use real butter

I’ve been busy this weekend with visitors. My aunt (one of my dearest friends) and her family are staying with us. They’re in the Denver area for some business and I am delighted to have our first guests in many many months. It is the first time I have seen her since my diagnosis and we had a tearful, heartfelt reunion on the sidewalk outside of Sushi Tora in Boulder. Yes, we had sushi. She is as much a sushi whore as I am (we are related, mind you).

So I wasn’t able to get online until late last night when to my delight, I learned that beloved Chuck of Sunday Nite Dinner has revved up Food Gawker, a budding replacement for Tastespotting. Good on ya, Chuck, and thank you thank you thank you for stepping up to the plate. A lesser cook could not have done this so quickly, so elegantly. You are superfly, babe.

Now, I have to be quick with this recipe because I need to make brekkie shortly and I am still managing random and annoying side effects (yes, they linger long after chemo - stupid chemo…).

I chose my partner well, this is obvious. Jeremy is never a cause for strife or stress in my life - he always makes everything better. But you can’t be guaranteed the same for your partner’s family. Luckily, my in-laws are incredibly sweet and loving people who treat me as if I were their own daughter. And they love to cook! Every time I see them, MIL and I always wind up exchanging recipes and sharing new dishes. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years and some of my favorite recipes come from the early days.

pasta, chicken, sun-dried toms, pesto, parm, roasted peppers, garlic, pine nuts

A lovely pasta dish that my ILs served us years ago had such fresh and delightful flavors that I had to have the recipe. It is incredibly simple to throw together, incredibly satisfying to eat. They didn’t have a name for it, really - so I dubbed it Darling Pasta. Did I mention everything about Jeremy’s family is just Darling? It’s true - and it’s their surname!

sauté chicken with garlic and oil

While this isn’t a cold pasta to cool off with (sorry, my East Coast friends who are sitting in the heat), it is perfect for any season and I make it year-round. I’ve used rotini of various flavors/colors and cheese tortellini for this dish, but it is flexible - very flexible. Often, we will make the pasta without the chicken for lighter, vegetarian option.

add sun-dried tomatoes and roasted peppers

Many of the ingredients are easy to come by at the supermarket today (this wasn’t always so a decade ago in Ithaca, New York). Of course, the purists can roast their own peppers, dry their own tomatoes, make their own pasta, and make their own pesto. It’s whatever you want to make of it. Considering this is on my list of quick meals, you can hazard a guess as to how I prepare it.

smell the love - add the pesto

Darling Pasta is terrific with a salad and bread, or served as a side pasta at a potluck, or as a one-bowl meal as we hunker down to watch a streaming episode of BSG (Battlestar Galactica, for those unfortunate souls not in the know).

colorful, flavorful, beautiful

Darling Pasta
1/2 lb. chicken breast, diced
1 lb. rotini or cheese tortellini, cooked
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup sundried tomatoes, rehydrated and cut into strips
1 cup roasted red peppers, diced
1 cup pesto
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 tbsp vegetable oil
parmesan, grated

Heat oil over high heat in a large sauté pan. Add garlic when oil is hot and stir until fragrant. Add the chicken and sauté until just cooked. Stir in the tomatoes and peppers. Mix in the pesto and pine nuts. Toss the drained pasta into the pan and stir together. Remove from heat and serve with grated parmesan.

I’ve received a lot of requests lately for foods I’ve posted pictures of without corresponding recipes. I will get on those in due time. There just happens to be a huge backlog of recipes I need to post and I’m cranking them out daily (have you noticed?) because I have another chemo on the horizon. But it’s my last frakking one! Can I get a w00t! ?? Hell Effingham yeah, people.

So just sit tight and keep your pants on.

I know some folks get that sour-lemon look on their face when they hear the word tofu. Those people can stick it. If you know how to prepare tofu properly it is teh delish. And yes, I know how to prepare it properly. I’m Chinese after all, and I wield a big knife.

tofu, green onions, preserved mustard green, pork floss

I spent my fair share of childhood summer days sweating my brains out running around like a maniac in the sweltering and oppressive Virginia heat. On occasion I’d come inside on weekends and find my dad preparing a refreshing lunch of cold, silken tofu tossed with loads of goodies. I’ve never had this in Chinese restaurants, so I am just assuming it’s my dad’s concoction. Either way, I loved it. Like Diane, I too am a salt girl rather than a sweets girl. Salt grrls rule. I just call it cold tofu, but I suppose it’s really cold tofu salad or some such thing.

on the left: pork floss, on the right: preserved mustard green

I’m posting the packaging for the less common ingredients because if you’re anything like me, you can’t read Chinese and you may not know how to find these things in an Asian market. Sometimes I have to ask the lady who runs our local Asian market in Boulder and she shouts at me (that’s her only volume though, it’s not that she hates me - she actually likes me). I’m trying to save you guys from the shouting.

diced silken

minced green onions

minced preserved mustard green

I always use silken tofu in this dish as the firm stuff just has the wrong texture. The preserved mustard green is a salty, crunchy sort of pickled vegetable. Pork sung (pork floss) is really finely shredded dried pork with a sweetish flavor to it. I like to eat the pork sung with congee (rice porridge) and loads of chili radishes and any other spicy vegetables. Love the spicy. Give it to me.

sprinkle the vegetables over the tofu

Cold tofu salad is a totally simple recipe. Top the tofu cubes with the minced onions and mustard green. Pour a little sesame oil for flavor (use chili oil if you’re my dad) and some soy sauce. Sprinkle the pork sung on last or else it becomes a matted mess that soaks up the soy sauce and becomes unbearably salty.

top it off with soy sauce

Now, for the more daring eaters, you can add some diced thousand year egg. If you’re not familiar with this preserved duck egg, don’t freak out. It’s not really a thousand years old. It has been preserved in a mixture of ash, salt, lime, and other stuff which raises the pH and transforms the sucker into this:

you were expecting?

