Where else but in NYC would you go to a flea market just to eat the food? The Brooklyn Flea is the newest stomping ground for foodies who also like to browse and shop while eating. It’s the pinnacle of the hipster DIY mentality that is the embodiment of a Brooklynite.

Brooklyn Flea is the brainchild of Jonathan Butler, a DIY vehicle for him to bring people to his beloved borough. Hey, it worked on me. In a way, Brooklyn is way too big a neighborhood to get your mind wrapped around it, so this guy is really doing a great PR job. He’s elevated the humble yard sale to something quite unique.

There’s two locations: Ft. Greene and DUMBO (literally under the Brooklyn Bridge). In the winter, the Flea goes indoors in DUMBO. Last week, we went to the Ft. Greene one, which is enclosed in the fenced parking lot of a Catholic school, a typical location for a flea market.

Ft. Greene is a very residential area, with mostly well-preserved brownstones, without the chic little cafes or boutiques on the ground floor. We were there early when not many vendors were set up, but I had seen the Martha tour of the Flea and knew which goodies I wanted to eat. While it was only 10am, Pizza Moto was already churning out pies. The woman ahead of us had ordered three. They were individual servings, 4 slices of the gourmet thin crust-style in two options: Margherita or White.

The story of the oven: This is this the third Pizza Moto pizza oven so far.  The previous two were crude brick and mortar structures that lasted only a few weeks aboard the trailer. The punishment from NYC’s streets quickly reduced them to shattered piles of rubble. This oven is a vast departure from its more traditional predecessors. It has a masonry hearth that soaks up the heat of the fire to produce thin crispy bubbly crusts, but instead of the heavy fragile brick and mortar enclosure, this oven is made from a double walled vault of insulated 12 gauge diamond plate steel! It is a much stronger and lighter structure that solves the problem of how to make a light weight wood-fired brick oven that can travel safely across the streets of NYC or anywhere that’s connected to a road.

This pizza is no joke. It is now the best pizza I’ve ever had, ever. The beauty lies in the crust made from a sourdough using yeasts found on local apples. QQ to the infinity. And using a simple tangy sauce of chopped Italian tomatoes, real mozzarella slices, and blistering the heck outta the outer rim doesn’t hurt either.

Yesterday we drove to DUMBO just for another dose of the pie, traversing two bridges to find ourselves smack dab between two more bridges when we arrived. I was also hoping I’d also get a taste of the Red Hook Lobster Pound lobster roll, People’s Pops and Blue Marble maple ice cream. I had to poach these pics since I didn’t have my camera with me.

DUMBO is such a picturesque waterfront, with ultimate views of eastern Manhattan and industrialization that has maintained the local character of the buildings. The location can’t be beat, right under the most famous bridge in the world. The square footage of this Flea is much smaller than the Ft. Greene parking lot, which adds to the intimate feel.

While the other half procured another pie, I scooted over to the lobster roll purveyor. There was no line for that one. But then again, maybe other customers didn’t know $14 per roll is actually quite affordable for the product you get! I did see many vendors and customers sucking down a small cup of the lobster bisque for $8 as a consolation prize.

It was totally worth it. A stern woman in a fur coat approached the stand and demanded another half roll, because her first one “didn’t have enough meat in it.” Mine had at least two lobsters’ worth, perfectly cooked, still tender, minimal mayo, just a clean, refreshing sweetness.

The recipe is a hybrid of the Maine (classic) and Connecticut versions, mildly tangy, with scallions cut on the bias sprinkled on top, dusted with paprika. It was buttery, but not overly so. The vendor flies in lobster fresh from Maine every week, along with the authentic New England Style rolls. The flatness of the roll permits proper toasting of the buttered sides. The sandwich is gorgeously delicate and hearty. Superb.

The food vendors are sequestered in one area. Next to my lobster roll stand was the Soler pupusa stand, supposedly the best of all the ones at the Red Hook soccer fields. Martha even had the proprieter on her show to demonstrate the pupusa-making technique. Unfortunately, these guys are suffering from the weight of their fame. Whereas other vendors were doing gourmet, restaurant-quality entrees, Soler is still churning out pedantic street food.

I ordered a chicken tamale and the daily special of pork and jalapeno pupusa. It comes with pickled fixin’s: cabbage, onion, chiles, sour cream sauce and chunky hot sauce. The stuff only rendered the pupusa mushy and soggy. The overly large tamale was already overcooked, so was mostly unaffected by the onslaught of sides. Very disappointing to say the least.

There were other food vendors there which we didn’t try: Asiadog, Choice Market (mostly pastries, didn’t see the sushi), Choncho’s Fish Tacos etc… too many to list. Check out the vendor list.

We did stumble upon Fine + Raw Chocolate, which we had sampled before at the Williamsburg Indoor Artists & Fleas. They give you a tiny pinch of truffle and it’s like you’ve eaten a giant bonbon. The flavor profile explodes in your mouth, with hints of coconut and salt, along with the deepest, richest chocolate, unadulterated. We bought a bonbon bar, which has a sandwich of dark bitter chocolate around the truffle. Unfortunately, the bitterness of the hard chocolate masks the subtlety of the truffle flavor.

The food and product vendors vary depending on which location you patronize. There was this taco place (on-site fresh flour tortillas) at the Ft. Greene location we had wanted to try that wasn’t at DUMBO. As for non-foodstuffs, a girl was selling exquisite terrariums at Ft. Greene, while a wacky-looking man with a waxed mustache was selling 18th century refurbished clocks at DUMBO. It’s really a trip worth tripping.

Tagged: brooklyn flea, review ]]> http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/flea-bitten/feed/ 0 jeju flea fort trailer trash wood fire like camping winner winner DUMBO under the bridge roll wit it poo-poo-sa http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/nama-ste-udon/ http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/19/nama-ste-udon/#comments Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:09:44 +0000 jeju http://jeju.wordpress.com/?p=2242 ]]>

Ah the elusive udon, so QQ when cooked properly, the king of all noodle. I’d always thought the recipe was a super secret national treasure of Japan, impossible to make in real life without high level ninja skills (like pulled noodles). Not according to The Manga Cookbook. In fact, it’s so easy kids can do it!

This cookbook was one of the few English language tomes available at the Mitsuwa bookstore. We didn’t buy it though because the other half had coincidentally found it at our local public library the night before. I initially scoffed at it, because it was a children’s book for udonsakes. Joke’s on me!

Ingredients:
1.5 cup bread flour
1.5 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup water
1 tsp salt

The key to this recipe is developing the gluten. Bread flour gives the extra punch with its malted barley flour, vit C or potassium bromate (kansui-type pow). The barley flour helps yeast work in cakes (none in this recipe). The latter increases the elasticity of the gluten and its ability to retain gas as the dough rises and bakes. For udon, the elasticity is the key element since it is not given a workout by being pulled.

Since this is manga, I include the pics via Photobooth (I was too lazy to make it look nice).

1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl (except water).

2. Add water slowly and knead in between. Once dough firms up, knead for 8 minutes. Put it into a ziploc bag.

3/4. Then put that bag into another ziploc bag. Press extra air out.

5. I Love Lucy Step: Stomp on the bag softly for 15 minutes.

6. Refrigerate dough in ziploc bag at least 3 hours, or overnight.

7. Remove dough from fridge and cut in half.

8. Coat the dough, surface and rolling pin in bread flour so dough won’t stick.

9. Roll out dought to 1/16″ thick, rotate as you flatten so it maintains a rectangular shape.

10. Fold the dough into thirds (like folding a letter). Repeat with other half of dough.

11. Coat knife with flour. Cut the dough into thin strips, unfold and cook up! Make sure you rinse the noodles in the colander after boiling so your soup or stir-fry isn’t coated in extraneous gluey gluten goo.

The land of the rising sun is scattered around lower Manhattan, but the singular outpost across the river is near the Asian enclave of Fort Lee, in Edgewater, which is really just a tiny long strip along the water’s edge. I’d heard of Mitsuwa Marketplace but never had a burning desire to go because things tend to be a smidge overpriced compared to the same item at Chinese marts. The Giant Blue Fin Cutting Performance changed my mind.

