How To Make 'Midwestern Salad' 10x Better, According to Food Network Star Molly Yeh
And all of that sweetness and light is on full display in Yeh's newest cookbook, Sweet Farm!: More Than 100 Cookies, Cakes, Salads (!), and Other Delights from My Kitchen on a Sugar Beet Farm. The recipes in the book are a mix of fun treats—think church cookbook classics, playful remakes of childhood desserts and fresh creations that incorporate flavors from her Chinese and Jewish roots.
Related:
Sweet Farm! is organized based on dessert type. There are cookies, cakes and breads, but it's the salads chapter (yes, salad can be dessert, especially in the Midwest) where Yeh's uniquely sweet food identity shines.
We chatted with Yeh recently about the new book and talked to her about her love for all things sugar, her passion for nostalgic flavors and, most notably, the wonders of fluff, the iconic Midwestern dessert salad.
Related:
Parade: We'd love to know a little more about what inspired you to write !
Molly Yeh: My obsession with sweets has no end, and the fact that I married a literal sugar farmer meant that I couldn't not write this book. The sweets are inspired by life here—they're reflective of the local cuisine, as well as my heritage and the kinds of sweets that keep big burly farmers going in the fields. The recipes are big, rustic, whimsical and sometimes messy but it's ok because if you're eating them in a tractor, you're probably covered in some dirt already!
Related:
You're famous for blending your Chinese-Jewish heritage with your Midwestern roots. How do the recipes in continue to highlight that?
I have absolutely no chill when it comes to expressing my love for my favorite nostalgic flavors, like black sesame, tahini, cardamom, pistachio, marzipan, rhubarb, halva and rose. So there are LOTS of recipes in the book with those ingredients. I also wanted to create new versions of classics, like babka, rugelach, cookie salad and pineapple buns that would tell the stories that make them special to me.
😋😋SIGN UP to get delicious recipes, handy kitchen hacks & more in our daily Pop Kitchen newsletter🍳🍔
Speaking of salad, it's Midwestern to dedicate an entire chapter to . Fluff, that classic combo of whipped cream (or Cool Whip) and Jell-O, is a potluck staple, but the ube fluff recipe in the book really turns that dish on its head. Can you talk about the texture and flavor of that dessert?
Ube fluff is fluffy, creamy, wiggly and a little chewy from the tapioca. The flavor of ube has always reminded me of cookies and cream for some reason! It's sweet and earthy, similar to vanilla. I love it. And what makes this truly unique is the fact that ube wasn't really available in the Midwest until very recently, so the meeting of ube with fluff is a new phenomenon. I'm proud to make this shidduch (the traditional process of finding a marital partner within the Jewish community with the assistance of a matchmaker). First, make and chill the ube gelatin until set. While the gelatin sets, make tapioca pudding using coconut milk, sugar and ube halaya jam until thick and creamy. Once both components are chilled, whip heavy cream with powdered sugar, fold in the broken-up gelatin, pudding and mini marshmallows. Finish with more marshmallows. Serve immediately or refrigerate until ready.
Do you have any tips for people who are new to cooking with ube or looking for it in stores?
Ube halaya is the name for ube jam that's easy to order online. When ube is in its halaya state, it's already gone through a fairly long cooking process, which is necessary since you can't eat it raw. Ube extract is also easy to order online.
Related:
Are there any other underrated Asian flavors or Asian ingredients you think people should use to take classic desserts up a notch?
Kinako is my current fave. It's Japanese roasted soybean powder and its flavor reminds me of peanut butter but funkier in a cool way. I like to add some to chocolate chip cookies or hot chocolate!
