posted by
Samar on
October 5, 2013
After a month-long hiatus, Oishii-Rasoi is back! From England! I’ve been hard at it setting up a new home and, more relevantly, a new kitchen. It has been a fun, instructive, and occasionally frustrating experience because, even in a highly globalized world, eating and shopping habits remain stubbornly local (which is of course what makes food so interesting). Not to mention that old joke about America and Britain being two countries separated by a common language: everything has a different name here! More on that in a future post. On to today’s recipe.
posted by
Samar on
August 29, 2013
I bet that got your attention! Actually, the blog isn’t going anywhere, the blogger is. After 21 years, give or take, in New York I am finally upping sticks and moving across the pond to England for a new job in Oxford. A big move indeed, and not just physically. Of all the big cities I’ve lived or spent time in, New York stands out for its density, urbanity, and multiculturalism. Not to mention convenience and, important for a food blogger, easy access to just about any ingredient on earth: everything from berbere to fenugreek leaves is around the corner or a short subway ride away.
posted by
Samar on
August 4, 2013
Like any right think person I want to have my share of ramen and sushi when I visit Japan. But, perhaps unlike most visitors, these are not what first come to mind when I think of Japanese cuisine. Instead, its all those other dishes that are the staple of the Japanese diet but are oddly mostly unknown in the west. (And, no, whatever David Chang might say, the Japanese don’t subsist on ramen! Nor, in my experience, are they making sushi at home.) Dishes such as oden, kabocha, and curry-rice (カレーライス) that are typical of Japanese homestyle cooking. Which brings me to today’s recipe for kinpira gobō, easily one of the most common and popular dishes in a Japanese home.
posted by
Samar on
July 22, 2013
Image linked from http://www.srede.com.br/
For those wondering about the paucity of posts recently, I’ve been in Japan for the past few weeks because of work. Things have been a bit hectic here, but I promise to resume regular programming just as soon as I’m back. In the mean time, I wanted to share an interesting discovery that I made a few days ago in, of all places, a shop selling Peruvian and Brazilian foods here in Tokyo. If nothing else, it demonstrates, yet again, that there is no a better way to appreciate the interconnectedness of the world than through food.
posted by
Samar on
July 11, 2013
If you live in New York you cannot have failed to notice the colorful posters advertising my new cooking class venture with fellow blogger Rachel over at foodrefuge. Well, perhaps you did, in which case do take a look at the description here. We’ve already gotten quite a bit of interest and plan to hold our first class soon. More exciting still, Rachel and I were recently given the opportunity to audition to teach classes at Brooklyn Kitchen. BK, if you don’t know of it, is one of those only-in-Brooklyn outfits (located where else but in Williamsburg) that validates Brooklyn’s claim to be the center of the (New York) culinary world.
