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.

The next video that I am working on is for apple cider yeast donuts. I’d honestly liked the idea of apple cider donuts for as long as I’ve lived in the Northeast, but in reality, most of the donuts seemed a bit too dense and oily for me. I kept trying different ones, whether they were from colleagues or at farmers’ markets, and still, they were just okay — not anywhere near what I thought would be my favorite, ideal donut.

Then, I had the ones at Terhune Orchards in Jersey during our day trip there in August, and I was blown away. These were light, fluffy, slightly sweet, with not even a hint of greasiness. These were the apple cider donuts I had missed out on for so long.

So today, I decided to make the Serious Eats recipe for apple cider donuts — they are yeast-raised and shallow-fried in coconut oil, which is supposed to keep the donuts light and prevent that “greasy fried food smell or taste” from lingering. I’d never made donuts before, so this was my very first time. And these donuts delivered: they were perfect (well, other than the shape of some) in flavor and lightness, and they turned out even better and fluffier the next day, with the flavor becoming even more pronounced! These are a donut lover’s DREAM!

I’ve always wanted to make Kheema Pulao in the Instant Pot – this is basically Indian-spiced rice with minced meat, but I didn’t finally get around to doing it until this week, and it’s really as easy as dumping a bunch of ingredients into the pot and allowing it to pressure cook. I overestimated the amount of water I needed, so the rice wasn’t as light and fluffy as I hoped, but this truly is a weekday, one-pot meal. The Instant Pot really has been a god-send for those who are short on time and still want a quick, healthy, delicious meal at home. These are the times I really relish my IP.

I spent several hours today filming one of my next videos, which will be on Malaysian chicken satay. These delicious grilled skewers, which originated in Indonesia, have a Malaysian spin and are quite ubiquitous everywhere in Malaysia. Malaysian Airlines even serves it as their signature dish in their premium cabin flights.

At first glance, the recipes for the satay marinade and the peanut sauce do not look that daunting. It’s not until you decide to prepare the dish the traditional way using a mortar and pestle for both the marinade and the peanut sauce that it becomes a bit of a grueling workout. If I wanted to take a shortcut, I could have expedited the process and used a food processor, but what fun would have been had in that?

The laborious nature of this dish doesn’t even take into consideration the lengths I had to go in order to find all the ingredients. Ingredients I don’t use very often but are necessary for this to to remain “authentic” include galangal, which I could only find at 3 Aunties Market in Woodside frozen in slices, and lemongrass, which 3 Aunties was out of stock of. One of the workers was really apologetic when she told me; she said her supplier had run out, and she wasn’t sure when they could get more of it. “It’s scarce and very expensive now!” she exclaimed with a sad face. I ended up attempting to go to three other Asian markets before I could finally find it, and it ended up being around $2.50 for 4 stalks. That’s kind of expensive when you find out that you can technically only use the last 3 inches of each stalk for cooking; the rest of this really long stalk is so woody and fibrous, not to mention it has less fragrance. It got even worse when I went to a fourth Chinese market, which was selling 4 stalks for $5!!

We’re letting the chicken marinade overnight, and then I’ll be cooking it tomorrow along with the peanut sauce. I hope this is all worth it.

So I don’t have a *ton* of data to support this based on all the work I’ve been doing to support YmF via social media, but what seems to be the resonating theme across what gets the most engagement and interaction is that the simpler something is, the more it seems to garner intrigue. When I first made my lavender syrup for coffee video, I never really imagined it being my most-watched video for the last year. And today, when I posted a couple short Instagram stories about making chai, or Indian spiced tea, I was surprised by the number of direct messages I received regarding how I make mine, what spices do I use, what proportion of milk to water do I use, what tea brand do I recommend?

To me, chai is one of the most basic preparations and something that, since the pandemic began, I’ve been making about once a week, if not more. It’s a delicious, soothing, rich (but not “bad” for you) treat that feels like an indulgence because of how all the flavors meld into a luxurious drink, but it’s insanely simple to prepare. My default and favorite version just has two spices: fresh smashed ginger and whole green cardamom pods, along with a 1:1 ratio of water to milk (usually cow or Oatly) along with some Dilmah Ceylon tea bags. After having many different kinds, I realized this was my very, very favorite while in India, and it’s also known as “Bombay chai.” Occasionally I’ll throw in a cinnamon stick, some fennel seeds, and a whole clove, but ginger and cardamom are my two loves in chai.

Chai time is like self-care time for so many. I hope that I can convey how easy it is to make so many things that people think are a reach for them, but just take a few ingredients and 10-15 minutes to make like this.

I was having a chat with one of my Instagram/blogger friends, and she marveled how fascinated she was by my mere existence, how “I’ve never met or known any non-Indian who is as interested in Indian food as you are. You know and cook more Indian food than many Indians!” She told me that she talked about me and my posts a lot with her Indian husband, who was also born and raised for most of his childhood in India. “She’s a non-desi, but she makes every Indian dish! I don’t think it’s possible for her to fail making anything Indian!” she exclaimed to him.

It’s like the e-mail thread I’ve been on with Chris’s mom’s cousin about how to make appam. I had repeatedly failed at getting the right texture and look, and so what originally started as an appam recipe exchange morphed into a “what is your favorite Jasmine rice brand?” to “do you want the all-time best Kerala chicken stew recipe from a Syrian Christian”? discussion. I love, love these conversations so much.

These conversations generally only happen with people who are super food obsessed down to the last grain of rice or the last gram of spice. Chris’s aunt also marveled over my attention to detail at making idlis from scratch: “I just buy the ready-made batter!” she said. I could even hear her voice through the email. Yep, I am a perfectionist. If you’re going to do something, you better do it all the way, otherwise just stop altogether.

