In the chaotic kitchen of a recipe developer, you get a food blog called FoodMayhem.
I'm Jessica, an Asian-American, born and raised in NYC, and that's Lon, my Jewish, white husband. While professionally trained as a French culinary- and pastry chef, many of FoodMayhem recipes are my attempt to preserve and share authentic Chinese and Taiwanese recipes learned from my mom. We don't eat Chinese food every day, so you'll get a little bit of anything we find delicious enough to share: from our Eastern European side; recipes and techniques learned from my restaurant days; restaurant reviews, food travel tips; and a few other juicy bits along the way. Welcome to FoodMayhem!
Inspired by the nicely spiced lamb meatballs at Alta, I decided to make Moroccan Spiced Meatloaf. Lon happens to love meatloaf and the last time I made it, he raved. I love when he loves my food so I thought this would be a good shot and I think this one beat the last one!
I wanted to end with a classic pasta dish so that it would satisfy what anyone would imagine as a pasta dinner. You can’t go wrong with meat sauce! We happened to have a large amount of very lean sliced beef so Lon got to play with our new grinder attachment. Because it was so lean, I added pancetta to this recipe but I still think you should use fattier meat. I got to make mushrooms since Lon wasn’t going to be home but I still chose to make it a mushroom topping as opposed to mushrooms in the sauce because I figured we would have left-overs, and Lon would want to eat it.
We had Martin and Melissa over for dinner last night and they loved my Oxtail and Linguini. Good thing I wrote down the recipe for my Oxtail Sauce. Four people almost finished the entire pot! I served it with linguine but it would be wonderful with pappardelle or fettuccine as well.
I decided to serve my Chinese family an all-American meal, Rosemary Meatloaf, Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, and Sauteed Garlic Spinach. I have to pat myself on the back for this meatloaf recipe. It was so unbelievably flavorful and moist, my brother couldn’t believe it was mostly turkey.
