To the people of Mesoamerica, corn was a very sacred plant and this pre-Columbian Mexican soup was only consumed during special occasions. Ancient Mexicans believed that the combination of corn and meat was a religious communion of their sacred plant and humans: prisoners were killed in religious sacrifices and served as meat for the whole [...]

Vietnamese grilled pork, or thit heo nuong (insert Vietnamese characters in there), remains to be one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes. I still remember when my parents and I would eat in Chinatown’s Nha Trang restaurant every week. The dish did not cost much and it always came with a lot of rice; to my [...]

Chigae, or more appropriately jjigae, is a Korean stew made of a variety of vegetables and meat cooked in a broth seasoned with kochujang, or red chili paste. It’s more of a soup to me, really, but I’m not about to correct whatever the Koreans say. Recipes online ask for pork tenderloin, but I find [...]

This isn’t a recipe for a new dish as much as it is a recipe for leftovers. I had made the Japanese buta no kakuni, or pork belly, two weekends ago and still had leftovers that kept pretty well in the fridge. When it came time for a home-cooked meal this week, I scooped some [...]

After returning from a long weekend in Istanbul, Turkey, I wanted to eat some pork. While in Istanbul, I ate a lot of very good seafood and a lot of very good lamb, but at the end of the day, you may take the pork away from the girl, but you can never take the [...]