A week or so ago, I found a post about a thirteenth-century European mead recipe on the Historical Cookery site. Needless to say, it caught my attention. For some years, in fact, mead has held a special place in my heart. Like most sugar fiends, I like my drinks sickly sweet: creamy pina coladas, cloying Rieslings, and yes, pineapple cider. Which is why I am perhaps overly fond of meads. Like most of you, I had assumed that mead was a European drink. So imagine my surprise w

Sometime in the late eighteenth century, a merchant copied—or a scribe captured—the following recipe: Goose roasted in a Western oven (yanglu 洋爐 ).Insert a scallion roll into the belly of a goose and one big head [of onion?]. Using a roasting char (fork), skewer the goose and put it into the oven and roast until cooked. You can do the same with duck and chicken. It is uncertain whether the scribe knew much about the provenance of this recipe. By most accounts, he was a salt m

I was forty-seven before I realized I had never eaten a proper steak. Growing up in San Francisco, I had eaten plenty of steak—but it was always the Cantonese adaptation of this Western classic. Soft in texture and thoroughly cooked, it was a heavily modified for the Chinese palate. The catalyst for this belated realization? A weekend visit from Ryan Waddell, the fine-dining chef I was working with. A flattering picture of me Want to read more? Subscribe to my free Substack p

“As a Chinese person, I have never heard of Chinese people eating a plant-based diet.” “All of the food traditions include a lot of meat and less of plants.” The comment was from an Honors student the other day. We had just discussed Colin Campbell’s famous China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted and the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, and Long-term Health, widely regarded as a “Bible” among vegans. For those of you who don’t know