My dad loves to dice this up and add it to the cold tofu salad. I am not such a fan of the egg and I’ve given it several chances, believe you me! I’ll list this as optional. I opt out and enjoy my refreshing salad sans green and black stinky egg.

great in the heat of summer

Cold Tofu Salad

8 oz silken tofu, diced into 1 inch cubes
2 stalks green onions, minced
2 tbsp preserved mustard green, minced
2 tbsp pork sung
1 tsp sesame oil
1-2 tbsp soy sauce
1 thousand year duck egg (optional)

Combine ingredients and serve cold.

What does the passage of a year mean? We read so much into the Earth’s completion of her tiny path around the Sun. A way to mark Time because it doesn’t stop for anyone. I never stopped to think much about how we recognize these temporal ticks and why. Not much until my sister died - out of the blue, just like that. No time for good-byes, I-love-yous, what-do-you-want-us-to-dos. That sick and empty feeling sucking the breath out of me every time I came up for air. Stepping out into the night thinking she’d emerge from the darkness and tell me it was a mistake. A terrible mistake, please. Numb mind. Racing heart, aching heart… broken heart.

Not 24 hours earlier, a blanket for Ben? Sure, I could knit one for him. He may tell you his favorite color is pink, but it’s really green - you know, four-year olds. So glad she loved the blanket I knit for Emily. Only 10 days and already full of piss and vinegar, just like me, just like her mom. Love you. Love you too. Our last words to one another.

Just like that.

kris and me

Rummaging through old letters, old photos, I begged with my self from the past. Please, didn’t you take more? Didn’t you write more? Where are they… Why didn’t you save those thousands of emails? Because I always thought she’d be there. She told me it would always be us. I was grasping desperately to hold on to what was left, even though I knew I had what was most important already - in my head, in my heart. I would bring only what I could carry.

Four times around the Sun - I’ve gone in circles. May 1. That pain is still there if I want it, but I leave it be. I hold on to what keeps me going and what made her so dear to me: my best friend, my only sister. Laughter, snarky remarks, hugs, kisses, tears, practical jokes, heart-to-heart talks, phone calls, emails, visits, surprises, gifts, inside jokes, hopes and fears, plans for the future. Don’t mourn. Celebrate.

organic, ripe strawberries

Cooking is big in my family, yet somehow it skipped Kris. Surprisingly, her petite size 0 (yeah, you read that right) body could put away a lot of food - and good food at that. Whenever I visited Kris, I would cook for her and she would treat me to things we both loved to eat. I think she would have enjoyed these strawberries. I know she would have.

drying

For me, the most important part of the recipe is getting your hands on ripe strawberries, and you can only do that in season. I find that organic is far sweeter and more fragrant than conventional and this time they happened to cost the same. I gently wash the berries and then blot them and set them to dry completely. That’s pretty easy to do where I live as the humidity was somewhere around 50%.

64% Valrhona

If your berries are sweet, then a good bittersweet chocolate will play on that sweetness nicely. The Valrhona I used was just sweet enough. I think overly sweet chocolate kills the strawberry. I don’t bother tempering the chocolate when dipping strawberries because there are too many factors that don’t make it worth it for me.

dipping

I let the strawberries set up on their tops after dipping, because I dislike the foot you get when you set them on their sides to dry. This is probably one of the more aggravating steps - trying to balance the berries on their tops while wet with chocolate. They tend to tumble about and run into one another and smear chocolate everywhere. Maddening, I tell you.

steady…

Once the chocolate has set up in a cool room, I either dip in a different chocolate or do something lazy like drizzle white chocolate. I personally dislike white chocolate, but I find that a little bit adds a hint of sweetness to the shell of bittersweet on the strawberry.

adding visual and flavor contrast

Jeremy tells me the strawberries are perfection. I did take a nibble, despite knowing I wouldn’t be able to taste the full range of flavors because of the chemo. It’s like playing piano with mittens on your hands. However, the berries smelled right and I knew what the chocolate tasted like when I was healthy… Beethoven composed even when he was deaf. Of course, he was a genius and I’m just a tool ;)

to celebrate

Chocolate-Dipped Strawberries

24 ripe strawberries (I prefer organic)
8 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (used Valrhona 64%)
1 oz white chocolate, chopped

Rinse strawberries and gently pat dry. Set on a rack to dry completely. Melt bittersweet chocolate in a double boiler. Dip strawberries in chocolate and shake off excess. Set to dry on a rack (on the tops as shown in the photos) or on parchment (on the bottoms which will give you a foot of chocolate) in a cool, dry location. When chocolate has dried, melt the white chocolate and drizzle over the strawberries. Or, you can melt more white chocolate and dip the strawberries a second time.