What I'm Cooking — Nathan Pai Schmitt

How we learn to cook in our family. Three generations of Pai women (pre-Covid).

A wonderful catch of 23 crabs (dungeness and red rock)--post-steaming.

The zakuski course of an incredibly varied and delicious Russian dinner party (complete with multiple infused vodkas).

Russian dinner party: absolutely mind blowing gluten free lamb pelmeni: post-wrapping, pre-boiling.

Russian dinner party: unbelievably delicious homemade gluten free lamb pelmeni in adjika butter sauce.

Russian dinner party: delicious gluten free pirog.

Made jok in preparation for being knocked out by the 2nd Covid vaccine.

An incredible vegan (a first for us) Indian dinner party made with my coworker Hiten for our team.

My young cousin prepping short ribs to make "Jorge pork"--our uncle's absolutely incredible 30+ ingredient sauce.

My young cousins making spring rolls.

What was, no doubt, the best gluten free philly cheese steak in Colorado (not a high bar, but still).

Bua Loy Nam King: a life changing dessert soup. Extremely intense sweet ginger broth with black sesame balls (toasted black sesame seed paste inside a thin layer of rice flour).

Bao burger--copied from Toki in Portland.

Mandu making for (a belated) new years celebration! Ended up making/freezing enough to fill 4 gallon-size bags. I think we've mastered gluten free wrappers!

Our gluten free artisanal bread loaves. To buy some life-changing gluten free bread, visit us at cpbakery.com

Our first steak from the quarter beef we ordered from Willow Creek Meats. The most incredibly flavorful beef we've had, regeneratively grazed in partnership with The Land Trust for habitat restoration, and net carbon negative...meaning the cows' lifecycle actively sequesters carbon, making it more environmentally responsible than conventional forms of *both* meat and veggie/grain production.

Ridiculously delicious gluten free focaccia. To buy some life-changing gluten free bread, visit us at cpbakery.com

Foccaccia goes extremely well with a quick tomato/herb reduction and super high quality olive oil.

An absurdly delicious chicken pot pie on the weekend of the 2021 blizzard when we got 2 feet of snow in Denver! Game-changing tips for incredible pot pie: (1) reduce twice as much stock as you need to concentrate the chicken flavor, (2) infuse this stock with dried morels and chanterelles to dramatically bump up the umami before adding them back to the filling, (3) bake/toast chicken skin until it's super crispy, chop it up into a dust, and add it to the filling for a ton more concentrated chicken flavor/umami, and (4) use parsnips or turnips in the filling to add to the butteriness and depth.

Daily green smooth: 64 ounces, minimal carbs. Generally: 3/4ths of a bunch of kale (including spines), a couple huge handfuls of spinach, cucumber or celery, carrots, chia seeds, half an apple/pear, frozen wild blueberries, an avocado, collagen powder, MCT oil, water.

Not a great photo, but incredible: sitka blacktail deer that sister harvested on Kodiak Island in Alaska and gluten free fried oysters.

Sundubu jjigae: Korean stew with soft tofu, pork belly, kimchi, and egg.

Mix of Indian and Afghan for weeknight dinners: kadoo boranee, saag, chhonk, and Afghan style beef.

I helped very minimally on this: Tricia's first cake with her new kitchen gear. Espresso chocolate cake with maple buttercream.

Traditional Christmas tamale making with the family in 2018.

Tricia making kimchi.

Making some seriously delicious kimchi.

Asiago bagel (gluten free).

Asiago and everything bagel dogs. Anyone who grew up in Portland (or California) knows Noah's Bagels. These taste like childhood.

Decorating Christmas sugar cookies!

Mussel chowder bread bowls for Christmas dinner (clams were hard to come by)! In our gluten free Catalla Pai sourdough boule.

Mussels in a butter/wine/garlic sauce.

Around Christmas time, my grandparents used to host all the Korean students studying at UMKC on Christmas Eve since they didn't have family in the US over the holidays. They made pizzas to feed everyone and this is now a family tradition. We usually make pizza Neapolitan style and this time we did New York style...nailed it.

Another Christmas Eve pizza: copying Pizza Schmizza's Genoa pizza.

Thanks to family roots in New Mexico, tamale making on Christmas Eve is also a long-time tradition. This year we used beef cheeks and the usual dixon chili powder from The Chili Shop near Santa Fe.

First attempt at gluten free cannoli, the ricotta in the filling was also home made. Incredibly delicious.

Baked brie in our gluten free puff pastry with my dad's (and great grandma's) tomato/hatch chili preserves.

Christmas cookies, gluten free. Chocolate crinkles, shortbread cookies, Russian tea cakes that spread due to a bit too much butter, and pinon brittle.

Tricia's birthday dinner and her first time having fondue. Massive steak and chocolate fondue waiting in the wings.

Covid Thanksgiving dinner: we made enough for 8 or 10 people so we could freeze it and have leftovers.

Thanksgiving turkey: 2 day salt/sugar/pepper/allspice brine, oak smoked with butter-wine cheese cloth, uncover for the last 30 minutes to brown and crisp the skin.

Thanksgiving: delicious sweet potato pie.

Ingredients for thanksgiving stuffing using a couple loaves of Catalla Pai bread. Tip for next level stuffing: rehydrate chanterelle and black trumpet mushrooms in the chicken stock prior to adding to stuffing. Also, oven dried bread is different and better than stale bread for stuffing--it holds it's starch structure better.

Filipino feast: lechon kawali and lumpia. Crazy delicious.

Filipino feast: pancit and 3 sauces (garlic vinegar, calamansi, and sweet chili).

Filipino Halo Halo: ube ice cream, pandan jelly, red beans, macapuno, sweetened condensed coconut milk.

Ridiculously delicious gluten free buttermilk biscuits. Sold at Catalla Pai.

Samgyetang: Korean ginseng soup with a cornish hen.

Every variety of chili pepper we grew in 2020. From left to right: Aji Santa Cruz, Anaheim, Belize Sweet Habanero, jalapeños (green and red), Brazilian Starfish Yellow, Bhut x Neyde hybrid, Guarumal, Thai birds eye (green and red), Pequin, Carolina Reaper.

Huge harvest of herbs and chilis at the end of the Summer 2020 season.

Delicious bruschetta made with garden tomatoes and basil.

Catalla Pai artisanal boules.

Handmade gluten free gnocchi. Extremely light and delicious.

Homemade gnocchi with garden pesto and tomatoes.

Our Catalla Pai gluten free bagels. You won't find a better gluten free bagel anywhere...just look at that crumb!

Ensaymada: Filipino sweet bread with cheese.

Garden squash blossom pizza on our insanely delicious gluten free crust.

The pizza oven was the most popular appliance of the summer.

Brook and rainbow trout caught in Boulder Creek, Colorado. Smoking and making trout dip.

Beat and garden arugula blossom salad.

Non-alcoholic rum recipe from Grant Achatz's Zero cookbook (3 Michelin star and #1 restaurant in the world, Alinea).

Outrageously delicious gluten free focaccia.

Our first batch of gluten free everything bagels.

Soft shell crab.

Inspired by our time in Portugal, gluten free pasteis de nata. We were a bit lazy with the pastry dough, so it came out a little thin...but still delicious.