Eldo Cake House

My favorite bakery in Boston's Chinatown. These cakes are made of
fluffy vanilla sponge cake with a layer of light cream and fresh
strawberries in the middle.

Breakfast at home

Rice porridge
Pickled vegetables
Hard-boiled egg
Steamed bun with red bean filling
Mmmm

Hibino

I finally made it to Hibino last night, a Japanese restaurant on a residential stretch of Cobble Hill. Located at the corner of Henry and Pacific streets, the restaurant serves the usual Japanese fare, as well as daily "Obanzai" specials, or home-style Japanese version of tapas. The food is very good - simple, unfussy and satisfying. The sushi was also the best I've had in a long time. The service was also great, our waitress was attentive but not obstrusive, appearing at all of the right times.

To start, we ordered one of the obanzai specials: the curry croquette, which came with a thick ponzu dipping sauce and the Hirousu, which are tofu cakes served with a mild soy broth. The curry croquette looked like a McDonald's hash brown and tasted sort of like a samosa. That description doesn't sound appetizing, but it was actually my favorite dish.

Our bill for two obanzai (obanzais?), two rolls of sushi, a glass of wine and a glass of beer came out to about $35. That's a pretty good deal.

http://www.hibino-brooklyn.com/

Tablespoon

The cute and delicious new cafe, Tablespoon, on 20th between 5th and 6th aves. The lemon meringue pie is very good, the coffee will make you jittery for the rest of the day. They also serve breakfast (egg dishes and pastries) and lunch (salads, sandwiches and a daily entree.)

Vegetable Soba Noodle Soup

I love this dish because it's healthy, versatile and super quick and easy to make. It's the perfect meal on a cold winter night...it's guaranteed to warm you up! You can use whatever vegetables you want....spinach, bok choy, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage...my favorite is a combination of carrots, tofu and enoki mushrooms. The following recipe serves one with a little bit extra.

Ingredients:
Half of a brick of firm tofu, cubed
1 scallion, chopped loosely
1 carrot, sliced into thin pieces
1/3 package of enoki mushrooms (the weird looking ones with the long white stalk and a very small head)
2 cups of water
1 teaspoon of hon-dashi (seafood flavoring, you can find this in any japanese grocery store, M2M in Manhattan sells it, it comes in a small round jar with a red cap. you can find it in the spices aisle)
1 1/2 tablespoon of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of miso (available in many regular grocery stores and all japanese grocery stores)
1 small fistful of dried soba noodles

Directions:
Bring 2 cups of water to a boil
stir in the hon-dashi and soy sauce
Add the carrots and bring down to medium heat
After a few minutes, add the tofu
After another 5-7 minutes add the mushrooms
In a small dish, mix a spoonful of the broth with the miso, until it turns in to the consistency of a thick paste
Add the miso paste to the broth and stir
While you're working on the broth, bring another pot of water to boil
Add the soba noodles and cook according to the instructions on the package (probably will instruct you to cook the noodles for 6 minutes)
Drain the noodles, place in your serving bowl
By now, your soup will be done. Ladle the soup into the bowl with the soba noodles
Garnish with scallions
Sesame seeds would also be a nice finishing touch.

Really Easy & Healthy Fried Rice

2 cups cooked brown rice
1/2 cup frozen peas
1/2 cup frozen corn
1/2 cup frozen edamame
1 stalk of scallion
1 egg, beaten
sesame oil
soy sauce
optional: diced bacon

Heat one tablespoon of olive oil in a wok, mix in the peas, corn and edamame, saute for about 8 minutes.
Make a space in the center of the wok, pour in the beaten egg, scramble and mix well with the rest of veggies

Mix in the brown rice, add a small splash of sesame oil and one splash of soy sauce, mix well

Add the scallions at the end. Plate and serve!

Some things i learned....

...flavoring turkey burgers with turmeric and cumin is really tasty...
...mixing cucumbers with chopped beats in a salad is no good...unless you like your cucumbers bright pink....

