I've been to Sunset Park plenty of times before for grocery shopping and eating, but have somehow missed East Harbor Seafood Palace, supposedly one of the best dim sum restaurants in New York. Robyn from The Girl Who Ate Everything wrote about it over a year ago, as did The Village Voice. So on President's Day, despite the sudden "wintry mix" in a week of good weather, and the wonky holiday train schedule, my boyfriend and I decided to forgo bagels in front of the TV and instead brave the longish trek down the Sunset Park.
Chinese restaurant names tend to exaggerate ("pagoda", "garden", "kingdom"), but the inside of East Harbor Seafood Palace was as palatial as you can find in New York. It had a large dining room with high ceilings, pleasant (re: not gaudy) decor, and most importantly, a decent amount of space between tables. (Of the 200 or so diners, there were approximately four who were not Chinese, if you like to judge authenticity by these ratios.) While waiting for our number to be called, I kept eyeing all the baskets of perfect-looking har gow that traveled from the dim sum carts to the tables. Twenty minutes had never seemed so long.
Read MoreAlmost every omnivore in the U.S. goes wild for chicken wings. Juicy meat, glistening skin that can be roasted, grilled or fried...what's not to love? Yet very few of us seem to feel the same about chicken thighs or chicken legs. Last July, when every store in my Brooklyn neighbordhood was out of chicken wings, I had no trouble finding abundant supplies of fresh, organic chicken legs for less than $2 a pound.
A recent article in Slate about the U.S. needing new markets for exporting dark chicken meat made me ponder (again) why we are a nation of wings and chicken breast lovers who toss or export the rest of the bird. You can't find more polar opposites, as far as chicken parts go, than wings and chicken breast. One is all skin and rich dark meat that oozes flavor, the other is lean and frankly, rather bland on its own.
While I like chicken breast in chicken noodle soup and somestir-fries, it's rather boring compared with dark meat and shines only when paired with tastier ingredients. You can't just rub a skinless chicken breast with olive oil and pepper and salt, stick it in the oven, and call it good.
Read MoreLiving far away from family this year, I didn't celebrate the first week of Chinese New Year by going out for dim sum or another festive meal. I talked to my parents in China via cell phone, made some Sichuan wontons, and called it good. I took solace in the fact that 1) I've eaten many great CNY meals in the past, and 2) I'm constantly recipe testing for my upcoming Chinese cookbook, so every day is like Chinese New Year.
Still, it was nice to finally have a Chinese meal outside of my apartment after a long hiatus of not doing so. Last night I went with Kian (of Red Cook) and his partner Warren to the opening of our friend Magda's photo exhibit near Chinatown. Afterward we wandered over to Nyonya on Grand St., It's part of the Penang restaurant chain that's pretty popular along the East Coast. I've eaten at the Boston branch numerous times, and occasionally find myself with massive cravings for their roti canai with curry chicken dip, so I was pretty excited to try Nyonya.
Read MoreSo the holiday season is over, it's snowing for the 20th time this month, and the road to spring looks long and arduous. You want to be some place warm. Like Tahiti, or Oahu. But there's that cost thing. If only there were a place in New York where you could go and pretend to be in a tropical paradise. Some place with Mai Tai's and an occasionally overactive radiator, for example.
So read the beginning of the invitation for my Brooklyn tiki party. The end of January seemed like the perfect time to throw one, in conjunction with Foodbuzz's 24x24 event, wherein 24 bloggers around the world host food-themed events of their choosing on the same night. Tiki seemed like a natural choice; Chinese food plays a pretty big role in tiki culture as we know it in the US, and donning a lei and drinking tropical punches seemed like the perfect way to spend a winter's evening.
We no longer have a Trader Vic's in New York, but the city has seen some high-profile Polynesian-themed establishments open in the past year, including Lani Kai, The Hurricane Club, and Painkiller. Years ago, before the tiki revival trend, for a fun night out I used to go to Otto's Shrunken Head on East 14th, where you can get highly potent concoctions and listen to The Ventures cover bands. My current apartment, with its open kitchen layout, seemed like the perfect spot to recreate a tiki bar.