Since I’ve become more active on social media to support YmF, I’ve had all kinds of fun, interesting interaction with other food vloggers and small business owners, many of whom have suggested that we meet up at some point in this COVID-19 global pandemic. Of the friends I’ve made to date, only a tiny handful are as passionate about food and how it’s intertwined with culture the way I am. Through Instagram and YouTube, I’ve been able to connect with people who are just as obsessed and passionate as I am.

One woman I’ve met is a small business owner who is currently running an ice cream business out of her home kitchen, churning small batches of desi-inspired ice cream flavors and delivering them to residents across the New York City area. She’s ethnically Chinese, but her grandparents actually immigrated from Indonesia to the U.S., so culturally, they are very Indonesian. She also married an ethnically Indian man originally from Delhi, so there’s so many cultural layers to their union. Another woman is based in Jersey City but originally from New Delhi, and we’ve had many long Instagram chats about cooking different dishes, ingredients, and our mutual love of chai.

The blogger/vlogger world, though I’m still quite new to it, has been very interesting and fun to be a part of. Through this, I can finally start meeting like-minded people who get as excited and giddy about food, culture, and travel as I do. While working in tech has had many benefits and I’ve met lots of incredibly smart, talented, and good humans through it, the food world is altogether a very different place; it almost feels just more core to me and what I care about.

I’d always been curious and thought about buying a mortar and pestle. I’d seen it used in so many cuisines, from Vietnam to Thailand to Mexico and across South American and African cuisines. Yet I’d put off buying one for so long, thinking that I wouldn’t use it very much. And since I live in Manhattan, space has always factored in as an issue, as a mortar and pestle is something I’d want on display in my kitchen. I finally sucked it up a couple months ago and bought one, and on average since then I’ve used it about once a week, which is pretty darn good for a kitchen item I had hesitated on for so long. I’ve used it to crush whole, toasted spices, mash sauces, smash ginger and garlic, and today, I’ve finally used it for pesto.

Since I first watched Samin Nosrat’s Salt Fat Acid Heat Netflix series and read her book by the same name, I knew I had to try my hand at making pesto with a mortar and pestle. Before I watched this, I had never really thought about the mechanics of how a mortar and pestle is different than a food processor. I’d only ever made pesto with a food processor. So to learn and think about the fact that a food processor, with a metal blade that rips and shreds ingredients, would yield a different texture and taste vs. a mortar and pestle, which crushes individual cells to release aromatic compounds, was quite fascinating and made me think about how to do this myself.

So I tried it today and filmed a video on it, and the end result was what I suspected; the taste and texture were far, far superior to pesto made in a food processor. It really could not be compared; it was thicker, creamier, chunkier, and so much nuttier and richer in taste and scent. It was certainly an arm workout, as it took a very long time to fully crush the basil leaves, but all that work was worth it. I think I’m ruined on regular pesto from here on out.

I think it’s pretty safe to say that every child loves pancakes. There’s something about a little round edible, pan-fried blob that is comforting, appealing, and delightful to all. The amazing thing about pancakes is that they can come in all shapes and sizes, and it seems like most cultures have their own variations. In the U.S., there’s the standard cake-batter-type pancake ranging from fluffy buttermilk, blueberry and fruit filled, and corn griddled pancakes. In Jewish culture, the fried potato pancakes that are known as latkes are hard to not love (who doesn’t like fried things?!). China has its most famous scallion pancakes, but many other variations of pancakes exist as well, from “chive boxes” to the thin wheat crepes that traditionally roll Peking duck. In Vietnam, the closest thing I can think of would be banh xeo, better known as Vietnamese sizzling crepes, and in India… there are so many versions, some of which I’m just learning about, ranging from dosa to adar to cheela to pesarattu.

I’d made dosa a number of times on my own, but it never occurred to me to attempt a version of it without rice and urad dal, but that’s where Pesarattu comes in. Pesarattu is the Andhra Pradesh’s answer to pancakes in a ground lentil form. Some add a little rice or rice flour for texture, but many are just 100 percent green whole moong dal without any rice added. The only things that are added to it are ginger and perhaps a few spices, and that’s it. Pan-fried on a hot pan, they are extremely delicious, especially when eaten with a peanut and/or coconut based chutney. I’ve already made these twice now and am pretty obsessed with them. I’m trying to find every which way to use beans, as they are one of the healthiest and most delicious foods on earth, and our diets can only get better with them.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that although I have owned an Instant Pot for two years now, I still haven’t used it to make one of my all-time favorite dishes in the world, pho — not the chicken kind, not the beef kind — neither kind. I’m not sure why I’ve procrastinated on this. Part of it was because I still cannot find a a reasonably priced source for beef and oxtail bones for beef pho. The second part is that I tend to always want to try new things, and because I’ve already made chicken pho (pho ga) the traditional way so many times, I deprioritized it.

I finally made pho ga today in the Instant Pot, making some changes on the spices to the Serious Eats’ version that takes 20 minutes at high pressure in the Instant Pot. It was incredibly easy, very little work, and was so, so satisfying. Noodle soup is one of those ultimate comfort foods for me since I grew up eating with it, but for Chris, he prefers noodles separate to soup. He loves noodles. He loves soup. He doesn’t necessarily love them together most of the time. But when he had a bowl of this, he admitted that this turned out very good.

All I need to make this are chicken drumsticks, which I can buy organic and reasonably priced at Trader Joe’s. And now that the quarantine restrictions are loosening in New York City, I can more comfortably go to Trader Joe’s without waiting in a long, slow line to get in. This is win-win!