Pasta with Arugula Pesto and Roasted Tomatoes

This is the fourth week in a row that I've gotten a big quart of arugula in my CSA share. I needed to find a way to use up all of the arugula in one meal, preferably something that I can freeze and eat over time. Georgia suggested that i make arugula pesto, which i've never done before. And pesto freezes really well and goes with anything - pasta, chicken, fish, as a spread, and the argula leaves tend to go bad really quickly in my fridge, so i really needed to cook all of it immediately. Arugula pesto isn't much different from regular basil pesto, you just substitute the one leaf for another. Argula is quite bitter, so I added basil olive oil and walnuts to mellow out some of the bitterness in the pesto. Even with the basil oil and walnuts, the pesto was still very better. So, when making my pasta dish, i added some roasted grape tomatoes to boost the sweet flavor. I topped it all off with some basil from my CSA. This was literally the best basil i've ever tasted....the flavor was bright and strong, and had a lemony after taste. The basil gives this dish a summery taste!

Arugula Pesto
Ingredients:
1 quart of argula
3 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 cup of walnuts
1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese
4 tablespoons of basil olive oil (or regular olive oil)
salt to taste

Directions:
combine all of the ingredients in a cuisinart and blend until it has smooth consistency

Roasted Tomatoes:
Dice half a quart of grape tomatoes
Mix with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil
Cook in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees

Orecchiette and Chicken Meatballs

I made pasta with chicken meatballs for my little dinner party on Sunday. It took a long time and rendered my kitchen a big mess of dirty pots and dishes, but it was worth it because it was surprisingly good. There's something really satisfying about making meatballs....mixing the lifeless ground meat with breadcrumbs and parsley and turning it into something that's hearty and satisfying is really fun.

I've never made a pasta dish with orecchiette...it seems like it's always placed on the highest shelf in the grocery store...the shelf that i can't reach. It's got an interesting texture and a bit more interesting looking than your everyday ziti or rotini.

Ingredients:
1 box of orecchiette pasta
1 pound of ground chicken
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup of bread crumbs
1 tablespoon of ketchup
1 tablespoon of milk
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1 cup of grated parmesan cheese
5 cups of cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup of chicken stock
1 tablespoon of cornstarch
a bunch of basil leaves, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Meatballs:
Mix the ground chicken, 1/3 cup of parmesan cheese, parsley, bread crumbs, eggs, milk, ketchup, salt and pepper together and mix well
Heat the olive oil in a large pot, roll the mixture into small balls, fry on both sides for two minutes each, in batches

Sauce:
Add the tomatoes and chicken stock in the same pot and bring to a boil
Return the meatballs back into the pot, simmer sauce and the meatballs for another 15-20 minutes.
Add the cornstarch to thicken the sauce

Pasta:
Cook the pasta according to the instructions, drain the pasta and reserve a 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid
Add the remaining parmesan cheese to the pasta and add a little bit of the cooking liquid
Add the meatballs, sauce and chopped basil leaves and mix well

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

This is my second ever rhubarb dessert and it was much better than my first try. I got two stalks of rhubarb in my csa share a few weeks ago and I used it to bake a rhubarb and chocolate cake...which was ok but too dense...it looked like one large thick cookie. I definitely preferred the rhubarb/fruit combination over rhubarb with chocolate. I adopted this recipe from Simply Recipes and it came out really well...it was a bit on the tart side, so next time i increase the proportion of strawberries to rhubarb. Served with a big scoop of good vanilla ice-cream....it is really delicious.

Ingredients:
2 frozen pie crusts
3 cups of rhubarb cut into smallish pieces
1 cup of strawberries, halved
1 cup sugar
3 tablespoons of quick cooking tapioca
1 tablespoon of lemon zest
pinch of salt

mix all of the ingredients together
fill one pie crust with the mixture
cover the mixture with the other pie crust, crimp the edges of the two crusts together and slice a few vents on the top
Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes and then another 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees

Treats Truck

I finally caught up with the elusive Treats Truck this afternoon. Parked down the street from my office, at the corner of 6th Ave and 19th street, it was a silver gleaming thing of beauty. For a mere $1.50, I got a "chocolate trucker treat", or as the Treats Truck lady described it, a home-made oreo cookie. It's a generous-sized cookie, consisting of a thick slab of vanilla buttercream sandwiched between two moist chocolate chip cookies, which had the consistency closer to a brownie. I chatted with the lady briefly and she'll be parked at this corner for the most of the summer from 12-3 on Fridays. Hooray!

Garlic Scapes

From my CSA share...doesn't have much flavor, kind of like green beans.

