Pan In! It’s about cooking our favorite foods, the ingredients that go into my pan and how to make them tasty. Pan Out! Looking beyond, it’s my quest to learn about and find the ingredients, picking and prepping them; finding short cuts and better ways to cook and run an efficient kitchen; and making meals for friends and large groups. I also want to share discoveries and experiences related to food, cooking and eating out.
Making a dish taste good involves more than cooking. We are also dependent on the freshest ingredients and the proper sauces.
So I want to share what I’ve learned cooking Asian living in the DC-Maryland-Virginia area. Selecting Chinese vegetables and ingredients can be daunting for the novice cooking this cuisine. Because Asian supermarkets here cater to such a wide clientele–Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, and Chinese from the different provinces in China–some of the “Asian” vegetables are even foreign to each of the ethnic groups!
Growing up as an urbanite, I love the life we have here. We can go into DC and enjoy cuisines from many ethnic groups . Venture out and we can also go pick peaches and plums, or wild berries (or weeds!) at different times of the year, learn to craft beer or make apple butter, watch how beekeepers make honey and learn about aquatic plants that native Americans lived on in a kayak tour.
I hope you enjoy my adventures as much I have.