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Post
9 hours ago
- New York Post
US woman with tattoos and nose piercing may be descendent of Queen Victoria's secret lovechild
A Midwestern therapist with a mullet, tattoos and nose piercing may be a descendant of Queen Victoria's secret lovechild, a British historian has claimed. Angela Webb-Milinkovich, a mental-health practitioner from Minnesota, was named as a possible living testament to a scandalous affair between the British monarch and her devoted manservant, John Brown, by historian Fern Riddell. Webb-Milinkovich, who is in her 40s, according to online records, doesn't look like a royal but is prepared to get a DNA test to prove whether she is. 3 Angela Webb-Milinkovich, a healthcare worker in Minnesota, may be a living descendant of Queen Victoria's secret lovechild. bettylooper/Instagram Advertisement 'I feel pretty confident that there's some legitimacy to [the theory],' Webb-Milinkovich told the Times of London. 'It's not something that I myself would ever be able to confirm. 'The story that my family grew up with is that John Brown and Queen Victoria had a romantic relationship,' she said, referring to the loyal aide who the royal matriarch became particularly close to after her husband Prince Albert's death. 'They went on a long boat journey. After that, a child was produced, and from that child came my family's lineage,' Webb-Milinkovich said of Brown and the queen. Advertisement 3 Queen Victoria asked to be buried with a picture of her manservant and suspected lover John Brown. Rumors have swirled that Mary Ann Brown, Webb-Milinkovich's great-grandmother, was their lovechild. Victoria and Brown's closeness sparked rumors in Britain, and in 1866, a Swiss newspaper reported the pair had secretly married. Victoria even dedicated her book on highland life, published after Brown died in 1883, to him and asked to be buried with his picture. Advertisement 3 Brown was suspiciously close to blue-blooded boss Victoria, some historians say. The rumored affair was the subject of the 1997 movie 'Mrs Brown,' which won Dame Judi Dench an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Victoria. Although the alleged affair has been dismissed by many historians, Riddell said she has unearthed new evidence indicating a relationship. The evidence includes a cast of Brown's hand ordered by the monarch in the days after his death, something she had previously done for her late husband. Advertisement A previously secret diary entry from Victoria also describes how she and her 'beloved John' confessed their love for each other. 'Their relationship has been downplayed and sanitized,' Riddell told the Times of London. 'I hope we give John Brown back his place in history and his legacy, which is that he was Victoria's de facto royal consort for 20 years,' said the researcher, author of the book 'Victoria's Secret.'
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: A delicious weekend at Ravinia brings together music and fine dining
'A good program,' chief conductor Marin Alsop told a crowd in Ravinia's Tree Top Lounge, 'is like a meal.' She wasn't just reaching for a fanciful metaphor. Each year, Breaking Barriers, the festival-within-a-festival she devised around gender equity at Ravinia, spotlights a different profession. This year's focus on the culinary arts invited women chefs to devise dishes inspired by Alsop's Chicago Symphony programs. Alsop picked the music, while her co-curator, 'Food Network' star Molly Yeh, matchmade the pieces with specific chefs. At this ticketed, add-on event in the Tree Top Lounge, a Ravinia audience sampled the results. The chefs themselves assembled and handed out the hors d'oeuvres at a long table: 'Chopped' judge Maneet Chauhan, New York City baker Jacqueline Eng, Florida chef Mika Leon, and Monteverde and Pastificio chef/co-owner Sarah Grueneberg. For some of the chefs, thinking deeply about music is already second nature. Yeh is the daughter of CSO clarinetist John Bruce Yeh and a Juilliard-trained percussionist; she designed a bite and performed at Saturday's chamber concert. And Eng is also a percussionist with a Juilliard credential. (Those department dinner parties must have been elite.) Despite the crush of more than 250 attendees — about the most Tree Top can fit comfortably — the preconcert tasting went off smoothly. When the line got long, a quick-thinking Chauhan started offering her dish to those waiting, scoopable from a Fritos bag. I'm a pale excuse for a food critic. But after sampling the bites first, then attending the concert in the Pavilion, I found that the chefs' dishes uncannily forecasted the performance to come. Here's how this musical feast went on Friday: Accompanying Reena Esmail's 'Re|Member' By seeking an Indian spin on Midwestern comfort food, Chauhan set a challenge for herself. Any Frito pie, even a cheffed-up one, has to contend with the overwhelming saltiness of the chips themselves. Chauhan might not have been able to surmount that totally, but I can't imagine it being done much better. Her answer was to introduce several tastes: fruity pops of pomegranate seed and mango koochumbar, sweet-and-sour tamarind chutney and briny-creamy queso fresco. In a clever stroke, Chauhan made the vindaloo with ground lamb, rather than the usual