I'd heard of tori paitan for years before anyone shared an actual recipe for it. My guiding star turned out to be a 1969 cookbook — Chinese Gastronomy — and its Cream Stock, a labor-intensive Chinese stock I consider the ancestor of tonkotsu. No seasoning, no shortcuts: just cracked bones, gelatinized collagen, and a hard boil that emulsifies fat into a broth with real body. Here's how that method, applied to chicken, becomes tori paitan — and where you can improvise.

Fig leaves are one of the most underrated ingredients hiding in plain sight. Most people walk past them every day without a second thought. But these deeply lobed leaves carry a remarkable aroma — toasted coconut, vanilla, almond — and a culinary history stretching back to ancient Greece. In this post I'll show you how to choose, prepare, and cook with fig leaves, and share two simple recipes to get you started.

Beef tendon doesn’t look like food when it’s raw. Snow-white, dense, strange, it asks you to know something before you cook it. And yet, given time and gentle heat, it transforms into something luxurious—translucent, creamy, deeply satisfying. This essay explores beef tendon as an ingredient shaped by patience and tradition, and reimagines a classic French Bourguignon made with 100% tendon, where collagen becomes the star and the sauce becomes the protein.

Machacado con Huevo, Discovered in Central Texas My husband and I sometimes recall migas as our first real breakfast in Texas — a long time ago now. Tortillas, eggs, texture, comfort. It stayed with us as a memory more than a recipe. We eat breakfast at home most days, so some regional dishes simply never announced themselves to us. Recently, that memory nudged me into wanting to understand Mexican egg dishes better — not just migas, but to see what else is out there. How egg

Hawaiian Bouillabaisse found me late — at Mama’s Fish House on Maui. A bright, island-born twist on the Provençal classic, it inspired me to recreate it in Texas using dashi, frozen seafood, and intuition. It’s a dish that connects Provence, Polynesia, and the Gulf of Mexico — a reminder that good cooking always adapts and evolves.

On Maui, I discovered aguachile in a way I never expected. Once just a classroom recipe I didn’t care for, it became unforgettable at Gather [on Maui, for food and drink]. Between a Savory Citrus Martini, ocean breezes, and two wild kittens on the terrace, I found a new appreciation for this Mexican seafood dish. Here’s the story, the authentic recipe, and the Maui-inspired version.

Stuffed squid (aka calamari ripieni) is one of those win-win meals: the tubes are basically all lean protein, the filling adds just enough flavor and texture, and a quick cream-fish stock sauce keeps things moist without piling on the calories. Think of it as a seafood spin on meat-stuffed chicken breasts—only with way fewer grams of fat and a cool Italian vibe.