build your own!
Maybe, like, 80% of the food I make for myself is a "Jess Plate." If I really want to inflate the number of recipes on the menu, I can split "The Jess Plate" into at least 12 distinct dishes. It's just
(1) some kind of protein, PLUS
(2) ...some kind of veggie, ON
(3) ...some kind of carb.
Do you see how this explodes into 12+ different dishes? If I consider "chicken-but-it's-poached-and-on-rice" and "beef-but-it's-stir-fried-and-on-noodles" and "fish-but-it's-grilled-and-with-naan" to be distinct dishes, I would have an ungodly amount of dishes to write about, but that's a lot of writing for not a lot of insight.
So instead, it's more worthwhile for me to go over the things that change how a Jess Plate tastes, like the cooking methods and seasonings.
/r/RiceCookerRecipes. You would think that rice cookers have one job, for cooking rice. I did too, until one faithful day in July of 2026, I had this flash of insight:
Hmm! The way I usually cook chicken is by poaching it. That's putting chicken in a pot of water and letting it cook.
And the way a rice cooker works... you put rice in a pot of water and let it cook.
What if I poach some chicken in the rice cooker WITH my rice? Is this a thing? Can we do it?
Turns out not only is this legal and not only can we do it, it's delicious! As the chicken cooks, its fat seeps into the rice and fills it with chicken-flavored goodness. Same effect happens with fish, and any fatty protein really.
I do this rice cooker trick for any white meat, since the meat ends up with the same texture as if it were poached or steamed, which is how I typically cook my white meat anyway. So I take it as a shortcut to the same result, with one less pot to watch and clean up and without sacrifice in quality.
I'm not as big a fan of doing it for red meats, since otherwise you miss out on the browning that gives them their flavor. According to esteemed food scientist Kenji Lopez-Alt, there's a fancy science word for this, Maillard reaction or something like that, but all you need to know is that a rice cooker won't get us there.
I've decided that I ought to diversify my knowledge of spices and herbs. If Columbus can spend two months crossing the Atlantic ocean for some spice, the least I can do is bike 6 minutes to my local Trader Joe's and learn what makes this stuff so worthy to die for.
Left to myself, I'm someone who happily lives off of zero seasoning with the occasional splash of salt or soy sauce...
Toasted soy sauce. I use toasted soy souce where I typically use salt or ordinary soy sauce, when I feel like upgrading the flavor of my food. It's really tasty! You put a bit of soy sauce in a pot or pan, heat it on the stove until it juuust about starts to smoke, and remove it from the heat.
...though, remembering our boy Columbus who voyaged two months for spice, I decide to make my pilgrimage, too.
Amchoor powder. It's a fruity spice powder made from dried unripe green mangoes. I've not had a spice quite like this. It's sour, a fruity sour, almost like a citrus. Am a big fan of this and am on the hunt for a reliable, affordable source around the area.
Black pepper. I know, I know, pepper is the most commonplace seasoning on the planet, it's the stuff that sits next to salt in every clipart in kindergarten / grade school coloring books. For what it's worth, my household didn't use pepper much growing up so I underutilize it.
Dashi. My first reaction was that this tastes exactly like MSG, then I learned that MSG was created to imitate dashi. I use dashi whenever I want to add umami without the guilt of MSG, because dashi's provenance in fish stock makes it sound more natural and therefore more virtuous than sinister man-made MSG.
There's something about the color green that makes a dish look complete. It can be the most repulsive dish in the world, a beige lump of unidentifiable ingredients, but the moment you add a sprig of green... mmph, now it's rustic!
My go-to is usually green onion or cilantro. Lately I've been trying to document the herbs that show up more in Western cooking. I'll be honest, while I can taste the difference between basil/dill/thyme/etc, I can't really tell you why a recipe picks one herb over another, but I'd like to.