I don’t like making pastry. Well, I didn’t like making pastry. Now, I feel mostly neutral about it. That’s because I’ve made a concerted effort over the past few months to overcome a lifelong aversion to it via self-inflicted exposure therapy. There have been a …
I’ve already gone on and on about maesil before, but to briefly recap, maesil are small green fruit that grow on maehwa trees, an East Asian relative of apricot and plum trees. We are lucky enough to have some maesil trees in our front garden, …
Mugwort is a magical plant. The Romans used to stick it in their shoes to protect them from exhaustion on long journeys by foot, and in medieval Europe, it was used to ward off evil spirits — in Germany, it is sometimes called St. John’s …
Sometime a few weeks back, I got it into my head to make a dessert with black sesame seeds. I don’t know why, but I can tell you this cake won’t be the last of it. Black sesame seeds are nearly as aromatic and rich …
We are having some crazy weather here in Seoul today. Our old little house is lined all the way around with ancient sliding windows that are rattling like crazy in their tracks, and I’ve got one cat curled up in my lap and the other …