Gung Hay Fa Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! (and v-day!)

Chinese New Year growing up was always exciting because it meant big family dinners, familiar faces and lucky money in pretty red little envelopes. Now that I’ve moved away from my family, I cook a lot more chinese food at home. Usually this results in big shopping days at Uwajimaya at least a couple times a year to stock up on essentials:

Ok, ramen is pretty bad for you, but I love it. Usually if I am craving Ramen I head to Samurai Noodle in I.D., but I like to keep a supply of ramen at home for emergency. (Also, I think it would be pretty fun to design ramen noodle packaging.)

Owl Beer! I was more than excited when I saw that Uwajimaya is now carrying Hitachino Nest. I first had the white ale at Spice Market in NYC and have been on the hunt ever since.

Various essentials. (Ok, some of these are Japanese ingredients too. Not included here: fresh veggies and other various junk food items. You’ll have to wait for the next shopping day!)

Lucky for me, not living close to family also results in giant care packages of goodies from Hong Kong: sauces, noodles, abalone, and cakes.

Living away from my family is always hard, and I do feel more disconnected from my culture the longer I live apart from them. But simple things like cooking Chinese food and sharing family dinners with friends is always a good reminder that I can still keep the same family traditions even today…

Annual Hot Pot Day at Seven Stars Pepper with the Baerwaldes was a couple of weeks ago. We shared the traditional feast of pot stickers, onion pancakes, meat and seafood hotpot, and hand shaven noodles with pork. Here are some pictures of the meal and it’s aftermath:

Special thanks to AM and GFI for the photos.

T-pie

Happy T-day everyone! This year I am spending Thanksgiving at RLF (although I am sad to miss Thanksgiving with my fellow orphans—you know who you are). This year I made an apple pie, but decided to ditch my usual recipe and try a recipe from Martha Stewart. The recipe is pretty straight-forward (although I had underestimated the time commitment with the refrigeration involved), but instead of a traditional covered or lattice crust top, this recipe has a decorative top made of fluted circle cutouts.

A few tips:

• I probably over filled the pie, in hopes that it would shrink down, but as you can see in the photos below… it didn’t! The recipe calls for 4 lbs of apples—about 7 medium
  sized apples, but you could probably do with 6.
• Don’t forget to put the dabs of butter in before layering the top on!
• Keep an eye out for the crust browning too quickly— after the initial 25 minutes I had to tent the pie with foil to keep it from burning.

Here is the before:

and the after:

New obsession

My latest obsession these days is Alice Waters cookbook, The Art of Simple Food. If the name sounds familiar, it should! She’s the chef behind Chez Panisse Resturant in Berkeley and famous for eating and preparing seasonally, locally and sustainably grown foods.

What I love about this book is the easy-to-follow recipes and basic lessons that Waters gives the reader. (It also helps that the page layouts and typography are well done. I am always disappointed by cookbooks and their lack of design sensitivity to the reader/cook. In fact, there are no glossy color photos included to distract you, just wonderful illustrations. Really, everything about this book makes me want to cook…) But back to the content! Once you try one of the lessons, you will feel confident to change up the recipes and make them your own, or at least try one of the variations Waters has provided. If those aren’t enough to get you started, there are an additional 250 recipes sure to become favorites.

So my plan for the rest of the year is to cook from this one cookbook. Last Sunday’s dinner was braised chicken legs prepared in my new Martha dutch oven (Sorry Le Creuset*, I want you but I can’t have you!). My mom used to make a recipe just like this while I was growing up, although I think her recipe called for V8 and an electric kitchen skillet, circa 1984. Either way, it was just as good as I remembered.

I’ve included a few photos of the inside pages below, in case you are interested in getting a copy of your own. There is a surprising lack of imagery available online, so just remember you saw it here first!

*I’ve heard from very reliable sources that if you can’t have Le Creuset either (or don’t like Martha), to try Tramontina.

Chicago food, part deux

I must not forget to mention, of course, that there was pizza consumption: deep dish supreme with sausage patty at Gino’s East. There are so many Chicago pizza chains downtown— Giordanos, Lou Malnati’s, Pizzeria Uno, Pizzeria Due— that it’s hard to decide which one is best (for us it came down to which had the shortest waiting time). After a half hour and walking in circle, we ended up at Gino’s East on Superior— the one closest to where we were staying, and the one with the best sign, of course.

Chicago food

Per tradition, I always meal plan a week before I go home. Potbelly, Phoenix dim sum, and Portillos are regular pit stops, but I also like to try at least one new place on my list.

This trip was highlighted by a visit to Avec in the West Loop. Since Avec doesn’t take reservations, it was probably better that we had planned a late dinner after a day of being touristy. We arrived at about 10, had a glass of wine on their outside patio and were seated within 20— even though it was clearly packed. With a bar on the left and communal table seating on the right, we lucked out and were seated at the chef’s counter at the bar, where we could watch all sorts of deliciousness happening.

Unfortunately, I don’t have documentation of all our amazing food, but here was our menu for two (the description should be enough to make your stomach growl):

House Marinated Olives
Chorizo-stuffed Medjool dates with smoked bacon and piquillo pepper-tomato sauce
Farro salad with roasted peppers, rutabaga, crowder peas, fried egg and salsa verde vinaigrette
Wood-oven braised pork shoulder with garlic sausage, summer squash, tagliati pasta and basil pistou

The staff was attentive and the food was paced just right— which I always think is hard when plates are meant to be shared. Nothing was too rushed and the portions were just right for two people. The braised pork did take 45 minutes, but before we could even ask if they had forgotten our last course it was ready and served.

I was even surprised that Depeche Mode playing in the background seemed to complement the meal perfectly! Now I can finally cross Avec off my list and hope it will become one of my regular stops on my trips home from now on.