By Gretchen McKay From Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Pittsburgh—Andrew Alvarez’s immigrant parents had high standards. From an early age, he knew they hoped a career in medicine or engineering would follow his 2004 graduation from Quaker Valley High School. There was only one problem, and it was a biggie: Cooking is what actually fired the Sewickley, Pennsylvania…

Plum sauce is a sweet-sour-salty condiment vaguely modeled after suin mui jeng (in Cantonese) or suan mei chiang (in Mandarin), which is made from the prunus salicina, a tree fruit more commonly known in English as Chinese plum, Japanese plum, or Japanese apricot. It has become a popular Chinese American dipping sauce for egg rolls,…

The tastes of summer are bountiful. Colorful fruits and vegetables abound, and barbecuing is the welcome technique to complement summers’ best produce. Pork ribs have a permanent place on my summer menu; particularly baby back ribs that are meaty and happily take on the Asian flavors of this zesty marinade. Growing up, summer barbecues at…

In an industry known for its high risk of failure and low profit margins, Mie Okuda has survived opening a restaurant during an economic slump—twice. In the late 1990s, during Japan’s “Lost Decades” recession, she started a restaurant in one of the most restaurant-dense cities in the world, Tokyo’s Ginza district. Years later in America,…