Hungry Hippo

It has become more and more apparent that every restaurant has its own pièce de résistance. For example, Oversea Asian has their Young ToFu in curry soup and the Momofuku restaurants have their pork. Some things just stand out.

There are also many ways to find out about these highlights. Much of the time, some skilled internet reading will have one anticipating certain dishes even before setting foot in a restaurant. Lately, however, I’ve been employing a different method. It combines an underused skill of mine with my interest in food: people watching… while they eat!

This method has finally proven to be wildly successful.

A few months back, I visited Moon House for the first time. This tiny restaurant is one of the two Shanghainese restaurants that flank the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory on Bayard Street. The other restaurant is Yeah Shanghai Deluxe, which is notable in it’s own right.

While my first visit to Moon House was decent (the food was not bad—the value was amazing), I noticed, right after we ordered our food, every other table in the restaurant was busily inhaling plates of ropey stir-fried noodles. The noodles themselves didn’t look outstanding; they looked like most decent plates of noodles, lightly glistening with a good amount of oil with a good meat/veggie to noodle ratio. The look on the faces of those eating the noodles, however, was more telling. They looked content and satisfied—the exact facial expression I would want to have after eating a plate of noodles.

Unfortunately, we did not order these noodles, which is why that first meal only qualified as alright. I did, however, keep yapping to my dining partner that there was something special about these noodles.

These mystery noodles at Moon House were mentioned on and off for a few months, and finally, we returned for sole purpose of identifying this noodle dish on the menu and eating them. Luckily, I was in the company of an individual who speaks Mandarin. He quickly described the noodles and we were directed to a dish with the inauspicious title of “Shanghai Lo Mein (with Pork)”.

The noodles were stir fried in combination of vegetable oil and pork fat, and beautifully coated with a deep brown sauce that was satisfyingly savoury, yet sweetly complex with every bite. Matchstick sized pieces of pork, finely chopped suey choy (AKA nappa cabbage), and the occasional sliver of Chinese-style pickled vegetables were distributed evenly throughout. It was all made better by the taste a hot wok imparts on food.

The noodles themselves were in a category that I’d never come across before—that category being “I’d beat up your grandma if she stood in between me and the noodles”. They were Shanghai-style wheat noodles, with the approximate dimensions of the pointed end of full sized, plastic Chinese chopsticks. The texture of the noodles were unforgettable: a cross between being elastic and al dente, they gave back a little of what you gave them with every bite.

These noodles will keep me coming back. They’re the type of thing I’ll daydream about (and drool over, in my weaker moments). And, the best part about this dish? It cost $4.95 (tax and tip, not included).

Labels: Chinatown, noodles

A bunch of atheists and a Jew got together and celebrated Easter with Bloody Marys, Mimosas, blueberry muffins, granola and Greek style yoghurt, hot cross buns, Munchkins, and Easter egg painting. Or Easter egg decorating, rather. These new fangled pimped out egg decorating kits are startling with all their bells and whistles.

After being surrounded by the fragrant sulfurous scent of hard-boiled eggs, I decided against making Deviled eggs, and thought that a salad that minimized the natural bouquet of these eggs may be more palatable.

I bet that the addition of some lemon zest would be lovely too, however, I happened to be extracting juice from the single lemon I possessed; unfortunately, that lemon had been stripped naked the day before. He’d given up his skin for the muffins and the hot cross buns .


Red Potato Salad

1 1/2 lb red potatoes
5 hard-boiled eggs
3 1/2 celery ribs (or 1 1/4 C when chopped)
1 small onion (or 1/2 C when chopped)
2 Tbs capers
3 Tbs fresh lemon juice
2/3 C (scant) mayonnaise
salt and black pepper to taste

Boil the red potatoes in water until cooked through. Peel and cube potatoes to the size you desire (I tried to cut everything to approximately the same size—1/2 inch cubes). Cube the hard-boiled eggs. Chop celery and onion. Gently toss together all solids (potatoes, eggs, celery, onion, capers). Mix in mayonnaise and lemon juice and a bit of lemon zest (if you’re into that sort of thing—but make sure you zest your lemon before juicing it). Salt and pepper to taste. All amounts can be adjusted to taste, especially since I only had 2 Tbs of capers left in the fridge.

Labels: egg, potato

Unfortunately, sugar maples are migrating north, meaning that the US will be producing less and less maple syrup/sugar. You can read about the history of the maple in the US and the science behind this trend in an excellent article from Slate.
Also, please let me know if I'm the only one who is interested in this article, as I suspect it's the hard core Canadian in me that is so attached to maple products.

So I've recently returned from a number of days in Philadelphia. We spent our time at the Marriott just across the street from the Reading Terminal Market. It was all for the Annual Drosophila Conference, which is a non-stop orgy involving fly biology. Ahhhh yes. Science.

I have returned, quite possibly fatter, and very exhausted. But I will update with the meal highlights... for now, detox.

I'm a big fan of gorging myself every once in awhile. But, I've recently noticed that I can't recover from binging like I used to. Now I experience the “food hangover”, which includes symptoms such as general malaise, mild headaches, lethargy and bloating. Chronic sufferers of the “food hangover” may notice longterm bellyaches followed by gradual muffin top formation.

On that note, I’m excited to report that I’ve visited Sobaya a couple times now, and found that, regardless of the amount consumed here (ginormous is one word I would use to describe the food volume that went into my body), I have not been plagued by the hangover. I highly recommend this restaurant, where soba and udon noodles are handmade on the premises. Naturally, noodle dishes feature prominently, and are supplemented by a large appetizer and sake menu.

