August 2026
It’s been another bit of a busy month, and it hasn’t been quite as conducive to my usual note taking as usual. Searching for some inspiration, I decided to have a run at a steamed eggplant recipe I hadn’t tried from my small cookbook library.
July 2026
It’s been a light month not so much for cooking, but for anything that felt noteworthy enough to document it and take notes. The weather has been extremely hot, which makes me feel guilty and a bit ridiculous firing up the oven, and it’s been a hit-and-miss July for some of my favorite produce.
RecipeCavatelli
This is different to the usual fresh pasta people might think of. You don’t need a pasta machine or special equipment, it uses hard durum wheat instead of “normal” soft wheat flour, and it doesn’t require any eggs, so it’s incidentally vegan.
RecipeCá Hấp (Vietnamese-style Steamed Fish)
This is my North American adaptation of an Australian take on a traditional Vietnamese technique for doing steamed fish, cá hấp. It’s great, though I won’t even begin to pretend this is authentic, or that I know anything about the cultural context.
RecipeMochi
The procedure for doing the mochi itself is somewhat specific to the Tiger SMJ-B18U machine. The water and rice amounts, or the timings might work in other machines. From experience, however, each machine tends to require a bit of finesse to get right.