I grew up in a humble household in the Richmond District of San Francisco. My brother and I had zero extracurricular activities growing up. Our family rarely went on vacation, and when we did, it was just to places locally around California, as far as Orange County. But one thing that we were never lacking in was food. Our fridge, freezer, and pantry were always extremely well stocked, full of ready-to-eat food like frozen dumplings or burritos, canned vegetables and fruit, as well as fresh food such as fresh vegetables, meat, and noodles. Because I grew up like this, I just thought this was normal. If my mom wanted to make something quickly for dinner with the raw ingredients on hand, she always had plenty of garlic, onions, tomatoes, or carrots already in the fridge, ready to go. If she wanted to make us a quick pasta sauce, she’d just thaw out ground turkey or beef from the freezer and make it. Chicken cutlets? No problem – she always had chicken breasts on hand that she’d quickly pound, along with bread crumbs to coat the chicken pieces in. There were never too many eggs at home. We had all the usual condiments like mustard, ketchup, maple syrup, soy sauce, fish sauce, oyster sauce, etc., to make dishes from Western cuisines or different Asian cuisines. In many ways when I look back, our kitchen was like the land of plenty.

That’s why it was strange to me when I started making friends, and I’d go to their houses and see them open the fridge, and there would barely be a bottle of ketchup or water in there. Their freezers would be empty, except for maybe a box of popsicles or a bag of Hot Pockets. When the question of “what are we going to eat for dinner?” came up, the parents would scramble and get takeout, or just have everyone eat something like Kraft macaroni and cheese. I wasn’t sure if it was a money problem or a “preparedness” issue, but either way, it seemed depressing to me even back then.

I suppose I took that with me as an adult living on my own. When I started building out my pantry and kitchen staples, I’d buy more than what I’d need immediately and get more things for future uses. If I was at a Chinese grocery store, I’d buy the fresh noodles I’d make that night and also add a few more packs to my shopping basket to store in my freezer for future noodle dishes. For spice staples like cumin or turmeric, I’d get enough so that it would last me indefinitely. For frozen vegetables, well, you can never have enough of these, so I’d always get several pounds. For canned goods like tomatoes and coconut milk, these are forever on my shelf, and I get a bit uncomfortable when there’s only one more can left. This way, on the fly, I could make what I wanted to make and not worry about having to rush out to the store just to pick up one or two things for dinner. I could have a ready made meal on the table out of “pantry staples” in just 30-60 minutes.

I realize not everyone has the ability to buy enough to have a fully stocked pantry at any one time because not everyone is as lucky as I am to have the money to do this. Some people live paycheck to paycheck and cannot afford to “stock up.” But for those of us who can, it definitely pays off in the long run, in terms of sanity, preparation, and your stomach, to do this. Most of my friends, as I’m learning during this pandemic, have very little “staples” at home, and instead use their freezers completely as storage for ready-to-eat things like dumplings, enchiladas, etc., that they may not want to eat every single day during the shelter-in-place orders. They get bored. They want variety. And there’s nothing wrong with that — we should be eating varied diets regardless of whether we’re in a pandemic or not. Their pantries are mostly snacks like chips, pretzels, cookies. There’s not enough raw ingredients to do any real cooking with.

We’re well stocked because that’s all I’ve ever been fortunate enough to know and experience. I’d like to think that this pandemic would force people to be smarter and more prepared in terms of ensuring household and kitchen staples are plentiful if they can afford it and have the space. It’s annoying to have to run out to the store just for one or two ingredients, and it’s especially annoying during this time when we should be limiting our time outside our homes to keep ourselves and others safe. But wouldn’t that be annoying, too, even not in a pandemic?

