I made a dish I adore and which is featured on the cover, Dan Dan noodles. While I have certain ingredients like both dark and light soy sauce, Chinkiang vinegar and Shaoxing wine in order to make this particular dish I went ahead and purchased some sweet fermented sauce and embarked on a search for find ya cai. Ok, this is where is gets complicated. I searched high and low at every Chinese grocery store I could find and there was no ya cai, a kind of preserved mustard green. In fact one store told me they hadn't carried it in a long time despite requests from restaurants. I did find lots of other preserved vegetables and Tianjin preserved vegetable another kind of salt pickled cabbage with garlic which I used instead. It's a delicious savory vegetable that adds a really nice texture to dishes and is fairly easy to find.
Last spring I had the pleasure of interviewing chef and restaurateur Deborah Schneider about salsas for a San Diego Union-Tribune 
Any fans of Lisa Fain’s first cookbook, 
. I’ve not seen very many African cookbooks and even fewer designed for a Western audience. There are many indigenous ingredients that you won’t be able to find, and author Miriam Kinunda has made substations and focused on recipes that are more practical.
First up is