Kate Wentland originally comes from Claremont, California, and teaches at the national seminary in Nanjing, China, serving under Mennonite Partners in China and Mennonite Central Committee. She’s been a vegetarian almost 20 years, and writes a food blog: https://keitopotato.wordpress.com/.

With the shock of the recent United States election, many of us are craving comfort foods. Living in China for almost 7 years total, many Chinese foods have become comfort foods for me, not only because they’re tasty, but because of the countless memories of cooking and eating these foods with friends here.

This week, dumplings come to mind as a cozy comfort food, especially because I just received two new dumpling-related gifts: a handmade sorghum-stalk board for holding raw dumplings (with ridges so the dough doesn’t stick) and a handmade gourd scoop for flour, both made by elderly members of my student’s family during a recent visit to her home. I’m eager to use these new tools. I often make dumplings with my students here, and this is my favorite filling recipe: https://keitopotato.wordpress.com/2013/01/17/making-mushroom-ginger-jiaozi-with-chinese-seminary-students/

Teaching at the national seminary in China, I’m trying to encourage more fellowship on campus though several cooking groups and craft groups with students. On Saturday this week I have a graduate student cooking group coming over. Sometimes they teach me how to cook foods from their hometowns, and sometimes they ask me to teach them dishes from other countries. This time around, they asked to learn about Italian pasta sauce. I’m planning on making Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce with them because it’s so delicious and simple. I learned about this recipe 10 years ago when I was living in London, and it’s been my favorite tomato sauce recipe ever since. You only need to cut the onion in half, and those halves poach in the tomatoes and butter. Butter isn’t commonly used in China, but it’s now available in some of the bigger supermarkets. I recently listened to a cooking podcast about genius recipes that change the way people cook, and they regarded this tomato sauce method as an exemplar because it changed the way many people approach tomato sauce. Living here, when I make Italian pasta sauce, I usually buy fresh Chinese noodles from the noodle-maker at the vegetable market down the street.

I’ve never been to India, but my parents have spent time there and subsequently, one of my favorite father-daughter activities over the years has been cooking Indian food together. So while living abroad, when I want to cook something nostalgic from home, I often think of Indian food. This week I’m planning on making this spicy and lemony chickpea curry. You need to used dried chickpeas for this recipe because they maintain their texture better than canned ones. Chickpeas aren’t traditionally used in China, so I buy dried chickpeas at one of the Indian restaurants downtown that also sells Indian dried beans and spices from their pantry.

This week I’m also planning on making a delicious Chinese noodle dish for some friends. The sauce comes from Henan province, and I learned to make it from a former student from that province. The color is a little ugly, but it’s delicious if you like the flavors of fresh ginger and fried peanuts. This sauce is pretty easy but it requires some sort of Asian yellow bean paste, either Chinese, Korean or Thai style.  You can be flexible about the vegetables.