My self-care list! Part 2: Food Recipes!

Okay, folks, I’m here to continue after Part 1 with round 2 of self-care… FOOD! (+ some miscellaneous other ~self care~). Below I’ll share my favorite recipes & YouTube cooking channels/videos, & my current favorite non-perishable (bougie) food items that I’ve been ordering.

If you know me even the slightest bit, you know that I. LOVE. FOOD.

I love cooking! (though, ~cleaning~ is sadly *not* one of my favorite things…) So it’s no surprise that during shelter-in-place I’ve been cooking more (hooray for the disappearance of commute time! and having flexibility between meetings and such). For this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite recipes (generally and during the pandemic) and some of my recent favorite ingredients (like pastaaaaaa). Stay tuned for deliciously sumptuous pastas & really yummy asian food & an informative collection of YouTube videos.

***BIG CAVEAT: I’m kind of notorious for NOT following recipes to a T (you all can ask Kenji 😂) so I’ve probably only made about half of the things based on the actual recipe. That said, the real recipe’s probably better and I had a fine time eating everything I made lol, so you all should be just fine.)***

PASTA RECIPES

Ah, pasta. What to say about deliciously chewy (but obvi al dente) noodles? I’m thankful that I don’t have a true gluten allergy because I’d be really sad otherwise. Over the past couple months I’ve made a LOT of pasta, and have been switching it up more than usual (because at a certain point, even I recognize that eating *just* carbs is maybe not the best option when I have other choices).

Here’s my list of go-to pastas (all can be made with a bunch of substitutions and tweaks – it is pasta after all!):

• Garlic pasta (Aglio e olio) with an Asian twist – Marion’s Kitchen 🌟
• Fennel & Sausage Rigatoni – Ina Garten 🌟
• Shallot Pasta – Link is to NYT video, and here’s a slightly more helpful video from Dak & Ju. Great with a side of grilled asparagus.
• Saffron Pappardelle with Shrimp in Creamy Sauce🌟 – I don’t follow the recipe exactly but I essentially combined this with the shallot pasta base and used a frozen seafood mix instead of shrimp… it was amaze!
• Haven’t made it in a while, but I also love this really simple tomato & onion (or shallots!) & herbes de provence pasta I first encountered from my host mom in Paris! 🌟

My favorite discovery has probably been the beautifully simple, garlicky fusion pasta from YouTuber Marion‘s Kitchen. Her mom is Thai and she has a lot of Thai and other Asian (and fusion) recipe videos that I’ve LOVED watching/making during quarantine. She’s not afraid of butter, she’s not afraid of garlic, and she’s definitely afraid of spice! I love that recipe because it’s so simple and you can also substitute a bunch of things or add in additional things (e.g., olive oil instead of butter, adding veggies).

As noted above, I’ve also been cooking the viral Alison Roman shallot pasta. My verdict? It is indeed good………and also it’s not like as MIND BLOWING as I thought it was going to be? Idk lol. Especially if you’re used to having umami flavor in a bunch of things. That said, I absoLUTEly agree with her that it’s a *delicious* base to add to a whole bunch of things. I just used my most current batch up on another pasta, but I could see it being really yummy added to a pan of paella or something for extra oomph. Also many cookie points to her for using a whole tube/can of tomato paste, bc that “add 1 tbsp of tomato paste” awkward struggle in so many recipes is real, lol.

ALSO FRIENDS. I’ve been buying hella bougie pasta. It’s delicious though. I try to tell myself it’s ok bc at least I’m not buying essential ingredients that people actually need. The rustichella d’abruzzo ones are so gooooood. From MarketHall I have also splurged on Mariage Frères tea, some shmancy grapefruit marmalade, and…..cookies. Because one can never go wrong with cookies.

THAI RECIPES

Ugh. I could probably eat Thai food almost every day and be really happy. I probably don’t even know what real Thai food tastes like since I’ve never been to Thailand, but still. That FISH SAUCE UMAMI! That BIRDS EYE CHILI SPICE! That spice-y BASIL AROMA. Ugh. I JUST WANT ALL OF IT, OKAY!?!

Anyhoo. Here’s some I’ve been making. TBH the pad thai I made was an absolute fuckin’ fail, but I don’t fault the recipes (I was missing several key ingredients including the preserved radish, shrimp of any kind, and tofu lol). They do require more ingredients, so you might not be able to make these easily if you don’t have some standard (and non-standard) Asian groceries and sauces on hand!

