Good afternoon. Happy Holy Mother of Ice Cream It’s August 6th Already??.
As a person who’s fine with m&m’s to start my day, I’m calling this one a stroke of breakfast inspiration. I had the peaches, and we’ve got the corner bagel shop. And then I suddenly remembered our visit to a Portland farmers market a few years back, when we got to try Tastebud’s famous peach slices with honey cream cheese on a sea salt bagel. Actually, the Internet told me just now that’s what it was. All I remembered this morning was the peaches and cream cheese and bagel. This was my first try.
Immediately upon my first bite my brain screamed out what I’d forgotten: “Honey! Salt!” So I finished this one, and tried again for my second half, drizzling a bit of honey and a shaking a few cracks at the salt grinder over it. Pretty darn good. Sadly, my California loved ones, this isn’t something that can be replicated with good results for you because, as the New York Times recently decreed, good bagels just never made it out west. It’s not new knowledge: bagels in New York are superior, sure. But they’re also just so much more plentiful here, so it’s easy enough to run out and buy just the one you want for your breakfast that day. I’d never be able to do that in LA. We’re talking about a geographic inequity in fair bagel access. And that’s before considering the fact that fresh New York City bagels are also far better (crunchier on the outside, softer on the insides) than a sleeve of more expensive and less satisfying bagels from the Ralphs. Though I do miss Ralphs. Scratch that. I miss shopping carts. No that’s not quite it either. I miss throwing my groceries in the trunk of my car and zooming home. That’s it.
I also found a photo Kevin snapped from our Portland farmers market trip. If I remember correctly, Tastebud’s bagels were smaller, denser, more compact, like Montreal-style rounds. But it seemed not to matter so much this morning.
So, while the stone fruit is still plentiful, I suggest whipping this snack up for yourself, wherever you may be, as long as where you are isn’t California.
I’ve been on a self-imposed book-buying moratorium since April, back when I knew we’d be making this cross-country move and as I started packing up every single one of my cherished but HEAVY tomes. In the course of packing I vowed never to buy anything ever again (ha ha ha ha). (Here I am reminded of a line from Marilynne Robinson’s “Housekeeping” where a character hazards a guess that keeping a home is really just the act of acquiring and rearranging objects around a room.) While I was packing I cursed all my possessions, wanted to set fire to everything I owned, which I felt certain owned ME.
Well, I’ve acquired six books since April. This is one of them!
Give me half an hour in a used bookstore and I’ll always spend 20 of those minutes in the cookbook section. Turns out I’ve got a particular interest in vintage Chinese cooking books, and give bonus points to those with great illustrations of cooking techniques. The Key to Chinese Cooking by Irene Kuo has got both.
The dust jacket was gone, but that let me see the cover’s charming illustrations of canned bamboo shoots, black beans, Napa cabbage, wood ear mushrooms, cilantro, and star anise, their names written in Chinese. If I know anything in Cantonese, it’s food, and I had fun naming ingredients and looking to the Chinese to see if I’d gotten it right.
If a cover alone can sell a book, this one nearly did. I spent half an hour in the bookstore with the book, reading Kuo’s 1977 take on Chinese food. Look at that portrait! Doesn’t she look like the sleek, stern, exacting perfectionist 1970s Chinese auntie you never had?
I heard once from someone who was trying to manage their already overflowing cookbook shelves that they wouldn’t buy a new cookbook unless they intended to make at least half a dozen recipes from it, and it’s a rule of thumb that I’ve tried to adopt for myself, with mixed results. (Will I be buying Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook, even though I’m not fond of cheese-based dishes and I completely disagree that Tim’s Cascade Snacks make the best jalapeno-flavored kettle chips? Likely yes.) So that’s what I looked for the moment I pulled this down from the shelf. Really it was more like “Quick, find six recipes you want to make.”
