About Sassy Radish

4377886958_d8f5f37f4f(3)

Sassy Radish is written by me, Olga Massov, a writer and a recipe tester/developer. After a decade in finance, I decided to take the plunge and make a living in food writing. I got freakishly lucky and get to work with amazing folks like Melissa Clark and Andrew Scrivani. I still pinch myself on a daily basis. I am now working on co-authoring my first book. It’s going to be on kimchi featuring various kimchi recipes as well as recipes using kimchi as an ingredient. It’ll be published in the fall 2012 by Ten Speed Press. My co-author, Lauryn Chun, runs a fantastic boutique kimchi company called MILKimchi. I might sound biased when I say that her kimchi is extraordinary. I eat it straight out of a jar.

I started this blog awhile back and it sat on the back burner until about fall 2008. I want to help you make good food. Daily. Good food is not necessarily complicated or precious, and sourced locally and ethically (as much as it is feasible), is easier, healthier, and more fulfilling. If you’re a beginner home cook, I want to help you take the scary out of cooking. If you’ve been around the chopping block a few times, I want to help explore better techniques. We can do it together, one chop, stir, or knead at a time.

What you should expect to see here is real, honest, spruced-up home-cooking along with stories. Sometimes they are about food; other times – not so much. You will never see anything with foam nor will you find any molecular gastronomy unless you count making homemade peanut butter.

Besides giving you recipes, I want to tell you stories. Stories from my childhood in Russia, stories from my life in the US, stories from last week when I had a hankering for chana masala. I’m convinced that our most cemented memories are all tied to food in one way or another, and the communities we build through gathering around our table.

I was born and grew up in Russia, and although I’ve lived in the United States most my life, I’ve maintained my deep love of all things pickled, herring, pelmeni, cabbage, beets, and sour cream (among other things). My life in the US, on the other hand, helped me to develop a great penchant for things like bourbon, barbecue and bluegrass. I like to eat pretty much everything, particularly sushi, brisket, pizza, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and good Mexican (the latter being rather difficult to locate in New York). I’m a sucker for food with cilantro, lime, and onions; and believe that mashed potatoes is an acceptable answer to a really bad day. If you give me a ripe summer tomato, I will be your friend for life. When my kitchen runs out of onions, garlic, ricotta, olive oil, lemons, or anchovies – it feels naked and empty. I can put Sriracha on almost anything and enjoy it. I think Trader Joe’s Chocolate Covered Almonds with Turbinado Sugar and Sea Salt are divine.

While I’ve grown to love fennel, especially sliced thinly in salads, I still loathe licorice or anise – I’ve tried, and I still find it disgusting. I think truffles are overrated. I am allergic to, and don’t like, champagne. I am also indifferent to Spanish food, and before you try to tell me I haven’t tried the good stuff, believe me – I have. I’ve made peace with not growing to like certain flavors – there’s always hope – I’m told our palates shift every seven years or so.

Since my background is Russian, I will continue to feature some traditional Russian recipes, particularly those passed onto me by my family. I’ve a stack of recipes I want to adapt for the American kitchen. Add that to the list of three million things I want to do.

4377732982_4a972164e2

All the photography on this site is taken by me with my priceless and beloved Nikon D700 (starting roughly in December 2009) and previously with a Nikon d70s. I use a Sigma 60mm macro lens, the 50mm 1.4/f Nikkor lens, and (rarely!) a Nikkor 18-70mm zoom lens. My dream lens can be found here. I heart it so, but seriously, the price tag!

Use of recipes, writing, photography:
Unauthorized use of text and photography is not allowed and violates the copyright laws. If you want to use my images somewhere, ask me first – this is my livelihood.

Comment Etiquette:
We love comments here at Sassy Radish! Your comments are welcome, and we try to foster a cordial and pleasant environment for us all to share ideas, ask questions and exchange best practices. Please treat this space as if you were a guest at our table for dinner – if you wouldn’t say something to us at the dinner table, perhaps the comment might not be appropriate. Please be respectful and nurturing of the other commenters as well. The Sassy Radish censor (that’s me!) is generally quite lax (unlike my birth country), however, should you choose to leave a mean and disparaging comment addressed either to me or someone else, the censor (me!) has the liberty to edit your comment out. We like to play nice in the SR sandbox!

If you have a question or a comment you wish to email me directly, I’d love to hear from you. If you have a recipe question, it is best to leave a comment, this way we can all exchange ideas and certainly other readers might share your questions or concerns.

Contact Me!
sassyradish at gmail dot com

Connect with Sassy Radish!

  • On Facebook – become a fan!
  • On Twitter – updates to the site will be posted along with whatever random thoughts float up in my mind.

Links/Blogroll:
I do not recipro-link as I believe that we read what we like and we link to what we read. And we can’t read everything (no matter how much we wish we could).

My current links are ported dynamically from my Google Reader.

Sassy Radish Work, Mentions, and Press: