le blog de tranny

yummykins mcderish

Month: May, 2010

May 26, 2010

notes on southern food

I’ve always been fried chicken’s biggest fan. I used to always force my mom to bring me popcorn chicken after tennis practice when I was in middle school and I believe it was Arby’s chicken strips at a food court or some shit that ended my one and half year stint as a vegetarian when I was 19. And nowadays, from Bakesale Betty’s fried chicken sandwich to 900 Grayson’s Demon Lover to Pizzaiolo’s buttermilk fried chicken, it seems like I can satisfy any fried chicken craving I have in the blink of an eye. Now it’s not even fried chicken that I crave so much anymore. I’ve branched out somewhat into the world of southern cooking – from sampling the homestyle Sunday specials at Lois the Pie Queen (the catfish with potato salad is the best!) and the beef tongue canape and shrimp n grits at the more modern and upscale Hungry Mother in Boston to throwing a southern-themed potluck for my birthday this past January. People hella brought it for my birthday, by the way. We had at least 6 different bottles of whiskey on the table, and people made ribs, gumbo, cat fish, chicken, potato salad, mac n cheese, collard greens, corn bread, biscuits, sweet potato pie, pecan pie, tiramisu, bread pudding, cake balls (lol), and probably a bunch of other stuff I’m forgetting (it has been 5 months after all). I tried to salvage these photos from my party with heavy editing.




On a separate note, Iiving near Lois the Pie Queen has been magical, and I’m sad to say that we may no longer be able to call this a neighborhood establishment come August (depending on where we move).

Here’s one taken by our friend Caity.

No other Sunday spot will ever measure up to Lois. The food there just hits the spot and there’s always a good vibe. The prospect of not being within walking distance of this place makes me sad. But alas, time to lighten the mood with a collards recipe. Not your traditional stewed collard greens — this recipe takes all of five minutes to execute (aside from prep). I made this dish for our gigantic and ridiculously gourmet and delicious Thanksgiving feast that we had at Matt and Jane’s last year. The recipe is from Epicurious. Basically you cut the collards into thin strips and then saute them in bacon fat with bits of chopped up bacon for about a minute or two. Such a refreshing and delightful take on collards. The bacon fat is a must but if you are feeding a vegetarian (one of our party was) then sauteing the collards in olive oil and minced garlic also does the trick. I also recommend squeezing some lemon juice over the collards before serving, and a little s&p never hurt anyone.
Here’s some ‘before’ pictures of the Thanksgiving collards.


I didn’t get them quite thin enough so I think I sauteed them for more like 3 or 4 minutes. A bientôt!

1 comment
May 21, 2010

it’s asparagus season!

And who am I to complain? Asparagus is like one of those luxury vegetables that rich people eat with their filet mignon. Or I guess this was my perception before asparagus season 2010 hit and we started getting bundles of beautiful asparagus in our CSA every week. Our household has greatly benefited from the opportunity to experiment with asparagus — Caro has crafted some delicious salads and pastas with the stuff and I’ve done some dappling of my own. To borrow wording from the stock cover letter I like to spam potential employers with, “[asparagus] works well independently or as part of a team.” In the first recipe presented in this post, asparagus does indeed show that it is a formidable team player and can effectively play a supporting role to some other spotlight ingredient. In the next two recipes, asparagus stands more on its own, creating an entire dish/course centered around its unique flavor.

Asparagus and Balsamic Mushroom Pizza
About a month ago, Caro and I had a few people over and made a few different pizzas. Caro made the dough from scratch, using the recipe Matt and Jane always use. The pizza sauce recipe we used also comes from Epicurious. Caro grilled the asparagus on the grill pan with olive oil, s&p so that it was still crunchy and delicious when we put it on the pizza. It was really the balsamic mushrooms that added complexity to the pizza. To make those, I sauteed crimini mushrooms, minced garlic and chopped onion in some heated olive oil for 5 minutes or so. Then I seasoned them with s&p and some dried thyme and then stir-fried the shrooms in some balsamic vinegar. I used less balsamic vinegar than this guy recommends. The asparagus-balsamic shroom combination was straight up gourmet.

