Pomegranate is most likely THE fruit I look forward to every autumn season as September rolls around the corner. I love persimmons, particularly the gooey hachiya persimmons that my grandma loved so much every fall, but pomegranates are a really hard fruit to hate. They look beautiful when you cut into them, and those little seeds bursting with brightness and juice are like tiny little jewels. It’s no wonder that they are used so often in South Asian and Middle Eastern cooking because they are just so stunning to look at. And… it should also come as no surprise that pomegranates are considered the “forbidden fruit,” as once upon a time in Greek mythology, Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, ate just two of these pomegranate seeds after being kidnapped into the underworld by Hades, therefore locking her into the world of darkness for half the year.

I think the biggest issue with pomegranates, or why people feel that these are difficult fruit, can be broken into a few reasons: 1) they are hard to cut and not make a total mess if you don’t know what you’re doing, 2) not everyone likes eating the seeds after sucking out the juices, and 3) it’s a bit hit or miss when choosing a pomegranate at the store. Sometimes, you can luck out, cut it open, and get all beautiful perfect jewels of seeds. Another time, you may inadvertently pick one where half or more of the seeds have already rotted, rendering the fruit nearly inedible.

So we’ll address points 1 and 3 since you can’t really push preferences on people. For 1, you just need to make sure you’re not cutting into it like an apple; cut a square off the top, then cut four lines at each “angle” of the fruit, and peel (more like an orange. That will allow you to segment the fruit into neat portions without squirting juice everywhere.

For 3, make sure to choose a pomegranate that feels heavy for its size. Also, pick one that IS NOT round; you want one that is a bit square-ish/angled. This indicates that the juicy seeds inside are bursting with ripeness and are good for eating. Lastly, look at the top stem. If it looks like the top is peeling downward, it will be ready to eat!

A new vlog series I’m starting to work on is around where I buy my groceries and food items. Chris suggested to me a few days ago that he thinks that I would really enjoy shooting these videos because his general opinion is that while I do love cooking a lot, I actually love discovering, finding, and picking ingredients even more. I’m not sure how I feel about that because my love and obsession with cooking and trying to cook new foods is pretty large, but yes, I do love sourcing ingredients a lot, and I visibly get excited when I find something new for a good deal. It’s Sunday, two days after we went to Costco in Connecticut, and I am still obsessing and glowing over the wild chanterelles I found there. Usually, chanterelles are seasonal, and given how popular they are, I have never seen them for less than $24-30 per pound! I’d always contemplated splurging on them just once at these prices and just indulging, but I could never actually bring myself to do it.

Thankfully, because so many companies are either fully online or have an online presence, sourcing ingredients has become easier than ever before!

Every Sunday is filming day at our apartment now with my new job, which I just completed week 4 of. I’m still in the process of working on my Tastes of Asia series, so I thought I’d choose a country that straddles two continents this week: Turkey. Turkey oftentimes is perceived as part of Europe, but it’s actually partly in Western Asia. When I visited Istanbul back in July 2011, I actually took a boat to the Asian part of Istanbul the city, as the city of Istanbul is technically half in Europe and half in Asia!

Two spices that were new to me when I started cooking Turkish food were sumac and Aleppo pepper. Sumac is a fruity, citrusy berry that is dried, ground up, and oftentimes used as a topping or garnish on everything from beans to salads to meats. Aleppo pepper originates in the Syria/Turkey region of the world, particularly known for its mild spiciness, fruitiness, and especially for its naturally oily feel when you rub it between your fingers. It’s a brilliant red color and notably has no seeds inside the actual pepper. Both spices are beautiful to look at as well as addictive. I used both of these spices to make a rendition of Turkish Adana kebabs, named after the fifth largest city in Turkey. Adana kebabs are loved not just for their interesting shape and appearance, but also their bouncy texture and delicious spice mixture. I used New Zealand lamb mince for mine. The Aleppo pepper gives these kebabs a unique deliciousness, and it’s rounded out with some parsley and a generous amount of salt for flavor.

I was really happy with how my kebabs came out, and ideally, if I can still get reasonably priced Australian or New Zealand lamb, would consider keeping this on rotation in our home when having a lamb craving. Looking forward to sharing this soon!

Because the world is suddenly so interested in becoming gluten free, or just gluten-free tolerant, I decided to try a gluten-free fresh spinach pasta that was on sale at Whole Foods. It’s mainly brown rice, tapioca starch with some spinach powder for the green color, but I thought I’d try it out just for the sake of it. I tossed it today with some homemade tomato sauce, ground wagyu beef, and some grated parmiggiano reggiano, and while it all tasted good together… the noodles, for me, did not have a very strong or distinctive flavor. Chris said he found the pasta overpowering, but I thought it was the opposite. It was like eating pasta for the sake of eating pasta, as opposed to enjoying the pasta.

I only occasionally buy dried pasta now except for specific brands, as I’d prefer to reserve my pasta experiences for fresh pasta since I love it so much, so knowing that I got this fresh pasta and it was pretty much a disappointment felt sad. I think I’m gonna stick with the fresh wheat pasta from here on out.

After the most recent Amazon Prime Day, I am now the proud owner yet again of some delicious matcha powder. A brand I was following had a special for Prime Day, and since matcha is quite expensive, I didn’t buy it for a while. I also didn’t want to be too much of a glutton since I’d purchased so much tea while in China last summer, and I recently started depleting all the everyday tea I bought there (except for the Zhe Ye Qing high end tea, which I’m still getting through and spacing out).

