Category Archives: Cooking

Manhattan Chinatown in the morning: when everything comes alive, and you tiao can be discovered made fresh

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I dropped Kaia off at school this morning since I had a 5pm work call that I couldn’t get out of, so Chris picked her up today. Since it’s technically winter break in New York City this week, kids who are opted in (and paying for) after-school hours can still attend school this week, just that the hours are slightly shorter. Drop-off this week is at 9am (instead of 8:30), and pickup can be no later than 5pm (it’s usually 6pm, but I usually try to pick up between 5-5:10).

Chris has said he prefers doing morning drop off and has gotten into a routine of it. When I have suggested in the past that he could make use of that morning drop off time by buying some groceries and baked goods, he’s brushed it off, insisting he doesn’t have time and has a pseudo morning work schedule he has to adhere to. To be fair, he doesn’t really care to explore different shops in Chinatown the way I do, so it’s better that I do these things during the occasional times I do morning drop off. Like any decent sized Chinatown, the real life and energy starts early in the morning, when all the produce and meats are getting delivered, when all the bakeries are churning out all their buns and breads and sweets fresh. The really good bakeries open as early as 8am; the shops tend to open around 9. This is the best time to come down here and buy all the freshly made staples for cooking Chinese food at home, such as freshly churned out and steaming hot rice noodles, fresh pressed tofu in endless forms, seitan, and soy milk. By the time I come between 4:30-5pm for school pickup, most of the best stuff has already sold out completely, or they’ve been sitting there, waiting to be purchased all day.

This morning, we arrived in Chinatown a bit early, so I decided to take Kaia into one of my favorite fresh food shops to pick up some things for cooking in the next week. This brought us to Kong Kee Food Corp, which is just a block over from her school. I discovered this spot maybe 10-ish years ago: they make fresh tofu and seitan in endless forms, as well as fresh rice noodles, herbal tea, and soy milk. They distribute to a lot of local supermarkets and restaurants. If you come early in the morning, they have stir fried noodles and rice noodle soup for breakfast that you can carry out. When we arrived, there were already some older ladies who were coming in to purchase breakfast noodles to go. A worker in the back was sitting at a table hand cutting noodles in bulk. Kaia curiously wandered around, looking at all the items in the glass cases and peering up at the female workers. She started giggling when one of them gave her attention; the woman behind the counter was so besotted by her that she took a package of fruit snacks and dangled them out as a gift for her. “So cute!” the woman kept exclaiming.

When I come in to Kong Kee, the items I get the most often are the pressed and five-spiced pressed tofu. I have also previously purchased and enjoyed their fresh rice noodles, which are cut thinly almost like pho noodles, thicker like ho fun/he fun (chow fun noodles), and also in huge sheets for large rice noodle rolls. I’ve also gotten their seitan and enjoyed it. This time, I purchased some seitan (kao fu), five spice pressed tofu as repeat buys. For new items to try, I finally got two sticks of you tiao (the Chinese donut crullers I wanted for jook at home), as morning is the best time to buy these sticks. I also chose a large container of their soy milk. They added some sugar at my request.

Well, according to the Shanghai saying, I already purchased two of the four warriors for Shanghainese breakfast – “四大金刚” Sìdà Jīngāng. The classic Shanghainese brekkie, heavy on the carbs of course, would be these four items: you tiao / Chinese donut stick, ci fan (pressed rice roll), shao bing (Shanghainese flat flaky sesame pancake), and fresh hot soy milk. I can’t wait to have my you tiao later! It’s the first time I’ve ever purchased these sticks whole anywhere in New York City!

When I look at whole long you tiao sticks in Chinese bakeries and food shops, I am reminded of the time shortly after my grandma passed when my mom made a big pot of jook. It was always a treat when we’d have jook at home and also have you tiao to dip into it. The textural contrast between the crisp chewiness of the you tiao against the soft creaminess of the jook was always so comforting and satisfying. My grandma would occasionally buy a bag of these freshly fried sticks from a local bakery, and when we’d have jook at the table, it would be a happy surprise when she’d lay out a plate of the you tiao, already neatly cut into bite sized pieces for us to dunk into our jook bowls. But it was always my grandma who bought them; we never knew what they were even called in Chinese then, and we didn’t know which bakeries to buy them from.

