Main Dishes | Pen & Palate

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Roasted Poblano, Sweet Corn, Black Bean and Cheese Tamales

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Illustration: Tram Nguyen

I have a tendency to overcomplicate things. For a casual basketball-viewing party, I might throw together a simple vegetarian chili to feed the crowd. And of course, I would need something to go with that chili, so I’d decide to make cornbread. But not just any old cornbread. I would want to bake the most authentic, delicious, pedigreed cornbread recipe known to man—something to impress my friends (who, to their credit, couldn’t care less about such things). But then there’s the problem with tracking down an “authentic” recipe. My people are from Southeast Asia, and my experience with American quickbreads growing up was mostly limited to those paradoxically greasy-yet-stale pucks they call biscuits at Popeye’s. When you’re trying to recreate food that you have no history with, it can seem like an almost insurmountable task.

Article

Dumplings I Have Loved

illustration: tram Nguyen

Almost as soon as I could write my own name, I was helping my mother in the kitchen. Most of the time I would be saddled with menial tasks, like peeling root vegetables or washing herbs, but my absolute favorite thing to do was help her assemble wontons.

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Crispy Panko Shrimp Tacos with Sesame Slaw

illustration: tram nguyen

Deep frying is “dangerous, y’all. But so is tanning, supposedly? And until noted medical professional Jenny McCarthy tells me otherwise, I’m going to keep doing both.

Article

Pork Tenderloin with Blood Oranges

illustration: tram nguyen

This morning I woke up to snow on the ground. Again.

Welcome to my least favorite time of year: Early spring. Early spring is an evilly deceptive couple of weeks. Starting in late March and extending, sometimes, all the way into May, it pairs the hope of warmer weather with the brutal reality of frigid, subzero days, days weighted down by one’s horrible 10-pound jacket and the awful knowledge that spring — real spring, t-shirt weather spring, put the coat in storage spring — probably won’t turn up until June. IF EVER!

If February depresses me, March and April make me feel vaguely murderous. There is sunlight now, thanks to Daylight Savings, so I no longer want to spend all day in bed reading trashy mystery novels — and yet some higher power, the soul-crushing force that is Mother Nature, is conspiring to keep me indoors, miserable, bored, deprived of Vitamin D, and in the mood to spill blood.

Article

Moderately Healthy Lentil Sausage Soup

illustration: tram nguyen

Lately I’ve had a lot of deadlines, which means I’ve been giving myself a lot of leeway in the “eating like a functional adult human” department. I have this tendency, when I’m stressed out by work, to let everything else – cooking, sleeping, making my hair look nice, fulfilling other basic obligations – go by the wayside. During these trying times you can usually find me in my bed with my laptop and my cat, wearing my kimono, and eating takeout pad thai.