Food & Cooking
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Fast food favorites you can easily recreate at home

Bertie A. Kinser

Copycat versions of fast food classics

While we love the convenience of ordering in, many popular fast food dishes can easily be made at home – and you can customize them to your heart’s content. From McDonald’s Sausage and Egg McMuffin to a Domino’s-inspired pepperoni pizza and Chick-fil-A-style waffle fries, check out these copycat recipes before you hit the drive-thru or open an app.



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Cheeseburgers

Five Guys fans should try these cheeseburgers. Ground beef with 20% fat content makes juicy patties with the best flavor – nothing else is added except salt and pepper. Cook them on the barbecue or a hot griddle pan and only flip them once. Add a slice of American cheese and once melted, serve in a sesame seed bun with your favorite salad items and condiments.

Get

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Street Food
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Popiah: a popular street food you can now make at home

Bertie A. Kinser
Popiah is also known as fresh spring rolls and is a popular street food in Malaysia. (Rasa Malaysia pic)

Popiah is of Chinese origin, and comes from the Fujian province in China. In Malaysia, popiah is also known as fresh spring rolls and is a popular street food.

Besides Malaysia, variations of popiah can be found in Singapore, Medan, and Taiwan – all using simple and healthy ingredients that make it taste so delicious and refreshing.

Here is a family recipe, one which is much-cherished, not only because of its supreme flavour, but because of the flood of memories it brings back.

Ingredients

  • 3/4 cup cooking oil
  • 20 fresh popiah wrappers
  • fresh lettuce, washed and drained dry

Filling

  • 3 cloves garlic, finely minced
  • 226 g shrimp, shelled, deveined and cut into small pieces
  • 1 kg yam bean or jicama (sengkuang), grated
  • 56 g French beans, sliced
  • 4 pieces bean curd,
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Japanese Food
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Sakura Gardens retirement home, a last vestige of Japanese American Boyle Heights, faces partial closure

Bertie A. Kinser

Kotoko Toji has lived in Los Angeles since the 1950s but speaks little English.



Laura Morita Bethel directs traffic during a protest at the Sakura Gardens intermediate care facility. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

© Provided by The LA Times
Laura Morita Bethel directs traffic during a protest at the Sakura Gardens intermediate care facility. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

When it came time to move to a retirement home 15 years ago, she had a request: Sakura Gardens.

Like Toji, many of the residents are Japanese Americans in their 80s and 90s. Most of the staff speaks Japanese.

On the Japanese holiday of Girls’ Day, Toji and her friends eat sakuramochi — a sweet rice cake filled with red bean paste and encased in a pickled cherry blossom leaf.

Sakura Gardens is a last vestige of Japanese American culture in Boyle Heights.

Since the facility opened in the 1970s, most businesses catering to Japanese residents have closed as the neighborhood solidified into a working-class Latino enclave.

Now,

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Food Traditional
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21 Of The Best Food Delivery Boxes For Fine Dining At Home This Valentine’s Day

Bertie A. Kinser

Eat like the Italians, with this Soho restaurant’s monthly-changing regional food box and allow yourself to be transported from Tuscany to Veneto.

Choose between ‘Campo’ (vegetarian), ‘Maccellaio’ (meat), and ‘Mare’ (sea) three-course menus. In February, boxes will be a hearty fare for one of the coldest months of the year. Expect baked scallops with parmesan, lemon, thyme and pumpkin ‘in saor’ to start, followed by warming mains of Maiale al latte – a signature northern Veneto dish where pork shoulder is cooked long and slow in milk and spices. For the veggies, there’s the restaurant favourite spinach and ricotta malfatti with brown butter and sage. To finish, a generous portion of Tiramisu, a household favourite and a dessert said to have originated in the Venetian city of Treviso.

For Valentine’s Day, their San Valentino feast has you starting in Venice with DIY white peach bellinis, before journeying south to

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