Read MoreI've been on a spicy food kick lately, more than usual, mostly from recipe testing for my cookbook. Many of my meals end up being all heat, such as dan dan noodles and spicy stir-fried shrimp with a dollop of kimchi on the side (I keep a jar in the fridge just to satisfy kimchi cravings, not for recipe testing). But, I rationalize, the more spicy food you eat, the more tolerance for spicy food you build up. So I'm actually bettering myself every day. And that's what January is all about.
Two weeks ago I found myself needing chili oil, on one of those snowy, slushy, windy days that we in the Northeast have been seeing too many of. Chinatown and Sunset Park were too far just for one item, and for some reason neither of the two supermarkets by my apartment had chili oil in stock. I've previously made chili oil in small batches just to use for a specific meal, but decided it would be as good a time as any to make enough for a bottle.
So here's a recipe to try if you, like me, can't find chili oil near your house or just want to have the good homemade stuff without any preservatives. You'll need just 3 ingredients: some peanut oil, sesame oil, and dried red chili flakes (or chopped dried red peppers). You'll also need an oil thermometer (if you have a candy/oil thermometer, you're golden) and a small, heavy-bottomed pot or pan. I use about a third of a cup of dried red chili flakes, which makes a medium-spicy oil that takes a second for your tongue to register, but feel free to adjust the amount to your liking.
Read MoreWhen I first started this blog 3 and a half years ago, I had an inkling that maybe I would someday write a book. I had just arrived in Beijing, after a couple years in New York attending culinary school, working in a pastry kitchen, and writing freelance food and travel articles. I had a lot of interests, mostly centered around food. But where would I start?
The road from blog to book always seemed to be a fuzzy path. There were a lot of blogs in the news whose writers found agents and publishers seemingly overnight, and others I enjoy reading whose writers segued into other media opportunities, which led to the books. But at that time I didn't know where to begin. So I just concentrated on eating.
Getting acquainted with Beijing was a really eye-opening experience, and I just started photographing and sampling street food and restaurant meals wherever I went. I experimented with making Sichuan dishes from favorite restaurants at home, and when I wanted a break from spicy food, started cooking Cantonese dishes that my parents had taught me. Pretty soon the comments started coming, and questions about how to use this spice or that vegetable. That was encouragement enough to continue, despite the long hours.
Read MoreSlow-cooking meat in a nice enamelled cast iron Dutch oven is a pretty sublime experience. I've done my fair share of braising in metal pots, woks, Crock-Pots, and even sauté pans, but really, nothing compares to the ease of searing and stewing everything in the same pot, and one that needs minimal heat to stay bubbling hot. When most of your favorite dishes (boeuf bourguignon, coq au vin, chicken adobo, red-cooked pork) are braises or stews, you start salivating over the Le Creusets and Staubs upon entering any kitchen supply store.
I've used Le Creusets a good number of times when teaching at cooking schools, but hadn't actually own a proper Dutch oven until now. This Christmas I received a lovely red Staub "cocotte" from my chief taste tester/bf and have been using it as much as possible. (A great present, by the way, for someone craves chicken adobo every other day and can make it in her sleep.)
Read MoreWhat a nice pre-Christmas gift! Appetite for China was just featured in the Wall Street Journal Asia's round-up of food bloggers around Asia, along with Robyn Eckhardt from Eating Asia, Andrea Nguyen from Viet World Kitchen, Makiko Itoh from Just Bento, Mark Lowerson from Sticky Rice, and many others. We each recommended a dish we "can't live without" in cities across Asia (my city being Beijing.)
Check out the WSJ's slideshow here!
In other news, I spent a few hours last Sunday indulging in a non-food-related interest: checking out relics of bygone New York. Every year around the holidays the MTA digs into its collection of old train cars that ran way back in the day, and takes them for a few spins on Sundays in December to keep them in working condition. This being my first holiday season in New York in three years, riding a Nostalgia Train was high on my must-do list.
