If it weren't that darn cold in the winter, I'd recommend a road trip next month.
Clean crisp air, beautiful clear skies and the most stars you've ever seen in a night.
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Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile
Usually I don't eat anything before my jiu-jitsu class, since I'm coming straight from work. Not the smartest idea, but you do what you have to do. So, after class the other night I was ravenous and needed some eats. A simple 15 minute trip to Wendy's ended up being a one f'n hour trip because every single road was closed that night. So infuriating, but at least Wendy's is usually my go to for fast food and I had a laser focus to get there. I used to love Wendy's for the variety you could get on the $1 menu. 
I have been officially challenged to a Dumpling Duel. It's been years since my last challenge (during college) where I came out victorious. I am currently 2-0 in Dumpling challenges but tomorrow's challenger seems pretty confident he can take me down.
courtesy StrongbuzzSunday: The 10-Year Anniversary Diwali Feast at Tabla 11 Madison Avenue (corner of 25th Street), 212-889-0667.
In honor of its tenth birthday, chef Floyd Cardoz is cooking a multi-course, family style dinner according the South Asian Holiday of Diwali. This much-loved holiday celebrates a reaffirmation of hope, a renewed commitment to friendship and goodwill, and a successful harvest.
IntroMy Menu
1) Louisiana Seafood Gumbo
2) Lettuce Wedge Salad *
3) Blackened Wild Salmon ---
4) Petite Filet **
5) Potato Au Gratin **
6) Creamed Spinach *
7) Warm Apple Crumb Tart *
Thought the salmon was juicy and cooked relatively well, it was terribly sour. Not sure if it was a marinade or what, but we couldn't finish it.Overall Restaurant Experience (82/100)
Not really...
As many of you have noticed around the country, gas prices have dropped a bunch. Like the stock market last week, we haven't seen sub $3 gas prices in a year or more. You would expect cheaper costs for the food companies would equal cheaper food costs, but not so according to this article from CNN. According to the article, once food prices increase, they virtually never go back down...good times...
IntroMy Menu
1) Kookaburra Wings ***
2) Bloomin' Onion
3) French Onion Soup ---
4) Baby Back Ribs **
Overall Restaurant Experience (77/100)
Just finished watching the show "At the Table With Anthony Bourdain" and although I like Bourdain's No Reservation show, this show really wasn't entertaining. It was probably unscripted, but that was a bad thing. No real focus or continuity - more Bourdain throwing random questions out to people that he's asked before during his No Reservation show. Plus, I really wasn't that interested in anyone comments either. Now granted, it probably would be a fun time if you were there and participating, but watching as an observer - it was kinda dull. For a better show in the same format, check out After Hours With Daniel.
Was eating a nuclear level sour apple and some Indian co-workers mentioned to add some salt to the apple to mellow the sourness. At first, I was relatively skeptical but I was figuring why the f not. A great what the f moment...the sourness of the apple becomes slightly sweet and pleasantly sour. Give it a try next time on your next sour green apple and you'll avoid the "bitter apple face"...
Toro is the fattiest portion of the Tuna's belly. The fattiness of the meat helps insulate the large fish when it travels through the frigid ocean waters. Generally, the larger the fish, the more fat it holds.
We were instructed to taste test Blue Fin Toro. The sushi gourmand's most prized fish. The best of the best.
YOU would think that chefs trained in French technique, in which slowly simmered stocks are the carefully concocted foundations of almost every dish, would find it laughable to rely on a quickly steeped broth of kelp and dried fish.
Gabriel Bremer uses dashi in dishes like pan-roasted fluke with cockles, above.
But that Japanese broth, dashi, is finding a place in the kitchens of many Western chefs.
“It’s basically water, but fantastically perfumed water,” said Eric Ripert, the chef at Le Bernardin. He complements Kumamoto oysters with dashi gelée, finishes mushrooms with the stock, and brushes it on raw fish before layering on olive oil and citrus. “The dashi is invisible,” he said, “but it brings more depth.”
At Per Se, its chef de cuisine, Jonathan Benno, weds the stock to preparations of Japanese fish, like a grilled hamachi belly canapé with dashi poured tableside. Jean-Georges Vongerichten adds dashi to a light mayonnaise at Perry St., and at Jean Georges he accents caramelized sirloin, grilled foie gras and slow-cooked snapper with it. “I realized its umami flavor can go anywhere,” Mr. Vongerichten said.
Kelp and bonito are loaded with umami, the taste of mouthwatering savoriness.
