Category: General

LOST characters explain how to make a sandwich. Awesome.

While we’ve been in LA, we’ve gotten xiao long bao from Mei Lung Garden, and braised pork belly with preserved vegetable and clear fried shrimp from Mandarin Chateau. All of these are even better versions than what we used to have at Wing’s, but our reaction has been one of overwhelming sadness that we cannot have these tastes any more in our home city. We have perfectly reasonable Cantonese places, spectacular Sichuan places, and a reliably excellent diner-style place, but we have nowhere to go for Shanghai cooking at an equivalent level.
Shanghai emigre community of Massachusetts, hear my plea! Start a decent restaurant and I promise to eat in it and drag all my friends too.

We had dinner Christmas day with tallasiandude’s LA-based extended family, and damn, was that a spread! Enough cold plates to feed an army, followed by an equally staggering battery of hot dishes and a pair of desserts.
I may have forgotten something, but to the best of my recollection there was:
salted eel (kind of like less-salty salt-cod)
vegetarian duck (layered sheets of tofu skin from the look of it)
wood ears and vegetarian kidney (some kind of gluten I think cut to look like kidney)
jalapenos stuffed with ground pork and braised in soy sauce & sugar
steamed egg loaf with 1000-year eggs and salted duck egg yolk
turnip pickles with soy sauce and szechuan peppercorns
cold tendon
sweet & sour spare ribs (not very sour, mostly savory)
salty ham with boiled lotus seeds, on lightly toasted bread to make a li’l sammich
clams steamed with scrambled egg and green onion
shrimps sauteed with garlic and green onion and spicy stuff
braised pork hock with bok choy
tofu noodles with green beans, ham and mushroom
mustard greens with shredded ham and dried scallop
soup with bamboo, enoki, napa and egg dumplings with pork filling
rice cakes sauteed with mushroom and cabbage in a brown sauce
sticky rice with red bean paste and dried fruits
my cranberry upside-down cake

I got a copy of David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook, and it is some of the most enjoyable food porn (and writing) I’ve seen in a long time. He paints himself as a bit of a bumbler, if perhaps one with borderline sociopathic passion for good food, and frankly I find that entirely charming. The fact is, this dude likes to eat the way I like to eat, throwing the low in with the high without regard for anything but deliciousness (and maybe the occasional gleeful fuck-you gesture).
Plus, there are recipes for nearly everything we ate at the restaurants. Nom nom nom nom nom nom.
I think that part of the reason I loved the sauce that came with our bo ssam is that it may actually have been pureed kimchi. And pureed kimchi is such a blindingly simple, wonderful idea that I can barely imagine I never thought of it myself. I am going to puree up some kimchi and start putting it on EVERYTHING.
UPDATE: now I’ve read through the bo ssam part of the book, and the sauce I really loved wasn’t the puree, but I now know for sure why I loved it so much. He thins down his spicy sauce with sherry vinegar, my hands-down favorite vinegar of all time. OMG yum.
Still gonna puree some kimchi though… and maybe thin it down with sherry vinegar too so it’ll drizzle. Be still my heart.

Still in a place where the last thing I want to do with my leisure time is stay parked on my ass in front of the computer. Sorry, Internet. However, while on a conference call, I share with you a few nuggets:
– a can of adobo flavored Muir Glen tomatoes plus a can of kidney beans plus random salsa makes a chili that really isn’t half bad for something that took all of 3 minutes.
– pie plus cheddar cheese really is the breakfast of champions. Yum, and usually I’m not ready for lunch until after 1pm.
– dark chocolate covered shortbread stars from Trader Joe’s are freaking AWESOME.
– also, Trader Joe’s Nutty Bits nut-and-seed candies are pretty great too.
– I LOVE STUFFING.

I have developed an odd pattern of craving PB&J sammiches every morning for breakfast. Not sure what to make of that, other than that possibly I am morphing into tallasiandude.
Two nights ago we ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant and somehow managed to order only exactly enough food and we left without any carryout boxes. Miraculous!
To use up the last of the season’s bumper crop of pears, my mom made us a pie (nom) and a poundcake/upsidedown cake sort of thing that was quite lovely in both taste and appearance. I should get her to type up the recipe so i can post it.
While we were away for the weekend, the cats for some reason jumped onto the table and started chawing on the lotus seed mooncakes we left there. They didn’t do too much damage, so maybe they didn’t like them after all?
Things are busy with work, so I’m not spending much leisure time at the keyboard. Hopefully it’ll mellow out soon.

They are shutting down Gourmet magazine. This is not detectably a spoof, though I haven’t started digging yet. WTF? The single best-known, oldest, flagship food magazine? The one that hasn’t yet succumbed to the quagmire of SUCK that pervades all the other food magazines I’ve looked at? Are they joking?
sigh.

Sorry, still busy enough to not post much. However:
– The Chilly Cow on Mass Ave in Arlington Center is YUM. Really excellent frozen custard. The pumpkin tastes like frozen pie, but we recommend the vanilla. Tastes almost butterscotch it is so rich and creamy.
– The chicken with vinegar at Chilli Garden in Medford is DREAMY. Comes with celery and bok choy and thin-sliced chicken in a buttery sour sauce. Absolutely fantastic. Also, it is something that can be safely eaten before swing dancing, unlike most Sichuan dishes that are full of garlic and/or spicy peppers, and therefore we will now be able to eat more frequently at Chilli Garden — we are in Medford fairly often to dance and every time we mourn the reality that we can’t take the opportunity to have a Chilli Garden fest.
– Sera brand turkish red pepper paste mixed with mayonnaise (and some spices, but that’s optional) made a really excellent marinade for chicken thigh that went into the grill pan tonight. Easy as hell and really delicious.
– corn off the cob + lima beans + leftover green and yellow beans + lots of dill = yum

That wee fucker has been eating the fruits in our backyard. We thought it was the squirrels that had methodically plucked and eaten EVERY SINGLE PEAR on the tree. But tonight I was on the back deck in the dark, shucking corn (long story), and I kept hearing the grapevine rustle. I thought I was knocking it somehow with the corn husks, but then I looked up and saw the ratty gray tail on the gray beast standing in the grapevines. At first I thought it was a giant rat, but then I realized rats don’t have that much fur on their tails. This little bastard had no fear at all. Tallasiandude came out and did a goddamn photo shoot, complete with flash, and he just stayed put. Even when tallasiandude got a broom and WHACKED the little fucker, he hung on that vine, chowing down. We had to whack him a bunch of times and then chase him out of the garden.
Wee fruit-stealing sumbitch. Harrumph.