Hi readers. I’m currently on my way back from vacation, so from afar, I’m delighted to introduce this post, by Carly Diaz, one that’ll transport us to the kitchens of Korea. It’s a recipe for gyeongdan-Korean sweet rice cakes-and a story about learning to love them.

The first time I tasted sweet red bean paste, I nearly choked. It was the summer of 2006, the air was thick with humidity and the sound of cicadas. Everywhere around me were bright lights, loud music, street carts, and hired girls dancing in front of an electronics shop as part of the grand opening celebration. I had recently moved to Seoul in a post-graduation flurry and planned to spend the next 12 months writing, applying to grad schools, and teaching English.

In my defense, I was given the bean-filled pastry and told it was the Korean-version of a cream-filled doughnut. Instead of a light cream, I received a mouthful of thick beans. And not just any beans. Sweet beans. It would not be the last time that an unfamiliar taste heightened the sense that I was in foreign territory. That first taste of sweet red beans marked the slow transition of the unfamiliar to the familiar. Over the next year, the wholly unfamiliar world of South Korea would become one that I navigated with relative ease, one bite at a time.

In September, during the Korean harvest festival Chuseok, I was confronted with the sweet red bean paste again when I received a box of songpyeon. The traditional moon-shaped Chuseok dessert is made with sweet rice flour and filled with the paste. I nimbly took a bite and found that I liked it. It wasn’t the kind of confection I had grown up with, but there was something about the sticky rice cake and the subtly sweet, earthy, protein-y richness of the red beans that appealed to my acclimating taste buds.

There’s been a lot of fuss about ramen this winter. As the bowls of Japanese noodle soup have made their way into the mainstream, via a lot of new restaurants, the never-before-seen availability of fresh ramen noodles at Whole Foods in NYC, and the appearance of crazy fusion creations on menus, there’s been a lot of interest in the dish. Also some backlash and serious reflection.

But at bottom, everything ramen chefs and noodle makers have told me about ramen leads me to believe that trendiness doesn’t really matter. If you want a comforting meal that you could eat every day, look to ramen and be fulfilled, belly and soul. If you’re like me, you’re never going to go out for ramen every day. And that’s why I put together this beginner’s guide to making the soup at home.

We ate ramen every day for at least a week as I was testing broths and toppings. I loved that. We’ll do a ramen week again soon. This works not just because it’s a comfort food, but also because the more you cook ramen, the better you understand what you want your bowl to be. If you want to get into it, read my full guide over at First We Feast.

Most of the time, I don’t deep fry at home. This isn’t a problem. I figure if I eat French fries at restaurants and baked potatoes here, I’ve achieved a balance I don’t need to upset. And then, once in a while, I fry potatoes at home and remember: oh, this is wonderful.

So the delight I took in some recently fried fries did not beg the question of whether frying at home is hard (it’s not). Rather, it made me think about if homemade chips are worth the $10 of oil I need to fill up my pot to deep fry them. And that’s when we have to talk about reusing oil more than once. To do so, you simply strain out all the particulates that have gotten into your oil. I did so twice, first through a strainer, and then through a strainer lined with a paper towel. The idea is to get out any organic matter that might spoil. With “naked” and battered foods, there’s not a lot of residue to strain out; with floured or breadcrumb-covered chicken or zucchini, there will be more. I stored this cleaned-up oil in a jar.

After straining, I had yet another object cluttering my kitchen, though: a jar of used oil. So, I kept frying. Yes, after the French fry meal, I went on a short but steady fried food bender. It mostly involved battered banana fritters with chocolate sauce, which I cooked up fresh for guests after we’d eaten our main, not the kind of entertaining I usually do. Apparently my jar of oil was stretching my boundaries.

Once I’d used the oil five times or so, I disposed of it (responsibly! not down the drain). I’d eaten my fill of homemade fried food for the time being, the oil was spent, and the jar no longer had to crowd my countertop. It’ll be a while before I make French fries again, but when I do, I’ll make them often-just for a couple of weeks.

P.S. One of the few fried recipes on the site-Fried Chicken Salad with Buttermilk Dressing.

In a small kitchen, you don’t need a lot of equipment to cook great food. Still, you do need some pots, pans, utensils, and dishes–obviously. In the BGSK book, you’ll find a bare bones list of necessary tools, but I’ve long wanted to bring you a similar resource on the web.

