Put the cold butter between two pieces of parchment paper (or plastic wrap) and whack it with a rolling pin until it’s about as thick as your thumb. Unwrap it and rip the butter into pieces, tossing them in the flour mixture. Using your fingers, smoosh the butter into rough 1/2-inch (2cm) flakes.
Don’t overmix the dough. You want visible flakes and chunks of butter in there.
Refrigerate the bowl of ingredients for 30 minutes.
To assemble and bake the scones, preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC) and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Remove the flour mixture from the refrigerator. Add the milk and yogurt, stir a few times with a flexible spatula, then add three-quarters of the cheese and the chopped chiles. Sprinkle the countertop lightly with flour.
Stir everything together until the dough starts coming together, then use your hands to gather the dough into a more-or-less cohesive mass. Transfer the dough to the countertop and shape it into a rough rectangle. Note: The dough will smell really good at this point.
Using a pastry scraper or chef’s knife, cut the dough into three rectangles (see the photos in the post). Pile the rectangles on top of each other, then press them down, forming a rectangle. Repeat the process, patting the dough into a rectangle, cutting it into thirds, piling them on top of each other, and pressing them down again into a rectangle.
With a rolling pin, roll the dough into a long rectangle measuring 10 x 4 inches (24 x 10cm). Cut the dough lengthwise in half, then cut it vertically, creating ten individual rectangular scones. (You could trim the outside edges of the rectangle to straighten them out before cutting the dough, if you want the scones neater. If you do that, gather the scraps together into a small mound and bake that alongside the scones, which’ll be a baker’s snack.) Place the unbaked scones evenly spaced apart on the baking sheet. Brush the top of each with a little yogurt, then top each with grated cheese and a thin slice of chile pepper.
Bake until deep golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes, but start checking them a few minutes before.* They’re done when they’re browned across the top and up the sides, and feel almost fully baked when you press the tops.
Serving: The scones are delicious on their own, or split in half and buttered. They would also be great for breakfast, served with scrambled eggs. You could cut them smaller (and reduce the baking time) to serve as appetizers.
Storage: The scones are best the day they’re made. They can be stored in an airtight container overnight at room temperature.
*My oven has a silly (and annoying) feature: When you open the door to check something, the oven turns itself off unless you remember to press the "Start” button again. Whoever came up with that idea never developed or tested recipes. I’m now hyper-vigilant about it, since I’ve had to redo recipes while testing them.
I forgot to turn it back on while baking these but luckily I remembered less than a minute after I checked on them. Helen’s book says to bake the scones for 20 minutes, but you can check them a few minutes before. (And if you have the same oven that I do, don’t forget to turn it back on!)
Today’s Sunday Special dispatch is short because the real meat of what I have for you is elsewhere.
First, although I’m not one to praise Whole Foods much, I did notice at my local store that there’s still Lunar New Year signage for “fortune foods” like whole fish at the seafood counter. The store is still running sales on Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese condiments — soy sauce, gochujang, and fish sauce, for instance. So, in the spirit of continuing the party, at my website, I assembled 25 recipes to help you further usher in the Year of the Fire Horse. Extend the holiday because that’s what Asian people traditionally do!
If you have a Vietnamese banh chung and don’t know what to do with it, I’ve got you covered with a primer and video! Ditto on pickles, noodles, sweets, and other foods to go along with the must-have Tet sticky rice cake (below, top left and center). Or if you just want to cook up a pan-Asian feast to celebrate the new year, the recipes will give you plenty of options. Head to 25 Recipes for Pan-Asian Lunar New Year Menus.
Second, I created a PTFS recipe index for you to more easily explore and find what you need. The index is one of my 2026 ,Year of the Horse goals!
The index includes all the exclusive PTFS recipes for paid subscribers as well as ones that are available for everyone. Since this newsletter started in September 2022, it has fostered a collection of about 150 recipes — the size of two modest cookbooks or one big one!
None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for your enthusiasm for Asian cuisines and cultures and my approach to them. Thank you! In particular, we wouldn’t have this robust, hardworking collection of recipes and audiovisual how-tos without paid subscribers pitching in. Seriously.
Before this newsletter, I thought my food writing career meant I had to deeply bow to the SEO algorithm gods in perpetuity. Pass the Fish Sauce liberated me and I thank you all for your kindness.
