Chiu on This

Home cooking

My hometown friend Mark, who resides outside of Denver, is big on food and drink. He brews his own beer, a pasttime he appears to be forgoing with his new obsession for winemaking, and was a coffee connoisseur in the days when Starbucks hadn't ventured outside the Pacific Northwest. He makes fantastic goetta, sauerbraten, and spaghetti and meatballs from family recipes.

Mark recently recounted that his roommate Mike and neighbor Judy have become a culinary trio after being influenced by The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. They're planning on buying into some locally raised grass fed cattle (i.e., putting dibs on a cow or part of a cow), which sounds both awesome and tasty, and Mark and Judy have also moved into classic cocktail making, perfecting the Sazerac.

Being a cantakerous contrarian, however, I was much more impressed by the trio's production of a classic Hawaiian snack of Portugese origin, the malasadas. Anyone's who lived in Hawaii knows about these little bits of heaven - fried yeasted dough dusted with granulated sugar (think of an ethereal version of zeppole, e.g., malasadas is to zeppole as Krispy Kreme is to Dunkin Donuts)  - and, like Zippy's chili, the thought of a malasadas can produce a deep sense of nostalgia and longing for the islands and "local" culture, akin to a madeleine-inspired reverie. Leonard's used to be the place to get awesome malasadas, but on my last visit home I found their version both different and disappointing; folks have told me that they've changed their basic recipe and have also created malasadas with fillings, which just sounds bizarre. I don't know if some crazy marketing type filled their head with these weird lilikoi-flavored ideas, but I'm pretty unhappy that the "you can't go home again" adage had to play out this way.

Oops, back from my digression...so Mike found the Punahou (howzit, Uncle Barry!) carnival recipe and made the dough, Mark deep fried them, and Judy put them in a paper bag to coat them with sugar. I really wish someone had been around to film or photograph them doing this (because then you'd be seeing pictures of the process here). I wonder if they were drinking homemade Sazeracs, beer, and/or wine while they were on the factory line, or whether the thought of a hot vat of oil within spattering distance kept them sober. I like the family feel of this production - it reminds me of when my parents would make dumplings, a half-day long exercise that produced trays and trays of dumplings and their byproduct, scallion pancakes, and when the only things I could do to "help" were (1) make crazy looking, misshapen, and poorly crimped dumplings and (2) act as "quality control" by sampling as many of the finished goodies as possible.

In any case, I'm looking forward to hearing more from the trio and can probably be of help to them in the quality control/inspection process as well. Why Mark doesn't have his own food/drink blog is beyond me, since he pays attention to both in much greater detail than I do. Apparently Mike has suggested that he start one called "The absinthe-minded professor"; I say "ditto" to that.

Note: I'm still trying to figure out where I can get malasadas in Newark, which has a large Portugese population in the Ironbound neighborhood. The last time I looked for signs of them (admittedly in a very feeble, tapping into Google, way, versus walking around Newark), I couldn't figure out where to go. Any hints would be greatly appreciated.

Stumbling across Schnipper's

It's been raining for what seems like forever in NYC. On Thursday, I woke up with a pounding headache and even less energy than usual (which is saying a lot). I blamed the barometric pressure for making me feel like my eyes were caving into my head, and I wanted nothing more than to stay inside and out of the rain. But I had to head into Manhattan for a workshop and awards ceremony on Excellence in Nonprofit Management held by the New York Times Foundation. My organization was one among six finalists, and I'd planned on attending the session and experimenting with Twitter to send info back to the home office on the proceedings and, naturally, on who'd won what.

Feeling like crap and not having had anything to eat, I wasn't quite looking forward to the 3.5 hour event. Lucky for me, though, I stumbled across Schnipper's Quality Kitchen, right next to the Times Center where the event was being held (and on the same block as the Muji flaghsip store - eep!). With fifteen minutes to spare, I eyeballed the menu. I very much wanted the sloppy dog -  a hot dog topped w/ sloppy joe, cheese, and green onions, but decided against it, knowing that "sloppy" could very easily be applied to my appearance if I tried to down this puppy too quickly.  Instead, I opted for the green chile cheese dog. This wasn't quite a rational alternative, since any form of "cheese" modifying "hot dog" usually implies an utter mess that could be as bad as a sloppy dog or chili dog.  Maybe my quick-as-lightning subconscious decision making process was steering me away from a disastrous red sloppy joe stain towards a more color-coordinated green chile stain. Nah - most likely I was thinking, "Hmm, I haven't had green chile in a long while. I wonder how spicy it'll be?" At any rate, that's what I ordered.