You’d think that with a comprehensive NJ and NY 5 Borough map (each 2″ thick) in the car, we’d never get lost. Not only do we routinely get lost, there are unmapped NJ streets or streets that are mapped but don’t exist in real life. Oh, and there’s always construction and one-ways. Don’t get me started on the duplicate street names and lack of parking.

Annoyed, late, and frustrated we arrived, but already our spirits were lifted when we were pleasantly surprised how big the complex is. Mitsuwa is a series of buildings right on the water, a book store, home good store, feng shui store in addition to the giant supermarket with food court inside. In the back right on the water, there is a Japanese steakhouse I would like to try, Matsushima, which seems to be under Mitsuwa ownership.

This is the view from the food court. It’s an unobstructed view of the entire western side of Manhattan. This is primo real estate, as expansive as the market was packed with wall-to-wall onlookers. There was a booth set up for the bluefin demo where hundreds of people gathered, craning and straining to get a bit of the good stuff.

This displayed head is about 8X the size of my head, maybe bigger. I wonder who the lucky one is to eat the cheeks. I hope they don’t throw it away like this:

There were groups of men and women preparing the slabs chopped off the mini whale. Some were weighing, pricing and wrapping strips in saran, separating the filet, sirloin and chuck sections. Others were making sushi. It was a frantic, yet silent, pace. The audience was in awe, the workers were stoic, typically Japanese. The other half marveled at the cleanliness despite the chaos. When the crowd finally cleared, we tried to find one piece of sushi to buy, but there were only empty cases staring back at us. We didn’t have the budget to buy the sashimi, which were priced differently, but a minimum of $15 for a strip the size of a cable TV remote.

We were starving by this time but the food court was bursting at the seams. The line for the ramen shop snaked out the door, at least 30 people ordering for who knows how many. We headed into the main market area for onigiri, aka Japanese pupusas, which were fresh and warm. There was a woman darting in and out of the back, bringing a small box of newly made ones, keeping a close eye on which variety was running low. They have onigiri stuffed with tuna fish salad, salmon roe, spicy cod roe, sauteed beef, pickled plums and seaweed.

Usually I’m hesitant to buy this stuff because they tend to be dry and hard, but these had a special packaging. The seaweed part is separated from the triangle of rice by plastic, and the small numbers in the corners tell you how to extract the goodie. Crisp seaweed is thus preserved by the ingenious Japanese.

We scored some free tea at one corner of the food court. There’s scores of booths, tables and counters to eat at, but we only managed to stand and chow down by the beverage station. The other half commented how we were basically standing in a replica of one floor of a Japanese department store.

There were stations of neatly dressed women in uniform selling biscuits in beautifully wrapped boxes, giant fabric-enrobed peach jellies and glistening red bean paste pastries. All exorbitantly priced, of course. We were happy to see a stand for Ito En, and eventually bought a case of Sencha Shots. We sampled a new item, Oolong Shots. The other half got jittery from half a can. The cans are 6.4oz each. They also had soft serve ice creams. We tried the black sesame, a creamy nutty concoction, too rich for me.

Before buying groceries, we decided to scope out the other shops outside. I remembered there were some manga authors I had wanted to find. At the bookstore, I managed to find a series about Japanese food, Oishinbo, which I’m poring through. The home goods store had lots of Sanrio and other too cute knick knacks. The other half found travel chopsticks for work. They unscrew and store in a flip box. Hours drifted by…

We were hungry again. Time for a real meal. We headed back inside and checked out the stalls. One was a Chinese-Japanese fusion, centered around rice.

I love faux food displays! Every stand had one. There was one with European breakfast items and snacks. Another shop focused on tempura and breakfast sets. A third called Italian Tomato was the non-Asian alternative, serving only a set of spaghetti and salad. One sold sponge cake filled with various delights.

We sampled the ramen, given it had the longest line before. Popular opinion doesn’t lie. Can you tell which is the real bowl?

These aren’t just any old food stalls. They are overseas outposts of actual ones in Japan. And of Asians, the Japanese are high up there for percentage of discriminating foodies. The ramen was outrageously good, even more so given that it’s in a supermarket food court. This stuff is better than any I’ve had in the ramen shops in midtown and LES. The key is the broth and the ramen noodle. The former is not too thick, full of mysterious meaty oomph. The latter is springy and eggy, even though it’s not freshly made, the squared off shape adds to the satisfying QQ. I could’ve had another serving of noodle. And the ‘melty pork’ special of the day was lean, tender, chewy, full of umami pow. Simply awesome.

I guess this means we’re going back.

Some parting shots:

Tagged: japanese ubermarket, ramen, review ]]> http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/mitsuwa-my-motherland/feed/ 0 jeju UWS i.e. Columbiaville the main event foodies unite! this thing's got spine food as sport GIMME Japanese efficiency roly poly one man's trash... bluefin gold laying bricks oni-yum-yum food court vantage point spigots of joy pretty pretty wall o faux cake stand, Asian-style the famous tonkatsu salt ramen special 'melty pork' spicy ramen steak of the sea THE REAL THING http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/a-steak-grows-in-brooklyn/ http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/a-steak-grows-in-brooklyn/#comments Sun, 15 Nov 2009 01:01:17 +0000 jeju http://jeju.wordpress.com/?p=2170 ]]>

These days, with vegans running rabid, (especially in the crunchy granola haven of Brooklyn) it’s nice to see that the ultimate meat stronghold in Williamsburg that is Peter Luger’s is still as formidable as ever.

We ventured into the city for a visit to celebrate the other half’s becoming a full-fledged barrister, officially anointed via passage of the Bar, in two states no less. While the other half used to go to Peter Luger’s religiously, i.e. once a month, I had only been once. We both have fond memories.

Our Persian friend scoffed when we invited her: tss, since when are you guys commercial? c’mon, it’s steak for christ’s sake.  i’ve already had the world’s best steak in argentina…with chimichurri sauce…you know, how they put an entire grill in front of your face, fine cuts of the world’s best meat (eat your heart out brazil), assorted thymus sweetbreads (mollejas), lower intestine, and argentinian-style morcilla (THE blood sausage).  it’s the only way to turn gizzard-haters into believers in finally giving gizzards the respect they deserve. all other dallas-style crap can go to hell.

Why is Peter Luger’s so good? They dry age their beef for a top-secret amount of time. Dry aging is basically letting meat rot slowly in a big room. Bacteria breaks down the collagen and meat fibers, rendering it a more consistent tenderness. It’s just like Americans to come up with a cheater’s way to improving a cut of meat while the Japanese pamper their Kobe cows with beer, classical music and weekly massages to get their spidery marbling perfect. But hey, it works, and it beats forking over $180 for thin slices of Kobe carpaccio at Megu:

We had considered rigging our own special fridge for dry-aging awhile back, but logistically, we weren’t ready to commit the time and energy needed for such an endeavor. Plus there’s the food poisoning factor, those lovely pre-formed enterotoxins are just a little too difficult to wrangle for an amateur.

I’d been on a steak kick lately, eating a filet mignon near the Delaware Water Gap and a sirloin at Torna a Sorrento, a cheesy Italian joint in my town. I even had prime rib in the wilds of Pennsylvania, which is not really a steak, rather, a roast, but it was still a 12oz slab of pure protein. But I tend to overeat, so after all these meat fests within two weeks, I had a stomach ache for several days. It felt like an ulcer. I couldn’t eat more than a handful of food before my gut started churning. But today, I was fully recovered and ready to tackle the perfect porterhouse that is the pride of Peter Luger’s.

As we approached from the east, this sign draws us closer, like a homing beacon. Whenever you go over the Williamsburg bridge (in the distance), you are greeted with this reminder of how lucky you are to live in the same town as Peter Luger’s. The place was sold by Luger to a Jewish family, who have run it for two generations. What’s cool is the women are the ones who select the sides of beef at the butcher and decide how long it is dry-aged.

