My diet is mostly composed of whole-grain cereals, legumes, beans, lentils. Lots of cooked, baked, or steamed vegetables. Lots of spices like curcumin or cumin that help aid digestion. Some superfoods.
All middle-income families use carbs to stretch meals, across any ethnic group - whether it's kugel or rice and beans or macaroni and cheese. I remember having pancakes for dinner. But as kids, we thought, 'Breakfast for dinner? This is great.'
You take the best ingredients - the best cocoa beans - and you process them in the best traditional way, and you have the best chocolate.
The best place to use vanilla beans is anywhere where they won't be mixed in with a million other flavors. Anything with dairy, yogurt, milk, cream, or eggs - any custard or flan - how can it be bad?
The hardest thing for me is restraint. I see fresh beans and ramps, and I start to quiver.
I've thrown vanilla beans into mustard. Nothing crazy or grainy, just normal dijon. It's great for duck. Smear some of that right on the duck, coupled with some roast plums, and it all comes together in that savory over sweet over savory over sweet way we all love.
There's a character that I play onstage, and I can't let him loose in the supermarket when I'm buying my beans on toast.
Being in a band didn't buy me my beans on toast!
With my husband, I do really appreciate the fact that we - even though we're different kinds of Asian, there is a cultural shorthand between us, and I don't have to explain anything. I've dated guys before who weren't Asian-American, and it frustrated me when I would have to defend why beans belong in a dessert.
I am fascinated by the Royal Family because they are shrouded in mystique, and the Queen, and to a certain extent William, represent fabulous blank canvases. I find the Prince of Wales less fascinating because he spills the beans and we know too much about him.