Now head over to the NEW RECIPE INDEX and start looking and cooking around.
Hey there, if you’d like to check out the newsletter recipe archive via an index, you’re at the right place. This listing of over 150 recipes covers the first three years of the newsletter from its inception in late 2022. You’ll find PTFS exclusives and free recipes in the newsletter and on my website.
The recipes are grouped in broad categories but are not listed in alphabetical order within the categories. I’ve done my best to cross list them but this is not a professionally done index.
How to use this index
You have 3 basic options: Browse the entire list from top to bottom, use the search function on your computer (⌘ + F on a Mac; Ctrl + F on a PC) to look for specific terms, or click on a link below to jump to particular categories.
It took me ten tries to get this cookie recipe just right, but it was worth the effort! These gluten-free chocolate chip cookies are made with just one wholesome flour—almond flour. They’re also sweetened with maple syrup instead of brown sugar, although you likely wouldn’t guess it. I love to use natural sweeteners when I can.
These cookies are golden and lightly crisp around the edges, and tender and chewy in the middle, which is exactly how I want my chocolate chip cookies to be. If you’re looking for a gluten-free cookie or a healthier take on a classic Tollhouse cookie, you’ve found a winner here. As a bonus, they’re remarkably easy to stir together by hand, with no chilling time required!
Welcome to the first day of the New Year of the Fire Horse! May the next twelve months shower you with blessings such as excellent health, life satisfaction, and abundant prosperity.
I made a special e-greeting for you and the Viet words say:
Chúc Mừng Năm Mới (say “Chook Moong Nahm Moy”) = Happy New Year
Well, la gastro got me again. Because la gastro is so common here in the winter, and French is so complicated to speak even for native French speakers, the name gets shortened from gastro-entérite, or gastroenteritis.
Being densely populated, Paris is a petri dish for it, although some guests were in the French Alps last week, and four out of six of them got felled by it. So escaping to the mountains doesn’t ensure that it won’t find you there.
I had it about a month ago, and just got it again, which doesn’t seem fair, although as I recently heard a doctor say, viruses don’t care about your feelings.
La gastro is very contagious and the best defense is washing your hands. (Hand sanitizers aren’t that effective against the virus.) Unfortunately, in a country where greeting someone involves shaking hands, and daily life entails holding onto poles in crowded métros, eating in restaurants and shopping at markets where multiple people have handled your food, and towels for drying your hands after washing them in some restaurants and cafés are shared with perhaps a hundred or more people*, you don’t need to look very far to see how (or where) you could have gotten it.
One thing about getting sick in France is that you have to plan for it. There’s no pre-prepared chicken soup, and supermarket soups are invariably veloutés or purees of vegetables.
I don’t know about you, but when I have an upset stomach, the last thing I want is a bowl of green soup, especially if you’re old enough to remember Linda Blair in The Exorcist. When things are coming out of you fast and furiously, you want a bouillon-based easy in, easy out situation. And certainly not anything green.
Newcomers to France, from America, are surprised to find that store-bought bouillon or stock isn’t readily available in liquid form, as it is in the States, where whole aisles of the supermarkets are devoted to a range of stocks sold in quart cartons. In France cubes of stock are commonly used, from brands like Knorr, and Maggi. Ultra-processed hasn’t become a keyword in France yet, but I’ve yet to make the transition to them.
I’m not sure what people in France do when they get sick, but if you can drag yourself to the grocery store, or can manage a trip to both the butcher and the produce store, you can make a poule au pot.** This “chicken in a pot” requires little hands-on work, and is easy on the system, one that I’m doing my best not to upset any further.
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There are fancy ways to make a poule au pot, such as one with a sauce suprême made with crème fraîche, egg yolks and butter, or this one, with 14 ingredients. Or this one with chicken stuffed with a farce (stuffing), which you’re welcome to tackle if you’ve got the fortitude for it.
There may be a definitive version of poule au pot, but I’m too zonked to track it down, nor am I up for a battle with the authenticity police. And I’m definitely not up for*** stuffing a chicken, or making or eating cream sauce.
The good thing about making this dish is that you don’t need store-bought stock as cooking a whole chicken gives you a lovely, rich broth. And while not part of the French culinary canon, since Manischewitz has not made it to France, there’s no matzoh meal at the supermarché.
