Top Home-Cooked Meals of 2010

As a partner to my list of Top Restaurant dishes, I thought I'd do another list including of my favorite home-cooked concoctions of 2010. I experimented a lot with Asian flavors, and dishes with roots in Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand were some of the best of the year, including some Asian pork meatballs that were pretty terrific.

Korean BBQ Chicken Wraps

The Korean BBQ Chicken Wraps with Pineapple Relish were a big success, as were every iteration of Banh Mi I created. The Korean tofu with spicy sauce that Ruth Reichl demonstrated on an episode of Diary of a Foodie was so good, we made it several times, particularly in the hot hot summer.

Tofu with spicy sauce

Let's not forget the very delicious Thai-style seviche I concocted from a myriad of seafood products that were living in our freezer. Ok, not "living," per se.

Thai-style ceviche

Another Thai-inflected dish I really loved this year was my Coconut Gazpacho. My Thai dinner party guests really seemed to enjoy it, too. And speaking of the Thai party, the Tod Mun Mu - my porky variation of Thai fish cakes - were also a hit.

Veering away from Asia, I thought my Caprese Salad Stack was particularly successful. And while one of the versions of Chiles Rellenos I cooked up this year was a big hit, even better were the accompanying corn muffins. Another side that I really enjoyed was a dish of mushroom orzotto, served up for our 10th wedding anniversary.

It seemed that everything was fodder for tacos - it didn't have to have Mexican or Tex-Mex flavors, either. I prepared a couple of fish tacos for a recipe contest, and even though I used commercially-breaded, frozen shrimp for one of them, when combined with elements like bacon salsa and peanut butter crema, they were utterly delicious. (Those recipes will be coming up in a future post.)

I hope you enjoyed reading about my cooking adventures in 2010 and have tried some of my recipes. I plan to have more for you in the coming year.