hunks, to nod to the more traditional chili topping. Your aunt in Cedar Rapids would surely approve. The Midwest/Indian mashup was apropos for Esmail, who was born in Chicago. In her 'Re|Member,' premiered in 2021, an oboist prerecords their solo, to be shown on a video screen at the top of the piece. Later, the video returns, with the same oboist duetting with their past self live onstage. Of all the pandemic-era commissions out there, Esmail's 'Re|Member' stands out for its poignancy — and I loved that Chauhan, by riffing on a familiar, lovable dish, managed to nod to that nostalgia. So, I was extra disappointed that Ravinia opted to go a different direction for this performance. Instead of the video duet, CSO oboists Lora and Will Welter played a spatialized duet— Schaefer playing in the Pavilion aisle, Welter onstage. Even with its profundity curbed, this was a fine, stirring performance. That's a credit to guest conductor Alexandra Arrieche, a participant in Alsop's fellowship program for female conductors. Accompanying Tim Corpus's 'Great Lake Concerto,' Movement III When you think 'percussion,' you probably think big, bold, maybe a little aggro. It's no surprise Eng's perspective as a former percussionist led her to temper those stereotypes. Instead of going for the obvious associations, she focused on that other, unseen aspect of being a musician: long sessions in the practice room. As she explained in the introductory video played in the Pavilion, she selected rye for its resilience in many different climates. (That grain selection had the added benefit of a slightly sour edge, brightening the dish.) And the bean-and-vegetable it rested upon had the rich, layered flavor one can only achieve by stewing high-quality ingredients patiently for hours on end. Decadent, a little cheesy, and oh-so-umami, it was the most flavor-packed bite of the evening. With its focus on Lakes-region vegetables and grains, Eng also drew inspiration from the piece's title. Corpus, a Chicago-based composer, composed the work specifically for CSO percussionist Vadim Karpinos and Lyric percussionist Ed Harrison; it was premiered by Roosevelt University's student orchestra last year. The third movement, marked 'Explosive,' throws us into a fast-paced repartee between Karpinos and Harrison from opposite sides of the stage — Karpinos on xylophone, Harrison on tom-toms. Corpus's writing is consistently inventive: It's never quite clear whether the soloists are teasing one another or casually trying to one-up each other, and you'll never hear a xylophone sound more mournful than it does at the middle of the movement. I's always a high endorsement, to both performer and composer, when people start hooting in the middle of a classical music piece like they're at a stadium show. Harrison's moment was his minute-long maraca solo (yes, really), and Karpinos' his stunt of tossing, then catching, a shekere 10 feet in the air during a cadenza. I'll be thinking about that performance for a long time—just like those beans. Accompanying George Gershwin's 'Cuban Overture' Of the four, León's dish was the most conventional, which is no slight. The texture of the ropa vieja was just right — not too soupy, but also not getting caught in your teeth for perpetuity, like some ropier ropas viejas. I could see a world in which the tostón weighs down the dish. Instead, it was just dense enough to support the generous mound of meat on top. I might have wanted some more acidity to brighten the dish. Then again, at this point in the meal, some unabashed heartiness was welcome. Without León's dish, I don't know that I would have left the Tree Top Lounge fully satiated. Alsop and the CSO's 'Cuban Overture' stuck to one's ribs, too. Maybe a little too much, actually — the overall spirit seemed transplanted from Gershwin's blustery, big-city tone poems, like 'American in Paris' or 'Rhapsody in Blue.' For a work that references son and rumba so deeply over its short duration, this overture didn't dance much as possible, I tried to isolate each dish's composite parts before taking them in together. The lamb vindaloo in the Frito pie. The cultured butter off Eng's rye toast. Even the tostón, alone, in León's creation. When I did the same for this 'pasta tale' — a chilled orzo, with a tomato saffron sauce pooling at its side — I admit, I was skeptical. Between the freshness of the lump crab and its vegetal crunch, the orzo had all the makings of a great summer pasta salad, if on the mild-mannered side. Meanwhile, the sauce was not at all what I expected, leading with the tomato's acidity. The saffron, for all its potency, arrives only on the back end of the bite, albeit mild enough to be overpowered by the taste of Ravinia's wooden utensils. I swapped to plastic before mixing it all together and digging in. Then: total magic. It's as though Grueneberg had carefully plotted a run-of-show for each bite. First, the salinity of the crab, now amplified. Then, that tomato zing, rounded off pleasantly to become more mere aroma than star. The fresh veggies complete the garden, but no longer dominate. And then: the saffron, asserting itself more bravely than before. If this ends up on Monteverde's menu, catch me there tomorrow, a Road-Runner puff of dust pluming behind. What kismet that the most nuanced dish got the