Just one block away! They only accept cash, so there is a huge bank conveniently located across the street, with an ATM. In 1985, the average check was $35. Today, it is $75 per person.

Inside the lobby, there’s a bar along one side before the hostess/register. They use Sacramento tomato juice in their homemade vodka bottle-filled bloody mary mixes. The decor is not like the sumptuous steakhouses that are popular in midtown Manhattan or Las Vegas. It’s actually Bavarian, like a German clubhouse that went public. Sure there’s dark wood paneling and trim, but the tables are simple wooden blocks and the chairs are a bit flimsy. There are no leather booths. And I could’ve sworn there used to be sawdust on the floor. The focus is on the food.

This is the weird thing about Peter Luger. I once had their steak sauce from a supermarket and it was not like any I’d ever tasted: onion-y, chunky and tomato-y. When I think of steak sauce, I see a smooth, dark, flavorful concoction, a kicked up Worcestershire. Here, it tastes like a shrimp cocktail dip. I was watching a show called Steak Paradise that divulged that you’re not supposed to use their steak sauce on the steak. In fact, you’re only supposed to use it for the bread and sides. I dipped my onion roll in it today. Not bad, actually.

I’ve never had anything besides the steak for two. Do people actually read this menu? Even the waiter asked if we wanted a menu when we sat down. Our birdwatching friend who was with us hadn’t had the fortune of ever coming to this lil’ hole in the wall, so this is the only reason we had the menu. I like how the prices are penciled in, for easy editing. Hey, look at the bargain prices for the daily specials! I wonder if they are any good.

What a kitschy design for steakhouse dishes. Does anybody know the story behind them? Or were they just some Fishs Eddy clearance item?

A porterhouse is the classic dish to order. One side of the bone is sirloin, and the other is filet mignon. I decided recently that I like to chew my meat so I prefer the sirloin side. The steak is broiled at 800 degrees F for 8 minutes, sliced up into 1″ chunks, drizzled with butter, and put back to sizzle the fat. They like to follow a rule of thumb of bringing out the meat within 2 minutes of it leaving the oven, so that the butter is still sizzling when the plate is brought to the table.

The waiter tilts the plate on a small butter plate and warns you not to touch it. He spoons the pooling fat back on top of the pieces before serving the table, each person getting a couple slices. Then he spoons the melted fats on top of each slice. I was too mesmerized to object. In retrospect, this last step only masks the beefy flavor. My best piece was one that was perched at the high end of the plate and had a chance to de-fat itself a little.

Filet side

Another gratuitous shot of meat, glorious meat

Everything is a la carte here. The waiter’s monologue goes people usually order one tomato and onion plate, a slice of double-thick bacon per person, the steak, German potatoes (torched beyond recognition) and creamed spinach. The tomato and onion is really just thick slices of tomatoes and white onions. I doubt they are organic or taste like the dirt they were grown in. It’s like the other tradition of eating a wedge of iceberg lettuce. I don’t get it. At least eating crispy bacon is something cooked. And, who doesn’t like bacon?

In exchange of the minimum $20+ tip you leave, the waiter tosses some milk chocolate coins on the table at the end of the meal. Who came up with the rule that a tip should be based on the price of the food? I think tipping more than $5 is exorbitant. $40, which we forked over, is enough for another two meals (not at Peter Luger’s).

The creamed spinach, usually a Thanksgiving side dish, is cooked to perfection here, or so I keep hearing from the other half. No one knows why Peter Luger first started serving it, but it is really tasty without seemingly being creamy. Some say the base is a roux. Since I don’t go for mushy things, it’s up to the other half to figure out a copycat recipe.

Actually the other half likes the creamed spinach the next day, schmeared on a bagel with a poached egg on top. We took an order to go. The leftover cow bits will probably end up in fried rice.

Tagged: beefsteak, creamed spinach, recipe ]]> http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/11/14/a-steak-grows-in-brooklyn/feed/ 0 jeju yowzas follow the sign to heaven just steps away bartending in heaven, note the bloody mary house mix when you look up in heaven this is what you see dude, where's my shrimp? price of admission to heaven, circa 2009 sailing off into heaven? sirloin side of the porterhouse lard and butter, an aneurysm in heaven filet side of heaven two slices sent from heaven pennies from heaven sauce or vegetable? http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/homily-for-hominy/ http://jeju.wordpress.com/2009/10/29/homily-for-hominy/#comments Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:21:44 +0000 jeju http://jeju.wordpress.com/?p=2158 ]]>

Of all the places he thinks is ‘bizarre’, Andrew Zimmern decides to go to Wisconsin for his latest episode of Bizarre World. I don’t think the other half blinked once while we were watching it last night. The reigning world champion in log-running and rolling was Andrew’s guide at the Lumberjack World Championships. She went to high school with the other half.

I was busy wondering why I’d never seen any of the places featured in the show. Zimmern makes Wisconsin sound interesting! The other half suggested an intrastate road trip next summer.

There was a grocery store in Milwaukee that caught my eye: Mercado El Rey. We had found a great taco place in the Mexican area of town when the other half had an internship in town several summers ago. Remember the heavy metal/Goth Mexican taco truck? But we hadn’t known about this grocery store. If only. In the back they serve all sorts of cooked delights, one of which is pozole, a hearty soup featured on the show.

When I took a bus trip down to Mexico City from San Antonio almost a decade ago, I tasted pozole for the first time. We were starved from puttering around the city, which is about 10X bigger than NYC, with a subway system to match, and wandered into this white-tiled soup station. It was so satisfying and rich but light, and this was a time when I didn’t really drink soup!

The main flavor components of pozole are tripe, hominy, roasted pepper and oregano. I remember I was in shock of some other culture besides Asians using tripe, and in such a different fashion. It was earthy, like rolling around in mud.

Fall and winter are all about soups now. Here in Jersey, we have to pay for our own heat (another reason not to move here!), so drinking soups are a way to save on the electric bill, but soups are also great one-pot cooking: just add pasta, noodle or rice and you’re set.

In the freezer we had the leftover packs of innards from my dinuguan-making adventure. I like pozole with offal-funk, but if you are shy, you could use any ’safe’ part of the pig. I had a big chunk of snout in this pack. I think it could be a better option than tripe, because it retains some QQ after long soaks.

As for pepper, it’s best if you had some sofrito stocked up in the fridge, or you could use chopped dried smoked chiles. I had some roasted red pepper in a jar so I used that. I have a mother stock (basically the dregs of the soup from last night, strained) that I transfer to the new soup. But if you don’t, Better than Bouillion is good, and doesn’t take up too much space. As long as the main flavor profile is intact, it’ll taste like the real thing.

By the way, if you want to make menudo, just subtract the hominy and amp up the spice factor.

Ingredients:
chopped tripe, but any offal will do
hominy (frozen is better than canned)
roasted chili pepper (pick your fav)
dried oregano
cumin
sofrito (or separately, minced garlic, onion, cilantro, bell pepper)
salt & pepper

Boil tripe or innards until easy to chop up ~1 hr.

Add all ingredients in pot with water (stock if you have it handy, if not, just make sure you add more of the flavorings). Simmer on low at least 15 min. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with pico de gallo, sour cream, tortilla chips, chopped cilantro and/or slices of avocado.

So I was minding my own business reading a comic book and lo and behold a recipe tracks me down. This is a cake from A Wizard’s Tale, the story of a nice wizard who is supposed to be evil and reign terror on the village below his castle.

The wizard’s buddy (the toad) was cursed a long time ago because he stole the evil wizards club’s massive book of ev-il. Now the nice wizard is sent out on a mission to retrieve said book from the princess who was entrusted with it and beamed out of this dimension by the last beam of sunlight.

Our bumbling wizard travels too far forward in time and lands in NYC present day where the princess is a granny living in Queens. She serves him this sunshine cake at tea time and he’s hooked…

You’ll have to read the book to see what happens.