Here’s a snap I took of the pizza before it went in the oven:

And here’s a snap Andrea took after the pizza came out of the oven:

Crab Asparagus Soup
Just like my grandma used to make! I gotta give hella props to this Vietnamese recipe blog I stumbled upon right after moving back to the states after my year abroad. This is the third recipe I’ve made from this blog and all the recipes I’ve made so far have been practical enough to make on a week night and taste legit to me (though I wouldn’t expect myself to know shit)! This person really seems to know their shit. I followed this recipe pretty much to the letter.. the only addition I made was throwing some enoki mushrooms in the broth about 10 minutes before it was done. I could’ve done without them to be honest; they didn’t really add anything in terms of flavor or texture and kind of just blended in with the crab. Ryan and I were feeling cheap so I just used canned crab meat which in my opinion, was just fine.
Anyway the great thing about this soup is that it really does get most of its flavor from the asparagus. You essentially make an asparagus stock by boiling the dickens out of the bottoms of the asparagus stalks in some chicken broth!



This is the crab meat step. I find it quite amusing that we have two bottles of fish sauce in our house and both of them were purchased by the white people living there. Way to rep my heritage Caro and Ryan! My mom has this theory about how the cheaper fish sauces at grocery stores are just salt water and you have to buy the more expensive bottles for it to be legit. I guess the ingredients list on this fish sauce did just say ‘salt, water and anchovies’ (<– is that normal?) but I think the dish turned out okay, if not a bit salty. So I guess if you're using one of the so-called 'cheap' fish sauces, then you should probably use a little less than the recipe calls for to avoid making the dish too salty.
You’re supposed to add the top parts of the asparagus and the crab mixture to the soup when it’s about ten minutes from being ready to serve. The color contrast between the asparagus used to make the broth and the asparagus added at the end was very pleasing to my eyes (which tend to be really appreciative of colors these days).


Immediately before serving you drizzle whipped egg whites over the soup. Did you know that the ‘chef’s way’ of separating eggs is to crack the egg into your hand and let the white drip through your fingers? That’s what this guy says. News to me!
Here’s a photo of the finished product taken with my old camera.

Asparagus Mousse
Last weekend Jane called me up and informed me that she and Matt were making cioppino with fresh pasta, and could I please bring a salad or starter? I was eager to try out a recipe from The Silver Spoon, which I had just received from Amazon along with the battery for my new camera, and was obviously too lazy to go the grocery store. So I decided to make an asparagus mousse of all things, which only required asparagus, lemon, cream cheese and eggs — all of which were already in my refrigerator! So here’s how you make asparagus mousse, in case you’re interested. The following photos were taken with my NEW CAMERA.

Trim the asparagus and boil it in salted water for about ten minutes.

Puree the cooked asparagus in a blender or food processor.

Then put the puree in a pan and stir fry it for a bit so it dries out.

Hard-boil some eggs (three eggs for four servings), scoop out the egg yolks, and whisk them up with some olive oil, cream cheese, and s&p.

Add the asparagus puree and some lemon juice and it should look like this:

Now for the difficult part. You’re supposed to separate out an egg white and then whisk it until it forms firm peaks. This takes a lot of muscle (or a stand mixer). I actually needed to bring in Ryan’s manpower to get the whites to this point because my arms got too tired :/. This is how it’s supposed to look once you’ve whisked the egg white into submission:

By the way, the cioppino was fucking delicious. I believe Matt and Jane got the recipe from Epicurious. They also recently came into possession of a Kitchenaid standmixer and bought the pasta attachment to go with it. So jealz.

Sunday night spread:

I’ll admit the asparagus mousse was a risk and I’ll admit that not everyone polished it off. The mousse would have definitely benefited from some crostinis or something to eat it with — on its own it was a bit intense. It was fun to make and document, anyway. And you know the funny part? Jane, completely independently, decided to make mousse on a whim as well! Hers was a raspberry mousse that we used to top this decadent olive oil cake we made for dessert.

Yummy!

2 comments
May 10, 2010

dutch snack food

I have this habit where whenever I travel somewhere, even if it’s not to a place particularly famous (or even, that is infamous) for its food, I make it all about the food. This is actually the context in which this blog was first created (during my year abroad in the notoriously not delicious UK where I often struggled to eat well/felt the need to bitch about it on the interweb). Perhaps the one exception to my usual rule of making every trip food-centric was when I went to Coachella with Paul about a month ago. In addition to being limited to the subpar, overpriced fare offered on the festival grounds, we often found ourselves in a state where we had fallen out of touch with our appetites, and were either too into dancing to eat, didn’t know what food was, or both.

Coachella 2010:

This talk of festivals seems like a good place to transition into the subject of this post: the trip that I took to the Netherlands about a year ago. Here’s a photo of A’dam’s Vondelpark, where according to Jasper, all the ‘festival people’ like to hang out.

