strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive: see chow
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
Dec 13 07: ny moment #44,201
Good evening, intrepid NYC eaters-of-food! Tonight’s cooking-at-home question: if you’re jonesing hard for Tater Tots1, but all your grocery store carries is Kineret Mini Potato Latkes2, are you bound for glory or disappointment? Stay tuned, because we’re going to find out!
UPDATED: Oh yes. Glory, my friends. Glory.
1 I love it that Tater Tots have a Wikipedia entry. But how could they not?
2 I’d really love to call these latkitos, because they’re, y’know, mini. But perhaps that’s getting a little too great-American-melting-pot-y. I dunno. I may just do so inside my own head.
Nov 17 06: whine and food
The phone rang eventually. Progress, but no resolution. I guess I’m waiting until Monday, then. Aaargh.
In the mean time, though, here’s something to chew on: a foodie does Puebla. Oh my stars and garters, does this make me hungry.
Jan 4 06: factoids du jour
Because I am presently bored out of my mind here at my desk, I was just taking a little Internet break, reading an article about macaroni and cheese in today’s NY Times. It even comes with recipes (creamy and crusty)! And who doesn’t love macaroni and cheese? Aside from those who also hate freedom?
Anyway, along the way I learned the answers to a constellation of questions that have long plagued me:
American cheese is simply cheddar or colby that is ground and emulsified with water, said Bonnie Chlebecek, a test kitchen manager at Land O’Lakes in Arden Hills, Minn.
Plain American cheese, labeled pasteurized process cheese, contains the most natural cheese and is the best for cooking. American cheese derivatives are made from cheese and additives like sodium phosphates (acids that promote melting), nonfat dry milk and carrageenan. In descending order of their relationship to natural cheese, they are cheese food, cheese spread (such as Velveeta) and cheese product. [emphases mine]
Wow. Mysteries of the ages, revealed unto us all. Not even the absence of the serial comma from the final two sentences could dampen my joy at such a discovery. Doubtless, all of you will agree.
Aug 9 05: lunch break
Hokey smokes. I have just discovered a new beloved lunch place to add to the shortlist. Oh, heavens.
The Kati Roll Company is on 46th between 6th Avenue and Times Square. They sell kati rolls, which are six-inch rounds of paratha bread wrapped around a filling. It’s Calcutta’s street-food answer to the wrap sandwich. Apparently they’ve had a teeny tiny little place down in the Village for a while, but I’d not heard of them until they opened their new spot a half-block from my office. It’s a long skinny restaurant with a few tables and a mess of Bollywood movie posters. The posters featured the same actor over and over. I’ll need to find out who he was.
KTRC only serves the one thing: kati rolls. I bought two of them. The first was a shaami kabab roll. Shaami is ground lamb spiced with cardamom and plenty of black pepper. It had a crumbly texture, with plenty of crispy bits, reminiscent of a really good griddle-fried hash. The meat was mixed in with a vegetable pickle (peppers, sweet red onions). The dense paratha was warm and just a little greasy. By the time I finished the thing, my sinuses were singing, and my taste buds were dancing. Yow. So good. The other roll was chicken tikka—spicy, a little sour (lime juice?), a little charred—again served with the pickle. Other rolls contained a spicy potato mixture, paneer cheese, other grilled meats—even one with meat and egg, which I’ve since learned is one of the most traditional forms. You can bet I’ll be back to sample the menu further. Damn, that was tasty.
The two rolls made for a filling lunch, and cost me about $9, which is at the high end of their price spectrum. Depending on what you order, you can do two for $6. If you’re not all that hungry, or just looking for a snack with some substance to it, you’ll be fine with one, and the most expensive of them costs under $5. Check it out.
Jul 16 05: shadows and fog
I’m in San Francisco this weekend, back in the metropolis of my birth for the first time in what seems like forever. I’m on this completely insane fly-by; there are a zillion people I should have called to say “let’s get together,” only there’s no time to see any of them. If you are one of these people, and you are only learning about my visit now, please accept my humble apologies; better, I thought, to slip in and out unnoticed than to dangle the promise of something that I’d never be able to pull off. (Although I guess I’m blowing my cover by posting this. Bad idea there.) I flew in last night, coming into SF more than two hours late, having sat in a seat that at irregular intervals smelled strongly of puke. Sunday night I go home on the red-eye. Monday I spend the day tripping over the furniture. For now, I’m staying with my cousin.