most nuanced performance. If programs are like meals, 'Scheherazade' would be the equivalent of a weekly special at Chez Ravinia: Like Copland's Clarinet Concerto, appearing later in the weekend, Alsop conducted the work earlier in her Ravinia tenure, in 2022. But the flavor profile of this meeting between CSO, Alsop and associate concertmaster Stephanie Jeong — who, then and now, played the expansive solos representing Scheherazade — has only deepened in those three years. Conducting scoreless, as is her wont in big repertoire works, Alsop had a specific and inspiring vision for the piece: an end-to-end lyricism, episodes that elicited delicious contrasts, slowdowns that were just right. But don't mistake specificity for micromanagement. Just as exhilarating was the sheer freedom and creativity the CSO seized in their solos. Stephen Williamson's runs in the third movement slowed at their peak, like the suspended, heartstopping moment before a roller coaster's big drop. Keith Buncke's bassoon solo was punctuated by pauses, a sage carefully choosing his words. And Jeong — where to begin? It was really her Scheherazade, a masterclass in taking time and, when called for, freezing it altogether. I can't think of a better 'Scheherazade' I've heard live, anywhere, even including Grant Park's noble account last summer. If only we could come back for seconds. The Breaking Barriers Festival continues 5 p.m. Sunday with Felix Mendelssohn's Symphony No. 4, 'Italian,' and Chicago Symphony clarinetist Stephen Williamson playing Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. Tickets $35–$95 Pavilion, $15 lawn. More information at
Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Boston Globe
A professor's hunt for the rarest Chinese typewriter
It went into a suitcase and he took it back to California, where it joined a growing collection of Asian-language typing devices he'd hunted down. But there was one typewriter that Mullaney had little hope of ever finding: the MingKwai. Made by an eccentric Chinese linguist turned inventor living in Manhattan, the machine had mechanics that were a precursor to the systems almost everyone now uses to type in Chinese. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Only one -- the prototype -- was ever made. Advertisement 'It was the one machine,' he said recently, 'which despite all my cold-calling, all my stalking, was absolutely, 100 percent, definitely gone.' Mullaney's mania for clunky text appliances began in 2007, when he was preparing a talk on the disappearance of Chinese characters and found himself contemplating the disintegration of everything. Among the vast number of characters in the Chinese language -- around 100,000, by some estimates -- there are hundreds that no one alive knows how to pronounce. They are written down, plain as day, in old books, but their sounds, even their meanings, have been lost. Advertisement Sitting in his office, wondering at how something seemingly immortalized in print could be forgotten, Mullaney went down a mental rabbit hole. It would have been physically impossible to build a typing machine to include all the characters that were historically written out by hand, he thought. Some characters must have made the cut, while others were left behind. He sat back in his chair and asked himself: Could he recall ever having seen a Chinese typewriter? Two hours later, he was lying on the floor of his office, looking at patent documents for such devices. There had been, over the last century and a half, dozens of different Chinese typewriters made. Each one was an inventor's take on how to incorporate thousands of characters into a machine without making it unusable -- a physical manifestation of their ideas about language. Never plentiful, the typewriters were now increasingly rare, gone the way of most obsolete technology. Mullaney was fascinated. That evening turned into months of research, which turned into years of searching, as Chinese typewriters became one of his areas of historical expertise. He cold-called strangers and left voicemail messages for private collectors, people whom he suspected, from faint traces left on the internet, of having typewriters. He pored over looking for the next of kin of the last known owner of a particular machine. He called museums and asked, 'Do you, by any chance, have a Chinese typewriter?' Sometimes, they said yes. A private museum in Delaware happened to have a surviving IBM Chinese typewriter, of which only two or three were ever made. Someone at a Chinese Christian church in San Francisco got in touch with him to say they owned a typewriter that they were trying to get rid of. Mullaney took it off their hands. Advertisement The MingKwai is legendary among the handful of people who know about Chinese typewriters. It was invented by Lin Yutang, a Chinese linguist and public intellectual who had begun to worry in the 1930s that without some way to convert ink-brush characters into easily reproduced text, China would be left behind technologically -- perhaps destroyed at the hands of foreign powers. Attempts to create typing machines usually stumbled over the problem of cramming a galaxy of characters into a single machine. Lin's solution was an ingenious system housed in what looked like a large Western typewriter. But when you tapped