So one day, my mom was determined to resolve this issue. She said we would go out together searching and would find those donut sticks! My mom and I wandered around Clement Street (like San Francisco Richmond District’s mini Chinatown) and went bakery to bakery, peering in to see if anyone sold them. We used our broken Toisan to ask around, but we kept getting negative responses; none of these places made this donut stick. Finally, we got to a bakery off of 6th avenue that had them way in the back, in a big metal bin, all standing upright and tall, waiting to be purchased. We pointed passed the cashier guy and motioned towards the you tiao, and they got excited to have helped us solve our mystery of what it was that we were looking for. In Mandarin, you tiao are literally called “oil sticks/strips,” while in Cantonese, they are known as “oil fried ghosts” or yàuhjagwái. Since then, I’ve never forgotten the name of them. And since then, I’ve also learned that these delicious fried Chinese donut sticks are eaten not just with jook/congee, but also wrapped in fresh rice noodle rolls (a dim sum delight), tucked into Shanghainese shao bing pancakes, and simply ducked into hot soy milk and eaten.

Memories with food are usually the happiest memories from my childhood, but I don’t think that’s unique to me based on all the childhood stories I’ve heard over the years.

The worst cooking class I’ve ever been to

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For Christmas, Chris gifted me a South African cooking class at a cooking school in the Lower East Side. I attended the class on Saturday night, and unexpectedly didn’t arrive home until midnight. When he asked me how the class was the next morning, I told him that while I love him, to please never, ever get me another cooking class at this school ever again.

The class was over capacity, lacked a proper kitchen setup, was cramped and borderline claustrophobic (22 students, two teachers, a bartender, two photographers, and an assistant in a tiny basement room), completely lacked instruction or teaching of any technique or background of any recipe, was disorganized in that the ingredients were not laid out well or explained; the class started over 35 min late. 

For some details on what happened in this class: 

1. The class was over capacity in a cramped, tight space that is certainly not meant for a cooking class: The class was in a small room in Abigail’s Kitchen’s (a restaurant) basement. It had a bar setting, so I’d imagine the room is usually used for small private parties. The class was basically in this small room with several long tables set up where class participants were meant to gather, eight at each table. They somehow managed to cram 22 people (there were 24 people who originally signed up, and 2 didn’t show) into this tiny space. Abby and Lorna (the guest chef/teacher who is from South Africa) kept emphasizing over and over that the class would be “cozy.” “Cozy” is simply real-estate code-speak for a crammed and extremely tight space. 

2. No instruction or technique was taught. We were told the names of dishes, but not their cultural significance or any special techniques on how to make them. We were simply told to follow the recipe, and the chefs would walk around, observe, and give feedback. Copies of recipes were not distributed. Instead, each table got the equivalent of 2-3 parts of the different recipes. We all had to look over each other’s shoulders just to see how much of a single ingredient to measure out. In my pair (I randomly paired up with someone standing next to me), we worked on the yeasted dough for the South African donuts. Lorna kept telling us that the dough was too dry, while Abby told us it was just right. We had no direction on the recipe card and conflicting messages from both of them about what the dough should be like. 

3. There’s no kitchen setup here, and ingredients/materials were disorganized. The space had some makeshift stove setups and random kitchen items laid out. You aren’t able to see the items go into the oven and be taken out as a result. You aren’t able to do a part of every recipe, either. Because I worked on the yeasted donut dough, I had a LOT of time where I was simply observing other students try to figure out their recipes and how to execute on them. When I needed something basic like black pepper, I had to hunt for it. When I asked Abby, she simply responded that it was where “all the other spices” were laid out, but this actually wasn’t the case. 

4. The class does not start on time AT ALL, and it ends LATE. The official start time is 7pm. Most cooking schools are prompt and start on the dot. This cooking class started at 7:35pm. We didn’t get served dinner until 10:15, and dessert did not come out until past 11. We were all starving. 

The one highlight of this class: unlike every other cooking class I’ve ever done, alcohol (beer and wine) were included and unlimited. This is pretty unheard of. So, it was no wonder that people were getting sloshed in this class. My donut yeast dough partner was already on his fourth beer before we started mixing our dough. People were visibly tipsy. I’m pretty certain repeat students of Abigail’s Kitchen come simply for the wine overflowing. 

There are a number of great cooking schools with proper cooking school setups throughout Manhattan, along with real instruction and background on recipe given. This is not one of them. Here, you won’t learn technique or any new skills. But, you will leave with lots of alcohol in your belly. That may be a fun night out with some food and lots of booze, but that doesn’t really make for a proper “cooking class” where you actually leave and can say you really learned something.