The editing (by Judith Jones, natch) was crisp, Kuo’s instructions thorough, and the writing almost literary. Of a brewing chicken stock, Kuo writes, “Turn heat low and with a large spoon wrapped in cheesecloth skim off the foam with the motion of a bird gliding over a lake, darting and dipping in wherever this foam appears.” Uhhhh, sold.
Luckily, it turns out that Kuo’s also great at capturing the timeless dishes that Chinese people ain’t ever gonna stop eating and the more trendy dishes that are definitely from another era (”bacon-wrapped chicken-liver rolls,” oof). If your Chinese family is still making and eating this, please contact me ASAP. The recipes range from the fairly simple–pork meatball and vermicelli soup–to the more gourmet, like pressed duck.
I think what I love most though is how seriously Kuo takes the home cook. This is not Pioneer Woman, bless her accessible soul. Irene Kuo is for people who are serious about approaching what might be an otherwise foreign cuisine and approximating it in their own home kitchen. But neither is it Momofuku-esque either, with four subrecipes and a sous vide section. It’s you, your big ass Chinese cleaver and a chopping board turning basic, everyday ingredients into comforting, soul-satisfying Chinese dinner magic. Recipes are long, and extremely detailed, but careful.
I’m still assembling my kitchen in our new apartment (more on that soon) but for now, I’m content enough to read Kuo’s recipes in all her delicious detail. That’s almost as good as I hope the actual cooking, and eating, will be.
I won’t lie: moving cross country, saying goodbye to loved ones and family in California, leaving my job for freelance life, and trying to adjust to New York have been enormous life changes to undertake all at once. (I’ve only cried about a half dozen times since we got to NYC three weeks ago.) But I’m slowly getting the hang of this new chapter of my life and finding my bearings in this new city.
Part of that’s meant getting to Chinese food, stat.
We did Chinatown last week and today we made a pilgrimage out to Flushing. K and I went off of some basiclists and also meandered around, eating ourselves silly for roughly $30. Not a bad eating adventure.
We started out at White Bear for an order of their wonton in chili oil (紅油抄手). We somehow managed to have this dish at three different places this weekend, and White Bear’s was notable because it was garnished with preserved pickled vegetables. Other than that, White Bear’s rendition wasn’t as mind-blowing as people on the Internet made it sound. I realized this weekend that so much of what makes these wonton so satisfying is in the particular chili oil mix that the wonton bathe in. You want something with brightness and punchiness but also depth and an inviting dose of heat. White Bear’s chili oil mix was a little too flat for my taste. One of my favorite places for hong you chao shou is actually at Pine & Crane back in LA. They’ve got their chili oil mix down. (12 wonton for $5)
We then rounded the corner and popped in to a little food court, the name of which I never got, for jian bing, a crunchy crepe filled with a crackly sheet of crunchy deep fried dough and your choice of fillings. We got green onions, a fried egg and various sauces. This was fine but I definitely need to keep trying others, because I know there’s got to be a gem in Flushing (alright, in America) that I don’t need to travel to China to enjoy. (1 jian bing for $3.50)
After we kept on walking until we hit a BBQ skewer cart that Thrillist calls Xinjiang Traditional BBQ, but which is probably called Three Treasures BBQ, based on the Chinese name that was on their menu. Whenever I’m in a Sichuan joint I always want whatever lamb cumin dish is on offer because I’m just chasing the lipsmacking joy of perfectly smoked and spiced lamb skewers (羊肉串), the memory of which has lingered in my belly ever since I tried them on my first trip to China over a decade ago. Something about the combination of lamb and cumin is magic to me. The two go together like tomatoes and basil. This spot was a total joy. I could eat my weight in Chinese meat kebabs from this stand. (2 skewers for $3)
We went onward to the enormous food court in the New World Mall and were too full for more than grapefruit green tea for me and hot soy milk for Kevin. We moseyed around the mall and grocery store while I dreamed up menus and shopping lists for when we’ve got our own permanent kitchen for me to muss up. I love a good supermarket field trip. We’ll be back, for sure. ($6 for the two drinks)
Back out in to the spring sunshine and we ended up at Biang!, a sit-down noodle spot with an alcohol license by the Xi’an Famous Foods folks (like Din Tai Fung at Glendale Galleria!). You can never go wrong with Xi’an Famous Foods noodles. That and a cold potato salad splashed with Sichuan peppercorn chili oil rounded out our day. Guess we’ll keep on chasing that numbing chili spicy high–and washing it down with glasses upon glasses of water. ($14.60 pre-tip)
After that it was the best time: grocery time. We finished our day picking up fruit and bao and other provisions for the week before heading back.
