Author: Kelly Kennedy
Associated Press
Chef Molly Yeh (Photo by Scott Roth/Invision/AP)
Fort Lauderdale, Florida (Associated Press)-Somewhere between testing beet and carrot juice, blueberries and mint, in search of the precise hue of the four-tier rainbow cake celebrating my daughter’s first birthday in the spring of 2020, Food network star Molly Ye was forced to gather storm clouds for COVID and suddenly cancelled the party she had planned for six months.
The food blogger and author of “Molly on the Range” have outlined the desktop, sent hand-painted invitations with vegetable themes, and made cute marzipan carrots as cake decorations.
Since then, the 32-year-old Ye has balanced the daily frustrations of living in isolation and isolation with the many happy firsts of her toddler Bernie. The constant that holds it together is food, or in the case of leaves, tahini. She likes to incorporate her favorite ingredients into original recipes that blend her Chinese and Jewish traditions.
“Food really has a different meaning, whether it’s in starting a family or in a pandemic,” said Ye, who lives with her husband and children on a sugar beet farm near the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.
This young family never goes to restaurants, rarely orders takeaways, cooks from scratch, and finds fun in Bernie’s milestones, despite the tedious daily life, the housework seems endless.
“Such terrible things have happened around us, and there have been so many special moments,” said Ye, who recently interviewed the Associated Press when he was attending the South Beach Food and Wine Festival in the city. “Imagine the first time you smell and taste fresh bread, the first time you bake cookies.”
The kitchen becomes a source of field trips and experiments. On a holiday in Florence, Italy, the family took out a pasta machine there and made pizzas. One day trip to the Italian Alps, which is a nearby hill, where they rode in an inflatable unicorn sleigh. A happy spa day is a coconut bath with masks and books during Bernie’s nap.
Ye, the star of the food network “Girl Meets Farm” program, has been the highlight of many viewers in a gloomy year. Her contagious smile, recipe mix and match (think Harissa honey rab, hummus dumplings, hakata Kale pizza and bacon and egg drop soup), and the cute habit of sprinkling homemade sugar or marzipan on desserts.
Pretzel challah is one of the first recipes to gain attention on her blog “My Name is Yeh”. She is happy to report that the art canvas her daughter chose is to paint woven bread with egg wash.
Ye, like the rest of us, has experienced a difficult pandemic year, full of traps and key points. She lived with her parents-in-law while overseeing large-scale home renovations, and began to write a new cookbook, “Where are the eggs”, featuring simpler weekday meals.
Although these recipes are not so picky, Ye never shy away from celebratory and sometimes labor-intensive dishes. She grew up in the kitchen with her mother, everything started from scratch, and found comfort in rituals and routines-perfect preparations for pandemic life.
In early 2020, as the Americans passed the uncertainty, Ye’s old cake recipes became popular again, including Hawaiian (a Middle Eastern spice) carrot cake and tahini caramel frosting; chocolate cake with half sugar filling and tahini frosting; and Mini pumpkin loaf cake with cream cheese glaze and candied bacon.
The new mother admitted that she struggled when she realized that she was not an interesting parent. “It is obvious that Nick is a funny person, dancing and singing, making her spin in the air,” she said.
But food also solves this problem.
“When she eats my chicken noodle soup, I will see Bernie’s face, and when she wakes up from a nap, I will fill the house with the smell of macaroni and cheese,” she said.
Ye met her husband while studying at Julia and made her debut as a percussionist at Carnegie Hall at the age of 17. 1977.
One of her favorite moments on the show is cooking chicken pot stickers, making scallion pancakes with maple syrup salad, and of course sprinkling cakes, and then performing Bach inventions with the man she calls her greatest musical inspiration.
Ye said: “The feeling of making cakes and food for other people is the same as the feeling I get from playing music for my loved ones. It is creative, specific and pleasant.” “If life can string many of these moments together. Together, that is the life I want.”