Cooking with chayote, aka choko aka su su

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For the longest time, I’d walk into Asian and Latin supermarkets and notice this slightly wrinkly, green pear-shaped vegetable that I had no idea what to do with. It kind of looks like a gourd, maybe a squash, and potentially like a not so pretty fruit. In markets, they’d be labeled as “chayote,” so it sounded like it came from Mexico or another part of Latin America. Based on what I’ve read, chayote, also known as choko or “su su” in Vietnamese, origins in southern Mexico and Honduras, and is technically a vegetable in the gourd family. It’s used the same way summer squash is used; it’s lightly cooked to retain a slightly crisp but soft consistency. The gourd is high in fiber and also contains folate, magnesium, and vitamin C. It’s also supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties and be good for gut health.

I got inspired to buy and cook with it after Chris got me a copy of Thanh Truong’s (aka the Fruit Nerd!) book called Don’t Buy Fruit and Veg Without Me! The Fruit Nerd is Vietnamese Australian, and his book has a number of family recipes that have a Vietnamese twist. One of them is stir-fried choko, which is simply chayote sliced up and stir-fried with some garlic, shallots, and a bit of fish sauce. I bought these from Hong Kong Supermarket on Friday and stir-fried them today with Kaia. And I actually enjoyed them! It’s sort of like a cross between a cucumber and a summer squash, with a hint of sweetness similar to an apple. It’s a nice, versatile vegetable to add into our rotation and increase the diversity of plants being added to our diet. I just wish I had discovered this vegetable sooner!

Lunar New Year’s lunch party – lots of food, and lots of people at our place today

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Chris used to have this arbitrary “six person maximum” policy when we would host friends over for meals in the past. I decided to do away with this and basically invited all my friends I could think of to our Lunar New Year party today. I invited 14 people to our place today; two were out of town, one had a baby shower, and one had to work, so in the end, we had 10 guests plus the three of us. This is the most number of people we’ve ever had in our place at a single time.

“It’s going to be a zoo!” Chris grumbled the night before.

This was what I made and served:

Starters:

Luo bo gao – Pan-fried Chinese turnip cake slices

Goi cuon – Garlic shrimp summer rolls with Vietnamese herbs, dipped in nuoc cham

Nem nuong cuon – Nha Trang-style pork paste sausage summer rolls with Vietnamese herbs, dipped in peanut-hoisin sauce

Mains:

Burmese tea leaf salad

Thit kho – Vietnamese braised pork ribs and eggs in coconut water, with a side of pickled carrot and daikon

Chinese whole steamed black sea bass with fermented black beans and garlic

Nuo mi fan – Chinese sticky rice

Yi mian – Longevity noodles with carrot, bell peppers, chives, and king oyster/shiitake mushrooms

Stir-fried garlicky gai lan

Desserts:

Hei zhi ma tang yuan – Glutinous rice balls filled with sweet black sesame served in a brown sugar-ginger soup

Black sesame-swirled ube nian gao / Chinese New Year sticky rice cake

Chinese almond cookies

Other than the cha siu in the sticky rice, I made everything myself, from scratch. It was an endeavor, but I loved every minute of it!

It was boisterous, chaotic, loud, and lots of fun with lots of food, people, and laughter. Kaia had her little friend over to play and run around with. Everyone had plenty of savory and sweet food. I was shocked repeatedly when I found out how much people enjoyed dishes like my black sesame tang yuan; even people like my friend’s husband, who usually scoffs at Asian sweets for being “not too sweet” (“Desserts are supposed to be ‘too sweet’; it’s DESSERT!” he exclaimed). I had people who either don’t eat dessert or don’t eat Asian desserts ask for seconds and even thirds. In the end, I had to boil a second batch of tang yuan! I thought I’d have a ton of frozen tang yuan left over, but I actually only have about six or seven left.

I love preparing food for my people. I spent the last week cooking and preparing food for this. I devised my menu about a month ago with my list of ingredients and action plan. And I loved hearing the comments people made, which included:

“This shit is terrible (referring to my black sesame tang yuan), but if you have more of this shit, can I have some more, please?”

“I don’t normally like desserts, but these (black sesame tang yuan) are incredible. Can I have some more? (Then, when asked how many more): “How many more do you have ready?”