Dashi, which simply means “stock” in Japanese, is prepared from many ingredients. But dashi made from kelp and bonito holds pride of place. For much of Japan’s history, eating meat was taboo. So instead of animal fats and butter, which flavor Western cooking, dashi evolved to infuse umami-rich taste.
Kelp, called kombu in Japan, grows for up to two years before being dried into cardboard-thick green-black ribbons. Japanese bonito (skipjack tuna) is filleted, boiled, smoked, covered in mold and sun-dried to the hardness of oak — a technique dating from the 1600s — then shaved into translucent flakes.
Combining them in dashi synergizes their rich umami compounds — glutamates in the kombu and inosinates in the bonito — creating an umami impact greater than the sum of its parts, explained Dr. Sue Kinnamon, a Colorado State University biomedical professor who studies the mechanisms of taste. It’s an effect not lost on Japanese chefs.
At Kyo Ya in the East Village, Chikara Sono prepares his dashi daily. It is a careful process of extraction and infusion. He chooses among two varieties of kombu and three kinds of bonito he keeps handy, adjusting proportions to vary taste. Mr. Sono gently heats kombu in water to tease out its essence, removing the kombu before the water boils. Then he adds bonito flakes to simmer gently or steep in the liquid, like tea. When the dashi reaches “koku” — a sublime density of flavor — it is ready to strain.
The result is a lively, satisfying savoriness, a clean taste and an alluring smoky fragrance.
But how does it compare with a classic French chicken or veal stock, also naturally rich in umami? Chefs familiar with both Japanese and Western cooking say it’s simpler. With only kombu and bonito, dashi yields a lighter, less complex flavor than a stock produced from bones, mirepoix and bouquet garni. So it magnifies rather than masks the taste of other ingredients.
“To us, it’s an element of flavor as opposed to an element of tradition,” said Café Boulud’s Gavin Kaysen. This approach is taking dashi in new directions.
For David Kinch, chef at Manresa, in Los Gatos, Calif., dashi is applied as a seasoning or it serves as a versatile blank slate, delicately infusing soups and vegetable dishes. “It imparts that savoriness in anything it touches,” he said, “even in small, negligible amounts.”
Laurent Gras of L2O in Chicago, who coaxes his dashi with the aid of a high-tech Gastrovac vacuum cooker, metamorphoses a chicken bouillon into intense chicken dashi bouillon. “You can take chicken and bring it to a meat level” of taste, he explained.
Dashi’s smoky nose is what appeals to Gabriel Bremer, the chef at Salts, in Cambridge, Mass. He suffuses a light cream sauce with dashi to subtly mimic the smokiness of bacon, applying the emulsion in a deconstructed New England fish chowder.
At Cyrus, in Healdsburg, Calif., Douglas Keane prepares a broth of dashi and citrus (sudachi) to serve as an “umami canapé,” balancing the savoriness with the acid. “Your palate actually wakes up and goes, man, that’s good,” he said.
Linton Hopkins of Restaurant Eugene in Atlanta contrasts the stock’s lightness with rich French butter to glaze root vegetables, sharpening and coating the ingredients at the same time (recipe at nytimes.com/dining).
“It adds a new and exciting dimension to your cooking,” said David Myers of Sona in Los Angeles, an aficionado of Japan who has traveled there four times this year. For Japanese chefs, he explained, cooking with dashi is an art. “For us, it’s an exploration.”
IntroMy Menu
1) Clam Pie with White Sauce ***
2) Tomato Pie with Mozarella *
Overall Restaurant Experience (86/100)
IntroMy Menu
1) Shrimp
2) Clam Chowda ***
3) Mussels and Clams **
4) Lobster Salad Roll **
5)1 1/4 lb Steamed Lobster **
Overall Restaurant Experience (88/100)
Stopped by Mystic, Connecticut to check out the Chowderfest held in the Historic Mystic Seaport. The event wasn't so much a Chowderfest, but a small gathering and a pretty average one at that too. This had the makings of something special, but the quality of the food was average (except the fresh clams) and there were only 3-4 chowder food stalls to choose from. All of our friends weren't very impressed with the chowder either - we probably tried all the chowders there. The good news was Mystic, Connecticut was a beautiful town to visit and there was good food to be had in town...more on that in tomorrow's post.My Menu
1) New England Clam Chowder
2) Whale Rock Oyster *
3) Bluff Point Littleneck Clams **
4) Mini Lobster Roll
5) Corn Chowder *
6) Kettle Corn **
7) Lobster Mac and Cheese ---
Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way * Good ** Great *** What the F – in a good way
Nan Shian Dumpling House