The clock was ticking away as I stood around waiting for my order. The cashier handed me one of those electronic buzzers that would indicate when my food was ready.  Is this place really that popular? I wondered. I'd never even heard of it. But the location - 8th and 41st - must drive a lot people in here, even though the prices were somewhat steep: my dog plus a diet coke amounted to $8.50. If I thought those prices were high, why did I misinform the employee doing a survey of waiting customers that I typically pay $10 to $12 for lunch?  (I never pay that much if I can help it.) I couldn't answer her question about what I considered Schnipper's competitors, since this was only my first time there, but I speculated - Johnny Rockets to go? An upscale In-and-Out burger? Five Guys with an extended menu? Shake Shack??? (It hits me afterwards - Taylor's Refresher in San Francisco.)

The buzzer goes off. I was getting worried - fifteen minutes had gone down to eight minutes. I would have snarf this dog down fast. But if this thing had just been cooked up, then why was half of the bun cold? I grumbled to myself. I struggled a bit trying to pick up said dog, which was heavy and dripping with toppings - unidentified cheese product, somewhat airy yet gooey; roasted poblanos; and pico de gallo. About a fifth of the toppings slid off before I even got it near my mouth (next time, get a fork). My grousing came to an end with my first bite. A bizarre thought came to me as I savored the taste combination: I think I've just found a good substitute for the Chicago hot dog, which no joint in NYC can make make properly. Even though the resemblance to the Chicago dog is miniscule - bun, check; hot dog, check; tomatoes, check; a little bit of spicy-hot, check; near impossibility of eating without making a mess, check - something about the green chile cheese dog hit the right spot in terms of both complexity and harmony of flavors. Smoky + savory + piquant = yummy and craveworthy.

I will need to go back and "test" this dog out again, just to make sure that my hunger wasn't clouding my judgment, and also to try out the other items on the menu. Burgers, fish tacos, milkshakes, combos of sloppy joes and mac-and-cheese: good ol' American comfort food. It might even help take the edge off this ridiculous weather.

(Oh, and about the competition - we won a Special Mention for Excellence in Management award, but not the overall prize.  That would have been nice, but no biggie - the top winner is an excellent organization!)

Family tested, family approved

The last restaurant I ate at during my March trip to Los Angeles elicited excited recommendations from my mom and dad - "are you going to eat the fried crabs?" they each asked when they heard I was going to meet up with my uncle, aunt, and cousin for dinner. I don't eat crabs often; one factor is that I'm too lazy to deal with the shells, but more to the point because I've never been wowed by crabmeat anyway (thus making my college years in Annapolis somewhat pointless from a culinary standpoint). So I wasn't entirely giddy at the prospect of eating at Seafood Village in Temple City, even though I knew good things had to be in store if my folks gave it not just a regular thumbs up but endorsements along the lines of "I could eat there every day!"

 My cousin Pauline did the kindness of picking me up from my extended stay hotel in Arcadia (which I commented frequently about on my Facebook account, to help keep my sense of humor intact), and we arrived fairly quickly at the restaurant, passing by the Santa Anita Race Track and taking a route similar to the one my colleagues and I used to get to the Sherriff's Department HQ. My uncle Jonathan (my dad's brother), my aunt Jenny, and my other aunt Sophie had already gotten us a table.  The place was sparsely occupied at 6pm-ish but filled up steadily over the course of our meal.

We started off with a soup course that at first had me feeling a bit worried; I could spot lots of innards floating around in the light broth and I was frankly worried about what I might encounter.  Unfortunately, I don't have the taste buds to truly appreciate a lot of what the world's diners enjoy - stuff like liver, kidney, tripe, eyeballs, etc.  In this instance, I believe I wound up with tongue, and that I can handle and I did enjoy it and the soup overall.

