The Cut - Crystal Kung Minkoff Likes It Spicy

“Don’t use your favorite knife!” Crystal Kung Minkoff warns. This unfortunately isn’t a scene from her first season on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — as high-drama as the Bravo reality series may be, cutlery doesn’t usually get involved. No, we’re smashing cucumbers over Zoom. Minkoff is showing me step-by-step how to prepare the classic Chinese dish huang gua, a refreshing appetizer made with cucumbers, plenty of garlic, and a mix of various condiments.

Minkoff easily floats around her kitchen in a white-and-blue tie-dye top, framed in front of the same pristine stove with red knobs we first see her cooking at when she’s introduced on RHOBH. Beyond hosting, the housewife has turned her culinary skills toward mini cooking lessons on IGTV in which followers follow along for recipes ranging from the cucumber dish to cocktails. In a couple videos, the family’s housekeeper, Lucy, makes appearances, drinking piña coladas with Minkoff. The housewife jokes that as she was setting up our Zoom call, Lucy asked how long it’s going to take because she has work she needs to get done in the kitchen.

Your bank probably funds climate change. Here’s how to save more sustainably. Gender researchers’ tips on how they maintain equal marriages. Jeremy O. Harris walks the walk, pulls Slave Play’s L.A. premiere over the Center Theatre Group’s lack of female playwrights. GEICO might need to pay millions to a woman who says she caught HPV having sex in car it insures. Which unnamed, unvaccinated famous actor contracted COVID while on set this summer, resulting in a breakout amongst the crew and production shutting down for weeks? When Bridgerton launched Phoebe Dynevor to fame, Daisy Edgar-Jones from Normal People Zoomed with her to talk about “the disorientating experience of sudden lockdown celebrity.” And here’s a helpful, important reminder about Zoom etiquette.

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