“This sticky rice is so good. It’s like being at dim sum, but even better because yours is packed with all the good stuff!”

“These almond cookies are so addictive! Could you share the recipe?”

“The sea bass was so good! It tasted like the steamed fish I had with black beans in Flushing when I went!”

“I just couldn’t stop eating! I can’t even decide what I liked best!”

“If I ate any more, I definitely would have regretted it. It was like being at a restaurant!”

It was a smart move to get disposable paper plates; it made cleanup so much easier. At the end of the night, the dishwasher was mostly filled with utensils, small serving bowls, and glasses. Now, I’m wondering when the next time will be when I can host another meal at home…

Modern version of Chinese New Year (sticky rice) cake – 年糕

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For Chinese New Year since I started living on my own, I would make traditional brown sugar based nian gao or 年糕. It’s an extremely plain cake, with only three main ingredients: glutinous rice flour, brown sugar, and water. You mix it into a thick dough, shape it into a round cake pan, and steam it for an hour. The cake it topped with some white sesame seeds and red dates for presentation. Then, you cut the cake Chinese style into rectangular slices, dip in egg, and then pan fry it. The egg and pan frying make this dish tasty. Everything else always feel like eating carbs and sugar for the sake of it. In the beginning, I made it for nostalgia. But I gradually realized that I didn’t really care for this dish at all and needed to change it up so that it was appropriate to my tastes today.

I had leftover black sesame paste from my black sesame glutinous rice balls I made earlier this week (which are currently in the freezer waiting for my party tomorrow). I also knew I wanted to use ube since I had just less than a pound of frozen grated ube waiting to be used in my freezer. I kept thinking about black sesame swirled into ube for a new version of nian gao, and I figured this would be a good time to try and make it happen. A purple cake with a black swirl sounded very aesthetically pleasing in my head, and a bit unique even. So I thawed the ube out, mixed it into a batter of glutinous rice flour, eggs, white sugar, coconut milk, oil, and a little vanilla extract. This is probably the first time I was truly winging a recipe and hoped for the best. I swirled some black sesame paste on the top with the tip of a chopstick and then put it into a loaf pan in the oven for about 45 minutes. And out came this black oozy purple cake that ended up being quite addictive. The texture was soft and squishy. The black sesame was messy, but it really did complement the cake. Even though it wasn’t the prettiest thing once sliced, I think it’s still good to serve for tomorrow.

Next time, I am considering keeping the ube cake base the same, but perhaps mixing the black sesame with cream cheese so that it becomes a version of black sesame cheescake ube New Year’s cake! That will be real fusion right there!

Lo bak go / luo bo gao / 萝卜糕 Chinese turnip cake transition from taro cake 芋頭糕

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For many years once I started living on my own, and as an ode to my paternal grandma, I would make a whole yu tou gao 芋頭糕 or Chinese savory taro cake around Lunar New Year. Since I was very young, I always loved taro. I also have fond memories of my grandma making it around Chinese New Year every year. She would fill her savory taro cake with generous amounts of Chinese sausage, shiitake mushrooms, dried shrimp and scallops, then steam them and top them with scallions and cilantro. Unfortunately, having lived with just one roommate, and then one partner and now husband, we could never get through the cake in time before it would start drying out and feeling very dense. Taro is a very starchy root vegetable, and as such, once you cook it, it doesn’t really retain too much water. And after it’s cooked and you let it sit there, every day that goes by means more moisture loss, resulting in a dryer and denser cake. My grandma also made luo bo gao 萝卜糕 or Chinese turnip cake, but not as often as taro, likely because she preferred the taro one herself. One year, I told Chris that I was going to make the turnip cake. This is a bit misleading because no turnips are in the cake; the base of the cake is radish, usually daikon, which is high in water content. He didn’t seem too enthused by it… until after the cake was steamed and he had some pan-fried slices. He declared that it was much lighter than the taro one, predictably. And given the radish has more water in it, it also didn’t dry out after day 4 or 5 the way the taro cake did. So from that point forward, I started making the turnip cake more often or alongside the taro cake. And so it stuck.

I spent some time this morning grating and cooking the daikon, folding it into my rice flour batter with all the generous fillings. It steamed on the stove for an hour. And as usual, it was a beauty, one that I will be sharing with 13 other hungry people on Sunday when we host our Lunar New Year lunch.

