East Asian

These hors d'oeuvres should be served warm, so fry a couple of batches at a time as platters need replenishing.

A soy-sake marinade is the base for a delicious reduction sauce. For convenience, begin this one day ahead and refrigerate the steak in its marinade overnight.

Serve steamed rice mixed with fresh cilantro alongside this spicy Chinese-inspired dish.

Though these dumplings are traditionally cooked in stacked Asian bamboo or metal steamers, you can also use a pasta pot with a deep perforated colander-steamer insert. If your pot has a second shallow colander-steamer insert, you can steam 2 batches at once. The dumplings should be served warm, so reheat them in batches as platters need replenishing.

Black cod is steeped in sweet miso before being baked in the oven. The sweetness of Nobu-style Saikyo Miso is an excellent match with the plumpness of the fish.

Steaming, a method often used by Asian cooks, works well with delicately flavored red snapper, since the aromatics (ginger, scallion, chile) are easily absorbed by the fish.

Steve Katz of Potomac, Maryland, writes: "I would like to share a recipe for the most finger-licking baby back ribs you'll ever cook on your stovetop. The secret ingredient is Lapsang souchong tea, used in the braising liquid to give the ribs a smoky flavor. Active time: 45 min Start to finish: 2 1/4 hr

The combination of salty, sweet, crunchy, and smooth gives these confections a special place in my heart. That, added to the fact that they made an appearance at every bridge and mahjongg game my mother ever hosted, elevates their status to serious nostalgia food. You can find cans of Chinese chow-mein noodles in the Asian food section of the supermarket. The ones you want are cooked and ready to eat like crackers.

This three-in-one dish (chicken, rice, and soup) originated in Hainan, a tropical island off China's southern coast, and has become a culinary staple in Malaysian culture.

Kombu comes packaged in dried lengths that are most easily cut with scissors.

The term tataki refers to beef or fish that is seared, then chilled, marinated and thinly sliced. This ginger beef version is served with traditional tataki accompaniments—grated daikon (white radish) and ginger, chopped green onions, and a great dipping sauce.

The recipe below is excerpted from restaurateur Jenny Kwak's book, Dok Suni: Recipes from My Mother's Korean Kitchen.

Spicy Szechuan dishes were quite the thing in the seventies; around that time, pasta was also coming into its own. This recipe features ingredients that are widely available in the Asian foods section of most markets. If you like, add snow peas and sliced red bell pepper for some crunch.

Hey-mul Pajun Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from restaurateur Jenny Kwak's book, Dok Suni: Recipes from My Mother's Korean Kitchen. Kwak also shared some helpful cooking tips exclusively with Epicurious, which we've added at the bottom of the page. To read more about Kwak and Korean cuisine, click here. It is said that because Korea was almost all surrounded by water, Koreans looked seaward for culinary inspiration. Hey-mul pajun, a simple and reliable treat, is a good example of this. My parents both spoke of this dish when I was growing up. My father ate it when his family had little to eat, and still to this day he enjoys it with a bottle of soju (sweet potato vodka). My mother told me that the aroma of the dish was so good that it would entice her neighborhood girlfriends to peek over the walls that divided the homes and ask, "Hey, can I come eat that with you?" And because the girls enjoyed the company as much as the food, they sat by the fire cooking up one pancake at a time, talking and eating until their mothers called them back home.