Ingredients:
6 egg yolks
6 egg whites
1 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 lemon rind, grated
1 tsp almond extract
1/3 tsp cream of tartar
pinch salt

Sift flour, measure, sift 4X more. Measure and sift sugar. Beat yolks with rotary beater until light colored and thick. Gradually beat 1/2 of the sugar and the lemon rind and almond extract into the yolks. Set aside.

Now beat the whites with a wire whisk until frothy. Add cream of tartar. Beat until stiff enough to hold up in peaks, but not dry. Folk in remaining sugar. Cut and fold some of the white mixture into the yolk mixture. Fold and cut in the flour and salt, then the rest of the white mixture.

Place in an ungreased sponge-cake pan (with center tube). Bake 1 hour at 325 degrees. Invert pan; when cool, remove cake.

*** I would serve the cake with fresh whipped cream and berries.

Here is the cute poster for this Sunday’s NYC Dumpling Festival:

We shan’t be going to it because the other half decided we must get spiritual on Sundays now. Last week, we visited the Unitarian Church (the Caucasian version of Buddhism) in Summit after our previous disastrous attempt to go to the ghetto one in Orange. This one was much nicer, though the demographics were a little too bourgeois and elderly for us. The best part was going to lunch at the Summit Diner downtown.

Yes, it really is that awesome. The interior has backless stools along the counter, and booths on the opposite wall, all reds and browns (wood-paneling). The food is pretty much greasy spoon stuff, except their huge breakfast sausages were like the ones at Tom’s Restaurant on the UWS, whose sausage is the standard by which I judge all others. This one is up there. The Greek men behind the counter were bantering and having a grand ol’ time while going through the motions in almost a precious ritualistic fashion. It was a great show. Next we’ll be checking out the church near our Asian Food Mart, so we can go food shopping afterwards.

I am a fan of things wrapped in flour. Now that I’ve mastered the potsticker/dumpling, bao, and eggroll (which isn’t featured above), it’s time to move onto three items which I’ve never seen: idli, palitaw and kuih koci. They all cook by using a steamer. Pierogi and gnocchi are out because of the other half’s potato issue. Until I have time to gather the ingredients and make them, I’ll reserve judgment on which one will be added to my repertoire. I’d also convert them to a savory flavor.

By the way, that Tang’s brand dumpling is probably one of the grossest things I have ever put in my mouth, no QQ and the filling falls apart. I know how to boil a frozen dumpling and those, my friends, are impossible to boil. I’d really feel sorry for the contestants at the eating contest if those were the ones they are forced to scarf.

One wrapped delight I miss is zhongzi, which Mother used to make but it took all day and forever. There used to be a place in Chinatown that sold 10 or more varieties with different ingredients, each only $1. I could get my fix then, but they still lacked that authentic Taiwan flavor, that earthy dirty umami. I’m including the classic recipe from my childhood (via the secret blue spiral notebook with yellowing pages), but I’m thinking it’ll also make a great rice cooker treat. It’s fun to eat the dumpling out of your hand, but I ain’t got the patience no mo’.

Ingredients:
Sweet glutinous rice (don’t cheap out, get the Japanese brand)
raw peanuts
pork with skin and fat layers
dried shittake mushrooms (rehydrate in water overnight and julienne)
fried shallots
100 year old duck egg yolks (dislodge from whites)
five spice powder
soy sauce
salt & pepper
bamboo leaves
twine

Soak rice in water overnight. 1 cup = 2 zhongzi. Pour out excess liquid.

Soak peanuts with boiled water ~4hrs. Steam in rice cooker. Shake dry and put in bowl.

Cube pork into 1″ chunks (so each piece has fat and skin) and stir fry. When meat is opaque add shittake mushroom, soy sauce, five spice powder, salt&pepper. Saute ~5 minutes.

Pour pork mix liquid into rice, add peanuts and fried shallots. Add salt, but not too much because the duck egg yolk is plenty salty.

Cut duck yolk with string or knife.

Soak bamboo leaves with warm water until limp. Wash in cold water and put aside.

Get twine and cut ~30″, tie 10 together with a knot on one end.

Assemble zhongzi by placing two leaves at a slight ‘v’ (one larger, one smaller), fold into small pocket. Put down a layer of rice, add pork mix on top, some more rice, half a duck yolk, top with rice. Bundle up and wrap around the middle with twine.

Boil a big pot of water. Add zhongzi and simmer for 1.5 hours. Unwrap and eat with soy paste (thick soy sauce) and chili paste.

***For rice cooker method: Don’t soak the rice. Add rice and all ingredients into rice cooker. Fill up to the line matching the number of cups of rice plus a little more for the extra stuff, mix well. Cut soaked bamboo leaves and place loosely on top (just to absorb the fragrance). Cook as you normally would for rice.

10/28/2009 update: So I tried my above rice cooker method and it wasn’t a good idea to place the bamboo leaves on top. It prevented the rice from steaming properly, and since my cooker is based on indirect heat, there lies the rub. So, instead, I would soak the bamboo leaves until they get pliable – while the rice is cooking – then drop them in on top of the rice after it’s done. The leaves are so fragrant the sauna should percolate the aroma nicely. Also, add more water outside the rice cooker during the cooking since you’ve got extra bulk to cook (this is only if you’ve got the old school style rice cooker).

***There’s many variations on the bamboo-leaf wrapped dumpling, savory and sweet. Each region and country in Southeast Asia also has a version. Here is the Vietnamese style from Serious Eats. Asian tamales are the best.

Today we were in Westfield craving a malted chocolate shake. While getting sandwiches at the Robert Treat Deli where they only have egg creams, I chatted up the cashier to find out why it’s so difficult to find a good milkshake in New Jersey. She referred us to her childhood favorite, Holsten’s, in Bloomfield.

We had been eagerly awaiting the Sonic that is opening on Highway 22, but we stopped at one on the way home from Philly, and they put Whoppers in theirs, so it was extra sweet with a caramel undertone. A good malted chocolate shake has got to be fudgy, thick, and not too saccharine. This one was a disappointment.

The cashier said she used to take her kids to Holsten’s, and they made their own ice cream and candy. It is now also famous for being featured in the last episode of The Sopranos and is part of the Sopranos tour of New Jersey. We booked to it after we dropped Mother off at the airport. At first glance, we were pretty much in love.

We sat at the counter on red swivel stools, across from the other side that sold a bunch of chocolates and T-shirts, laminated menus, and other odd paraphernalia you would find at a five-and-dime store from the 1950’s. There are booths in the back, with a mural on the back wall. The other half thinks it was a painting of windows and an outdoor scene. There was a backlit original plastic menu posted on the wall where you replace each letter by hand, like the signs in front of old gas stations or schools.

We ordered the shake we’d been craving, and also a scoop of vanilla ice cream. That’s the standard ice cream to get if you want to know if someone knows how to make ice cream. The poor kids serving at the counter really use their brute force to scoop that stuff up.

I got my ice cream first. It had great QQ, was super creamy, perhaps the most non-sweet ice cream I’ve ever had, very dense, but not as chewy as the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. It would be a perfect vehicle to add into their Fizzes featured on the menu, a drink made of seltzer, juice and ice cream.

They had one thing on the menu that caught my eye, Wet Walnuts. Sounds like a Sopranos character. The ambiance was so New Jersey, kinda musty and kitsch, but just the thing that’s missing in a lot of the diners that we’d been. There was one in Hoboken that could have been up to snuff, but the shake we got there was watery.

The other half got the chocolate malted. Though it was a little low on the malt flavor, the chocolate part really hit the spot, like they used dark chocolate. Our resident shake expert explains:

Q: What makes a good milkshake?

A: The proper ratio of milk to ice cream. Other added ingredients also impact the proper texture. If it’s too milky, then it’s like you’re just drinking flavored milk. If there’s too much ice cream, then you must consume it with a spoon, which makes it an entirely different animal, in the category of a Wendy’s Frostee. There should be a difference between restaurant milkshakes and homemade ones. I prefer my homemade milkshakes with a little bit more milk and blended so there are small bits of ice cream in the milkshake. Malt makes any shake better. A restaurant milkshake should be smoother because they have the special blender.