But the real star of the meal, of course, was the crab, deep fried with a huge heaping mass of deep fried garlic encrusting the crab itself. Yowza. No one had told me about that! I love garlic but I made a note to get myself a pack of gum before my flight, as a courtesy to my fellow airline passengers. The crab was tasty - just lightly greasy, not too salty, obviously garlicky - and it was fried to the point where I could eat some of the thinner pieces of the shell, kind of like being able to eat fishbones when you have deep fried fish in a Thai restaurant. Not being a big connoisseur of crab myself, I thought the crab meat was nice, but Pauline pointed out to me later that our crab wasn't as fresh or good as she'd had during previous visits. My relatives are sticklers for quality control!

In addition to the crab, we had several other excellent dishes, including steamed chicken with ginger sauce, scallops with sugar snap peas and other vegetables in a white sauce, fried rice made with egg whites and crab meat, and beef fried with sa cha sauce. The flavors of all the dishes were bright, clear, and distinctive. They didn't suffer from oversaucing or greasiness as you'd encounter in lots of mediocre Chinese restaurants, where the dishes just seem like blobby masses of stuff. Here the dishes worked well on their own and in combination, so we hit a good balance between spicy / emphatic and subdued / subtle flavors. My favorite dish was the beef in a spicy sa cha sauce, a condiment I find hard to describe and can't find a good description of on the internet - it is neither satay nor barbecue sauce, although it's been couched as either. Maybe a reader can provide a more accurate rendering via the comments.  The last items we had were two desserts - one provided by the house, the other ordered - tong sui soups (man, I hope I got that right) with gingko nuts and a transparent, crisp, and nearly tasteless fungus. The soups were too sweet for me to finish off completely, but I enjoyed crunching on the fungus, which I think provides some benefit to one's health other than feeling a sort of kid-like light-heartedness at the idea of eating a see-through crunchy fungus.

Seafood Village: tested, approved, and recommended by many in the Chiu clan. I'll definitely go back if I can swing it. One more reason for me to get a drivers license.

Fun with enclaves

I was originally going to title this post "you don't make friends with salad,"* however, having used that for a previous posting in 2005 <yikes!>, I had to opt for something else.

Just a few days ago, I was in Los Angeles for the start up of a new project to examine and address the county's jail overcrowding problem. My colleagues and I had a packed schedule.  We had lots of people to meet and plenty of things to learn, not least of which was how to navigate traffic using a GPS device that we had yet to trust fully.  Travelling with co-workers is a low cost way to establish team building, I can tell you that much.

Eating with colleagues while on the road is also a great way to get to know one another.  We managed to find plenty of good restaurants in Arcadia, where we lodged, and in the city proper.  It was also surprisingly easy for us to agree on where and what to eat.  I say "easy" not to indicate that the personalities of my colleagues were difficult, but rather to compare this to other occasions where I've had to coordinate and wrestle agreements from groups of people as to where to eat (something I seem to have done thru almost my entire adult life, and some of my teenage years).  Throw in these additional factors - our days were exhausting, we hadn't done a lot of research in advance about food options, and I had an unstated (and possibly shared, though never confirmed) desire to avoid eating in chain restaurants as much as possible - and you can imagine things going awry easily.

One item in our favor was the advice of my former colleague Heidi, whose friend sent in a recommendation for Soot Bull Jeep, a Korean restaurant downtown on 8th and South Catalina. After a slight struggle with fatigue and street parking (they've got a big ol' parking lot, btw), we plopped into a booth and went straight for the basics - an order of kalbi and what I figure was bulgogi (referred to as the "Spencer" cut).

Ah, luscious meats!  They were grilled over a charcoal fire rather than a gas flame, which I found surprising, having never encountered that setup in NYC Korean joints.  Just those two orders were enough for us four hale and hearty women to feel comfortably satisfied as opposed to stuffed.  The panchan were fine, although I don't think I got to try the kim chee (that may have been hoarded by one of my colleague).  I particularly liked the spicy scallion salad for the starter.  Note to diners: I don't think the ventilation system did a damn bit of good. Plan on emerging smelly but happy.

I wouldn't rate this the best Korean restaurant I've been to - that would be one in Manhattan's Koreatown whose name now escapes me - but I definitely recommend this.  Good flavors, good fumes, laid back, and a good value, to boot.

More L.A. items to follow...

* I also just learned that the phrase from the Simpsons is actually "you don't win friends with salad," as this wondrously annoying website indicates.