Given that my companion on this trip is native Dutch, I guess it makes sense that I ended up sampling many of the more exotic local delicacies, most of which would be considered typical Dutch ‘snack food’ and some of which translated into a tummy ache :( . All of these food photos were taken in Amsterdam. We went to Rotterdam for a day too, but I guess I didn’t eat anything all that interesting there.

Here’s a vending machine dispensing different varieties of hot food. Over the course of the day, cooks in the kitchen on the other side of the wall refill the food slots. Way to cut out the middle man, Amsterdam!

Bitterballen – kind of like a croquette, but filled with tiny bits of beef and a mush made of broth, flour and butter (so Wikipedia tells me) and served with mustard. Pretty delicious if you ask me.

Of course I had to lurk on a cheese shop or two.

Here’s one for the books — haring (in English, herring), served raw and topped with raw onions. Not really visible here, but the fish has little hairs on it. I’m going to go ahead and say that this wasn’t the best thing I ate in Amsterdam, though I don’t regret trying it!

So, something I learned is that Dutch people like to eat sandwiches with sprinkles in them. The ones below are a special kind called ‘muisjes,’ eaten on top of biscuits when celebrating the birth of a baby. You (and your family, friends and coworkers) eat the blue ones if it’s a boy and the pink ones if it’s a girl. The muisjes are actually aniseed sprinkles but there are chocolate ones too, for your day-to-day sprinkle sandwich fix! They had the chocolate ones at the breakfast buffet at our hotel actually – imagine how silly it was to watch a fully grown man eat baguette topped with butter and chocolate sprinkles for breakfast!

Frikandel, one of Jasper’s favorites. It’s essentially a deep-fried meat stick made of leftover cow parts and served with tons of mayonnaise. I actually found it to be quite tasty (as mysterious meat amalgations tend to be).

See?

French fries served with satay sauce, mayonnaise, and raw onions. As one might expect, the satay sauce made this combination a bit too sweet for me.

But enough of that shit. In a much-welcomed break from all the fast food, I was lucky enough to be treated to some bona fide Dutch home-cooking courtesy of A-M, my number one homegirl in NL. This dish is called hutspot, a mash made with potatoes, carrots and bacon. So comforting and exactly what I needed.

Fin. Needless to say, I hope I’ll have the opportunity to visit the continent (and all my peeps there) sometime soon.

1 comment
May 9, 2010

mac n’ cheese 2 ways

The method behind both of these recipes is loosely based on Alice Waters’ mac n’ cheese recipe in The Art of Simple Food, pretentiously called ‘Pasta and Cheese Gratin.’

Mac n’ Cheese with Roasted Butternut Squash

The pictures accompanying this recipe are actually from the first time I ever made it, with PH.

The first thing to do is to prep the butternut squash. I usually use a half to a whole squash, depending on the size of the squash and how many people I’m feeding. Erring on the side of too much squash is always a safe bet. Peel the squash, scoop out the seeds, and chop it into bite-sized cubes. Toss the squash in a bit olive oil with any combination of the following: oregano, thyme, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, s&p and maybe a little chili powder. I like to pile on the spices for maximum zestiness. Roast the squash at 400 degrees F for about 20 minutes.

Now would also be a good time to cook the pasta. I like to use rotini or elbow macaroni, but it obviously doesn’t really matter. Boil the pasta ‘til it’s al dente. (As for the amount of pasta, all I’ll say is that when you assemble the mac n’ cheese, the pasta-to-cheese ratio should err on the side of too much cheese, because there’s nothing worse than mac n’ cheese with not enough cheese to cover all the pasta.)

Meanwhile, make the roux. Melt like half a stick of butter in a pot and then add some flour. (Alice Waters recommends using equal parts butter and flour, but I like using less flour. In fact if you use no flour then it’s basically impossible to fuck up the cheese sauce, but then I guess it wouldn’t be a roux.) Whisk continuously over low heat for a few minutes and then start adding in milk, little by little, still whisking. (The quantity of milk depends on how much cheese you’re using. Alice Waters recommends 2 ½ cups for 8 ounces of cheese. I would say that the amount of milk you’re using doesn’t matter all that much, provided that there’s enough milk to make the cheese sauce reasonably liquid-y so that you can coat the pasta in it/so that the mac n’ cheese won’t dry out too much during baking. In fact, if I’m short on milk then I’ll drizzle the baking tray with a little bit of water before popping it in the oven.) Once you’ve added all the milk, add a bay leaf or two and bring the sauce to a simmer. Let it simmer on low for like ten minutes and then turn off the heat. Add grated cheese to the sauce and stir until it all melts in. For this recipe, I like to use sharp or extra sharp cheddar. If you’re wondering why I’m only using one type of cheese, don’t worry – the next recipe uses four different cheeses. I just prefer to keep it simple for this particular recipe.