Q: Does Holsten’s cut the mustard(milkshake)?

A: Yes (grin). It was smooth and chocolately, with the good amount of milk. You had to shake it up each time to get it flowing. Inertia is the sign of a good shake.

When I was a kid, we used to go to a Swensen’s ice cream shop next to the Ralph’s supermarket. It was small and filled with booths lined with dark wood paneling. Around the top of the room was a model train on tracks that went round n’ round. I would always get cookie’s n’ cream on a sugar cone and watch that train zoom.

Holsten’s has got it right. I hope it doesn’t become too overrun by tourists or close down because downtown Bloomfield decides it needs a modern makeover. We’re going to get a box of truffles for the Grandmas this holiday season. Their font on the gold boxes reminds me of See’s Candies.

The cashier told me to go back and let her know what I think of Holsten’s. Someone’s about to get a great big hug and maybe even a sloppy kiss!

My Filipino friend mentioned during our housewarming piglet-out that there’s a secret sauce that they use to accompany roasted pork: mang tomas. He was going to get me a bottle from the elusive Filipino market in the wilds of Queens, but I thought, why not try to find a recipe and make it myself?

I’m still waiting for him to get back to me on his mother’s review of my first ever attempt at dinuguan via her recipe. I did add a secret ingredient which I thought I tasted in her version but wasn’t in her list of ingredients: grated ginger. His only comment was we didn’t use enough blood. The stew is supposed to be very thick and hide all the bits of offal, like molten black lava creeping down the volcano in Hawaii’s national park. I told him our Asian mart didn’t have any cow’s blood, and I figured one tub of pig’s blood would be enough. I agreed with him though, it’s all about the black sauce oozing on top of the white rice.

I found out after the party that the other half’s intake of innards has increased 100% since meeting me. I am so proud. In this incarnation of dinuguan, I used pig heart, tongue, snout, kidney, stomach, intestine, blood, and just for variety, beef tendon. Ha, take that, Thomas Keller! I didn’t even use up all the offal we bought. There are more portioned out packets in the freezer for future experimentation in perfecting this soul-stirring dish. (As I write this post, I am chomping down some dinuguan leftovers for lunch.)

I started looking up this mysterious tangy-sweet-sour-spicy chili sauce that you automatically get from the piglet man in the Filipines. I came across this blog post which goes into the history of a butcher named Mang Tomas who invented the eponymous liver sauce. A sauce based on an innard? Fantastic! I figure the guy probably had tons of innards laying about after slaughtering thousands of piggies and thought, why not have a dipping sauce made from the piggy itself? It’s a beautiful circle of life/foodie (loodie?) kind of thing, don’t you think?

Liver would be a perfect vehicle for dipping not just meat because it’s pureéd creamy and thick. Maybe with some crudite? It is touted as ‘all-purpose’ on the Mang Tomas brand of bottled sauces available online. Nowadays though, there doesn’t seem to be any actual liver in the ingredient list. I think they use breadcrumbs as a substitute for texture and bulk, like I did when I made the vegetarian moussaka. Oh for heaven’s sake, isn’t that just wrong?

Ingredients:
1 pound liver (chicken is most tender)
1/2 cup native vinegar (Datu Puti brand)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (toast some bread and crumple up)
5 Tbsp minced garlic
1 minced onion
salt & pepper to taste
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 hot pepper (optional)

Saute onion and garlic till fragrant. Add chicken liver, chop up beforehand or mash up with fork when cooked through, ~ 5 minutes. Add all other ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes until flavors well combined and sauce thickens.

Use an immersion blender to zap into a fine dipping sauce.

Don’t forget to order the lechon!

My vacation month is over…the other half is off traipsing upstate New York in the Finger Lakes region with Mother and I’m alone contemplating the last couple days of freedom before another long commuting month begins. Reflecting on some bad meals during these road trips, I realize I must live in a place where great food is easily accessible. An unhappy belly makes for cranky jeju. And that really ruins everyone else’s day.

In Stowe, Vermont, we visited the von Trapp Family Lodge overlooking Mt. Mansfield. The hills were indeed alive. Traditional European cooking like you find in Austria is generally heavy, full of sauces and stews. We didn’t dare venture into the actual hotel dining room, but trudged down the hill to the “Austrian Tea Room,” which we suspect was built for nosy tourists like us.

It was nothing like what I expected – a cozy Neue Galerie-type space with dark wood paneling and with waiters dressed in costume and thick accents. Instead, it was really a deli with spectacular views, one mountain overlapping another amongst shifting fog. But the food we had, a trio of Austrian deli meat with sauerkraut on rye sandwich, butternut squash soup, and linzertorte were surprisingly good and hearty.

The linzertorte was invented in Linz, Austria, and falls somewhere between a shortbread cookie and a pie with fruit filling. The recipe variations are numerous. The flavor in this  crust was pumpkin-y but nutty, with a good QQ. I loves me some thick crust while I abhor too much jammy filling. The linzertorte is perfect for me then, minimal jam and maximal crust. There was a book selling the recipe, but I poo-poo-ed it and thought it would be easy to find something authentic online. Ha, if only I could eat my words like I gobbled up that pie-cookie.

When we were eating our horrendous dinner at City Tavern in Philadelphia, (a ‘historically accurate’ reproduction of the same 18th century building and colonial fare, where the founding fathers dined and debated) the colonially-costumed waiter showed the Spanish couple next to us the dessert tray, which also had a linzertorte. Compared to the one at the von Trapp deli, this one had a dark brown burnt? crust, with more jam than I care to introduce to my tongue. We were already supping on a dry, yet braised, oxymoronic rabbit and rubbery (like raw kidney) metallic-tinged venison, so we were afraid to order anything else. If ‘open-hearth’ cooking is like when you cook directly over the camfire flame, then how could a five-star chef manage not to sear a piece of meat? No wonder the colonists were angry enough to start a revolution. Their bellies made them do it.

Dave C. put it best in his yelp review of this establishment: Have you ever gone to Medieval Times in N. Jersey or where ever the hell else that place is located and have reenactors massacre each other  to vie for your attention?  Yea, … City Tavern is just like that, but without all the bloodlust… or fun. You basically eat and drink and watch people dolled up in colonial garb NOT murder each other. Honestly, I felt shame walking out the door, did you feel shame?

And so we left this historic tavern one Benjamin Franklin lighter but with two angry bellies. My hang-up with linzertorte lingered though, so I found this one with a story and unique method. Our resident baker will have to tell me whether it works. It’s copied below:

As clarinet soloist with more than a hundred orchestras—and as recitalist, chamber musician and innovative jazz artist—Richard Stoltzman has earned an international reputation.

Like many musicians who are constantly on the road, Mr. Stoltzman enjoys sampling the local cuisine, but when he’s home he loves to do the cooking himself, especially baking. Early in his career, he took some classes at London’s Cordon Bleu school. The actual process of baking pleased him so much that he continued his training during summers at Marlboro.

Mr. Stoltzman first made a linzer torte in 1974, when Rudolf Serkin asked him to bring along a dessert following a Mozart concert in Vermont. Recently he presented his linzer tortes again for a pre-concert supper at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center.

Mix the flour, cocoa, cinnamon and cloves together in a bowl and set aside. Cream the butter and beat in 1/2 cup of sugar. Beat in the egg yolks. Gradually blend in the almonds and the flour mixture to make a thick batter.

Using about half the batter, spread an even layer, 1/8- to 1/4-inch thick, in the bottom of an 8- or 9-inch round baking pan with a removable bottom. Spread the jam over the batter to within 1/2 inch of the edge, taking care not to break the layer of batter.

Spoon the remaining batter into a pastry bag fitted with a large tube, 1/2 inch in diameter. Pipe 3 to 5 parallel lines of batter straight across the layer of jam from one edge to the other. Give the pan a quarter turn and pipe 3 to 5 more parallel lines across the pastry from edge to edge. Pipe the remaining batter around the edge. (Any excess batter can be used to form round cookies on a baking sheet. Fill the cookies with jam and bake for about 10 minutes or until golden.)

