Roasted Beets with Pistachio Vinaigrette

I never really cared for beets until I stumbled upon a lasagna recipe with roasted beets and an herbed béchamel sauce a few years back. I absolutely had to make it as my curiosity overwhelmed my otherwise lukewarm feelings about these vibrantly colored roots. It turned out to be (at the time) the best vegetarian lasagna I had ever eaten. Thus my beet craze began. I'm pretty sure I made that lasagna twice more in the month or two that followed, and I also started ordering beets at any restaurant that offered them on the menu.

There is this pub in Chicago that serves really good British food. You know, the stereotypical stuff: fish and chips, bangers and mash, scotch eggs, bubble and squeak. But though they have their staples, the rest of their menu is ever changing with the seasons. On one serendipitous occasion, I happened to order their roasted beets. It was tossed in an amazing pistachio vinaigrette and topped with a dollop of ricotta. I was through the moon, it was so good.

Pork Chop Over Rice

I have a confession. I misled you. That last post about tea eggs...it was actually a teaser for this post right here. Although those marbled beauties are fine and dandy to eat alone, their real destiny is to play a supporting role in this plate of porky goodness.

When I was a teenager and lived with my parents in the Dallas suburbs, we used to go to this hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese cafe that served shaved ice, pork chop over rice, and a bunch of other Chinese street food that I don't particularly remember. I woke up one day about a month ago with a serious craving for those same fried pork chops from my days of yore. And instead of wandering over to Manhattan to find a place in Chinatown, somehow my squirrely brain went straight to the least logical resolution: I have to make it myself! This is the recipe I finally landed on (with some help from this amazing YouTube channel).

Chinese Tea Eggs

There are certain memories I have of my childhood that are more vivid than most. I remember my mom used to spend an entire day stewing an astronomical amount of food to eat that same night and many more nights to follow. It was usually things like seaweed, tofu, different parts of a pig (ear, tongue), and occasionally she would throw in a few hard boiled eggs and let them soak up all the flavors the previous occupants of the stewing liquid imparted.

Those eggs weren't the exact same thing as these tea eggs, they weren't delicately cracked to create a perfect marbled pattern (my mom is far too practical for that), and I don't actually think the stewing liquid she used had any tea in it, but the other aromatics were very similar. The first time I made tea eggs myself, the smell elicited an overwhelming feeling of childhood nostalgia. So even though they're not the exact same thing I ate growing up, they're pretty darn close.

Ragù Bolognese

When I was in elementary school, I used to get free lunch. For those of you who might not know, free lunch was pretty much a big label on your forehead proclaiming "my family is too poor to pay!" I was always so embarrassed and would insist on having my mom pack lunch instead. When my dad finally landed a corporate job and we made too much money for me to freeload off the public school system, I changed my tune and instead wanted to buy lunch every day. No longer did I want my mom to pack "embarrassing" asian lunches since all the kids at school were eating chicken strips or pizza or spaghetti with meat sauce.

I was a pretty dumb and impressionable kid, but weren't we all?