Old-Fashioned Cuppa Cuppa Cake is a beloved Southern dessert made with equal parts flour, sugar, and milk layered with fruit and baked until golden brown. Popularized by the movie Steel Magnolias, this easy cobbler-like dessert can be made with peaches, berries, or even canned fruit cocktail for a simple old-fashioned treat.
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This Norfolk Seafood is such a good recipe and so simple to make. The story behind this recipe is interesting.
When I was a young boy, we used to go to a seafood restaurant in Washington DC called O’Donnell’s. The historic O’Donnell’s Sea Grill opened in 1922 on E Street NW in Washington, D.C. It was a legendary destination for seafood, nautical decor, and its signature rum buns. They had wonderful food, and most importantly, they had Buck.
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Roasting eggplant until completely tender transforms it into an unexpectedly rich pasta sauce. Tossed with garlic, good olive oil, basil, Parmesan and toasted walnuts, this is one of those simple Italian pastas where a handful of ingredients become much more than the sum of their parts.
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Guizhou Spicy Chicken-贵州辣子鸡, is very different from the dry, crisp laziji associated with Chongqing and Sichuan. The defining ingredient is cíbā làjiāo—a coarse paste of softened dried chilies, ginger and garlic fried in oil—which is cooked with the chicken until the meat becomes deeply infused with chile and coated in a rich, glossy red mixture.
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Ciba Chili Paste gets its name from its sticky, cohesive texture, which resembles freshly pounded glutinous rice cake (cíbā). Unlike dry chili flakes or smooth purées, it is a coarse, moist paste made by rehydrating whole dried chilies and pounding or grinding them together with fresh ginger and garlic, then slowly frying the mixture in oil until fragrant and glossy.
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The more I cook Hunan food, the more I realize that some of its most distinctive flavors don’t come from complicated recipes. They come from the ingredients that Hunan cooks keep on hand. Duo Jiao (剁椒), chopped salted chilies allowed to ferment until they become tangy, savory and deeply aromatic, is one of those ingredients.
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This vibrant Hunan seafood dish pairs shrimp with Duo Jiao—a pickled relish made from crisp green chilies, garlic, and ginger. Flash-fried over high heat, the chilies create an aromatic, savory-sour glaze that clings to the shrimp without the need for heavy cornstarch sauces.
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This Hunan pork belly recipe was suggested by a friend and is adapted from a recipe by UK based site, School of Wok. It’s delicious.
This dish belongs to a family of Hunan stir-fries known as xiao chao rou (小炒肉), literally “small stir-fried pork.” There are many variations, but the combination of fatty pork, fresh green chilies and fermented black beans is classic Hunan cooking.
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This braised chicken recipe comes from Jennifer Brennan’s wonderful The Original Thai Cookbook, 1981, one of the pioneering English-language books that introduced authentic Thai cooking to Western home cooks. Brennan describes first discovering Gai Tung after an afternoon wandering Bangkok’s bustling Sam Peng market, where a simple neighborhood restaurant served her a fragrant braised chicken over rice that became one of her most memorable meals. After making this recipe for years, I understand exactly why it left such an impression.
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I learned how to make demi-glacé from the legend Anthony Bourdain. I followed his wonderfully written step-by-step instructions in his Les Halles Cookbook, and the results were excellent.
Demi-glace is one of the foundations of classic French cooking. Made by slowly reducing rich brown stock until its flavors become deeply concentrated, it adds remarkable depth, richness, and body to sauces, stews, braises, and even soups. Just a spoonful can transform an ordinary pan sauce into something that tastes like it came from a fine restaurant.
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