the keys, something remarkable happened. Any two keystrokes, representing pieces of characters, moved gears within the machine. In a central window, which Lin called the Magic Eye, up to eight different characters containing those pieces then appeared, and the typist could select the right one. Lin had made it possible to type tens of thousands of characters using 72 keys. It was almost as if, Mullaney said, Lin had invented a keyboard with a single key capable of typing the entire Roman alphabet. He named his machine MingKwai, which roughly translates to 'clear and fast.' Lin, who was then living with his wife and children on Manhattan's Upper East Side, hired a New York machinist firm to make a prototype, at enormous cost to himself. He presented that prototype in a demonstration to executives from Remington, the typewriter manufacturer. Advertisement It was a failure. The machine malfunctioned at a crucial moment. Lin went bankrupt and the prototype was sold to Mergenthaler Linotype, a printing company in Brooklyn. And that, as far as Mullaney had been able to find out, was the machine's last known location. When Mergenthaler Linotype moved offices sometime in the 1950s, the machine disappeared. In his 2017 book, 'The Chinese Typewriter,' Mullaney wrote that he believed the MingKwai had most likely ended up on a scrap heap. This past January, Jennifer and Nelson Felix were in their home in Massapequa, N.Y., going through boxes that had been in storage since Felix's father died in Arizona five years before. They were looking at a wooden crate sitting among the cardboard boxes. 'What's this?' Jennifer Felix asked her husband. He'd had a peek in the crate back in Arizona. Oh, he said, it's that typewriter. She opened it, and realized it was not a typical typewriter. The symbols on the keys looked like Chinese. Nelson Felix, who often sold and bought items on Facebook, quickly found a group called 'What's My Typewriter Worth?' and posted some photos. Then they set it aside and moved on to other things. An hour later, Nelson Felix checked on his post. There were hundreds of comments, many written in Chinese. People kept tagging someone named Tom. The couple looked at each other. 'Who's Tom?' Mullaney was in Chicago to give a talk when his phone started going off -- ping, ping, ping. The small community of people he'd encountered in his long quest were sending up digital flares, urgently trying to get his attention. As soon as he saw the post, he knew exactly what he was looking at. It was the MingKwai. Advertisement But he didn't rejoice. He didn't sigh with relief. He was gripped with fear. What if they didn't know what they had and sold it before he could get to it? Someone could buy it with a click on eBay. They could make it into a coffee table. Take it apart and make steampunk earrings. It would be gone, just like that. He posted a comment on Facebook, asking the poster to contact him right away. After a few frantic hours, he got a reply, and the next day he and the Felixes were on the phone. He told them the MingKwai's story. He said that while it was up to them what they did with it, he hoped they would consider selling it to a museum. He was afraid that if it were sold at auction, it would disappear, a trophy hidden in the vacation home of an oil tycoon. Jennifer Felix was bewildered by what was happening. It was just a typewriter in a basement. But Mullaney had made an impression. 'It was lost for half a century,' she said. 'We didn't want it to get lost again.' 'To me it's just a typewriter,' she continued. 'But to other people it's history; it's a story, a life, a treasure.' Instructions and a box of tools were used to cast more Chinese character bars for the MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT Mullaney figured out that Jennifer Felix's grandfather, Douglas Arthur Jung, had been a machinist at Mergenthaler Linotype. It's likely that when the company moved offices, he took the machine home. Then it was passed down to Felix's father, who, for more than a decade, had kept the MingKwai with him. 'That's what my dad decided to keep and bring across the country when they moved,' Felix said. Advertisement Keys on the MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT Why, of all he had inherited from his own father, did he hang on to this typewriter? She doesn't know. But she feels it must have been a conscious choice: The MingKwai would not have been packed by accident. It weighs more than 50 pounds. In April, the couple made their decision. They sold the machine for an undisclosed amount to the Stanford University Libraries, which acquired it with the help of a private donor. This spring, the MingKwai made its way back across the country. When it was lifted out of the crate onto the floor at a Stanford warehouse, Mullaney lay down to look at it. The history professor could see that it was full of intricate machinery, far more delicate than any other typewriter he'd seen, and he began to imagine how engineers might help him understand it -- perhaps revealing what was going on in Lin's mind in 1947 when he invented a machine he thought could rescue China. Perhaps they could even build a new one. Lying on his stomach, Mullaney began to wonder. The MingKwai 9 typewriter. CHRISTIE HEMM KLOK/NYT This article originally appeared in
