Until yesterday I had no clue how to ride a bike. It’s just something I never learned. And whenever someone said “Oh, it’s just like riding a bike” I nodded along and thought “so I’m going to yell and cry and tell my parents to not let go of me?”

Yesterday I taught myself how to ride in an hour. I honestly didn’t think it would happen so fast. There was no crying. None of my skin is bruised. And I only hit 2 mailboxes(they just popped up out of nowhere; seriously, who puts a mailbox by the side of the road?). At the end of the day, I realized something: Learning how to ride a bike is a lot like learning how to cook.

What will they think of next?

When you start biking, you use training wheels to do all the work for you. When you start cooking, you probably aren’t “cooking” so much as microwaving and/or following directions to add 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of oil and baking at 350 for 25 minutes. But eventually you get tired of phoning it in; you want to learn how to do things by yourself. Or maybe you want to impress someone who already knows how to ride a bike/cook. So you set out to learn.

Should we talk about the 2nd search result or just not go there?

If you’re part of my generation, you’ll immediately go to google for an answer. Google, cookbook, experienced mentor—it’s all the same. Before you know it you’re following a step-by-step instructions on coasting without peddles or making a pasta salad. You’re still not doing it 100% on your own but you feel great about your progress and gain a new found independence.

And then one day it clicks.

You know how to push off with your feet to keep your balance. You get how vinegar, salt, and a little sweetness bring the flavors out in a dish. And before you know it you’re doing it all by yourself. You don’t need a recipe. You don’t need training wheels. It all flows naturally.

So if you don’t know how to cook yet, just know it’s like riding a bike. And if you don’t know how to ride a bike, just know it’s like learning how to cook. And if you don’t know either, that’s what delivery pizza is for.

I have a new obsession. It’s tahini. I’ve heard a few other bloggers talk about how good this seed butter is but never picked it up at the store since the only brand I could find was majorly expensive. Luckily, they started carrying a new brand that’s much cheaper and I decided to give it a go.

I’m not looking back.

The flavor is very savory, almost bitter, just like you’d imagine sesame seeds to be in concentration. On its own it’s a bit much but paired with other flavors it’s excellent.

Lemon-Tahini Fish Sauce

Ingredients:

• 2 Tablespoons tahini
• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons neutral oil
• 1/2 Tablespoon water
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon dill weed

Mix all of the ingredients together until smooth and silky. If the sauce is too thick, add an extra 1/2 a tablespoon of water to thin it out.

This sauce would be good with:

• Any white fish
• Tofu
• Tempeh
• Veggie burgers
• Chickpeas
• Diced potatoes

And much more. This recipe was a huge success; I can’t wait to try more with tahini.

Some foods I could eat at every meal. Peanut butter is one of them. My favorite peanut dish has always been Pad Thai with that rich, silky sweet sauce. As a rule, the best Pad Thai usually comes from the sketchiest restaurants where you’re not really sure what they’re cooking with and you’re not sure you want to know.

But this recipe wasn’t inspired from a Thai restaurant; it comes from Ina Garten. One episode, Ina was making a lunch for some couple that paid a God awful amount of money at a charity auction to have lunch with her. The worst part was the pants the husband(not Jeffrey) was wearing; they were turquoise with some yellow nautical pattern—God, I wanted to turn off the TV right there.

But I’m glad I didn’t because Ina made an Asian noodle salad that sounded too good to pass up. This weekend I grabbed some foreign ingredients I don’t normally keep around(tahini, roasted red chili paste) and tried to imitate the recipe as best I could from memory. If you can’t find roasted red chili paste, it’s basically just red chilis, fish sauce, garlic, and a heck of a lot of sodium. The unique flavor really helps add a lot of depth without much effort.

Thai Sesame Peanut Sauce

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup raw or roasted tahini
• 2 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 4 teaspoons Thai Kitchen roasted red chili paste
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• 1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon chili powder(optional)

Combine all the ingredients together and whisk until emulsified. Add more salt to taste if necessary. If the sauce isn’t hot enough, continue adding chili powder until it reaches your desired spice level.