I’m here for Reuben’s wedding. Tonight was the bachelor party. I worried that there would be straight-boy jiggle-bars, but I figured I could see how the other 90% lives for an evening. Instead, we were told we’d be going to a SF comedy club to catch the 11:00 act. But first we were going to have dinner at some tiny restaurant I’d never heard of.
Oh, the meal. May I please recommend this restaurant to you? It’s Albona Ristorante Istriano. Hot damn, what food. I had pan-fried gnocchi with a hint of nutmeg in a sirloin sauce; this indescribably wonderful mushroom soup; a veal shank that melted off the bone; and a heavenly ripe-canteloupe sorbet that Bruno, the proprietor, had improvised today because he’d found these amazing melons at the market. Throughout the meal, Bruno went to great lengths to make sure we knew all about what he was serving, what he recommended, and how he had cooked it all. He put together sampler dishes of some of his favorites for us to enjoy. He made us feel like family.
We never made it to the comedy club. We decided to linger over the meal instead, swapping stories and drinking much wine and making each other laugh our asses off. I don’t regret that decision for an instant. If you’re in the area, I can’t recommend Albona highly enough.
Jan 15 05: metropolitan
Tom and Genevieve are in town from Ithaca for the long weekend. As such, we got to have the sort of Manhattan day today that we locals only seem to get when we’ve got somebody visiting from out of town.
After being stood up by the superintendent for the umpty-skillionth time (he’s supposed to install a carbon-monoxide detector, and to stabilize the doorknob on the front door), we went out into the cold morning air. We took the subway up to 96th Street and then walked through Central Park to see the Aztec show at the Guggenheim. I know that it’s bad anthropology to say stuff like this, but: what a seriously weird bunch of people they were. The show wasn’t completely satisfying as an art exhibition or as a cultural overview, but it was still interesting. Lots of gold; lots of stern and carnivorous gods; lots of death. (If you’re ever invited to participate in a Xipe Totec festival, decline.) Also a graceful pumpkin of green stone, and a two-foot grashopper carved from carnelian.
Next, chicken soup and grilled cheese sandwiches at some random diner on Lexington Avenue. About which what more could I say? The air was getting colder, the light already fading, and we needed a little something to get us all the way to dinner. It was perfect. And then we wandered a while, and ambled through the racks at Kinokuniya, and then we went home for a bit and put up our feet.
Dinner was Korean barbeque at Dae Dong on 32nd Street, in vast quantities, spicy and garlicky and savory, with fifty little bowls of companion foods crisp and smoky and fresh and pickled. Wrap it all up with a lettuce leaf—shake the water off it first, preferably on one of your dining companions when he’s not looking—and don’t worry about getting the juice all over your fingers.
After that, a dash down to the Village on the subway, and a quick stroll, for dessert at Chocolate Bar. The brownies and truffles are very good, sure; the chocolate-covered patties of peanut butter or homemade-marshmallow-and-banana are quite fine, it’s true; but the spicy hot chocolate is The Thing. Creamy as anything, made with ground chocolate (not cocoa powder) and allspice and cinnamon and ancho chiles and smoked chipotles. Oh my god. I finished the last sip at least an hour ago, and I still feel like I’m radiating a languid sort of joy.
This is a good city, you know? And I am fortunate indeed to be able to partake of its bounty.
Sep 19 04: discovery
Man alive, what a beautiful day. Paul and I just got back from a walk ‘round downtown. The San Gennaro Festival is in full swing, which we’d forgotten about, but it just served to force us off the more familiar streets and onto the ones we’ve never before explored. Which is fine, really, because as a result we discovered Dumpling House, at 118A Eldridge Street.
Get thee to the Dumpling House. Right now.
It’s one of those teeny tiny little storefronts that’s maybe six feet across and twenty feet deep. There’s seating for maybe four people. Everybody else is standing at the counter or piled up on the sidewalk, ordering through the window. And why? Because their food is incredibly cheap and delicious. Fried dumplings that will just blow you away, piping hot and savory and gingery and everything you could want in a potsticker, five for a buck. The cooks—five people crammed behind a tiny counter, maybe six, it was hard to tell—were cranking out dumplings as fast as they could, because the minute they came off the stove somebody bought them. We knew that we had to wait a moment or we’d burn our tongues, but the smell coming out of the little styrofoam clamshell made it hard. Eventually, we had to succumb to our appetites and risk getting scorched. I nibbled on one of Paul’s while I waited for my own order to come up. Heaven.
