Sriracha

This mac and cheese has been haunting me for over a year. It was on the list, but kept getting pushed back. The idea sprang from something Mandi ate at an upscale pub awhile back. Since I love the combo of mac and cheese with sriracha but never officially posted such a recipe on here, I was excited to make it. The problem was every time I tried to make it, I couldn’t find any decent mushrooms! Mushroom season is weird you guys! The other day I was in Whole Foods and they happened to have a crazy abundance of delicious and weird looking mushrooms, so I snatched them up and ran home to make this.

I decided while I was away that when I came back I would make sure to stick to a more regular posting schedule. Instead of sometimes posting 4 or 5 times a week, then only posting twice some weeks, I would just always post 3 times, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. I am going to try and stick to this for the time being, with Wednesdays usually featuring my most recent Tablespoon post, and see how it goes. Of course, there will still be theme weeks from time to time, where I post every day so I think the frequency will be pretty much the same as in the past.

Seems kinda weird to tell you all that info on a Tuesday post. But since I’ve been away so long, I figured I would give you guys a bonus recipe this week. It’s a good one too! I had some marinaded meat leftover from these burgers, and decided to cook it loose in a pan and serve it with a cous cous salad that was based on one of my favorite dishes, Vietnamese Bun Vermicelli. I ate this for lunch one day while getting some serious writing done and it really got me through the day! In fact I went back for more every hour or so…

When I was frying some tofu one day, I noticed that it sticks together really easily. As the tofu cooks, it basically binds to any other tofu cooking nearby. This gave me the idea to one day stuff cubes of tofu, considering that whatever the stuffing may be, the tofu would hold it in nicely. When “one day” finally came, I made a vaguely Asian turkey meatball mixture to stuff into the little cubes.

It makes sense to dip your gnocchi in ketchup since gnocchi is made of mostly potato. But these weren’t just any gnocchi, they were marbled with a sharp cheddar, and perfumed with a splash of truffle oil. And it wasn’t just your ordinary ketchup either, it was fortified with some garlic and olive oil, and spiked with a nice hit of sriracha. These cheese gnocchi were nice and crispy on the outside, but extremely delicate and soft on the inside and exploding with flavor on every bite.

A version of the classic Thai spicy noodle dish with fresh bay scallops.

A warming play on a classic chicken and dumplings that infuses just the right amount of Thai flavors into the dish.

A Japanese take on traditional carbonara, with some charred pork belly in place of bacon.

A hearty rice and avocado salad that is great for a healthy weeknight dinner in the summer.

This pork is slow roasted in a red curry sauce and topped with a fresh herby slaw.

Super spicy potato salad inspired by Vietnamese ingredients and bland potato salads everywhere!

A Noodle dish that is a mash-up of a whiskey sour cocktail and a Korean dish called jajangmyeon that is loaded with fermented bean paste.

The sandwich dips series returns! Banh mi dip has been in my head since the series began, but I was having a really hard time trying to find an appropriate situation where it would go over well. For most occasions I attend, it isn’t exactly ideal to show up with a plate of chicken livers. I was so glad to finally find some people who were interested in trying out the banh mi dip because it came out better than I had even imagined.