After that you can smother this on grilled chicken, or toss it with noodles and sprouts, or mix it into a salad like I did. In the mix were:

• Mixed greens
• Shredded carrots
• Mushrooms
• Firm tofu

I was really impressed with how quick and easy the sauce was to make. I will definitely be whipping it up again. You can make a big batch of this and refrigerate the extra sauce in a sealed container for up to a week. And if it’s good enough to serve in the Hamptons, it’s good enough to serve wherever you are.

If you follow me on Twitter then you’ve probably heard this already because I’m a bit of a blabbermouth. Bear with me while I tell the whole story.

This past weekend I went home to interview for a Summer internship at a restaurant near my house. The restaurant, an Italian Trattoria, focuses on locally sourced food, making everything in-house, and using the ingredients to their fullest. I had eaten there several times over the past few years and knew I loved what they made.

As soon as I arrived I got to see the ins and outs of the restaurant—the kitchen, the walk-in, the pantry, curing meats—and then it was time to work. I started by learning how to roll garganelli pasta(all the pasta is made in house and frozen). After that I worked with the salad and pizza station manager making lemon-thyme dressing and then putting out all the salads during service with odd jobs in between. After only 6 hours of cooking I probably learned as much as I ever have food blogging. 

This is what garganelli pasta looks like(taken from Wikipedia). To make it, you roll the dough into thin sheets, cut it into 2×2 squares, roll the dough around a dowel diagonally and press it on a rigid surface so that it will stick to itself. Who knew?

At the end of the night we mutually agreed that this internship felt like a good fit for me; I enjoyed learning so much in a professional kitchen and the staff appreciated an extra set of hands. The fun thing about this internship is that the restaurant does a lot between prep work to service to pastries and I’ll have the opportunity to dabble in each.

How will this change the blog? Well, probably not too much, if at all. Obviously I’m not there to take pictures of the restaurant or what I make there but just to learn. That being said, I’ll probably bring a lot of what I learn home and will definitely be influenced and inspired by the dishes. Maybe I’ll even start a new segment called Secrets Of A Restaurant Wannabe Chef a la Anne Burrell(did you know chefs don’t wear their own pants in the kitchen? More on that some other time).

In case you were wondering, yes, we wear a hat during service and this is what it looks like. Black is slimming, which is good because Italian food is not.

If there are any burning questions left I’d be happy to answer them.

For the past 2 years eggs and I have not been best amigos. Sure, they’re a cheap source of protein, but unless I was counting on baked goods for protein I wasn’t getting any from eggs.

Did I break up with them because I don’t like the way they taste? No. I think eggs have a great neutral flavor, also that anything is good when you smother it with ketchup.

And I do.

Did I break up with them because of the cholesterol thing? No, I’ve had high cholesterol since the day I was born. If you can fix that you should get a Nobel Peace prize.

Did I break up with them because as a food blogger I’m constantly taking pictures of my meals and so everything’s cold by the time I actually eat it? No, but that’s remarkably true.

The reason is much more vain than all of that I assure you.

I stopped eating eggs because I could never cook them right. I can’t tell you how many yolks I broke trying to cook an egg sunny side up or fried. Even today don’t ask me to make you a recipe that involves separating the whites and yolks or—God forbid—whipping the egg whites; I’d just buy something from the store and say I made it.

But then my friend gave me a duck egg a few weeks ago. “Don’t make brownies with them; they don’t make good brownies” she said. Crap, there went my plans. So instead I took the plunge and fried it with some vegetables in a pan. And it came out perfect so I made it again. And again.

There are so many ways to cook eggs, all of which I will be trying out now(except hardboiled because that’s just nasty). My point? Don’t give up on something because you fail a few times because at the end you just might find your reward, a fried, tasty reward.