But I had almost forgotten how much I love preparing matcha. The last time I had matcha at home, my dad had bought me a bag of ceremonial grade matcha, and to properly make it, you really need to whisk it well. I even got a bamboo matcha whisk specifically for this purpose. I whisked about a teaspoon of the matcha in about 3 tablespoons of hot water, then added foamed Oatly to my cup to make a homemade hot matcha latte. It was creamy, smooth, with just a hint of bitter. There’s something about the sound and feeling of whisking matcha that I find so soothing and fun. It’s definitely a good use case for #asmr (autonomous sensory meridian response). There are ENTIRE accounts on Instagram and TikTok JUST around the #asmr from simple, everyday things such as whisking, pouring liquid into a glass, to ice cubes falling into a cup!

Since getting more and more immersed in the foodie community of YouTube and Instagram, one fun thing I’ve been doing is learning more about small, locally owned businesses in New York City. Most of the ones I’ve learned about are so small that they’re still operating out of their home kitchens, including two Asian-American owned ice cream businesses in Manhattan and Brooklyn. The one that I just got a delivery from was Sundae Service NYC, which delivers pints of ice cream every Sunday across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. They are two Asian American sisters who churn out pints of ice cream in a small selection of flavors ranging from Vietnamese coffee to coconut pandan sorbet (vegan!) to earl grey strawberry cheesecake. I got all three of these flavors, along with black sesame ginger, and had been waiting to order from them for a while (I was trying to eat the rest of our ice cream and also clear out our freezer of all the stuff I’ve been over stocking up on). We tried all of them after they were delivered yesterday, and I was blown away by all four of them; all of them have very strong, assertive flavors, and the flavor combinations are just so complementary. With the earl grey strawberry cheesecake, what I loved most about it was not only the earl grey tea base, but the fact that the cheesecake chunks were small — just enough so you could taste the cheese, but not too much so that it would overpower the earl grey or the fresh strawberry chunks.

This may be dangerous knowing they exist and can so easily deliver without a delivery fee if you get at least two pints because I’m pretty obsessed with them now.

I love autumn squash. Every year when fall rolls around, I get excited about all the butternut, buttercup, and kabocha squash I can easily get at markets everywhere here. The funny thing, though, is that I actually don’t really change up how I make it; I almost inevitably will roast it, puree it into soup, or toss it into salads. I do know that certain types of squash appear in dal recipes, even in Kerala sambar, but I’d never actually tried it myself. With the new food blogger/vlogger network I’ve been developing on YouTube and Instagram, I’ve come across way too many food inspirations to keep track of that I actually want to make (and have ingredients easily accessible to make!), and one of them is Tamil butternut squash (dal) stew. It’s so easy and simple to make, and other than cubing up the butternut squash, there’s very minimal cutting or chopping. It has just a small amount of shredded coconut that you blend into a paste before adding it into the Instant Pot, but that gives it an instant bit of sweetness that works super well with the overall stew.

The new foodie community I belong to now has really been inspiring. I have so many things I want to make and try out to increase my cooking knowledge all thanks to these new food-loving, creating friends.

With all the leftover Tom Yum Soup that I made a few days ago, I figured this would be a good broth to have with the Lotus Foods brand gluten-free rice ramen I picked up from Costco a few months ago during our quarterly haul. So no, I am not gluten-free, nor will I ever be, and I actually think leading a gluten-free lifestyle when you actually do NOT have a gluten allergy is just bad for your health and bad for society at large. The real reason I was attracted to this at Costco when I saw it was just the idea that the label said that the texture is just like regular ramen (which is made with wheat, and sometimes eggs), but it’s made from brown rice and millet only. It’s organic, gluten-free, and vegan naturally. Plus, it only takes about three minutes to cook!

Well, the label wasn’t lying: it was really quick cooking, and the texture really was just like regular ramen! I liked the bite as well as the texture and taste of the noodles. I didn’t even miss the wheat or eggs. I’d definitely buy this again, but since this is Costco sized, we still have ten servings left!

Even though Vietnamese food overall is pretty laborious, one of the most common things on a Vietnamese meal table is actually one of the quickest and easiest, and that’s nuoc cham, the ubiquitous, fish-based dipping sauce that is sweet, salty, sour, and umami. It comes together in less than 15 minutes, and when you have a mortar and pestle, you don’t even have to mince any garlic, and it could come together even quicker!

I used to pound the garlic and the chilies for this with a make-shift mortar and pestle the way my mom does it, which is pounding these two ingredients against sugar in a bowl with the back of the knife, but now that I have a real mortar and pestle, it’s so much more satisfying to mash in the mortar and so much quicker, too. I also think the flavors are also stronger and more pronounced with the fish sauce now, but I guess my opinion is biased since I obviously know the change I’ve made to my method.

I posted a video on TikTok and Instagram for my method, which is pretty much my mom’s method for making nuoc cham. And a former colleague who is Vietnamese said that his method was completely different, but he still “approved” of mine.

WHAT METHOD COULD BE BETTER THAN ONE THAT HAS POUNDED GARLIC AND CHILIES? 😀

Well, now that I’ve got this new job, I can’t slack off and cook during the weekdays anymore. Yep, I said it: when I was at my last job, pretty much since the pandemic began, I probably spend a good chunk of my work day working… on cooking and filming videos. Not like it really mattered since I knew that the company wasn’t going anywhere and that I’d still perform better than most of my colleagues on half the number of hours actually at my computer, but hey, who cares now?

What this means, though, is that now that I actually am working at a company that I care about, and I have to limit the time I spend doing any real cooking and filming to Sundays. Saturdays are the days we go out and explore a new neighborhood, while Sundays are the day when I can record and cook food for the videos and for the week. Today, I made and filmed videos for Tom Yum Soup and Vietnamese egg meatloaf. It was a tiring day, but at least I know that I not only have content to work with, but I also have delicious food for the week.