Words Make Food

Flaked Salmon and Beech Mushrooms with Dashi Broth

August 6, 2026 by Matt Leave a Comment

There’s rice under it all… I promise.

Every time I come back from Japan, I swear I post some shit about “eat this thing over rice.” Whatever. The classics are classics for a reason.

My friends made me make dinner for them the other night… well, let’s be fair, I offered and they wanted Japanese food. Fine. I’m good at that and I obviously love it. So I made them something like what you see here. Apparently, one of my friends neglected to inform me that he usually doesn’t eat fish. You wouldn’t have known it by how quickly he housed this dish.

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Dashi Stock

August 6, 2026 by Matt Leave a Comment

Okay… so I don’t have cool photos for this one.

Here’s how to make dashi. I use this in a ton of stuff, from flaked salmon over rice, to ramen, and miso soup. Yes, you can buy the packaged shit in the store that is full of sodium and bullshit, or you could show some restraint and just make it.

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Gaijin Gyudon: A Guide to Your Easy Beef Bowl

July 15, 2025 by Matt

My first real experience with any sort of meat and rice bowls came in the form of fast food. Needless to say, it didn’t exactly pique my appetite.

It took a trip to Japan this year to open me up to the complexities that one could provide in a seemingly simple combination of meat, rice, and vegetables. Like most things in life, however, the most simple things can be the easiest to fuck up.

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Shaved Brussels with Italian Radicchio, Parmesan, and Pine Nuts

December 27, 2023 by Matt

This week, I got excited about a salad.

I know. This sounds like something that should be whispered in hushed, shameful tones to one’s religious leader. Or maybe it’s a loudly proclaimed cry for help to most Americans, but I can assure you that my mental health is about as stable as it ever was. Hell, maybe better after tasting this.

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Chicken Stock That’s Better Than That Store-bought Crap.

November 6, 2022 by Matt

Chicken feet are pretty much essential to this whole process.

In the grand scheme of things, I can rarely think of a skill that is of better benefit in the kitchen than knowing how to make stock. With the right tools this simple procedure is fairly effortless, yet the rewards are astronomical. Okay, that’s a little hyperbolic, but this stuff is way better than that sodium-laden chicken-flavored water that you buy at the market.

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Painless Coleslaw

July 4, 2022 by Matt

An exercise in amazing…

_{Yup. That’s pretty much all you need.}

A Fairly Painless Coleslaw. I swear.

There are very few things in this world that I love more than coleslaw. While I’m pretty sure I’ve said that about multiple things at multiple times in my life, this time I really mean it. Seriously. I’ll fight somebody for coleslaw, if it’s good enough. Sometimes even if it’s just mediocre.

Think about it. There’s very little that screams American BBQ or cookout or I’m gonna stab you if you take the last piece of fried chicken like a tart, yet creamy coleslaw. Cooling in the summer and a way to force vegetables on your kids.

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Why Mistakes in the Kitchen Matter

June 24, 2022 by Matt

The other day I made the most awful, offensive thing to grace my stove in many, many years. And frankly, that’s a good thing.

Let me clarify that. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

It all started with the chicken thighs I had bought. I had already cut the vegetables that would be going with the chicken and had them ready to go before I looked in on the meat. It was grey. The kind of grey that suggested death and bad omens. Basically, shit I didn’t want anywhere near my stomach. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some chicken, but when that shit goes bad, I’d almost rather eat a closed oyster. It’s not worth the risk of getting sick. But when the chicken went bad, that’s where things went down hill…

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Miso-Garbanzo Salad

May 6, 2022 by Matt

^{It’s not enlarged to show detail, but damn.}

I go crazy over cookouts. No, really. I get really obsessive over cooking the right things or bringing the most memorable things to the party. There’s some weird part of my brain that hungrily feeds off of the praise of strangers (or even friends) when it comes to the preparation of food. I’m a junkie for it. I have to be the one with the most interesting thing at the potluck. It’s a point of honor or something. It might explain why I spent so long working in hospitality. It probably explains a lot of fucked up things about me.

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Pork Cheek Ragu

January 11, 2020 by Matt

There are very few things better in life than quality Italian cuisine. This was cemented in my being one early morning in a 30 second elevator ride in downtown Los Angeles.

I feel that this might need some clarification.

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Buffalo Wing Cheese Dip

July 3, 2019 by Matt

Oh man. There is absolutely nothing wrong with wing sauce. Ever. Just the words “buffalo sauce” conjure pleasant images of cold beers in a dark bar on a Tuesday afternoon, the wadded up, orange-stained napkins littering your table top like fallen comrades strewn about the battlefield, sacrificed in the vain effort of keeping ones hands and face relatively clean. The kind of memories that end in a full belly, a keen sense of satisfaction, and, if you’re in a quality establishment, lots of wet-wipes.

I can’t think of a single person I know that doesn’t like buffalo sauce. Maybe not because of its popularity, but because I don’t readily associate with those sorts of people. In fact, if you are one of those people, I’m afraid I’m going to kindly have to ask you to leave.

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