Refrigerate torte for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 300° F.

Beat the egg white with the remaining sugar and the water until frothy. Brush this mixture over the pastry strips and the edge. Place the linzer torte in the oven and bake for 1 hour. Allow to cool completely.

Before serving, sift confectioner’s sugar over the top. Remove the sides of the pan and serve.

Ingredients: Linzertorte
(Ha, I found it!)

1 1/2 Cups Butter
1 Egg
3 Rounded Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
1/2 Teaspoon Nutmeg
1/2 Cup Currant Jelly
1/4 Cup Almonds, Sliced
1 1/2 Cups Granulated Sugar
1 1/2 Cups Walnuts – Ground
1/2 Teaspoon Cinnamon
1/4 Teaspoon Cloves
1/2 Cup Raspberry Jam
Confectioner’s Sugar

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Flour and grease two 8 inch pans. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light (either by hand, with a mixer or a food processor). Add egg, walnuts, flour and spices. Mix into a dough and then roll into a ball. Divide dough into quarters. Press a quarter of the dough into the bottom of each cake pan. Cut one of the remaining quarters in half and press each half up the sides of both pans. Cut the remaining quarter of dough into 12 pieces and set aside.

Mix the currant jelly and the jam together. Spread half of the mixture into each of the walnut crust shells. Roll out the remaining dough into round strips and crisscross on top of the jam mixture-three pieces each way. Press the side crust down to connect with the strips. Sprinkle the top of your torte with almonds and bake until golden brown and the jam mixture bubbles.

Cool, remove from pans, then sprinkle with confectioners’ sugar.

*** just received text from the other half: trip diverted to Delaware Water Gap due to inclement weather upstate.***

We just returned from a short trip to Philly, as a respite in between camping trips, but mostly to finally eat some real cheesesteak! I’d never been to the City of Brotherly Cheesesteak, but the other half has. Suprisingly, the city is also filled with all sorts of wonderful ethnic nosh, and a Chinatown that rivals Manhattan. We may be moving out of the armpit very very soon…

What is a cheesesteak but a soft Italian roll, thinly sliced steak, and Cheez Wiz? It can’t get any simpler or primal than that. The roll is of utmost importance, the QQ factor has got to be just right, not too thick, but with a very chewy skin you teeth can tear at. I had an authentic one once, at Tony Luke’s, when there used to be a cute outpost on 42nd St., off 8th Ave. The boxy interior was made to look like you were outside, at a carnival, with an awning over the order window. The next time I had a craving, it was gone.

Before we left, we gathered some opinions on which particular joints to sample. The other half made a list. Off we went. We arrived in the late afternoon, and the concierge said, “No, don’t go to Pat and Geno’s, that part of town is way too scary for you two to handle.” Well, he was definitely thinking that because he was trying to steer us to Tony Luke’s around the corner. I told him, “Yo coz, we lived in Harlizzle, fo’ shizzle!”

Well, anyhow, he mentioned Jim’s Steaks, which the other half had heard of, so off we went. His ’seven blocks down’ turned out to be in the southeast corner of Center City, which is the main downtown area, at least 20 blocks or so. By the time we crawled up to the door, we were expecting A LOT.

Jim’s is in the funky South Street area, where it’s more artsy and young grungy types  hangin’ out. The black and white decor is super fresh, like a diner but more edgy. There’s seating on the second floor, with stools and round wooden tables. We made the mistake of ordering onions on our cheesesteak. The taste of onions really overwhelms the whole sandwich, making it unclear which part was oversalted, the limp onions or overcooked meat. The flavor also reminds me of a sausage sandwich with onions and peppers, which you could get at any ol’ street fair. This was not a good way to start the tour:

We didn’t know until the second cheesesteak that Jim’s is really hoodwinking those who don’t know by chopping up the steak into tiny bits. This decreases the textural value and makes you think you aren’t really eating steak at all. This also increases the likelihood that the meat will be dry and overcooked. Well, at least the ambience was nice and chill.

That night, I vowed to right this injustice by going to the Tony Luke’s by our hotel. We walked right past it because it looked like this, all commercial chain and stuff:

This looked nothing like the place in NYC, which had a carnival font and the whole name spelled out. Online, there’s a dispute to whether this place really is Tony Luke’s. On the official website, there’s only mention of one location (it wasn’t this one). The guy is too busy trying to be a famous movie star or something, maybe because of his stint on Throwdown with Bobby Flay, which he won if I remember correctly.

At the time, I assumed it was affiliated, and I asked the guy at the counter, “Hey, when are you going to open another place in NYC?” The guy goes into this rant about franchising and name rights which made my head spin. Our resident trademark expert tells me that when you buy a franchise, you can only use the name so many times, and maybe they violated something in the contract. I don’t know about that stuff, I just want some good-friggin’ cheesesteak when I’m in NYC.

So what about the sandwich? Well, it is good, much better than Jim’s because it has sheets of thinly-sliced steak and is not dried out beef jerky:

You can see it wasn’t pure steak though, check out the bits of gristle. That’s okay with me, adds more flavor. The thing with the Cheez Wiz was there was so much it was gooshing out from every which way, which is not too elegant or tidy when you are eating it on top of the hotel sheets. This one had way more meat in it than Jim’s too. The bread was tops, shiny and chewy on the outside, soft and steamed on the inside surrounding the meat.

The menu at Tony Jr.’s is vast – they even have ostrich burgers. They’re also known for their alt-cheesesteaks: pork and broccoli rabe. I tried their cajun fries, which seemed to be Old Bay covered potato sticks. I wish it came with tartar sauce.

After taking a day off to sample Chinatown and the historical City Tavern, home of 18th century Revolutionary recipes, we stopped by Pat and Geno’s on the way out of town. Philly is the home of the one way street, but once you throw in Passyunk Ave, which runs diagonally, you are really asking for trouble. We managed to squeeze onto a sidestreet and walk onto the corner which houses the two joints staring each other down:

We headed to Geno’s first. It is really gaudy, all orange. I bet it’s a neighborhood spectacle at night, all neon ablaze. Geno’s give you a lot of attitude, misplaced patriotism perhaps?

Inside I saw there were bright orange booths, but we didn’t sit down because we were going to do a side-by-side tasting with Pat’s. The other half spied these stickers on the window and was pissed. What’s with this hypocritical xenophobic stuff? Aren’t they Italian? Isn’t money an universal language?

The Cheez Wiz on this steak was liquid, not thick and creamy, like maybe someone added some spit or something. It was bubbly like spit anyway. The steak was thicker cut but the thin Wiz really spoiled it. Not to mention the way immigrants are when they think they’re the big cheez now, just because they’ve been here longer. We’re never eating there again.

Onto Pat’s, much more in line with what you want an original cheesesteak place to look like, dingy and mom/pop.

There was no posturing here, maybe because Pat’s knows their cheesesteak is the best.

This cheesesteak is so cocky they don’t cut it in half, and it has a right to be: perfect meat taste, savory but not salty, thick Wiz and a hearty QQ bun. Hands down, the best of the four.

Ingredients:
Top Round/Ribeye/Strip (whichever cut suits your mood)
salt & pepper
Cheez Wiz (you could try to make your own bechemel, but why bother?)
Italian roll

Freeze the meat for ~1hr to make it easier to slice, by hand or mandoline.

Sauté meat and tent with fresh roll to steam a little. ~ 1 minute (I like my meat rare!)

Spoon on warmed Cheez Wiz on the side.

Why are egg rolls called egg rolls? They don’t have eggs in them, unless you’re making the Taiwanese version which has strips of eggs, but then they are called popiah. There is also the fluted flaky pastry that is an egg roll, which either has eggs or yellow no. 5. Some say the huge carbo bombs you get at Chinese take-out places are egg rolls. Wiki says they are the ones dipped in egg wash after you wrap them up, before they’re fried.