Fatty sling chilli kong grom

My colleague and FOCOT Christine shares this three-in-one review - dinner, dessert, and leftovers!  Four, if you count the drinks.  Yeah, let's make that four.

Mike and I went to Fatty Crab last night. We went to their original location a good few years ago but they just opened a new location on the Upper West Side which is much handier so Amanda babysat and we got our eat on - Malaysian Street Food. Overall, it was an excellent meal. We got five dishes. Three were excellent, one was very good, and the last was just ok.

Drinks: I started with the Staits Sling, a variation on the Singapore Sling - according to the menu it had gin, benedictine, kirschwasser, lime, and ginger beer. It was pretty good - nice flavors although I thought it needed to have a few more bubbles and to be a little spicier. Mike drank Blue Point. After the boozy cocktail I decided to take break and ordered a ginger beer. It arrived and I was suprised how bland it was and then looked at the bottle and realized it was Ginger Ale - this explains the lack of spiciness in the Straits Sling. I asked the waiter (who was great) about it and he went to check but that was their version of Ginger Beer - very disappointing. 

Food: The idea is to share things and everything comes when ready so no courses really. We knew this so decided to just order a few things first. We started with the Malay Fish Fry, (lightly fried spicy pieces of a white fish served with coconut rice - yum), the Fatty Tea Sandwiches, (pork belly with sambal aioli - very tasty - I could have eaten a whole plate of them) and the highlight - the Watermelon Pickle and Crispy Pork Salad. I don’t like watermelon so I left that and just ate the pickled rind with the pork - crispy on the outside and soft in the middle. I’m usually not a fan of soft fat, but this was amazing - just melted in the mouth.

We knew we wanted to finish with the Chilli Crab but needed one more dish - Mike wanted noodles so we settled on the Hokkien Mee - egg noodles with steak, cockles and shrimp. It wasn’t bad - all the components were good - but it just didn’t do much for me - I wasn’t sure what the chef was trying to achieve with the dish - it was the only one that I was disappointed in. We finished with the Chili Crab - so good - a whole Dungeness crab that comes in this amazing spicy, buttering, crab sauce. Once the crab is finished (it’s hard work) you can sop up the sauce with the toast that comes with it - soooo good. Oh, and I almost forgot, a friend recommended the Kang Kong - REALLY spicy sautéed spinach - it was phenomenal - garlicky and then the slow burn… definitely the spiciest thing on the menu.

Delicious dinner. We finished across the street at Grom. Pretty tasty gelato but I don’t get the hype - I’ve had  better - and, my pet peeve: the stracciatella flavor was just chocolate chip - it should be more like shavings - melt in your mouth rather than crunchy. The tiramisu flavor was nice though.

Epilogue: Breakfast this morning - fried egg on toast smeared with leftover crab sauce - divine. The yolky goodness melded with the sauce to create a sweet and spicy taste. So good - I must confess I did lick my plate. And the left over spicy spinach will accompany tonight’s dinner - marinated flank steak with mashed potatoes.

Small county, big flavor

In late January, I met up with a couple of my colleagues for a meeting in Moulton, Alabama, which sits to the west of Huntsville aka "The Rocket City." Due to an untrustworthy GPS navigation system, it took me two hours to get from the Huntsville airport to Moulton - the same amount of time it took my flight to get from NYC to Atlanta - instead of the roughly 30 to 45 minutes it would have taken had we trusted human judgment.  Luckily, I was in a [rare] good mood and didn't have any meetings to get to, so I was able to enjoy the scenic route, which included crossing the Tennessee River, and have a nice chat with the guy who both drove the cab and owned the cab company.

By the time I got to Moulton, I felt petered out.  My colleagues were still in a meeting, so I waited for them at Arrie's Bliss, right across from the courthouse on the town square.  I may have confused the guy at the register when I didn't request any flavorings in my cafe latte other than coffee, but no matter, it was delicious.  Arrie's, I believe, did the catering for our lunch the next day, which featured a tangy and tasty broccoli salad with lots of mayo and what I assume were real bacon bits.  I finally got a chance to sample the pretzel salad, which folks had been telling me about.  I had assumed it was a savory salad, but it actually referred to a dessert - a strawberry shortcake type of concoction with a bed/crust of snapped pretzel sticks instead of crumbled shortcake.  The sweet and salty combination worked out great.

