October 2014 – The Snack Review

Cong You Bing, With an Egg, at Home

I first fell in love with jian bing 煎饼 almost ten years ago on my first trip to Shanghai. A light eggy pancake, with chili paste, sometimes pickled greens, green onions, and a crispy cracker folded in it, it’s the very definition of everything that’s good about Chinese street food. Fresh off the griddle and folded up into a thin plastic bag, it’s also the perfect handheld meal. The prospect of eating another made it maybe the number three, number two reason I went to China this fall.

Alas, we never got to jian bing, but Kevin did find us its close cousin when we were in Shanghai last month. We’d been having lavish home-cooked and banquet-style restaurant meals with his family in Suzhou, and by the time we got to Shanghai, were ready for more casual fare. Kevin found this spot via the Chinese version of Yelp, and as we walked down the street counting down the building numbers, we were looking for a cafe of some sort.

It turned out to be a business the size of a coat closet, with barely enough room for a worktable, a griddle, and two workers–one to roll out the dough and another to fry each ball up into the flaky fried discs they’d eventually become. The two women who worked there that morning stood side by side in a space so narrow they had to file in one at a time to get into position. We ordered two cong you bing with egg in it. Neither a classic cong you bing nor the street food favorite jian bing, this one was a green onion pancake with an egg cracked over it. It was delicious.

And this week, Kevin figured out how to fake it at home. I’d long ago resigned myself to never being able to eat this outside of China, and so tasting even a vague approximation of it filled me with such happiness, and revived all my longing to go back.

Here are the directions: Take one frozen cong you bing 葱油饼. We’re fond of this brand (and we’ve tried a lot of frozen cong you bing). Cook according to the directions–with a dip of oil over medium low heat. After 3-4 minutes on both sides, pour a scrambled egg or two over the pancake and cook, then flip again. Serve with a dab or two of hoisin and chili paste or sriracha.

It’s a little bit Sandra Lee, and I loved it. (We were using up a different brand of frozen pancake–yours will look better than this.)

Honey Ice Creams

Looking back, it all started for me in July with a visit to Honeymee, the new milk and honey soft serve shop in K-town. Either it put honey ice cream on my radar, or honey ice cream is on the minds of all the ice cream shops in town. Fresh, simple “true milk”–not vanilla–ice cream with honey drizzled over it, Honeymee’s is a really lovely treat. In Seoul last month, Kevin and I passed by a whole bunch of shops that Honeymee seems to have modeled itself on. Ice cream and honey in various vessels, and that’s the entirety of the shop, just like Honeymee’s model.

Without much realizing it then, a mini obsession was born.

The Sunday we got back from Asia, we took a ride over to Three Twins in Santa Monica, where I got a scoop of their honey ice cream, which was good. It had a few ice crystals in it here and there, but I didn’t mind. I’ve got a soft spot for Three Twins because it’s from SF, and because Kevin and Teddy always kept at least a pint or two of Three Twins (or Strauss!) ice cream from Berkeley Bowl in their freezer. Alas, no photos.

A few weeks ago, after a fancy pants dinner on the west side, we ended up at Coolhaus, where Dawn treated us all to crazy ice cream times. (Thanks Dawn!) Did you know Coolhaus offers a “two-story” ice cream sandwich? I still haven’t decided if that’s clever marketing or silly architectural gimmickry. I got the scraped bottoms of their day’s batch of honey ice cream sandwiched between olive oil pine nut rosemary cookies. Delicious, and super rich. Photos!

Then last Friday, on a quick stop at Gelson’s (which doesn’t sell buttermilk, if you were ever wondering) I remembered that the best part of a Gelson’s visit is a glide through their incredible ice cream aisle.

I finally got the hint I’d been sending myself the last few months and sprung for this honeycomb ice cream from L.A. Creamery. The container says to let it thaw for five minutes before digging in, at which point it becomes a creamy, pliant block of cream. Dig a spoon in and rivers of dark honey ooze out.

So good. I’m a-okay with this honey spree. Who else’s should I try next?

Back in the Kitchen

After several hectic months that left me with little kitchen energy, I found vast reserves of it last night. I’ve been out of sorts and no good for more than fried eggs and sauteed greens lately. Last night as I was moving around the kitchen I felt myself coming back to life.

First up was an attempt at making my mom’s tomato curry oxtail stew. I thought it’d take somewhere along the lines of an hour and a half, based on my mom’s hazy emailed recipe (which included the line: “At this point I squeeze in an unknown amount of ketchup.”) Hers is a perfectly composed affair–fall off the bone meat in a cozy curry sauce that absolutely demands rice to soak up that gravy. Mine turned out fine, though I burned, er caramelized, the bottom of the stew a few times in my impatience. Low and slow are my mother’s eternal cooking directions. Next time I know: three hours.

In that waiting time I got to try out a crab meat, cucumber, vermicelli salad. The dressing is super light: rice wine vinegar, sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, a few drops of sesame oil. (That’s basically the entire recipe.) I found it in one of my favorite cookbooks, a series of slim 5×7 bilingual cookbooks by Harumi Kurihara (the “Martha Stewart of Japan”) I picked up at Kinokuniya. Light, refreshing, with a gentle brightness and no pungent tang. Please excuse the fish sauce-stained kitchen table.

And after all the cleanup was done, we turned on Sleepless in Seattle–Kevin lasted all of 18 minutes before he begged off it–and I made this pound cake via xobreakfast with yams I’d roasted earlier in the day. Bridal shower soon means it’s recipe testing time, plus I was just plain curious. It was 1:30am by the time I got that glaze on, and collapsed into bed a sweaty, sore, very alive mess.

Here’s the breakfast shot (that large hole thanks to my improvised chopstick-cake tester). It’s a true pound cake, but moist and not too sweet, and just about requires a cup of tea or coffee on the side. Perfect to share with book club tonight.

So nice to be back!