"asian food" news and stories

It's all about the crunch in this salad of fresh snow peas and baby carrots, tossed with an Asian-style dressing of rice-wine vinegar, ginger and sesame seeds. The same brilliantly colorful combination gets treated to a miso-tamari dressing in this recipe.

If the sweet snap of snow peas rings your bell, try Kitchen Daily contributor Adeena Sussman's snow-pea and tofu sauté with a buttery soy-vinegar glaze, a riff on Philippine-style adobo.

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Go fish! That's what blogger Julie of peekandeat did with her partner to celebrate an anniversary, taking off from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, into the Long Island Sound in search of black sea bass. The result, after a day spent with rod and reel, and a Chinese-inspired recipe from the Cooking Channel's Ching-He Huang, is black sea bass stuffed and topped with slivered ginger, scallions and shiitake mushrooms. Steamed with Shiaoxing rice wine, and served with a hot beer-and-ginger lime sauce, the bass was, Julie says, "soft and moist, its sweetness enhanced by the zesty, hoppy sauce."
Black sea bass is also a sustainable choice, which sweetens this meal even more.

Become a member of the Slashfood Flickr pool for a shot of having your photos featured in Feast Your Eyes.

Dotcomedy.com's Sean R. recently took a jaunt to Bangkok, Thailand. Being an avid carnivore, he took his camera on a long, languid lap around a market's sausage counter. Come and take a stroll with him, why don't you?


Seven Deadly Seans

Next - Midnight Sausage: Paris

I eat a lot of tofu, not because I'm vegan/vegetarian and have to eat some sort of protein, but because tofu tastes good to me. (My being Asian and eating tofu all my life might have something to do with this, too.)

Now, it is just way too easy to pick up several blocks of tofu from the market for ninety-nine cents each, sometimes less when it's on sale, but if you have some time on your hands, you can make tofu at home, per the above video above from Cool Hunting. All you need is 150 g of dried soybeans, calcium sulfate, and the foresight to start soaking the dried soybeans the night before.

There are certain things for which a recipe seems silly because it's more of a formula with variables rather than a specific set of ingredients and techniques -- a salad, sandwiches, casseroles, and in the case of Asian cuisine, fried rice. Fried rice is just something you throw together, pulling various ingredients from whatever choices you have in the fridge. You start with a base of leftover rice, then go from there. Meat? Pick one from what you have. Vegetables? Use whatever you have. Seasoning? Well, this one is a little tricky, but it always comes down to your personal preference. Jaden of food blog Steamy Kitchen always uses fish sauce, but I simply splash in some soy sauce, butter, and of course, my favorite hot sauce, sriracha.