Short essays and notes on food, history, and the kitchen.
Where ideas live before they cool into a book.
- Kitchen ScienceMarch 9, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
Browning, Burning, and the Line Between Them
The line between brown and burnt is about thirty seconds wide. The skill is not avoiding it but knowing which side to live on.
- Recipe NoteMarch 8, 2026 · Recipes · 6 min
Bánh Xèo (Sizzling Vietnamese Crêpes)
A rice flour batter with coconut milk, diluted and turmeric-yellow, cooked in very hot oil until it shatters. Bánh xèo is not a crêpe — it is a crisp shell of dried batter that happens to be thin.
- Food HistoryMarch 8, 2026 · Food History · 3 min
The Original Silicon Valley Had No Computers
In 1688, the institution that would eventually insure the Titanic, the Apollo moon missions, and the cargo holds of the British Empire was founded not in a bank, not on a trading floor, but in Edward Lloyd’s coffee house on Tower Stre
- Recipe NoteMarch 7, 2026 · Recipes · 4 min
Takoyaki
Takoyaki is a savory Japanese snack made by cooking a batter filled with diced octopus in a special molded pan.
- Kitchen ScienceMarch 6, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
The Logic of Mirepoix
Two parts onion, one part carrot, one part celery, slowly sweated in fat. It is a recipe so old it has forgotten it is a recipe — which is precisely why it still works.
- Food HistoryMarch 6, 2026 · Food History · 6 min
Why I Write About Food as Translation
The History × Food Translation series is not, as the title might suggest, a series about food. It is a series about how meaning moves between bodies, eras, and civilizations — and food turns out to be the cleanest available test case.
- Recipe NoteMarch 5, 2026 · Recipes · 8 min
Bún Chả (Grilled Pork with Rice Noodles)
The dipping sauce is the dish. Bún chả is a study in balancing four competing forces — sweet, sour, salty, sharp — without letting any one of them win.
- Kitchen ScienceMarch 5, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 4 min
How a Kitchen Scale Changes Everything: Why Pro Cooks Weigh, Not Measure
A cup of flour can weigh 110 grams or 160 grams depending on how you scoop it. Volume is the quiet lie at the heart of most Western recipes.
- Kitchen ScienceMarch 4, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
Why a Drop of Acid at the End Changes Everything
The last quarter teaspoon of vinegar or lemon — added off the heat, at the very edge of service — is the line between a competent dish and one that people remember the next morning. The chemistry is small. The perceptual swing is enormous.
- Tools & GearMarch 3, 2026 · Tools & Gear · 5 min
Why a Dashi Strainer Changes Japanese Cooking
The mesh is what separates konbu water from proper dashi.
- Recipe NoteMarch 2, 2026 · Recipes · 8 min
Phở Bò (Beef Pho)
Charred aromatics, blanched bones, hours of patient simmering. Phở is a long extraction that teaches you how to read a broth — clarity is not aesthetic, it is evidence of correct technique.
- Kitchen ScienceMarch 2, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
Smoke Point Is Not the Whole Story
Choosing an oil by its smoke point is a beginner shortcut that picks the wrong oil about half the time. The number is a floor, not a verdict.
- Travel & MemoryMarch 1, 2026 · Travel & Memory · 3 min
Why That Meal Abroad Still Haunts You
In 2005, neuroscientists John Lisman and Anthony Grace published evidence for what they called the hippocampal-VTA loop — a circuit in which novelty triggers the brain’s dopamine-producing region to flood the hippocampus with ne
- Kitchen ScienceFebruary 28, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
How to Season Food Without Guessing
Salt by weight first. Then by feel, calibrated by the weight. The home cook who skips the weighing has no calibration to season from, and the dish suffers in ways they cannot diagnose.
- Recipe NoteFebruary 27, 2026 · Recipes · 7 min
Chicken Soboro
Ground chicken, soy sauce, mirin, sake, ginger, sugar — cooked dry over seven minutes until every clump separates and the seasonings cling like a glaze. The Japanese pantry preparation that teaches how to make ground meat behave.
- FermentationFebruary 26, 2026 · Tools & Gear · 5 min
How to Use pH Strips Without Overthinking It
A pH strip is a five-dollar tool that replaces guesswork in fermentation and canning.
- Kitchen ScienceFebruary 25, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 4 min
The Quiet Difference Between Stock and Broth
Stock has bones; broth has flesh. The difference is collagen, and the rest — body, clarity, naming — follows from that one fact. Why the words matter when you want a result you can repeat.
- Recipe NoteFebruary 24, 2026 · Recipes · 6 min
Ratatouille
Eggplant, zucchini, bell pepper, tomato, garlic, olive oil — cooked separately first, then briefly together. The Provençal dish that teaches why vegetables steamed together always end up muddy, and what to do instead.
- Kitchen ScienceFebruary 24, 2026 · Kitchen Science · 5 min
Why Oil Changes the Way Heat Enters Food
Oil is not a flavor delivery system. It is a heat conductor that thinks at 180°C, and most of what a hot pan does well, it does through a thin film of fat.
- FermentationFebruary 23, 2026 · Fermentation · 6 min
What Fermentation Teaches Us About Civilization
Hunter-gatherers do not ferment. Settled peoples must. The chemistry that turns surplus into shelf-stable food is also the chemistry that turned humanity into a civilization, and forgetting that has cost us more than we tend to admit.