In the chaotic kitchen of a recipe developer, you get a food blog called FoodMayhem.
I'm Jessica, an Asian-American, born and raised in NYC, and that's Lon, my Jewish, white husband. While professionally trained as a French culinary- and pastry chef, many of FoodMayhem recipes are my attempt to preserve and share authentic Chinese and Taiwanese recipes learned from my mom. We don't eat Chinese food every day, so you'll get a little bit of anything we find delicious enough to share: from our Eastern European side; recipes and techniques learned from my restaurant days; restaurant reviews, food travel tips; and a few other juicy bits along the way. Welcome to FoodMayhem!
I know lots of you are throwing out the broccoli stems, just eating the pretty little florets. I also know that you’re not wasting it intentionally, you just don’t see recipes for broccoli stems that often. Who knows what to do with them? Well, let this be a start to new things. Broccoli stems are crisp and crunchy, refreshing, and healthy.
A wedding tradition in Pittsburgh is the Cookie Table, where friends and family bring cookies to put on the table. It’s quite a spread, as you can imagine, and everyone gets to participate in their own way. It’s one of the coolest traditions ever, that I would have adopted, regardless of being in New York, had I known about it before.
Staring at my pile of over-ripe bananas, some sort of banana bread/banana muffin idea was tumbling about in my head. I spotted an interesting combination of flavors in Nigella’s book, How to Be a Domestic Goddess. It was cupcakes made with banana, dried cherries, and white chocolate. Not wanting cupcakes at the moment, I married the idea with Nick Malgieri’s Banana Bread and out popped this baby. I didn’t think banana bread could get better, and with white chocolate no less? I’m not even a big fan of white chocolate, but here it melts into the bread and adds a wonderful creaminess that makes bananas even more comforting.
