February 29, 2004
Eat by the court continues
Lunch #2
Taste Good II (link is to the menu for the restaurants other branch)
Malaysian food is still a bit of a mystery to me. Even so this place had a fun interior and nice flavoring in the food.
Rojak- fruits and vegetables with shrimp paste and chinese cruller - odd!
Malaysian style 'lo-mee' - home made soy sause taste great on top of anything.
Hainanese chicken - steamed chicken - not yet use to that but the chilli ginger sauce was great.
Lunch #3
Ich ni san - Met a friend at this new fast food japanese place that is not that close to the court house (oops)
Chicken teriyaki box lunch - a good example of the difference between american fast food and japanese (or at least the americanized versioin of japanese fast food). Small portion of relativly good chicken teriyaki. Small bit of seaweed salad. Two mandoo dumplings. Rice with pickled vegetables. All actually tasty. Then thrown in were two pieces of california roll that had no place being there. But for 6.50 you get a filling and diverse assortment.
February 25, 2004
100 Centre Street
This weeks theme is a bit lazy. Still enjoyable of course.
I have jury duty this week in the Supreme Court of New York building, 100 Centre Street in lower Manhatten. Unbenounced to me the court building was steps away from Bayard street and in turn - Shanghai Cuisine. So there is the theme - eating by the court house. Every day this week I will try to have at least one meal by the court house. Today it looks like a Thai place.
Jury Duty Lunch #1 - Shanghai Cuisine
Hot and Sour soup
Crab and Pork tiny buns
Baby Shrimp Fried Rice
Hoomus Chicken Salad
Here is a leftover from chickpea week that I made. My problem with chicken salad has always been mayonnaise. I just don't enjoy the stuff ( as any good food writter will tell you - we must learn to eat the things we despise and one of these weeks mayonnaise will be the theme). I never have liked it. But I craved chicken salad. So I used Hoomus as the binding agent.
Eureka!! It was good. Below I will tell you what I did and soon I will write up an actual recipe with some pictures.
1. Make a good amount of hoomus (olive oil, tahini, 2 cans of chickpeas, 5 gloves of garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, a little lemon juice).
2. Marinate three chicken breasts in lemon juice, cumin, seasoning salt, peper, and olive oil.
3. Brown chicken in a pan and cook all the way through. Reduce leftover liquid with water or more lemon juice and save.
4. Put chicken in food processor and reduce it to tiny shredded pieces. Add the reserve liquid and a bit more peper to the chicken and run food processor once more.
5. Cut up scallions and add to the chicken. Add hoomus back to the mixture and run once more in the food processor to mix.
6. Salt and pepper if needed.
And there you have it. Does it taste like chicken salad? Well, somewhat. The garlicky taste of hoomus is strong but mixed with the chicken things balance out. I toasted wheat bread and served the chicken salad on it topped with cucumber, lettuce, and a few strips of bacon.
February 20, 2004
Chickpeas with garlic
I recently bought Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy - a simple and touching book that goes region by region through Italy with recipes so short and simple that you wonder if something is wrong - "thats all i need to do?" you ask staring at 4 ingredients and one line of instruction.
So for chickpea week I took her recipe for Ceci all'aglio (chickpeas with garlic) and added pasta. A filling dinner for six is created!
February 17, 2004
Eat the theme
Lately I have been trying to come up with some ways to make my daily eating more interesting. I try to cook as much as I can but of course get lazy. And when choosing places to eat in this great city of New York, the tendency is to try something new, but sometimes you need a little push.
Hence the idea of "Eat the theme". Each week (or whenever I want to do it) I am going to pick an ingredient or a dish or even a culture. Then through the week I will cook, eat, and learn that theme. You can think of it as "Iron Chef" extended over a week and with only one contestant.
The first installment........
Chickpeas
What is the chickpea ?
Some chickpea recipes
February 13, 2004
Rai Rai Ken
Last week me and some friends went to Rai Rai Ken on 10th street btw 2nd and 1st ave. I have never been to Japan, but I hope the ramen bars are at least close to what Rai Rai Ken. I love this place. Very small and no nonsense. Two cooks dipping noodles and making gyoza and one waitress dishing it out. My favorite (there are three) is the miso ramen. Rich miso broth with a huge mound of ramen noodles, slices of chicken, crispy garlic, cabbage and chili oil. Yum! Let's not forget salty hot edamame, pork gyoza, and spicy kim-chee.
Here are some more pictures:
An-nin-dofu (almond flavored tofu) - it was like ambrosia!
favorite things
SauteWednesday's Bruce Cole takes a survey of people's favorite things .
One of my favorite things - Fresh crusty bread, fresh olive oil, and bursting-with-flavor tomato eaten in the middle of summer. Add a bottle of red wine and you have bliss.
February 11, 2004
Truffle this and truffle that
NYTimes weighs in on truffles here and here and once again here. Three articles in less then a week!
February 09, 2004
If you build it they will come...
I was waiting all day to use that title.
So today I braved the crowds and went to scope out the new Time Warner building at Columbus Circle.
First impression is that its going to be a big hit. So many people were there. It is the first weekend, but still the throngs will come - especially to the new Whole Foods.
The building from the outside is nothing really special. Inside is nice. Kinda reminded me of the new casino Borgada in Atlantic City. Lots of glass and marble. It feels like they took a lot of time choosing the right lighting to go with the large amount of natural light that shoots through the building. And the view! The best view I saw was definitily from the restaurant Asiate in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. With views like this do we need the food - Yes.
And food they have. Whole Foods was packed with a sushi bar, pizza oven, wine store, butcher shop, and cheese area. Not every day do you see hen of the wood mushrooms selling next to caviar at a grocery store.
That brings me to the restaurants. I will soon try Asiate as its been open for some time and seem to have a nice lunch. But first might have to be Cafe Gray.
Cafe Gray had a full menu out front. Some of the dishes that sounded interesting were Mulligatawny Chicken Potage, Lobster and Crawfish Gratin, Chilled Apple Broth, and of course Chocolate Soufle.
The doors to the heavily anticipated Per Se were closed but I did snag a nice picture of the glass out front.
Stone Rose has a stylish inside but I wan't able to get a picture. It looks like its going to become a coveted place to get a drink.
Bar Masa and Masa are definitly small. At $300 or so a meal Masa won't be very packed, but I bet Bar Masa with its smaller prices and a bit more room will be a popular place.
Now all I have to do is eat at all these places. All in time.
February 07, 2004
ma la flavor
" 'You can't cook Sichuan food without huajiao.' said Wang Dinggeng, the chef at Grand Sichuan International on Second Avenue. 'You can't get that special ma la flavor.' he said of the peppercorns' numbing (ma) and burning (la) effects."
February 04, 2004
February 01, 2004
tastingmenu.com
Each day I always check a few food sits for updates. thefoodsection.com is one of them, another is NYC eats.
I just found another tastingmenu.com . Hillel is the one behind the site and boy does he go to a lot of restaurants and writes about them all. Honest and thorough reporting - what else do you need.
check out the FAQ
the tastingmenu.com philosophy
and of course the restaurant listings page