A Cooking Goddess

Bo's a natural in the kitchen. With ease and grace, she chops, stirs, fries as she creates delicious food. She never seems to panic, always sure of what she's doing. And the result is always delectable, healthy food.

Last week, Bo made dinner for Johnnie and I. We started our meal with wonton soup, a new dish in her repertoire (at least it was new to me). Bo made the wontons from scratch, combining ground chicken, mushroom, and ginger which she handily wrapped in a wonton wrapper. The wontons were larger and, I found, more packed with flavor than wontons I've eaten at restaurants. After cooking them in boiling water, Bo added the wontons and hot water to a bowl with pickles, sliced green onions, soy sauce, sesame oil, and spicy mustard. The result was a flavorful soup with a pronounced ginger flavor. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture until I'd eaten most of the wontons. Still, you get the idea, I hope.

This was just the first course of the meal. Bo also made one of my favorite soups, salmon and tomato. This soup also contains carrots, ginger, soy sauce and green onion. She cooks it on her stove top for an hour which makes the salmon quite tender. At several phases of the process, she also skims off the fat--yet the soup still retains the richness one expects with salmon. It's a delicious soup, one I've tried to make at home. This time, though, I made sure to write down all the ingredients used. Note to self: don't saute onions at the beginning of the process. Instead, add green onions just before serving. Next time I make this soup, I think it will turn out more like Bo's.

The trio above also features Bo's sauteed green beans with garlic and fried tofu rice noodles. Both these dishes are just as good as Bo's soups.

Ever since we were roommates, I've tried to replicate Bo's cooking. There are certain dishes I still want to master: her boiled beef with anise and mushrooms, the ginger chicken leg soup that she made when I got sick, and the tomato and egg soup that she was able to so quickly throw together. Bo's cooking features ginger, a taste I've grown to enjoy--other than that, the complexity of her food depends on her cooking techniques rather than a variety of spices. I'll finish where I started: Bo's a natural in the kitchen.