Lingbo Li
Asian Girl Cooking: The Great Pizza Update
My mother came home and finally revealed the yeast’s secret hiding location. It was in an unlabeled Snapple bottle in the fridge. Duh! And the white flour wasn’t in the baking cabinet, but in the pantry with the rice. So I whipped up a batch of Pioneer Woman’s pizza dough (since she uses all-purpose flour… and that’s all we got) and I’ll figure out this whole pizza thing in an hour or so. Since the weather is warm, I stuck the bowl with wet dishtowel out on the porch. Her recipe was absurdly easy.
I think part of the problem of working at Serious Eats is that one becomes exposed to all the complexities and neuroticisms of food. For a girl who’s normally super neurotic anyway (YEAH! Loud and proud!), this makes the prospect of cooking almost unbearable, like a tragicomical ballet of certain failure. You begin thinking cooking is rocket science. That to make a decent pizza, you need to read and follow every last word of this extraordinarily complex and nerdy recipe.
—–
Two hours later
I just made an “Asian breakfast” pizza… sorta. Topping of stir fried bacon and scallion greens with an egg cracked on top, Sriracha in the tomato sauce, mozzarella & Parmesan cheese. Then I did a more classic one with regular crushed tomatoes, mozzarella & Parmesan, basil, and olive oil drizzled on top to finish.
Parents seemed perplexed by the egg yolk. They ate around it, sullenly. Raw things do not really occur in Chinese cooking. The Western salad doesn’t really exist, nor do medium rare steaks.
I used the inverted, preheated cast iron skillet placed directly underneath the broiler set on high method. The Asian pizza was a bit undercooked, the second turned out better. Definitely need to invest in bread flour if I’m going to do this right – not enough chewiness in the crust.
Here, it seems like a lost cause, though. This is white rice and stir fry land. All other cuisines enter at their own peril.
Now washed up, smell like smoke and oil. Le sigh.
Asian Girl Cooking: Growing Pains
I didn’t want to be that sad person, standing bare footed in my mother’s kitchen and eating a Bisquick-and-parmesean-cheese creation straight over the cast iron pan.
But here I was, eating my cheesy biscuit thing. The Bisquick was at least 4 or 5 years old. Yeah, I know.
Cooking in my mother’s kitchen, with her pantry, presents a unique set of challenges. After leafing through two cookbooks, one from a mythical land called Middle America (The Pioneer Woman Cooks) and the other from Sex-and-the-City-ville (The Pleasure is All Mine), I was reminded that to prepare Western food in this kitchen would be an uphill battle.
Eating this random thing was almost an act of defiance. It would have been too easy to make a bitter melon stir fry, or to wilt a head of bok choy and stir fried an egg, steamed some white rice, called it a day.
We have no crushed tomatoes. (Our pastas never feature red sauce, and there’s not a box of elbow macaroni in sight.) We have no cheese. If we do, it is 1) moldy or 2) frozen, breaded mozzarella sticks that will never be eaten. We have no basil, but we do have star anise, Szechuan peppercorn, and dried chiles.
Harvard Square Guide: 4 Tourist Stops You CANNOT Miss
There are many reasons to visit Harvard Square, Harvard being the least of them. Sure, the buildings are pretty and whatnot, but I barely notice them as I’m trudging through a snowdrift and anticipating frostbitten toes. (Shoulda worn my Uggs.)
If you’re visiting Harvard Square in the summer – prime tourist season – skip the boring tourist tours and take my patently far more awesome tour.
Guide to Harvard Square
Other Tourists
John Harvard's desecrated foot
Hey tourists, have you ever thought about sightseeing the other tourists? Because I can promise you, they’re infinitely more entertaining than any rando not-actually-a-student Harvard summer school student. See tourists through local eyes by noting how large and homogenous tour groups are – all old people! Haha! All Korean teenagers! Haha!
Maximize your tourist-watching joy by sitting on the steps of University Hall, the backdrop of the John Harvard statue. Watch tourists grope and grasp John Harvard’s foot with glee. Laugh inside, or openly – thousands upon thousands of students have urinated on that thing. I know this, and have seen this, as a fact. But that shouldn’t keep you from indulging your own tourist whims, after all, urine is sterile! Isn’t that comforting?
The Homeless
Real panhandler, circa 2007 when I was there for pre-frosh weekend.
