“It is the privilege of loneliness; in privacy one may do as one chooses.”
–Virginia Woolf, from Mrs. Dalloway, as quoted in the above book.
I recently borrowed this book, Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant, edited by Jenni Ferrari-Adler from the library. Once I began reading, I found myself enthralled and barely took a break until I finished it. There’s something so irresistible about discovering what other people do when they are alone.
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This is a pasta dish I made last week using a Vietnamese-inspired version of pesto. It didn’t take long to make in the food processor, and was savory and earthy tasting and deeply flavourful.
I was re-introduced to perilla in its Vietnamese form this summer, when I discovered that a Vietnamese grocery store near our house always carries it, and it’s only 99 cents a bag! Their herbs are always fresh and in really good shape, so I buy them often. Tia to does not taste exactly like Japanese shiso, and it looks like a cross between red and green shiso; I usually find that one side of the leaf looks reddish-purple, while the other side is green. I really like to use this herb in spring rolls and in pho, and was looking for a recipe that would highlight it more prominently.
pesto made with 'tia to'-- Vietnamese perilla
Meaghan is a bibliophile and budding cook.
autumn
Books
botanical gardens
Breakfast
Canadian Lit.
Chinese
coffee
cookbook
cookies
drawing
Favourite Ingredients
fish
foraging
fruit
fun
Grains
Haruki Murakami
herbs
Japanese
Korean
musings
mysteries
noodles
pickles
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pottery
pumpkin/squash
ramenesque
Seasons
sencha
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spring
sprouting
summer
Tea
travel
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vegan
vegetables
Vietnamese
winter