Bar Q

Bar Q, Anita Lo's new restaurant in the West Village, doesn't look like your average bbq restaurant. Everything is crisp and white - the walls, the seats, the linens. The food also isn't what you'd find in your average bbq restaurant...all of the dishes have an asian twist to ithem: baby back ribs with a korean-style sauce, kimchee seafood stew. Everything on the menu sounded inventive and promising, so I was expecting a lot. But, i was sorely disappointed. Every dish i had was underwhelming and slightly off, and at a minimum of $20 an entree and $11 for a small plate, that shouldn't have been the case. We started with the baby back ribs and the unagi and scallion fritters. The ribs were all bone and very little meat and what meat was therewas quite tough and chewy. The unagi and scallion fritters were extremely bland and tasteless and every bite was all dough and no fish. I might as well have been eating a greasy funnel cake with a slight hint of fish flavor.

I ordered the Tea Smoked Chicken with Sweet Rice and Chinese Sausage for my main entree and that was also mostly forgettable. The chicken was on the dry side and the skin was incredibly oily. The chicken was seasoned unevenly, some bites were bland and some bites were very salty. The dish came with a bed of sauteed chives, which were tasty but soaked in a puddle of residual oil from the chicken.

The only redeeming part of the meal was my cocktail. I got a bubble tea spiked with vodka and it was frothy, green and refreshing. I won't be coming back here for dinner, but I'd recommend stopping by for a nice drink at the bar.

Cajun-ish style Catfish

This is the first and only real meal Amar and I have made and eaten together since we moved into our new apartment last month...which is a little pathetic really. It's just so easy to get lazy and order take-out or go out to eat in this neighborhood now that I have so many delicious options right at my fingertips.

It was a very tasty and colorful meal...the stir-fried green beans and asparagus we just sauteed, and the mashed sweet potatoes were also pretty straight forward. The fish recipe came from Foodnetwork.com, courtesy of Emeril. For the sauteed vegetables, i first cooked 3 cloves of thinly sliced garlic in olive oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then i added the string beans and a pinch of water and cooked it over medium heat for about 7-8 minutes, with a cover over the skillet. Then I threw in the asparagus last and cooked everything for another 5-7 minutes, because those cook through pretty quickly. If the vegetables start to look a little dry, add some more olive oil.

For the sweet mashed potatoes, peel and dice the sweet potatoes into one inch pieces, boil starting in cold water for about 15 minutes, mash together with a few splashes of milk and a tablespoon of better...more milk if you like it creamier. Add lots of brown sugar, otherwise it'll taste slightly bitter.

Onto the fish. This was the first time i used a broiler to cook anything and the fish came out pretty well. Broiling the fish gave it that blackened char around the edges, but still retained the juiciness of the fish.

Ingredients:
2 large filets of catfish
3 pinches of salt
2 cloves of garlic, minced
generous amount of olive oil
1 teaspoon of fresh thyme leaves
1 lemon, juiced
1/4 cup of bread crumbs
1 tablespoons of paprika
1/2 tablespoon of garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon of black pepper
1/2 tablespoon of dried oregano
1/2 tablespoon of dried thyme

Directions:
mix all of the seasonings
Season the catfish with salt and seasonings on both sides
combine the olive oil, fresh thyme and garlic, spread over the catfish filets
drizzle the lemon juice over the filets
add the bread crumbs to the top of the filets
add some more olive oil over the bread crumbs
put the fish in the broiler for about 12-15 minutes (the directions said to flip the catfish, but that made the bread crumbs all soggy...so i wouldn't advise doing that)

Frankies 457

Last night, Sam and I had dinner around the corner from my house at Frankie's Spuntino. The meal was amazing, I ordered one of the best pasta dishes I've had in a long time. My linguine with fresh fava beans and tomato sauce tasted like bowl full of spring...the fava beans were bright green and tender, the tomato sauce was light and subtle. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente with that great chewy texture. The dessert was possibly even better than the meal. I was initially opposed to ordering the red wine stewed prunes with mascarpone cheese, because i don't usually associate prunes with dessert, but Sam talked me into it. It. was. good. The mascarpone was so smooth and creamy, it literally melted in my mouth. It tasted like a thicker and creamier version of clotted cream. The red wine sauce was rich and only slightly sweet, which was the perfect compliment to the light flavor of the mascarpone. The prunes were sweet and meaty doubled as receptacle for scooping up the cheese. Oddly enough, this dessert felt more decadent than a piece of chocolate cake. The meal was great and i spied an outdoor garden that is going to be awesome when the weather gets warmer. Now i understand why there was a 45 minute wait at 8 o'clock.