Spread the pasta evenly in a buttered baking tray and then layer the butternut squash on top, tossing the pasta a little so the squash is evenly distributed. Pour the cheese sauce over the whole thing, making sure it dribbles down to the bottom-most noodles. (If not, then put your wooden spoon in there and mix it up a bit!) Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top. I like to use a generous amount of breadcrumbs, and I don’t mind using the delicious store-bought Progresso Italian kind. If you’re working with homemade or plain breadcrumbs, I’d recommend adding some oregano, garlic powder and other savory Italian seasonings to it.

Sprinkle some water over the whole thing if it seems like it’s en route to being too dry, and bake it uncovered at 400 degrees for about 15 more minutes or so. Sprinkle with fresh parsley before serving, if you have any.

Here’s another snap from a time I made this mac n’ cheese more recently:

~~

Bacon Mac n’ Cheese with Carmelized Onions

Cook the pasta. Fry the bacon. Remove the bacon from the pan and reserve all the bacon fat. Throw chopped onions in there with plenty of butter. Add a generous amount of dried Italian herb seasoning, which includes basil, marjoram, thyme, oregano and rosemary. (I’d say the thyme is most essential.) Sauté this miracle mixture for a while on high heat, stirring often so the dried herbs don’t burn. Here’s a photo of it that was taken with Andrea’s digital SLR. (A sad side note: I still have not received the battery that I need for my new camera to work. USPS is really eating shit right now. USPS is the middle chick in the human centipede.)

Remove the onions from the heat when they are sufficiently browned. Also don’t forget to chop up the bacon. Make the cheese sauce with cheddar, mozzarella, fontina and a little bit of gruyere. Those were the cheeses Andrea had on hand and the resulting combination was fantastic! Don’t be worried if the mozzarella remains stringy after you melt it – that’s normal, as I’ve learned. The mozzarella was definitely an essential cheese to include though. Andrea and I added a few frozen basil cubes to the sauce last time too, which was definitely a good call.

Now toss the pasta, cheese sauce, crumbled bacon and onions together and arrange the mixture in a baking tray. Top with Italian breadcrumbs and bake at 400 until the top is toasted and golden. Serve with fresh parsley, like so:

1 comment
May 4, 2010

ramyun fiend

I venture to say that the fact that ramyun makes up such a large part of my diet is partially justified by my asian heritage.  But we all know that it’s really because my love for savory foods is closely rivaled by my love for instant gratification.  My affinity for the stuff is primarily confined to two ramen genres: the Korean kimchi variety and the Japanese pork variety.  Growing up in Orange County my mom and I would often grab lunch at Ebisu in Fountain Valley, where I would usually order the shoyu ramen with sliced pork.  I haven’t really found a solid ramen joint around here so nowadays I usually make it at home (and given how cheap and easy it is to do so, it seems pretty silly not to).  During my first years living on my own during undergrad, I would often make imitation ‘kimchi ramen,’ which involved the very classy combination of Oriental-flavored Top Ramen, kimchi from the Korean corner store, and a poached (if I was lucky enough not to break it) egg.  Nowadays, when making ramyun for myself at home, I usually opt for the Nong Shim Kimchi Ramyun, available both at Berkeley Bowl and Koreana Plaza.  (In searching for the name of this brand, I stumbled upon a blog which appears to be dedicated entirely to sampling different varieties of store-bought ramen lol.  If I’ve recently made a trip to Koreana plaza, then my homemade ramyun is particularly fruitful and even worthy of sharing with friends:

A recent visit to Momofuku noodle bar in New York reminded me of how much I really do love a delicious pork ramen.  I arrived expecting a run-of-the-mill low maintenance noodle bar and was quite surprised to find a pretty high brow menu.  Once again, I have to backtrack on my professed hatred for asian fusion and declare Momofuku an asian fusion success!

Above: Momofuku’s Cider-Soju Slushie and Kimchi Jar

Momofuku Ramen with Pork Belly & Pork Shoulder

Ohhhhhh yeahhhhh.

The pork belly was kind of tough, to be quite honest.

But Matt and Jane recently bought the Momofuku cookbook so an attempted replication is definitely in order!

BTW, this blog is about to get so much more legit.  In my first splurge as a salaried employee of a private firm, I purchased a (really) nice SLR-quality camera.  Hopefully said camera (and all parts required for it to function) will be here in time for our Cinco de Mayo fiesta on Wednesday.

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