My next post will provide pics from our BBQ dinner the previous night.  Mmmmm, BBQ...

The lazy blog

Only recently have I taken advantage of the Monday night half-price Belgian beer special at Petite Abeille. I've often gone to this cozy place for lunches with co-workers or dinner with friends and had eyeballed the signs advertising the Monday night special (along with the all-you-can-eat mussels special on Wednesdays). What does it take to go from knowing about something to following up on it? When it comes to beer, other people glomming on to the idea; in this case, my colleague Ben managed to corral a group of folks to attend.  We were happy to learn that the beer list was extensive and that the special was a true half-price special (as opposed to a two-for-one deal). Also, our bartender that evening was both knowledgeable and helpful and directed us to beers that matched our preferences of the moment.

The reason this is a lazy blog is b/c I'm going to rely on other people's reviews of the beers they tried. I recommend La Chouffe, which, as the label indicates, means "gnome." It's refreshing, aromatic and spicy, not at all what I imagine a gnome to be like...

Bacon 'n' bourbon

I almost feel compelled to go back to my January posting to change its title to "Chicken 'n' chili" to go for a threepeat of the use of the conjunction " 'n' " but I digress already (maybe I should stop reading Tristram Shandy)...

Bacon 'n' bourbon - the expo! The fat, the salt, the smoke, the liquor! The semi-educational experience providing a thin veneer of respectability to the collective decadence!  The many grease-covered fingers, including my own, grappling with camera-ready devices to document our love of pork!  The overuse of exclamation points that tends to manifest itself when discussing cured and smoked fatty pig parts!!!

Okay, if you want to read a respectable and informative review of the recent expo at Astor Center, I recommend that you head over to this Voice post, which provides the full text of the loving ode to bacon that Feedbag editor Josh Ozersky recited to an appreciative group of pig and American whiskey philes, along with a listing of the bourbons available that evening.

I won't provide anything so thorough, mostly because my recollections of the evening were fuzzed out by an ongoing battle with a head cold that I'd hoped the bourbons would help cure.  I'm not going to write much about the bourbons at all, as I was slightly disappointed that I encountered only a few things that I hadn't already tried; I'm also hoping to provoke Thaler, a much better epicure than me who gets the credit for alerting me to the b-n-b fest, into providing her tasting notes in the comments section of this posting (hint hint).

Now, focus on the bacon: if I recall correctly, there were at least seven different bacons circulated at the expo (not counting the jerky / sausage, which I took a pass on as Thaler said they were somewhat tasteless).  It was hard not to break out constantly into drooling impressions of Homer Simpson, and critiquing bacon itself felt slightly silly.  At one point, I commented on a bacon that it was my least favorite of the evening, but instantly felt a need to add loudly and grinningly "but it's still bacon!"  You just can't get too high-minded about this stuff, you know.

The two best items, though, were the D'Artagnan uncured smoked wild boar bacon, pictured at top and, above, the "fresh" bacon deep fried in lard (did you get that? DEEP FRIED IN LARD) created by alchemist / pit master Scott Smith of RUB aka Righteous Urban Barbeque.  Both had intense flavors, well proportioned and balanced among salt, smoke, fat and meat (how did Josh put it? Fat is to meat as meat is to vegetables?  I'd like to see that on an SAT or GRE analogy section!) - and little sweetness compared to most bacons. The boar was wonderfully dense, the RUB bacon chunky and hearty.  The boar I can fully imagine substituting for "normal" bacon in most contexts, a bacon turned up to 11, but the RUB bacon reminded me of my mom's triple-cooked pork with cabbage and the wonderful things that Chinese cooks can do with pork because they have no fear of fat and know that that's where the flavor's at!  Lucky for us NYCers gustatorily but not calorically, the house cured, triple smoked, lard fried bacon chunks are available as an appetizer at RUB.  Thaler asked Smith about the science behind his method, and, as in scientific experimentation and cooking, serendipity played a role - part of his method was dictated simply by the hours of the restaurant (they had to turn the smoker off at some point), but the results worked out beautifully.

Since it's now lunchtime-ish, I'll sign off to think about what to do with my one slab of bacon currently in the fridge and to look at my calendar to see whether I can wedge in a visit to RUB for dinner this week.