The time has come. We are off for NY at the end of the week, and thankfully I’m too overwhelmed with the logistics of closing up our lives here and moving across the country to be as sad as I know I’ll be when I can’t just mosey on over to the other room and bug Appu for some laughs and snacks, or when we can’t head out our front door to go climb mountains or bike the coast, or meet up with our friends over late night tacos.
Back when this move seemed likely Kevin and I settled on a loose rule: if we were going to eat out for a meal, we’d try somewhere new. We’ve been trying plenty of new restaurants as a result, and also somehow returning over and over to our old standbys (Myong Dong Kyoja makes me want to name my first-born Dumpling. And the shaved fennel and chipotle salsa at Punta Cabras in SM always hits the spot after an afternoon on the west side.) I’ve got plenty of food photos from all the eating, and even some notes from recent cooking I’ve been doing to share once we’re settled. I love nothing more than a nice backlog of yummy blog posts.
As for New York, I’m looking forward to pizza and easier access to everything bagels. I’m sure I’ll find more to love, but for now that’s as much food excitement as I’ve got for NYC. Anything else I should get excited about?
It was last weekend, with a to-do list coming out of my ears, that I finally thought to myself, “This is about as well as I’ll know LA for now.” I’ve met all the people I’m going to meet, explored all the layers of this fine city, and tried just about all the amazing food on offer that I’ll be able to–for now. I could have easily burst into tears, but I got back to lifting boxes out of the car.
When I come back next I’ll be here as a visitor! What an exciting, and almost unbearable thought. To the next chapter…
Call it the Moschino effect. Here’s a collection of some ridiculous prints I’ve been seeing around lately. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted by some of these items.
Dance with me pointed sneakers – ASOS (I saw these on the feet of Nicole Byer when we were at an Upright Citizens Brigade show last week.)
And what about fashion from the fast food giant to best them all? McDonald’s
I’ve got a SORRY I’M LATE t-shirt, and I often joke that I can’t actually be late when I wear it, or else I’m my own punchline. Maybe wearing fast food on my body would discourage me from eating junk food. Does food fashion psychology work like that?
Last weekend when I was in New York I got to visit a winter farmers’ market for the first time in my life. I’m a Californian through and through–and I don’t say that in a prideful way. I only mean that I’ve just been exposed to very little else. I didn’t think too much about the experience at the time, but that visit has really stayed with me.
I don’t have any photos because the ones I took were on Snapchat, where they were meant to disappear immediately upon viewing. In other words, I had no intention of holding on to the memories. Instead, here is a photo I snapped on a walk to the train one morning. I believe I took this photo on a day when it was a balmy 19F. After a brutal couple days when temperatures never topped 12F, those extra 7 degrees made a whole lot of difference. Why didn’t I spend the extra $3 for the smartphone-touchable gloves at Target? is the question I berated myself with all week long, as my fingers hardened into a frozen claw every time I needed to look at my phone for directions.