• Tom Yum Soup – Mark Wiens or from Pailin’s Kitchen (note: i def cheat and use a store-bought paste, but I do buy fresh lemon grass and anything else I can find easily)
• Spicy Thai Basil & Chicken Fried Rice. 🌟Tomorrow I’m trying Marion’s recipe, which is about the same but slightly different from my usual Geefay mama & daughter recipe.
• Pad thai – After watching too many videos, I landed on this one from Pailin’s Kitchen. I definitely need to try it again with all the ingredients (laugh/cry). You could also watch Seonkyoung Longest‘s version.

VIETNAMESE RECIPES

I know Vietnamese food is so much more than pho but I could eat pho every day. I sadly still haven’t made it at home, but it’s on my list! In the meantime, I make the following few things every now and then (I think I’ve made them all since coronavirus started). I recommend searching a few videos and watching them to see what looks like the kind that YOU want to eat the most:

• Chả giò / nems / fried crispy imperial rolls 🌟: I LOVE THE CRISPY RICE PAPER. I will not make them with the other kind of wrappers. A few recipes to start your search: here (en français ici), here, here, and here. (These are the ones I referenced the most recent time I made them). My personal non-negotiables are the wrapper, a healthy mix of pork and shrimp mince, woodear mushrooms, the vermicelli, shallots/onion/carrot/potato, and mint and birds eye chilis for the accompaniment.
• Fresh rolls! Gỏi Cuốn See here for one example. I liked the sauce from Hungry Huy. 🌟
• Idk if this is really Vietnamese, so let’s put it under “vietnamese-inspired” — a quick caramelized ground meat w/ lemongrass stirfry from RecipeTinEats! Nagi has a BUNCH of really really great recipes. I’ve made several recipes from her site and once even made her tikka masala recipe and while the work put in was decidedly not worth it (lol), it was delicious! I’m probably making some version if this lemongrass stir fry in a few days (but with beef, bc that is what i have lol).

^Proof that I only make the things I like, and I like the same things over many years lol.

KOREAN RECIPES

OK who knew I had so much to say about food? Here’s my last list for today! My go-to recipes are ALL from Maangchi. Like, who doesn’t love her? She’s like your friend’s mom who’s super nice and makes delicious food and is always super energetic and nice to you lol.

• Soondubu jigae 🌟 is like my go-to almost always if I have tofu and zucchini on hand. (What’s really rude about this pandemic is ppl are out here buying my fave silken tofu and it’s really just inconvenient). She also has a more recent kimchi version. I love to add both thin pieces of pork and some frozen seafood. If I had kimchi I’d also add that. Getting the really soft Korean tofu for this soup is the best, but you’d get by just fine with the regular silken tofu in those rectangular plastic containers. (It’s what I usually use, except when I was in Philly and made my periodic pilgrimages to the H-Mart in the next town lol)
• Haven’t made this in a while, but kimchi bokkeumbap. So good. Such rice. Add a fried egg, it’ll make your life better.
• Cucumber side dish (oi-muchim). Delicious and so easy.

CHINESE RECIPES

Specifically, Sichuan cuisine! Love me some spicy stuff (but trying to cut back so trying to not be TOO spicy). Here are some recipes to try (I made both during shelter-in-place! I added too much peppercorn to the fish, but the wontons turned out great!)

• Sichuan chili wontons (I recommend using a bit less pork and adding some shrimp! probably not authentic, but tastes deliciousss). See Marion’s recipe and Cici’s recipe and SoupedUpRecipes for inspo. I ended up using like a half pound mix of ground pork and raw shrimp, 1 small clove garlic mashed/grated/finely chopped, 1 tbsp grated ginger, 1/4 tsp salt, white pepper, 1 tsp sesame oil, 2 tsp corn starch, and 2.5 tbsp chicken stock, and 3-4 tbsp of minced scallions, 1 tsp soy sauce. For the sauce, I used a tub of sichuan chili oil from Mala Market, soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar, and scallions + cilantro.
• Sichuan boiled fish! from Cici’s Asian Home Cooking channel. I’m hoping also to make the dry version from Chinese Healthy Cook here.