Fancying it up–Gateau de Crepes

French food week on 52 weeks of belated cooking posts. I mean 52 weeks of cooking. The week of the best cuisine in the world, at least if you subscribe to the theory that French food is the best food. I haven’t eaten enough or done enough comparison to make that judgment myself, but there is definitely a reputation there.

Then again, maybe there isn’t such a reputation anymore, depending on who you ask. That’s all I’ll say on that matter for now.

On a more personal level however, as a Vietnamese American, it is hard to deny the influence of the French upon our cuisine. The introduction of baguettes led to the now well known banh mi. Custards, potatoes, and onions are also a few of the many other introductions they made to Vietnamese cuisine, and I certainly have no complaints with these items at all.

And while it would be fairly easy to show off a French influenced Vietnamese dish, I shall try to be a bit more French leanings with the Gateau de Crepes, literally translated into a Crepe Cake. It may also be called a  mille crepe, or thousand crepes, but given that it is either 20 or 30 layers typically, wouldn’t it be better to call it the vingt or trente cake?

Horchata!

It’s rice week on Reddit’s 52 Weeks of Cooking, and I could have totally taken some more intrinsic routes, given my +2 to making Vietnamese rice dishes as a Vietnamese person.

Over the course of my life, it was very common to have rice twice a day, or maybe even three times a day, with a breakfast of fried rice from last night’s leftovers. Not to mention the uses of glutinous rice as well in desserts, celebratory dishes and so on.

It also usually involves a contraption like this. Asian people don’t need to know how to cook rice, since we have these fabulous machines to do it for us!

But when it comes to cooking I try to avoid the road more traveled, at least with cooking challenges. So I opted to take the rice I had on hand (from the traditional 50 pound bag most Asian households have) and made Horchata! Very glad I did too, it is super easy and delicious. Unfortunately she was not around, and was very jealous.

The First Comic Cooked on Comic Booked

A heads up for those who want to be in the know but are not yet, I thought I’d give everyone notice that I’ve been a writer for the comic book focused website, Comic Booked.

Mostly my focus has been on webcomics, but I’ve been given the freedom to start up a new column, Comic Cooked! For the first time around, I am doing a homage to Iron Man, and the man behind the armor, Tony Stark.

So if you like the idea of the Iron Manwich, please head over to Comic Booked and check it out!