Anyway, the farmers market. I found myself there after lovely Valentine’s brunch with M. I walked up and down the dozen or so assembled stalls to take it all in, and started chuckling. Compared to your average Los Angeles farmers market, it looked like a post-apocalyptic open air grocery. First of all, it was straight up frigid. A woman was walking around in one of those puffy insulated overall snow suits, and even she still looked cold. I myself was wearing just about every kind of fabric in my closet–denim, cotton, wool, down, polyester–and still couldn’t get warm. It was gray. It was windy. What were any of us doing outdoors?
And then there were the vegetables. Most of the vendors sold baked goods, pickled things, coffee, eggs. There were just four stands with fresh produce, and three of them sold only apples. Crates and crates of apples. The fourth sold root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions, turnips), and bunches of wilted, frozen kale that looked like they’d been run over by a truck. Oh, and more apples.
It wasn’t too hard to imagine some zombie takeover inching in out of the corner of my eye, or a fight breaking out over the last loaf of bread,
or people exchanging apocalypse-shekels for their foodstuffs.
In LA, where farmers markets are so plentiful, and where the produce spread year round is out of some technicolor dream, that Brooklyn farmers market left me utterly deflated. I snapped some photos and made snobby fun of it with friends. It’s an easy dig to make, just like when people say you’ve got to go out of your way not to get fed a vegan taco in SF (try harder guys).
But you know what I wasn’t expecting? I felt for that kale. It was so cold out, how was anything supposed to grow at all? Of course it’d come up out of the earth yellowed and weakened. It didn’t belong out there, on that sad table. Of course, none of us belonged out there. Kale compassion–that is what I took away from my visit. This and I love you forever LA.
This is what’s happening right now: Oscar arrivals on the telly, shrimp chips in a bowl on the couch cushion to my left, and soft gloomy rain outside–the kind that’s making me extra excited to be inside waiting on my last batch of Maialino olive oil cupcakes in the oven. I’ve only had two of the 32 cupcakes this batch produced, and I’ll report back once I’ve polished off the other 30, but I can confidently say at this moment: worth all the hype.
I knew from the photo alone that I’d really like this cake, but having made, and now tasted it, I can say that this is like hitting the cake jackpot. First of all, this recipe is a cinch, and almost way too easy considering how delicious the result is. My cupcakes turned out simultaneously light and rich, with subtle orange and creamy olive oil flavors. I broke out the good olive oil (on sale at Gelson’s this week!), and sprung for Grand Marnier (also on sale this week at Ralphs!) for this recipe–both worth it. Now just to figure out what to do with the rest of the bottle.
Notes: I followed a Food52 commenter’s suggestion to bring the heat down to 300F for cupcakes. It ended up taking 23 minutes per batch at that temperature, and by then I was worried about drying them out while I waited for the golden crust to form. Next time I’ll probably wait longer or try them at the recipe’s suggested 350F.
There’s not been much in the way of adventurous eating lately, but there has been a lot of travel. I spent 7 days in New York City and ate almost as many Pret sandwiches. (Work’ll do that to a girl.) I celebrated Valentine’s Day on my own at Eataly, where by virtue of being a solo diner amidst a sea of couples I was treated to a lot of unexpected attention. As in: immediate seating, a small plate of amazing cheese and tomatoes on the house, pity small talk from my seatmates at the bar, and, uh, an invitation from a man to meet up on the 14th floor.
I celebrated Lunar New Year by myself two nights ago up in the air, after scarfing down airport McDonald’s. I never eat so fast as when I’m eating chicken nuggets and last night I came up with two theories why: the first, I usually get fast food when I’m desperately hungry, so I’m in devour mode. Also, McDonald’s just never improves the longer it sits in the bag. The faster you eat, the better. All that to say, it was a more depressing than entertaining way to ring in the Year of the Sheep.
