Sunday lunch: February 2011 issue of Food & Wine magazine edition.

1. Lemongrass-Cilantro Chicken with Honey Dipping Sauce
Sadly my grocery store sold lemongrass only in gigantic bundles weighing at least a couple pounds, and I couldn’t bring myself to spend $7 on something of which I only needed two stalks. I don’t know how much this affected the taste of the chicken, but it was still quite good. The honey dipping sauce was very runny and light in flavor though, I think it needed less water.

2. Crisp Sushi-Rice Cakes
These were oh-so-yummy! Crispy rice on the outside, soft on the inside, and the additions of sugar, mirin, and rice vinegar made it taste amazing. Just make sure to wet your hands before shaping each patty, or the rice will stick all over them.

3. Asian Cucumber Salad
Although I lack a mandoline—no properly made Shaker Lemon Pie in my future, I’m afraid—I figured out that using a vegetable peeler is a close enough substitute to achieve long, even, and relatively thin slices of cucumber and carrot.

4. Skillet-Baked Pear-and-Apple Crisp
I don’t know if this recipe calls for too much sugar or if my using raisins instead of dried currants made it worse, but this turned out almost cloying. The suggestion of serving it with vanilla ice cream is almost mandatory to cut some of the overwhelming sweetness of the crisp. I would cut either the ¼ cup brown sugar or ¼ cup honey out of the recipe if I were to make this again. That or have it with a large cup of unsweetened black tea.