Yes, you can buy pain azyme and grind it yourself, but that also takes strength, so it’s a no-go. My neighbor who owns a deli in Brooklyn is out of town. Otherwise I’d ask him to bring some matzoh balls over. I’d be pretty surprised if he didn’t have some matzoh meal squirreled away.
Armed with my shopping list, after Romain came back from the store, I placed the free-range chicken in a pot. I added enough cold water so it covered about three-quarters of the chicken, then added some salt as well as a chopped leek and three carrots cut into thick batons. Fortunately we have a garden so I grabbed a few sprigs of thyme and tied them in a bundle to add to the pot, as well as two bay leaves.
Garlic is used very discreetly in French cuisine; with the exception of aïoli, which technically is Provençal - and some in Provence may argue that that’s not French cooking, that it’s Provençal. (Once again, I’m not looking for a fight. I’m just being diplomatic.) Few, if any, poule au pot recipes in French call for ail — doing an online search, the only ail I found in poule au pot recipes was in the word volaille, which means chicken.
I added four minced cloves of garlic, which the authenticity police may not approve of, and even Claude AI was baffled by the request. And into the pot that went, as the health benefits of garlic outweigh any cultural conflicts.
Everything was simmered over very low heat with the lid ajar for about 90 minutes, until the chicken was very tender. About halfway through the cooking, I used tongs to pull the thighs away from the breasts to help the broth get more infused with flavor. (That may not be scientifically provable but I have a feeling that it does.)
Once the chicken was cooked, I fished the pieces out with tongs and put them in a bowl to cool. When cool enough to handle, I shredded the meat and put it back in the pot. And that’s it.
If you want to add rice or noodles****, as I did, it’s best to cook them separately and add them to individual servings right before serving, or they’ll get soggy. Fresh dill is an add-on that’s no common in France, but Romain likes it (as do I), and picked some up at the store. It adds a nice flavor to the soothing soup.
*Many restrooms in France, such as those in restaurants and cafés, have a cotton towel on a hook for people to dry their hands on after washing them. That may save paper, but to me, seems to defeat the purpose of washing your hands. Although perhaps the feeling is that is everybody is washing their hands, before drying them on the towel, the towel isn’t harboring any germs or viruses.
**You’ll find recipes for soupe de poulet and soupe au poulet, that are basically variations on poule au pot, which further complicates things — especially the two different prepositions for the same soup. As mentioned, French is hard…even for the French.
***Sorry about any typos.
***Like Manischewitz matzoh meal, Goodman’s egg noodles haven’t made it to France yet. But egg noodles (pâtes aux œufs) are the best with this dish.
There are many great things about Lunar New Year but for me, the most important one is the idea that the holiday is not just one day. It’s more like a festival that lasts many days, weeks, or even a month, depending on how you want to celebrate. In Vietnam, people slow down for for at least a week to ăn Tết (literally “eat the New Year”) because at the center of the celebration is food. People work so hard during the rest of the year that they go home to visit family for rest, relaxation and special food.
Even though the Year of the Horse officially starts on Tuesday, February 17, you can get into the Lunar New Year spirit for weeks! There’s no need to rush. Just learn how to say Chúc Mừng Năm Mới (pronounced “Chook Moong Nahm Moy”) and repeat it to any Viet people you run into during the Tết season to make us extra joyous.
I’m at my mom’s house now for Tet and she’s asked if we were going to have Mandarin pancakes for something. Yup, I brought two stacks that I’d frozen so we can wrap up Chinese roast duck purchased from a barbecue shop and moo shu — a quick stir-fry full of flavors, color, and textures.
If you’ve ordered moo shu (aka mù xī ròu, 木樨肉), at a Chinese restaurant in America, you know that it can be made with different proteins. The dish originated as a simple stir-fry in Shandong, a coastal province in northern China. Shandong is southeast of Beijing and has a peninsula that pokes eastward. When I was studying Mandarin Chinese, a friend joked you can see Korea from the tip of the Shandong peninsula. Stir-fries are a hallmark of Shandong cuisine.