Beer 'n' meat

An aptly named tasting sponsored by the Culinary Center at the gigantorama Whole Foods on the Bowery. Much as I want to hate Whole Foods for being gargantuan and taking up a city block, I have to admit I appreciate their fun stuff like this event, where they paired beers from the Captain Lawrence Brewing Company with a variety of tasty meats from the market and brought The Shameless Carnivore Scott Gold to lead a discussion with brewmeister/Captain Lawrence himself, Scott Vaccaro, and Tate Ramos, the meat coordinator the the market.  (Meat coordinator, huh? That's either a job I should pursue or a friend I ought to cozy up to.)

Okay, what you see here is the tasting plate.  Starting at 12 o'clock, we've got Swedish meatballs made with ground buffalo, a chicken liver and veal pate, Prosciutto d'Parma (droool), Nostrano (an Italian American salumi that evokes a different sort of droooool), and smoked duck with Wheelhouse Minor Threat mustard.  Not in the picture is a small piece of Mo's Chocolate Bacon from Vosges.

All of these items were lovely and memorable on their own, although the pate and chocolate with bacon-bits made me swoon considerably less than the other delectables.  The Swedish meatballs had the sweetness but not the dryness of buffalo meat and got paired with a cranberry - as opposed to lingonberry - sauce to display American ingredients.  The rich, savory, and definitely salty Nostrano emitted a perceptible aroma that I can't quite describe - sort of tangy, peppery / spicy, and ripe.  The smoked duck breast - how did I not wind up with a cart full of this stuff?  The dense meat and creamy fat were in perfect balance. The smokiness did not overwhelm the flavor and paired perfectly with the piquant and sweet mustard, made with habaneros and mango.  It took a lot of restraint on my part not to mop up the mustard with my fingers.

Okay, that was the meat.  What about the beer?  Like the meats, excellent on their own - I am now a fan and will look for Captain Lawrence beer whenever I go to a bar.  I'm also planning a trip soon to Pleasantville, not too far away, for their brewery tours and tastings (ah, Pleasantville, what better place to quaff a beer).

And the pairings?  They really, really worked.  I appreciate the thought put into them.  An Imperial IPA was served with the buffalo Swedish meatballs, the intense flavor of the IPA matching up but not crowding out the richness and heartiness of the meatballs.  Liquid Gold, a light on hops but flavorful and spicy brew, made with a Belgian yeast strain and coriander, served as an elegant partner for the delicate pate.  The Prosciutto came, somewhat surprisingly to me, with a brown ale, but this particular brown ale worked: not overwhelmingly malty - just enough to balance the saltiness of the Prosciutto - and not too full-bodied; a very drinkable brown ale that I can fully imagine  ordering two or three rounds of.  The Freshchester Pale Ale was poured when we hit the Nostrano.  Made with American Hops, the pale ale was fruity and citrusy, nicely balancing the salt and fat of the salumi.  (I can't recall whether I preferred the Freshchester or the Liquid Gold.  Guess I will have to compare both on a hot summer day.)  A smoked porter came out with the smoked duck meat.  (I believe that's what my esteemed colleague Ernest is drinking in the photo.)  There were some raised eyebrows in the group, wondering if the double whammy of smoky flavor would be too much.  It turned out not to be a palate calamity, but I may simply not be a fan of smoked beers period.  I would like to try one of the regular porters they offer.  Last but definitely not least was the Nor'Easter Winter Warmer, a seasonal brew aged in bourbon barrels and bottle conditioned.  This year's batch featured dried elderflowers and had a complex flavor and aroma, very sophisticated and very drinkable, a beer to mull over and sip slowly.  This was probably the least favorable pairing, because the Winter Warmer eclipsed the "eh" (that was literally in my notes) chocolate bacon.  I need to get me some of this stuff because just thinking about it has made me feel much better.

That's it from here.  Beer 'n' meat, yessir.  Go forth and replicate the tasting on your own, if you can get the ingredients.  I plan to.

Chicken and chili

This doesn't count as a new post - it's really an add-on to the previous one from my friend Rob, who snapped this photo of the Chongqing Chili Chicken dish from Trend Restaurant.  I just wanted to make sure that the picture didn't go unnoticed!  And as Rob mentioned before, while the number of chilis looks daunting, this dish does not exhibit excessive and pointless spiciness, but rather a fine demonstration of ma la.