Years ago, I attempted mango lassi a number of times, and I always grew frustrated when it never came out quite right. I used ripe mangoes, frozen mangoes. I used whole milk yogurt and low fat yogurt. I added more sugar. Nothing seemed to do the trick. Then, I realized the error of my ways and came to these conclusions:

1. Use the ripest, orangest flesh mangoes you can find. The riper, sweeter, and juicier they are, the more ideal they will be for mango lassi.
2. Whole milk yogurt – Indian/Pakistani/desi-style if you can find it. The thicker and creamier, the better. DO NOT USE LOWFAT OR NONFAT. JUST DON’T DO IT.
3. Whole milk – cow’s milk is best, but macadamia or soy work, too, as long as they are very creamy in texture.
4. Sugar – this is really only necessary if your mangoes are not at ultimate sweetness. Golden syrup works amazingly well, too!
5. Proportions are key here: 1 part ripe cut up mango to 1 part full-fat/full cream desi yogurt. Just a splash of milk, a handful of ice, and enough sugar/golden syrup to taste. The mistake I used to make was doing equal parts mango to milk, then adding yogurt. DO NOT DO THIS. The creamy, thick texture is key, and that’s where the yogurt comes in.

The idea of baking tofu seemed like a very weird western adaptation of making tofu when I first heard of it. Tofu is meant to be fried, steamed, braised, or stir-fried. Who in the continent of Asia BAKES tofu? That just seemed quite blasphemous to me.

In the last year, I warmed up to it given I do not love deep frying anything, but I do love the crispiness that results from a good deep-fry. Deep frying oftentimes results in a lot of mess, lots to clean up (no one likes cleaning, even anal retentive cleaners such as myself), and the amount of oil required always seem so wasteful. So I thought I’d try baking tofu to get a “like fried” result to see how it turned out.

I took two blocks of tofu today and cut them into thin slabs, then took two cutting boards wrapped in tea towels and sandwiched the tofu between. Then, I placed my Dutch oven as a heavy weight on top of the sandwich to press out the excess liquid from the tofu. A couple hours later, I removed the tofu, cut them into small rectangles, tossed them with a little olive oil, cornstarch, salt and pepper, and laid them all out flat on a baking sheet and baked them for 15 minutes at 300 F. I removed them from the oven, flipped them all over, and baked them again for 20 minutes. The result was golden, crispy little rectangles that would easily soak in any stir-fry sauce, without the need for a ton of oil that I’d eventually throw out. I used only a tablespoon of oil for 1.5 pounds of tofu with the same result as deep frying.

I was pretty happy with myself, and after I posted it on Instagram, I realized others were impressed by this, too, and wanted to try this out. Baking tofu could be the next thing we all do to keep tofu tasty *and* healthy.

Since I was young, I’ve always loved pancakes. We didn’t have them that often growing up, but when we did, they were always on the weekend, and they were such a fun treat. Most of the time, we had the crappy fake syrup, but in high school, my dad started buying real maple syrup (from Costco, because where else are you going to get a “good deal” on that liquid gold, which is priced as such since it’s so extremely laborious to make?!), and that was a true dream in the mouth.

As an adult, I’ve experimented with all kinds of different pancake recipes, whether it’s with separating the egg whites from the yolks and whipping the whites to stiff peaks, buttermilk vs. milk, vegan “milks” vs. cow milk, brown rice flour/whole wheat flour/all purpose flour/cake flour combinations, corn meal for extra texture, banana or pumpkin bases — you name it, and I’ve probably tried it out. This morning, I used my dormant sourdough starter to make sourdough whole wheat buttermilk pancakes, and the amount of tang from the buttermilk plus the sourdough starter was truly delicious. When using whole grains like brown rice or whole wheat, I usually do a ratio of 50/50 all-purpose to the whole grain, but this time, I thought, what the heck — we need to be eating more whole grains than processed grains, and I figured that the buttermilk and all-purpose flour-based starter would mellow it out. And they really did.

But I had one pancake failure, though. I used Smitten Kitchen’s fluffy buttermilk pancake recipe and replaced all the all-purpose flour with brown rice flour after the brown rice flour did well with the 50/50 ratio the week before. The texture and taste…. left something to be desired. It was gritty, almost bitter, and I couldn’t figure out why. It was essentially a whole grain rice pancake. Maybe the brown rice didn’t interact well with the buttermilk. It was the very first time I made something when Chris took one bite, grimaced, and immediately said, “this is disgusting.”

#testandlearn