At our housewarming party last Sunday, I featured an egg roll I procured from my high school Vietnamese friend’s mom. These are light golden gems that are so crunchy they just put a smile on your face. I was lucky to eat them a couple of times when they threw big parties back in the day. They are so good I fantasized about them off and on since then. Finally I got my grubby hands on the recipe and made them for this occasion.

I never order egg rolls at restaurants because I was spoiled by these. Also, only tourists pick that item. There’s usually something more authentic and spicy to eat. And I never ever included them in my Chinese take-out order until I met the other half, who apparently is a fan. I find them too gummy or undercooked or greasy. The filling is also too mushy with watery tasteless vegetables. Toan’s egg rolls are none of these wretched things.

Menu:
1. Roast suckling piglet from La Valença
2. Dinuguan (my Filipino friend’s mom’s recipe)
3. Fried salmon fish head from our Portuguese fish monger
4. Toan’s egg rolls
5. Wisconsin rhubarb pie
6. Momofuku blueberry cream cookies
7. Vegetarian moussaka

Gotta shill for my neighborhood Portuguese pit master. Look at that beauty. I was about to chop it up with my cleaver when I realized the meat was so tender it was falling off the bone. Only the crispy thick skin kept it from falling apart. We’d been moved into our new apartment for ages, so this party was really just an excuse to buy one of these pigs. It was much cheaper than a piglet from Chinatown. This flavor is smoky as opposed to the five spice you’d get from the other, but it’s not a bad booby prize. I’d take it any day!

Anyways, back to the egg rolls. I knew there was a secret ingredient to Toan’s because I’d never tasted any filling like it before or after I had hers. Turns out it’s taro root, shredded, so you’d never guess it. It’s the key to making the filling bulky and mellow, a perfect contrast to the thin, crisp wrapper. I wonder how she came up with this combination, especially the Korean favorite of using mung bean threads in a dumpling-type setting.

There’s several different sizes of the wrapper. I chose the middle one, enough to get two bites out of one egg roll. The perfect amuse bouche. Make sure it is thawed completely, it’ll be easier to peel the layers off. It’s pretty fun, like pulling thin layers of bubblegum. To wrap up the Vietnamese burrito, place the filling in a diamond configuration above, bring the bottom corner up, pull it snug to the filling, roll up one half roll, bring the side corners in, one more roll, dab a thin schmear of the flour/water paste on the edge, and then roll it up to glue the cylinder together.

This is the consistency the glue should be. I rolled the pastry on top of a mini-stack of wrappers so the counter doesn’t get messy with drips of glue. If you can, get another set of hands to help roll these babies up, or the wrappers could start drying up too fast. I let them sit seam side down.

In anticipation of our foray into deep fryer mastery, we bought a gallon of peanut oil. When it’s hot, it smells like fresh roasting peanuts, unlike the bitter, almost sour aroma of frying olive oil. It also has a higher burning temperature, so you won’t char these precious egg rolls.

They were a big hit at the party, even though the filling burst out of the shells on some of them. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s because we wrapped them too tightly or I just fried them too long. Fried food done right can never go wrong.

Ingredients:
For filling:
4 small shallots, sliced thin
1 individual pkg (2 oz) mung bean thread noodles
1 lb ground pork shoulder
1 tsp garlic powder (coarse grind)
1 tsp ground pepper
2 Tbsp oyster sauce
½ lb grated carrots
½ lb grated taro root
½ medium onion, diced

For shrimp: (optional add-in)
~1 pound shrimp (size 36-40), peeled and deveined
2 tsp oyster sauce
Garlic powder
Ground pepper

For eggroll:
1 package (50-8×8 inch sheets) spring roll pastry, thawed to room temperature
Note: Brand – Spring Home: TYJ spring roll pastry (wheat-based)

Preparation:
For filling:

1. Sauté shallots in some olive oil until golden brown. Set aside.
2. Mix ground pork, garlic powder, ground pepper, and 1 tablespoon oyster sauce. Add sautéed shallots. Refrigerate.
3. Soak bean thread noodles in warm water to soften (~5 minutes). Drain and cut into 1-inch pieces.
4. Add bean thread noodles, carrots, taro root, onion, and remaining tablespoon of oyster sauce to meat mixture. Mix until evenly incorporated. Note: Do not overmix.

For shrimp:

1. Mix together shrimp, oyster sauce, garlic powder, and ground pepper.

For eggroll:

1. Separate spring roll pastry into sheets. Taking one sheet, add some of the meat mixture and 1 shrimp placed lengthwise. Roll. Seal with a water and flour mixture (with a consistency like glue). Repeat with the remaining sheets. Fry the eggrolls in a deep fryer at medium heat until cooked through and browned (<5 min).

Note: If freezing for later use, put the eggrolls onto a cookie sheet (slightly apart) and put into the freezer until the eggroll wrappers have dried and slightly hardened. Then put the eggrolls into a plastic or ziplock bag to store. Before frying, put the eggrolls onto a paper towel to thaw for about 10-15 minutes or until the outside wrapper has slightly softened. Fry as directed.

Dipping sauce: these really don’t need anything, but a fish sauce/sugar/chili one is classic, or the Chinese ginger/scallion/sesame oil combo would be great.

This morning we ventured to Hoboken, boyhood home of high school dropout and only child Francis Albert Sinatra. They should really just rename the town Sinatraville. But it was not for a pilgrimage to visit the haunts of ol’ Blue Eyes we wandered into this tiny hamlet in the shadows across the Hudson. It was because I wanted to eat a lobster tail made by the Cake Boss.

Sfogliatella is one of the most difficult pastries to make. It’s the Italian version of croissant dough, though crispy instead of soft and buttery. It mimics the look of a lobster tail, with a creamy or custardy filling. But the work it takes to roll out the dough, schmear it with lard and refold and re-roll makes my head spin. Then you shingle the dough, cut it a certain way to get the layers, and then inject it with another dough that poofs open the inside while it bakes. When it finally cools, you pipe in the filling.

I watched a mini-marathon of the TLC show and was quite amused by Buddy the baker who runs the joint, right across from old city hall. The other half is not so impressed by his mafioso management skills. Okay so he is a little obnoxious in that Jersey machismo way, and employs other thugs (unlike the hipster crew of Duff of Ace of Cakes – Note to TV producers: it would be funny to see them do a tag team cake-off) to do his bidding, but it seems like he really knows his stuff. Even his cannoli filling sounded good to a cannoli hater like me, mostly because it was mainly ricotta, cream cheese and butter, not sugary weirdness I’ve had in little Italy.

Hoboken is right on the water facing mid-downtown Manhattan with great views of all the landmarks like Empire State Building. The city itself is merely ~12 blocks by 16 blocks. The feeling is a mix of Brooklyn Heights/West Village/Willamsburg with the never-ending beautious blocks of townhouses in various stages of renovation. The eatery selection is electic. We had lunch at one of the many tiny restaurants book-ending the blocks, Sri Thai: frog legs (tastes like white-flesh fish, stringy like chicken) with basil and bell peppers, and soft-shell crab with tangy sweet mango salad. It was good, but not Sripraphai great.

Carlo’s is at the south end of town, and looks as pretty as a picture. The same cannot be said for the weird tense vibe inside with the gleaming countertops and very tanned help.

There was a sign plastered on the wall: beware! you may be filmed if you set foot inside. Some specialty cakes were displayed in front that looked better on camera. We decided to buy a lobster tail, a cannoli, and on a whim, a red velvet cupcake. They offered the cupcake with a buttercream or cream cheese frosting. We chose the latter.

Coincidentally, we had parked in front of another bakery that people raved about online, saying it was way better than Carlo’s. Giorgio’s has that old-time cobwebby look, which makes it more ‘authentic.’

When we walked inside, there was a pleasant bell chiming our entrance. No one was in there, not even a counterperson. There were barely any pastries in the cases. It was dark and gloomy, but it felt so much better than the kelig lights at Carlo’s. There was a black and white monitor where I could see myself. I finally said, “He-llo?” A robust girl emerged and cheerfully handed us our sfogliatella and cannoli. We left feeling much more small-towned.