Using the Chinese butcher at my usual Asian supermarket

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I’m not sure why in previous years I never really considered using the butchers at Hong Kong Supermarket. I had previously purchased meat from Asian markets in Elmhurst Chinatown and Flushing, but I’ve probably only done it in Manhattan Chinatown once or twice ever. Every year around Lunar New Year the last number of years, I’ve gotten into experimenting more with Vietnamese Tet Lunar New Year dishes, as I never grew up with them and only had Chinese dishes for the New Year. One dish that I’ve really loved and that Chris, Kaia, and every friend I’ve introduced this to has loved has been thit kho, or Vietnamese braised pork ribs with eggs. It’s delicious for a number of reasons: it’s rich and comforting because of the pork. It’s traditionally made with pork belly, but because our family loves meat on the bone, and ribs are frankly leaner than belly (when we have pork belly, we prefer it crispy), in the last several years, I’ve made it with pork ribs. It has this really deep sweet-savoriness from the pairing of fish sauce with 1) caramelized sugar syrup and 2) coconut water and its pulp. And once you throw in the copious amounts of browned garlic and onions, plus some whole hard boiled eggs for braising, it’s like comfort in a bowl.

The last couple years when I’ve made this dish, I either used large pork ribs from Butcher Box or Whole Foods. The issue with Butcher Box is that they send you a full rack, but there’s no way to customize how you want the ribs cut. Clearly, I don’t have the tools for cutting through a rib bone at home, so that’s out. At Whole Foods, you can ask them to cut a rack of ribs through the bone once maximum, and then, you’re on your own. You want the ribs all separated? Well, you can do that yourself at home! Ideally, I want the pork ribs to be cut bite sized the way they are in Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants; that means they need to be cut through the bone several times. That’s a lot of labor and equipment on the butcher’s part, and most places won’t do this for you. So when I went to the meat counter at Hong Kong Supermarket, my regular spot in Manhattan Chinatown, they already had what they call “jin sha gu” (literally, in Chinese, this means “gold sand bone”), racks of ribs that were only about 2 inches thick. This was perfect. I asked the butcher if he could cut between the bones so that the pieces were 1-2 inches, and he immediately agreed, measured out the four pounds I requested, and went to work. No fuss, no objections. He already had a rack that was close to what I wanted, and then he further customized it so that it would be ready for me to literally just throw into my pot for cooking. When you go to an Asian butcher, there’s an understanding of what you want and why; there’s no reason to explain what you are trying to do.

I’m definitely going back to buy more meat in the future now. I’m just regretting it took me this long to “discover” them as an option even though I frequent this market at least 1-2 times per week.

Cooking traditions in families

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My paternal grandma was an amazing cook. Like many women of her generation, she cooked simply by feel, taste, and approximation. She never measured out anything, unless you counted pouring things into rice bowls as “measuring.” She made endless Cantonese delicacies like a professional chef, yet I don’t think anyone in my family truly appreciated that about her until she was gone. I was only nine when she passed away, but I have so many fond memories of dishes she would make, from her labor intensive zongzi (dong, or Chinese tamales), savory Toisan style tang yuan (a chicken/shrimp/radish based thick soup studded with chewy plain mochi-like balls, napa cabbage, dried shrimp, and Chinese sausage; to her simple steamed chicken and mushrooms flavored with salted fish.

While I love my mom and my mother-in-law, I will be honest and say that if the two of them had one thing in common, it’s that neither really ever enjoyed cooking; they kind of got forced into it because of the men they chose to marry. My dad does not really think cooking is something a man should do every day; Chris’s dad can barely boil water on his own. So both mothers cooked out of necessity and were never truly passionate about it. Now that my mother-in-law has both her kids grown and out of the house, she does do more experimental cooking and some pretty good baking. And my mom, to her credit, makes a handful of dishes extremely well that I love, from her loaded jook, several variations of pork bone and vegetable soup, Vietnamese fried egg rolls, to her very rarely made Vietnamese braised pork belly and whole shrimp dish. But regardless of these things, I do not really look at either of them and think they have a signature dish or style that I’d necessarily want to replicate.