Read MoreMy bookcase is resembling the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It's not a very sturdy piece of furniture to begin with, and under the weight of all my cookbooks it has begun to lean more and more to the left, about an 1/8 of an inch each day for the past week. There's probably a loose screw in the back. Every time I remove a book or put one back on the shelf, it makes a creak that says "I'm going to topple at any second". Either I buy a new bookcase, stat, or stop purchasing cookbooks.
Buying a new bookcase was the easier option. While I wait for a new bookcase to be delivered (a nice sturdy mahogany one), I've had to momentarily suspend cookbook buying. Unfortunately, because the Brooklyn Public Library does such a good job of stocking up on newish tomes, my piles continue to grow.
Thanks to the library, my favorite cookbook discovery from the past month was actually published in 2008. And it's not Chinese.
Read MoreSince coming back to the US, I have had a hard time finding pan-fried pork buns, called shenjian bao in Chinese.
In Shanghai, they were available on practically every street corner. Like the more widely known xiaolong bao (called "soup dumplings" in English), sheng jian bao is also filled with ground pork and piping hot soup. But unlike its steamed counterpart, sheng jian bao is panfried until crispy on the bottom, then topped with sesame seeds and chives. They're so juicy that you have to bite into them carefully, or risk having hot broth spray out onto your shirt or at your dining companion across the table, neither of which are good ways to begin a meal.
A couple weeks ago I headed out to Flushing with Kian to try Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao. Fortunately, this place has no relation to the overrated and overly touristy Nan Xiang mini-chain in Shanghai. This Nan Xiang is a plainly adorned, two-room restaurant that draws a huge lunch crowd. We ordered a handful of dishes, one of my favorites being stir-fried glutinous rice cakes with seafood. If you like your starch dishes chewy, this is one to try, and even better topped with shrimp and fish. The texture of the rice cakes is similar to that of knife-cut noodles, or maybe even gnocchi.
Read MoreWhile shopping at the horribly chaotic Target at the Atlantic Center several weeks ago, I noticed something strange in the freezer aisle. Maybe I was just oblivious before, but there was a good number of frozen entrees based on Chinese takeout. Yes, frozen egg rolls and dumplings have been around for a while, and Trader Joe's is no stranger to frozen-foodifying Asian dishes. Now it seems PF Chang's has a shiny new line of "Home Menu" dinners, including Orange Chicken, Beef with Broccoli, and Shrimp Lo Mein, just waiting to be taken home and zapped in the microwave. (These are apparently for all those times late at night when the Golden Panda around the corner is closed, or when 15 minutes of waiting for the delivery guy is too much to handle.)
From an anthropological standpoint, I was dying to buy a package of P.F. Chang's Sweet & Sour Chicken to try in my own microwave. What a great blog post that would make! Then I read the ingredients, became dizzy with complex chemical terms, and turned my cart away from the frozen food section.
That was when I stumbled on a huge display of Archer Farms products, and an entire row of "General Tso's Thick Cut Potato Chips" at eye level. It seems that after exhausting all the possible barbecue and chili flavors on the market, the potato chip industry may have pinpointed Chinese takeout flavors as The Next Big Thing.
Read MoreI can't believe that we are already almost halfway into October. Where did the September go? For that matter, where did the entire summer go? It seemed like only yesterday that I had been busy bookmarking summer concerts and looking forward to beach trips and lazy days in the park, most of which did not materialize. (This summer I did, however, finally discover Arrested Development, and spent a good many 100-degree weekend days with the Netflix instant queue, a powerful fan, and an icy gin & tonic.) Yes, in general, the summer seemed to have flown by.
To be fair, many of my waking hours this summer had been devoted to not only side editing projects but also something pretty big and exciting. So I apologize for having been somewhat absent on the site. But the absence has been for a good reason and I can't wait to share the news with everyone in the coming weeks. And postings will definitely become more frequent again.
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