I’m a fan of their pickle platter, lightly pickled assorted vegetables, including daikon and bamboo shoot. Also, I recommend the dish with yam cake, which had a pleasing texture, jellyfish-like, but with a gentler crunch. If you are looking for something more luxurious, the Berkshire pork belly with poached egg will satisfy any craving (see photo on the left). This dish is soya-saucy yet not too salty or overpowering, and should be eaten by dredging the quivering hunks of belly through the yolk, so that every piece has a velvety egg/sauce coat. I think I just drooled on myself while I typed that.

Noodles, oh, noodles. They are excellent here, and I’ve had the Nabeyaki Udon and the Chirashi Soba noodles. There’s a photo of the Nabeyaki Udon, which is a sort of noodle soup casserole/hot pot, and contains shrimp and yam tempura, chicken, fish cakes, vegetables, and yet another poached egg. Delicious, but this definitely came in a solid second after the Chirashi Soba noodles, which happens to be part of the seasonal menu. The Chirashi contains deep fried tiny shrimp, bean curd skin, fish cakes, and quite possibly crack. And I mean that in the best way possible.

If you still have room, or even if you don’t, I suggest some dessert. After all, most of the dessert selection is ice cream, which is designed to melt and fill in the cracks between the other pieces of food in your stomach. We ordered the green tea, back sesame, and the honey wasabi ice cream. I’d been eyeing the honey wasabi for a while, and boy-oh!-boy, it did not disappoint. Creamy and cold, with a quick, sharp wasabi bite, this ice cream is rounded out with wispy honey finish. I could definitely eat this ice cream ALL day, it was that good, and the flavour combination was a revelation. I shit you not. I also really enjoyed the strawberry tofu pudding, which had a more complicated name/ingredient list that I can’t recall now.

So if you think I can’t rave about Sobaya anymore, think again. The service here has been great and the environment is friendly and relaxing. I am seriously in love with this place. And if you are still wondering whether you should dine at Sobaya, let me tell you that the toilet seat in the ladies’ room is heated—and has a dual spray angle bidet function, with water pressure control. You can feel fresher than ever after an amazing meal.

I’m not even commenting on the sake… I don’t want to embarrass myself now.

Labels: ice cream, noodles

At times, anal retentive/OCD behaviour can be rather useful. It was the day I made these cookies, because they turned out well, and now I can attempt to recreate their lemon-chocolateyness another day. As well, others can too. I got the original cookie recipe from Baking Sheet, an excellent blog about, well, you guessed it, baking (and cooking too). I started changing some of the proportions of the ingredients; for example, being the slave to chocolate and fat that I am, I increased the amount of chocolate chips, and went for full size chips instead of the mini variety, and started skimming the top off of unhomogenized whole milk yoghurt. But this recipe has quickly become one of my favourites, because the light citrusey tang of Meyer lemons nicely off-sets the chocolate chip overload, which occurs with a slip of the wrist while measuring out that last step over the bowl of cookie dough (this is precisely why home-ec classes across the globe give the age old advice of measuring ingredients anywhere but over the bowl/pot/skillet in which you are preparing the food). I really do think that the brand of some of the ingredients have made a difference in the cookies, so the nit-picky specifics of the recipe are as follows:

Cocoa Fudge Chocolate Chip Meyer Lemon Cookies (whew, that's a mouthful)

1 C all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp sea salt
1/4 C butter, room temp. (Organic Valley)
7 tbsp cocoa powder (Green and Black’s Organic/Fair Trade cocoa powder)
1 C evaporated cane juice sugar
1/3 C plain yoghurt (skimmed off the top of Hawthorne Valley’s unhomogenized whole milk yoghurt for some cream action)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 C (heaping) Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate chips (plus a handful more, if you are so inclined)

For optional lemon flavour:
grated zest from 2 Meyer lemons (approx. 2 tbsp)
4 tbsp freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
1/2 tbsp grated zest from a regular lemon

Preheat oven to 350F.
Mix together flour, baking soda and salt in a small bowl.
In a larger, microwave-safe bowl, melt butter in the microwave. Sift in cocoa powder. Mix in sugar. Stir in yoghurt and vanilla extract. Stir in lemon juice and zest. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined. Stir in chocolate chips. Drop tablespoonfuls of the cookie dough onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
Bake at 350F for 10-13 minutes and/or until slightly firm at edges. Allow to cool on pan for 3 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to completely cool. Cookies should be crisp around the edges, but otherwise chewy throughout.
Makes ~2 dozen.

A couple weeks ago, three people I know sent me this article about Korean fried chicken (which, unfortunately, is no longer available for free). Carolyn was hell bent on figuring out what all the fuss was about. She called a teatime meeting for the ladies last Sunday. But we drank beer, not tea, and instead of dining on cucumber sandwiches, we chowed down on some fried chicken at Bon Chon. These are my kind of ladies.

Korean fried chicken means business. The skin is beyond crunchy—you cannot converse and chew this chicken at the same time because you won’t be able to hear anything except for the fried chicken skin shattering between your teeth. Under the golden skin, you find juicy, tender chicken—texture-wise, this fried meat is truly a winner. Both the spicy and sweet varieties were ridiculously tasty. And, it’s all relatively light for fried chicken, as I had more than four pieces of chicken with no ill effects (although others in the party may have suffered from oil overdose). You can go here for unflattering photos of chicken consumption.

Apparently, there are multiple Korean fried chicken restaurants around the city. Perhaps it’s time to organize a monthly brunch meeting to discuss women’s issues at these various venues? I suggest clothing as the topic of the next meeting. To start, pedal pushers are neither pedals nor pushers. Discuss.