So we’re going one by one, stocking up our virtual pantries and maybe our real ones too. You can see the whole “set” here.

How I try to keep the specialized kitchen equipment to a minimum! One of the items I was strictest about for as long as I could remember was the thermometer. We won’t have one, I promised myself anytime I read instructions for checking the temperature on the inside of your roast beef. And then Alex and I researched one to get my mom for a gift for a very specific reason-grilling outdoors in the summer, after the light is gone, when it’s impossible to see what color the inside of your chicken is. We got her the ThermoWorks Thermapen.

Not long after, I committed. And I’m happy I did. The thermometer itself is tiny, so storage really isn’t an issue. It takes the guesswork out of cooking meats like the garlicky pork loin I’ve been obsessed with since October. You can stick it into hot oil for a reading, should you decide to make French fries. And you can finally make those finicky candies you’ve been eying, like marshmallows and caramel. The Thermapen gives accurate readings quickly. It’s cute, easy to clean, and, as I already told you, small enough for a small kitchen.

Here are a few ways you’ll use your digital thermometer:

• To get the oil the right temp for fried chicken
• To make your own Cappuccino Marshmallows
• To get your pork loin cooked just right

I hesitate to admit this when I’m about to tell you to summon summer with roasted tomato panzanella, but I haven’t found as much displeasure in the weather this winter as I ordinarily do. New York City is the proud provider of freezing cold sunshine, and I have a hard time frowning on sunny days or during Prospect Park’s especially beautiful winter golden hour, even when the sun forgets it’s supposed to heat as well as brighten. We visited Lake Placid in January, which put cold into perspective and also reminded us that snowshoeing is a reason to leave the house, I discovered rosemary & fennel seed tea and expanded my mastery of textile arts (crochet, macramé), Alex got into mixing Manhattans, TV got better and better, and we braised a lot of meat. Winter! For two more days until spring!

In this spirit of optimism, I’ve been ordering the most unusual local vegetables I see on Good Eggs, like romanesco cauliflower and sunchokes, in an effort to celebrate what little the frigid ground can produce. It works out okay, or at least the crucifers and roots aren’t fatal to my outlook, so long as I splurge on herbs, too or dollop everything in green sauce.

That’s how I ended up with a lot of basil hanging around. I had opened up a can of whole tomatoes for these roasted oysters, and I roasted them without their juice, but with a lot of olive oil and salt. The oily juice I stored them in seemed like it really wanted to be soaked up in stale bread the next day, and then it hit me: a winter version of the epic summer salad was staring out at me from the fridge. I tore up some mozzarella (just the regular supermarket kind), marinated shallots, and poured balsamic vinegar. And then I cracked on an egg onto my plate of rich panzanella.

Key lime pie is perfect for this in-between time of year. (Especially today-Pi Day 3.1415!) It’s green (extra points for St. Patrick’s Day), citrus is in season, and it tastes like summer when there is still snow on the ground. Depending on whom you ask, authentic key lime pie is either decidedly baked or not baked. This is a no-bake recipe. The pie comes together in a snap, and will transport you straight to the Florida Keys. In fact, it comes to you from Florida, and is a recipe my boyfriend has made since he was a little boy. He was born and raised in Florida.

Of course, fresh key lime juice will taste the best, but Nellie & Joe’s bottled key lime juice is the second best. You can find it in the juice aisle or perhaps by the cocktail mixers. The almond crust is a nice change of pace from graham crackers, and keeps the pie gluten-free. Feel free to use the filling in a standard graham-cracker crust if you don’t need to be gluten-free. I’ve also made this with a gluten-free gingersnap crust or chocolate crust. All delicious!

Natalie of Good Girl Style joins us each month to share incredible desserts with Big Girls, Small Kitchen readers–desserts that are entirely gluten-free, but not like obviously gluten-free. That means no specialty flours or hard-to-find ingredients, just lemons, lemons, and more lemons. Want even more GF desserts? Check out Natalie’s Chocolate Cookies.

The best food I cook comes from recreating imaginary dishes. I don’t usually know where my cravings spew from, but all of a sudden I’ll be steaming onions in turmeric for tagine, and I’m perfectly happy with the situation. After all, the best long-term way to keep yourself in the kitchen is probably to make what you want, consciously or unconsciously, so that the result is satisfying enough that dirty dishes don’t put you off cooking for weeks to come.