But if the dumpling was heaven, then superlatives fail to describe the beauty of my own lunch. A ‘sesame pancake with beef,’ they called it: it started with a pizza-sized round of soft dough, white and chewy and dusted with sesame seeds and then fried like a dumpling. The dough was cut into sectors (again, think pizza here), and then split through the middle, so the top could be peeled back from the bottom. Into the middle they layered handfuls of fresh grated carrot, fresh chopped cilantro, and cold roast beef flavored gently with anise. Over that, they squirted a peppery-vinegary red sauce. Then they close the thing back up, slip it into a pale wax-paper envelope, and there you are. For a dollar freakin’ fifty.
That was maybe three hours ago, and my taste buds are still all twinkly. We walked from Chinatown to Chelsea and I had a big goofy smile on my face the whole time. And, and I just bought tickets to go see Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence tonight with the boys!
What an excellent day.
For another look at Dumpling House, see cityrag. Or you could just take my word for it and go: here’s a map.
EDITED: although its dumplings are indeed excellent, the name of the place is just “Dumpling House.” The “Excellent Dumpling House,” on the other hand, is that place on Lafayette (which is good, sure, but frankly not as good as the just-plain-Dumpling-House).
Mar 5 03: dang!
Yesterday was Mardi Gras! Or, as I have since learned, Pancake Day! And did I make jambalaya for all my friends? Did I eat pancakes? Did I, in fact, do a blinkin’ thing to honor it? Nope, nope, and nope.
Of course, it’s not as if I give anything up for Lent either, unless you count a feeble attempt not to gorge on Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs until Easter is officially here. I’ll have to make do with the cups until then. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are in fact nature’s most perfect food. Cadbury Creme Eggs, on the other hand, are simply vile. Make a note.
Man, now I’m jonesing for chocolate and what I should be doing is leaving for work. Exit.
Jan 13 03: heavy-lidded happiness
Greetings from Post-Prandial Languor, NY. Andrew Chandler came over for dinner tonight. (The delightful Yuri Tanaka was apparently home alphabetizing her 2002 receipts, or something. Her loss.) We made my mom’s semilegendary Chinese Chicken Salad. And, because there’s really no other way to eat mom’s semilegendary Chinese Chicken Salad, we each packed away about three pounds of the stuff. I am swimming in a haze of sesame oil goodness and nonsoluble dietary fiber. Oh, yes.
recipe corner!
Mom’s Semilegendary Chinese Chicken Salad —from Brooke Gieda, and who knows where she got it. Serves three to six, depending on how hungry you are.Wash and dry well:
- 1 head Romaine lettuce
Put in a large bowl—it should have plenty of room left over. (Or put half of it in a bowl, and set the other half aside for seconds.)
Boil:
- 1 full chicken breast, or 1 1/2 if you’re hungry
…until the meat is cooked all the way through. Shred the meat off the bone with two forks. Toss the chicken in with the lettuce and refrigerate.
Fry in vegetable oil:
- 1/2 pack of won ton skins (about 40?)
Won ton skins are generally found next to the tofu in your supermarket’s produce department. Fry them in a shallow frying pan, turning them over one time; they should go from their original floury beige to puffy, crisp, and golden brown in no more than 15 seconds. If you take much longer than that to cook them, they’ll end up pretty greasy, so be sure to get the oil hot enough.
As you have probably gathered, this bit requires vigilance. You can’t multitask while frying the won tons. The skins will keep frying for a moment even after you pull them from the oil, so err on the side of caution. You’ll probably need to ruin a few before you get the hang of it, but no worries: they’re cheap. As they come out of the pan (you’ll only be able to do 3 or 4 at a time), place them atop a sheet of paper towel on a plate to cool and drain.
Once you’ve done that, prepare the dressing:
- 1/4 cup sesame oil
- 1/2 cup salad oil (nothing fancy here; plain old vegetable oil)
- 6 tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 4 teaspoons sugar
Put it all together, stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved, and set aside. It separates quickly, but don’t worry.
When you’re ready to serve, crush the won ton skins into the salad, and add:
- 1/2 cup sesame seeds
- 3 scallions, sliced into thin rings
…to the mix. Now re-emulsify the dressing and dress the salad. Toss vigorously—unless you haven’t been using a big enough bowl, in which case you’ll have to toss with extreme caution or risk covering the kitchen counter (and floor and walls) with salady goodness.
Serve to waiting family and/or friends. Be prepared for everybody to demand seconds and then fight over the good bits left at the bottom of the bowl.
Fall somewhere soft. Achieve state of bliss.