When I was a wee lad of 37, the internet was a new, exciting place where people shared ideas, images and pornography. How times have changed. Now it is a wonderland if you stick to certain specific interests.
My interests include food and cooking, and I thought I might share a few websites I’ve found useful over the last couple of years.
The first is Chinese Cooking Demystified. It’s a video series that is about the most approachable thing I’ve seen where it comes to regional Chinese cooking. Short version: married food nerds demonstrate how to make mostly Chinese dishes while living in China and later Thailand.
If you like to cook Asian food and specifically Chinese food from the south and southwest of the country this is your website. It’s extremely approachable but also true to the source of the recipes. Some recipes call for ingredients that are either hard to come by here or would require an online source but for the vast majority of the recipes you can find the ingredients at places like Hong Kong Market on the West Bank or Golden City Market in Metairie.
Next up is a column that Chef Yotam Ottolenghi writes for the Guardian. He’s from Israel but has spent his career in England and lives in London. He’s got an imaginative take on food and his food is genuine. I’ve also found those recipes I’ve tried to work well once one accommodates for the difference between U.S. and UK measurements.
And honestly, that’s part of the allure for me. I’m prone to Anglophilia and while I do not regularly make savory pies or use kidneys in my cooking, I like to read about those things. Ottolenghi doesn’t make a lot of “English” food, but when he does it’s usually interesting.
The last thing I’ll suggest is not a specific website but rather that you search for videos of “Jacques Pepin.” You will find many, many videos and you will not be disappointed in any of them. The shows he did with Julia Child alone are some of the best examples of cooking shows ever filmed, but the dude was absolutely prolific and as far as I know he’s still filming shows.
He’s adorable in an extremely competent way, whether he’s cooking with Julia or his daughter Claudine, and he’s almost always going to teach you something.
So those are my top three of the moment; I would be happy to learn of yours if you’d be so kind as to leave a comment?