I was thinking about a basic Vietnamese condiment, nuoc cham, the popular dipping sauce today. And annoyingly enough, even though I’ve made it endless times, it’s never been a consistent result. I think it’s ultimately because my limes are inconsistent in how sweet/sour/bitter they are, and I don’t always remember to taste the “limeade” base before adding the fish sauce. So I texted two of my Vietnamese friends for their mom’s recipe. Of course, their mom had no recipe and went by feel. But she did confirm tasting the “limeade” concoction before adding in the fish sauce, garlic, and chilies first. If the lime is too bitter, it needs to be evened out with a touch of unseasoned rice vinegar — this is a key step, the tasting to see if the limeade is balanced; would you actually want to drink this as a beverage? That’s an easy addition, especially since I always have that on hand. My friends are trying to gradually document all of their mom’s recipes so that they can replicate it on their own. While that would be a labor of love, I think that’s one of the best ways to honor those who come before us — to continue the food traditions that they lovingly shared with us, so that our children after us can hopefully continue to enjoy and make these dishes. After all, food is culture, and culture is food.

First time making Burmese tea leaf salad

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As part of my Christmas gift, Chris got me a bunch of ingredients, some ready to eat, some raw, to make Burmese food. Though we love Burmese food and are particularly obsessed with Burmese tea leaf salad, also known as lahpet thoke, I’ve never made any Burmese food ever. Although we are surrounded by endless high quality Asian supermarkets in New York City, most Burmese ingredients, other than standard things like rice/egg noodles, chickpea flour, fish sauce, etc., still seem obscure. I guess that makes sense when you realize that the number of Burmese restaurants in the city can be counted on a single hand.

The tea leaf salad is actually really simple to make with everyday ingredients like peanuts, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, onion… but the catch is that the dressing has one key ingredient that tends to elude most of us, and that’s fermented tea leaves. Technically, any high quality tea leaf can be fermented after being spent, but the fermentation process for optimal funk and complexity of taste is two to three years long. As much as I love the idea of not wasting my spent tea leaves and repurposing them into a tea leaf dressing, I have zero desire to have a jar of fermenting tea leaves in my apartment for the next 2-3 years. So, with the package that Chris got me, it included fermented tea leaves in multiple forms: straight up fermented tea leaves, tea leaf salad dressing (all ready to eat, maybe with just some added lime juice and garlic, and individual portions of tea leaf salad dressing for one serving of salad.

So today, I finally opened the ready-made packet and created my salad mise en place: I added minced red onion, chopped cucumber, diced tomatoes, shredded baby gem lettuce, fried garlic chips (from the Burmese package), roasted chana dal I made this morning, roasted peanuts, roasted sesame seeds, and the tea leaf salad. I added some minced garlic and drizzled freshly squeezed lime juice on top. And it was delicious – just like in the restaurants!

I guess this means that more Burmese tea leaf salads are to come at home!

An autumn take on a beloved “pick me up”: pumpkin tiramisu!

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I have a very long list of all-time favorite desserts. But high on that list, if not on the top of that list, is tiramisu. In Italian, tiramisu translates to “pick me up,” which is exactly what this dessert delivers. It’s light and fluffy because of the soaked ladyfingers, usually in a mixture of strong coffee/espresso and a liqueur, traditionally marsala, but oftentimes substituted with dark rum, coffee liqueur like kahlua, or amaretto. And it’s creamy because of the whipped dreamy mixture of mascarpone, cream, sugar, flavorings like vanilla, and airy egg yolks.

I’ve oftentimes been inspired to make different versions of tiramisu given how easily the format of it lends to different flavors. I’ve seen delicious, tempting versions, ranging from blended mango, matcha, hojicha, and even ube. But the issue is usually, when you make a tiramisu, it makes a HUGE portion, usually in a 9×13″ pan. So when I knew that one of my best friends and her mom would be coming over for dinner on Thursday, I figured this was my last opportunity this year to make a dessert at home, so I make a pumpkin version I found that was recently published on Serious Eats. Kaia and I spent some time on Wednesday night making it by whipping the mascarpone mixture, dipping the ladyfingers (pre bought) into the coffee / dark rum mixture, and then layering the soaked lady fingers with the mascarpone. We let it soak and meld almost 24 hours before serving it. And I’ll be honest and say: this no-bake effort was very worth it. The ladyfingers were perfectly soaked and soft. And the mascarpone mixture with it was like little soft pillows of sweetness in the mouth, with hints of autumn spices throughout. This recipe was definitely a keeper.

Kaia unfortunately did not appreciate the tiramisu when she had a lick. Instead, she tried to pick off all the chocolate shavings I topped the tiramisu with. But hey, that just meant more dessert for the adults, and more frozen tiramisu from when we’re back from Australia and Asia in the new year!