The last big cooking thrill I had was just about a month ago, in my Auntie Margie’s kitchen. She’s 80 years old, and can run circles around everyone in the family. She was making gurn fun (捲粉), and I asked if I could come by and learn. It’s a labor intensive snack that I rarely (more like never) see offered in restaurants. “Because it’s too much work!” was Auntie Margie’s answer when I asked her why. Gurn fun, in my family’s interpretation, is a rice noodle roll filled with barbecued pork, red pickled ginger, pickled cucumber, cilantro, green onions, and scrambled egg all chopped into a gorgeous confetti. There’s actually not that much “cooking” involved (unless you’re making your own damn noodles, and Auntie Margie said our family gave that up two generations ago).
When I got to her apartment before 8 in the morning, she’d already been up for hours. She goes to a noodle factory in the Mission to get freshly made sheets of rice noodles and had come back with 20 pounds worth. (Big family = big portions.) She’d chopped up all her ingredients–a hard job, the most laborious part of the whole recipe–and she doesn’t let just anyone help. My aunt Fun Bew Yee, who’s been assisting Auntie Margie longer than I’ve been alive, told me she was recently demoted when her minced cha siu wasn’t fine enough.
My family came to the U.S. in the late 1800s, and what’s left of the Chinese we speak can be pretty odd. Something happens, I think, when people migrate. They bring the language and customs of that time and in their new homeland those traditions and words, protected from the inevitable shifts of culture back home, can become frozen in time. Auntie Margie told us about going to the noodle factory in the Mission for the first time after her favorite Chinatown source closed down, and not being sure exactly where on the block she could find the shop. She asked another elderly Chinese lady on the street, in Cantonese: “Do you know where I can buy some bak fun?” The woman gasped in horror and shooed her away. Auntie Margie was perplexed. It was only later that she learned that bak fun, today, refers to heroin. She’d had no idea. You mean it doesn’t mean white rice noodles? I retold the story to my Uncle Barry, and he gave out a great, hearty laugh. He came to the U.S. from China as a teen, and he says he’s always trying to update his wife’s outdated Chinese. “I’m gonna remember that one,” he said.
Auntie Margie said she scrambled two dozen eggs, and it took her over an hour and a half. Try for something close to light egg crepes, she explained. Just enough oil so the pan is greased, “Chinese is always best,” she said, tapping her time-worn frying pan with a pair of chopsticks, medium-low heat, ladle in the egg, rotate the pan till the egg covers its entirety, and then wait. Wait some more. Flip once, then transfer to a plate and cool before slicing into the thinnest egg ribbons. Anchored by the salty barbecued pork, and tempered with the sweetness of the ginger, and the bright kick of the green onion and cilantro, the rice roll and fluffy egg bind it all together into a perfect one-bite morsel. Gurn fun is a once a year treat in our family, and as Auntie Margie ages, something that’s all the more special.
My Auntie Doris says that whenever she learns a new recipe, she forces herself to make it as soon as she can. The only way to really know a dish is to make it on your own away from your teacher, she says.
So…. where would one get fresh sheets of rice noodles in LA?
There’s also a place where the chef was doing a California-style broth with lots of vegetables, though I wasn’t that persuaded by it. As Americans eating ramen, I think we’re looking for something specific—and that something specific is not helped along by tomatoes.
Jon Favreau taught me how to make grilled cheese. (Roy Choi if we’re being technical.) We were in Idyllwild on a hike (a “nature walk” if we’re being technical) throwing around dinner ideas, and grilled cheese came up. As luck would have it Aaron and Erika had brought up to the cabin their New Year’s Eve party leftovers, which included a wheel of brie and cubes upon cubes of smoked gouda and sharp cheddar. A dinner menu was born. That night we watched this clip from ‘Chef’ (really the most memorable scene in the movie) a handful of times and then got to work.
As I gather from the clip, grilled cheese success comes down to whether or not a slice through the sandwich produces that crackling crunch, and also how much oozy cheese you get on that first bite. The only musts here seem to be butter (or mayonnaise!), slathered generously on both sides of the bread, and after that, vigilance and a medium-low heat. Expert butter slathering by Nancy and plating artistry courtesy of Eli and Anton.
