Journal

Notes on food, culture, memory, and movement.

Not recipes. The stories behind them — why certain flavors exist, where they came from, and what they mean when they meet on the same plate.

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New to Japanese-Italian cooking? Read this first →

What to read, what to cook first, and what order to build the pantry — whether you're coming from Italian cooking or Japanese cooking.

May 2025
Stifado: Greece's Spiced Onion-Braised Rabbit (or Beef) Stew from the Mountains
Stifado is Greece's most deeply spiced stew — a slow braise of rabbit (or beef) with an enormous quantity of pearl onions, red wine, tomato, and a spice profile of cinnamon, cloves, allspice, and bay that is entirely unlike any other European stew and clearly carries the memory of Byzantine spice-trade routes. The pearl onions are the structural ingredient: they braise whole, softening until translucent and sweet, absorbing the wine and spice broth, becoming almost indistinguishable from the meat in richness.
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April 2025
Dukkah: The Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend You Should Have in Your Kitchen
Dukkah is Egypt's most exportable culinary concept — a coarsely ground mixture of nuts (usually hazelnuts), sesame seeds, coriander, and cumin eaten with bread and olive oil. It's also the condiment that keeps appearing on restaurant tables worldwide. Here's what makes authentic dukkah different from the jarred version.
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April 2025
Mangú and Tres Golpes: The Dominican Breakfast That Feeds a Nation
Mangú is mashed green plantain — boiled, mashed with water and butter until smooth and creamy, served with pickled red onions. Tres golpes ('three hits') is the classic Dominican breakfast plate: mangú with fried salami, fried white cheese, and fried eggs. It is the most iconic meal in Dominican cuisine, eaten at breakfast from street carts and at grandmother's table alike.
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March 2025
Cơm Hến: Huế's Baby Clam Rice — Vietnam's Most Underrated Bowl
Cơm hến is a small, cheap, intensely flavored bowl of rice with baby clams from Huế — the former imperial capital of Vietnam. Layered with shrimp paste, crispy pork skin, herbs, and broth poured tableside, it's the dish Huế residents eat for breakfast and defend fiercely as their city's greatest contribution to Vietnamese food.
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January 2025
Baba Ganoush: The Roasted Eggplant Dip That Lives and Dies by the Char
Baba ganoush is not hummus with eggplant. It is a fundamentally different preparation — smoky, slightly bitter, with a texture that should be silky and slightly coarse at once. The smokiness comes from charring whole eggplants directly over flame until the skin is completely blackened and the interior collapses. Everything else follows from that one step.
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January 2025
Arroz con Leche: Latin America's Cinnamon-Scented Rice Pudding and Its Many Variations
Arroz con leche is rice cooked in sweetened milk until thick, creamy, and perfumed with cinnamon and lemon peel — eaten warm or cold, at breakfast, for dessert, or as a snack. It exists in some form across all of Latin America, Spain, and much of the world, but the Latin American version — cinnamon-heavy, lemon-bright, often dusted with ground cinnamon — has its own distinct character.
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January 2025
Bolani: Afghanistan's Stuffed Flatbread and Street Food Icon
Bolani is Afghanistan's most beloved street food — a thin, unleavened whole-wheat flatbread stuffed with seasoned potato, leek, pumpkin, or lentils, then pan-fried until the exterior is crisp and golden. Served with an Afghan yogurt dip (chaka or maast-o-khiar) or with green chutney, bolani is simple to make, endlessly customizable, and one of the most satisfying flatbreads in Central Asian cooking.
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Shorter pieces

Fragments — a paragraph from a market, a note from a kitchen, an ingredient caught in motion — collect in the field notes.

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Notes from the kitchen.

New essays, volumes, and the occasional thing that didn't make the book.

free.borderlesskitchenseries.com →

Notes on food, culture, memory, and movement.

New to Japanese-Italian cooking? Read this first →

Stifado: Greece's Spiced Onion-Braised Rabbit (or Beef) Stew from the Mountains

Dukkah: The Egyptian Nut and Spice Blend You Should Have in Your Kitchen

Mangú and Tres Golpes: The Dominican Breakfast That Feeds a Nation

Cơm Hến: Huế's Baby Clam Rice — Vietnam's Most Underrated Bowl

Baba Ganoush: The Roasted Eggplant Dip That Lives and Dies by the Char

Arroz con Leche: Latin America's Cinnamon-Scented Rice Pudding and Its Many Variations

Bolani: Afghanistan's Stuffed Flatbread and Street Food Icon

Notes from the kitchen.