Moo shu usually contains some scrambled egg that are deftly prepared to mimic the delicateness of fragrant sweet osmanthus flowers (Osmanthus fragrans), a symbol of longevity and nobility in Chinese traditions. In the dish’s name, the characters 木樨 (mù xī) refer to the sweet osmanthus. There are folks who say the original characters referred to wood ear mushroom (木耳, mù ěr) which are also in the dish, but in the main, people explain the characters as referring to the flower.
You don’t have to decide. Both egg and mushroom are constants in my moo shu recipes to add harmonious-yet-varied textures and flavors.
Finally, the third character 肉 refers to ròu — meat, which in China and Vietnam, defaults to pork. Traditionally the dish was prepared with pork, egg, earthy bamboo shoot, frilly crunchy black fungus mushroom, and aromatics and simple seasonings. It was a homey stir-fry that people whipped up to eat with rice.
As moo shu was introduced to the U.S. by northern Chinese cooks, the simple stir-fry got wrapped up in Mandarin pancakes and served as an appetizer. That’s to say, moo shu got the Peking duck treatment! When did it happen?
Thanks to a number of women chefs and entrepreneurs in the 1950s and 60s, urban areas on the East Coast had boundary pushing Chinese restaurants. The movers and shakers included noteworthy Chinese restaurant owners like Emily Kwoh and Irene Kuo in New York City and Joyce Chen in Boston.
Kwoh opened Mandarin East and Mandarin House in the 1950s. Below is a vintage menu from Kwoh’s restaurant with “moo sue juo” (for moo shu rou) but without the pancakes — yet. The New York Times eventually credited Kwoh as being one of the first to serve moo shu with pancakes at Mandarin House.
Kuo opened Lichee Tree in Greenwich Village in 1960 and Gingko Tree in 1966. Joyce Chen operated restaurants starting in 1958. They were all likely monitoring one another’s menus. The first cookbook to include moo shu with the pancakes was The Joyce Chen Cookbook, published in 1962.
Kwoh, Kuo and Chen were talented chefs and business people. Kuo and Chen were on national TV, hobnobbed with celebrities, artists and intellectuals, and they were not Cantonese. Chen was born in Beijing and Kwoh and Kuo were from Shanghai. They favored northern Chinese over southern Chinese food. Like Cecilia Chiang in San Francisco in the 1960s, those East Coast Chinese women were looking to push the Chinese food envelope before Nixon set foot in China in the 1970s! (Chiang opened The Mandarin in San Francisco in 1960 or 1961; though she had Shandong cooks, I can’t find early mention of moo shu on her menu.)
This explains why if you go to mainland China and ask for moo shu pork, you’ll likely get a wonderful stir-fry of rich pork, tender eggs, earthy daylily buds or bamboo shoot, crunchy black fungus and perhaps some other vegetables. Mandarin pancakes are not probably going to be on the side for you to wrap up the stir-fry with a smearing of salty-sweet hoisin-ish sauce.
Go vegetarian with the other moo recipe, if you’re not feeling meaty. Yeah, I load mine up with extra raw veggies. Add roast duck or rotisserie chicken and you can have a wrap party! I sometimes add coarsely chopped cilantro for an herby lift.
But if you like moo shu with Mandarin pancakes, know that it’s legit. Kwoh, Kuo and Chen tweaked moo shu for American diners and over time, the dish became redefined and it became a winning idea. Now it’s part of the Chinese-American food experience. Food evolves.
I developed two moo shu stir-fries for you that are fabulous wrapped up in the pancakes or simply eaten with rice. Below you’ll find:
3 recipes + PDF for: Master Moo Shu Recipe Blueprint + Moo Shu Any Meat (feel free to vary the protein!) + Vegetarian Moo Shu (with a vegan option)
Audiovisual aids: 2 videos plus process shots to help you manage potentially tricky moves
Ingredient guidance and swap tips: Explainers are here for those who want to shop at an Asian market and substitutions are suggested if you just want to use more accessible ingredients
You can plate the Vegetarian Moo Shu with the egg mixed in or on the rim. It tastes great both ways. I couldn’t decide. Yes, there’s a vegan tip below for this recipe too. AND, you can just treat this and the Moo Shu Any Meat as a stir-fry to have with rice.
This culinary deep dive and threesome of Moo Shu recipes were sponsored by paid subscribers. Join us to gain access to these recipes and so many other professionally developed recipes. You’ll also seed new content and enjoy other benefits, including my deep appreciation. I value support at all levels.
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