So I might get flack for being insensitive and all that, but panhandlers are part of what make Harvard Square well, Harvard Square. If the homeless have a religion, then the Square is their mecca, their promised land, their Willy Wonka Candy Factory.
The Five People You Meet in the Food World
Not a real chef
If you told me 1.5 years ago that I would be all into the food scene, I would have laughed. In the short time period since then, I have merely noshed on the tip of the food industry iceberg, but I’ve been an eager student of its inner workings.
For those of you on this list looking for a self-mocking chuckle, or outsiders looking to get an eerily accurate but rash overgeneralization, here you go.
Caveat: there’s plenty of crossover between categories – bloggers who write, writers who blog, editors who do freelance PR… you get the idea.
Don’t take this too seriously. But don’t be surprised if you do.
The Five People You Meet in the Food World
The Blogger
Some smartass who may or may not know what they’re talking about, but waves their power around anyway. (Wink!) PR people will be just as nice to bloggers as OGFW’s. Might have a caffeine addiction. Likes to have debates about where to get authentic Chinese food and recent restaurant openings; pleased if they meet another blogger who agrees that a hot new joint is “totally overrated, and that escargot/hummus combo just didn’t work.” Tends to come in all stripes, colors, and ages, but probably has more Facebook friends and Twitter followers than you do. Has a better paying day job, like selling insurance, being a consultant, or working for a biotech firm. Wishes they got paid money for blogging, instead of just free food.
Best day: when Grubstreet and Serious Eats picked up on their “best donut” roundup.
Worst day: outed by a famous chef for not knowing what a poblano chile was.
The Old-Guard Food Writer
Resentful of the Internet of dissolving their paychecks, but still keeps a blog and Twitter account to seem “with it” anyway. Will write long treatises on the importance of traditional, anonymous food writing. Has eaten in every restaurant in town, and is able to conjure up meals from long-deceased eateries to compare with the dish they’re eating now. Has definitive opinions on who has the best charcuterie; the role of Yelp and whether to trust the Zagat and Michelin guides; and why there just aren’t any good taco stands in town. Name drops former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl on first name terms. “Oh, when Ruth and I last had dinner at Marea…” Follows the newspaper industry shakedown with masochistic interest.
Best day: getting the first freelance assignment for Gourmet.
Worst day: realizing that Gourmet got axed.
My thoughts on freelance writing
[Requested by Vivian from my open call for blog entry requests]
more carefree days, when I didn't have to commute to work.
For awhile, I seriously considered being a freelance writer. I took a few books out of the library and talked to other freelance writers. And just to check in, I’ll still chat to freelancers about their decision to skip a steady paycheck, so I have a reasonably informed sense of what the job is like.
But I’m not going to be a freelance writer. At least, not as my full-time occupation.
There are definitely very successful and happy freelancers – but they tend to have built up a professional reputation in the industry before taking the leap. One freelancer’s biggest piece of advice was to keep your day job and write on the side. That, or have a spouse to support you.
Which brings to my next point – financial independence.
I’ve always felt an enormous drive to be my own person, whatever that could mean. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t given big consulting firms a try. (Although I’ve done my research on that, too.) And as much as I might daydream about letting someone else pick up the slack, I think it’s incredibly important – and as a woman, even more so – to make my own money. You can definitely make a full-time living as a freelance writer, but it can be a bumpy ride, and even if you “make it,” the financial payoffs are comparatively slim. But what about psychic rewards?
I love writing, and will always be writing in some way. But after having written in various capacities for a somewhat obscene number of outlets, I’m not sure I want to do this full-time – and I also want to succeed in a few other ways beyond writing. I find blogging rewarding enough that it satisfies most of my writing urges.
I can definitely see myself doing some freelancing part-time, but with an ever-shrinking number of publications willing to pay its writers, it’s harder cobble together a decent income. I once emailed a food writer for advice. Her reply was short and concise. “Not to be discouraging, but it’s probably one of the worst times to go into food-writing. The traditional media outlets are disappearing as we speak.” The amount of money you can make from a blog post just can’t compare. So you really have to write for whoever will pay you.
At that point, I’d rather write for myself, for pleasure.
What about you? Do you think I’m totally wrong? Leave a comment!
Lana Lingbo Li
I'm a world traveler / enthusiastic eater who's now blogging and producing videos over at HelloLana.com. Visit me there!
As Seen On