New Kitchen!

My new kitchen. As you can see, I don't have much space to work with.

Broadway East

Whoah i haven't written a post in 4 months! Life got really busy and for about two months i was eating really crappy food like bland whole wheat pasta with semi-cold pasta sauce dumped on top. But I'm going to start posting more regularly now. So, last night I went to Broadway East with Ursula and Nikki after checking out the Cai Guo Qiang exhibit at the Guggenheim. Which, by the way, was really great. I'm really glad I got to see it before the show closes later this month. My favorite piece was the snake in the bag, aptly called "Snake Bag". Broadway East is situated at the far end of East Broadway, past all of the Chinese bakeries and shops and basement restaurants. The restaurant has a very simple, almost sparse decor - polished wooden floors, dark wooden tables and velvety red banquettes lining the sides of the main dining room. The restaurant is very dimly lit, with the only light coming from small round globes that appear to float down from the ceiling.

I was a little skeptical at first, $21 for a plate of vegetables? Seemed a little outrageous to me. But, the food turned out to be delicious. I ordered a dish that came with grilled polenta, bread crumb encrusted and fried portobello mushrooms, a ragout made of porcini mushrooms and sauteed leafy greens (said kale on the menu, but i'm pretty sure what i ate wasn't kale.) The polenta was the perfect consistency, the ragout had a rich and salty, but not completely overpowering flavor. The light sauteed greens balanced out the hearty ragout perfectly. Our pear crostata dessert was a little disappointing - there was too much crust and too little pear. The presentation of the dish was also unappealing, the caramel sauce was hastily drizzled around the plate, the crostata looked like it hadn't been formed perfectly before it was baked. That said, the other dishes on the dessert menu sounded really good, there was a spiced chai bread pudding and a fig and hazelnut tart.

Overall a very good experience. This is a good choice if you're in the mood for vegan/vegetarian food, but don't want to eat at some hippy crunchy restaurant. Broadway East presents haute hippie food in an upscale setting without a hint of patchouli scent.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

We had a little dinner party last weekend...I gotta mention Nikki's delicious butternut squash risotto...it was excellent. Creamy and starchy, with hints of sweetness from the butternut squash puree. I made roasted brussels sprouts...I tried to replicate The Smith's brussels sprouts, but it didn't have the same lemony flavor. But still, it came out pretty well, the flavor was mellow and almost sweet, with a bit of crunch from the charred outsides.

Ingredients:
2 lbs of brussels sprouts
3 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 lemon
salt and pepper

Directions:
- Preheat oven at 400 degrees
- Cut off the stems of the brussels sprouts and peel off the first layer
- Salt the brussels sprouts with 2-3 generous pinches of salt
- Combine olive oil with juice from half of the lemon
- Zest the lemon and add the zest to the olive oil/lemon juice combo
- Pour the olive oil/lemon juice combo over the brussels sprouts and mix so that it's all coated evenly
- Roast at 400 degrees for 40 minutes
- Shake the baking pan occasionally so that all of the sides are roasted

Beef Stew

This hearty beef stew is a great winter dish. It also freezes well, so you can make a big pot of it and eat it slowly over many weeks. Chop the potatoes and carrots into large chunks, so you get big meaty bites with each spoonful.

Ingredients:

2 pounds beef chuck for stew, cut into 1-inch cubes
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
4 medium carrots, peeled, halved and cut into 1-inch chunks
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 14 oz cane of chicken broth
1/2 cup dry red wine
2 8 oz cans of tomato sauce
1 box of baby Portobello mushrooms, chopped
5 red potatoes, diced
2 (14 1/2-ounce) cans reduced-sodium beef or chicken broth
1 bay leaf
handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
two pinches of dried thyme
two pinches of oregano

Instructions:
Season the beef cubes lightly with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of the butter in a heavy 6-quart pot over medium heat. Brown the beef in two batches, for approximately 5-6 minutes per batch.

Scoop out the second batch of beef, then add the carrots and onions and raise the heat to medium-high. Cook until the onion starts to turn translucent, about 5 minutes.

Stir in the flour.

Add the chicken broth, wine, tomato sauce and herbs and bring to a boil

Simmer for 20 minutes

Add potatoes and mushrooms, simmer for another 45 minutes

Stir in parsley at the end