So the taste test commenced. Here is Carlo’s:

Here is Giorgio’s:

First, the sfogliatella. Carlo’s dough was much fresher and crispier while Giorigo’s looked prettier but was over-browned. The texture of the latter was hard to chew and rubbery. Maybe it was just old? The filling in Carlo’s was custard while Giorgio’s was fresh whipped cream. The former was too heavy, busting out of its shell. Giorgio’s filling was light and tasty. However, neither was something that was worth eating despite the amount of work it took to make it.

As for the cannoli, Buddy is proud of his 25¢ annual cannoli throwback day where their custom is to fill the cream to order. I thought we were going to get a freshly-filled one, but the mop-haired server was too busy flipping his hair out of his eyes, so he just grabbed a pre-filled one from a tray behind him. The shell is also harder to make than you realize. Buddy showed how he folded thin sheets of dough and cuts through many layers at once with a ring mold. Then he has to wrap them individually around a metal cylinder, drop them into a massive frying basket that takes the whole batch of 50 or so out at once before they’re burnt.

Carlo’s cannoli was definitely up to snuff, the best one I’ve ever had. The filling was light, not too sweet, with just enough tang from the cream cheese. The other half didn’t like it because it had too much cinnamon in the dough. We both didn’t like Giorgio’s at all, another soggy old pastry with the typical gag-inducing sweet gluey/gummy mess, like bad taffy with too much vanilla extract and again with the cinnamon.

The verdict: neither are worth the money (between $2-3 per pastry, by weight and individual pricing), but maybe I’d line up for that annual 25¢ special at Carlo’s if I could find out when that was. Oh, and the red velvet cake? Let’s not even get started on that soulless dry imitation of the real thing.

Uncle Phaedrus describes these sfogliatella recipes. I’ll try doing the same thing with pre-packaged phyllo dough. I’m not masochist when it comes to stuff like this. But first I gotta reverse engineer Carlo’s cannoli filling. That would definitely be a better option than the clumpy custard he uses.

“The ones I’ve had from commercial Italian bakeries seem to use the same dough they use for making their sfogliatelle pastries. The dough is a bit tricky to make, but I’m sure phyllo dough could be easily substituted. The filling (usually) is a mixture of stabilized whipped cream and pasticciera cream (pastry cream), or sweetened, whipped mascarpone, or just stabilized whipped cream.

I do not have a recipe for the filling, I usually just fold some stabilized whipped cream into the pastry cream to lighten it (about 1/3 stabilized whipped cream to a bit less than 2/3 very thick pastry cream).

Source: Immigrant’s Kitchen Italian by Cassandra Vivian

Recipe #1
Pastry
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup semolina flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lard or better, melted

Combine flours, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Mix well. Add butter,
cutting it into the dough until blended. Slowly add water. Knead until firm.
Form into a ball, cover, and refrigerate for 2 hours.

Filling
1 cup milk
1/4 cup semolina flour
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon of either
candied orange peel
lemon zest
candied fruit of choice
pinch of cinnamon
confectioners sugar
parchment paper, optional

Place a saucepan over medium heat. Add milk. Bring to a boil and slowly add
semolina flour. Stir constantly so as to avoid lumps. Simmer three to four
minutes, remove from the heat, pour into a bowl and allow to cool.

After five minutes add ricotta (which has been passed through a sieve), egg,
sugar, candied fruit, and sugar to semolina. Beat well. Set aside.

Remove dough from refrigerator. Divided it into two equal parts. Place on a
dusted pastry board and roll with a rolling pin into an 18 inch square. It
will become very, very, thin.

Brush the thin pastry with butter. Begin at one end and roll it like a jelly
roll. Cut the roll into a number of 3-4 inch pieces. Pick up one piece of
the dough in your hand. Press your thumb in the center of the pastry and
push it down to form a hole like a cup.

Fill the cup with 2 tablespoons of filling. Fold the cup until the open
edges touch. Gently press the edges together to seal the pastry. Set it in
front of you. Gently pull out the sides of the front to form a shell. Brush
the top with beaten egg yolk.

Repeat above until all pastry and filling are used. Preheat over to 425
degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper. Place the shells on
the paper and bake for 15 minutes or until brown. Let the pastry cool on the
cookie sheet for five minutes. It will harden a bit. Then place on a rack.
When ready to serve and completely cool, sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

Recipe #2

1 cup water
1/2 cup ricotta
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar
1/2 cup semolina
1 cup, 2 oz. flour
6 oz. butter
2 oz. strutto (reconstituted pork fat)
1 pinch cinnamon
3 oz. candied orange peel, diced
1 egg yolk

Bring the water to a boil, add a pinch of salt and pour in the semolina,
stirring so as not to form lumps. Cook, stirring for about 8 mins., stirring
constantly. Let cool. Make a fontana with the flour. Put half of the butter,
a pinch of salt and as much water as necessary to knead the dough to a
smooth and elastic consistency. Wrap the dough in a towel and let rest for
an hour.

Sift the ricotta; mix with the semolina, 6 tbs. sugar, a pinch of cinnamon
and the candied peel. Roll out the pastry with a rolling pin to obtain a
25×18-in. rectangle, 1/16-in. thick. Cut the pastry vertically into 4 strips
and place one on top of the other, brushing each one with melted butter. Let
rest for half an hour, and then roll up the stack of dough.

Slice the roll into 10 equal pieces with a very sharp, floured knife. Place
the pieces on the pastry board and roll them gently with the rolling pin,
first vertically, in an upward direction, and then in a downwards direction,
to give them an oval shape.

Turn the ovals over, place a bit of ricotta filling in the middle of each
one, brush the edges with egg yolk, then fold the dough over and press to
seal. Brush the sfogliatelle with melted strutto and place on a paper
greased with butter. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 425ºF for 20 mins. Remove
from the oven. Brush with melted butter again, lower the temperature to
350ºF and bake for another 20 mins. Let cool, sprinkle with confectioner’s
sugar and serve.”

We just got back from a road trip to Vermont, the self-proclaimed home of the skinny pancake. Why they just can’t call it a crepe is beyond me, but unfortunately, any faint hope of a food grazing tour was sorely misplaced.

Vermont is known for its scenery, not necessarily its food. The former is breathtaking indeed, and alas, the latter is breathtakingly bad. The state is devoid of any real ethnic food diversity, except for the requisite Chinese take-out in every town. Some places can’t even get American food right, burger, fries, and milkshakes.

One thing that was constant on our trip was slurping at least one malt chocolate shake per day, to keep up our spirits due to the lack of tummy satisfying food that wasn’t greasy or fried. But there are also amazing degrees of deliciousness in a shake, depending on the amount of fudge, real or fake ice cream (frozen yogurt), ratio of milk to ice cream, etc…that is used. The two best ones were had at the Arlington Dairy Bar and the Malt Shop in Stowe.

One of the very paltry food highlights was the Ben & Jerry’s factory tour in Waterbury, where after a short $3 tour through its hyper-technicolor facility, you are treated to a hearty sample of an yet unreleased flavor that is only available in scoop shops. We were privy to the orange and cream: orange sorbet swirled with vanilla ice cream, basically, a creamsicle. It was quite delicious.

The cream and icy were a great contrast, and the taste was just tangy enough. I hope they release it worldwide soon. In the back of the factory, there is a ‘graveyard’ of retired flavors and a revelation of what ingredients go into the ice cream:

At the gift shop, we happened upon a recipe that has been haunting me ever since I tasted it on the streets of the night markets in Taipei when I was a teenager: fried ice cream. I remember the guy sweating bullets onto my ball of goop and mixing it back and forth on a flat grill. But if you think about it, is that really possible? Ack! What a find! When we recover from vacation withdrawl, we will surely try this baby out, using tempura batter since I don’t think the one I had was crunchy on the outside.