Jicama & Apple Salad
I'm so in love with jicama these days! I'm totally addicted to the crispy, fresh texture. Apparently it's the "tofu of the vegetable kingdom" since it goes well with numerous flavors and dishes, sweet or savory.
Too many visits to the Whole Foods buffet for the "Mexican Salad" have prompted me to recreate a similar thing at home. I wasn't planning on making the salad for a few days, but due to the oppressively humid weather some of our produce is starting to mold - if it hasn't turned into green juice already. We've put a lot of our fruits and vegetables into these
produce bags and it's kept greens quite fresh but didn't work for the cantaloupe on the counter. I'd highly recommend the bags to extend the life of your produce, but if you have a mold-factory kitchen like we do, make sure there isn't a drop of water on your produce or else!
be's Jicama & Apple Salad1 lb jicama (1 medium or 1/2 large)
1 large crispy apple (i used Fuji)
1/4 c dried cranberry
1 handful fresh cilantro
1 small scallion
2-3 T lime juice
2-3 T extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper
Prep:
Peel and cut the jicama into large matchstick pieces. Core and cut the apple in the same way. Wash the cilantro and dry well, chop into small pieces. Slice the scallion into thin rounds, using the white part and some of the green.
Combine:
Toss all the ingredients in a large bowl, being careful not to break the jicama and apple pieces. I'd advise starting with small increments of the seasoning ingredients, using less or more to your taste. Let sit in the refrigerator for an hour and toss again before eating.
Ice Cream Break / Pro-Treat
A$ and i had a nice long lunch at
Sukhadia's last Wednesday. It's a fairly new Indian restaurant on 45th Street in Manhattan that specializes in sweets and chaats (crispety cruncheties doused in chutneys, cilantro and onion), but they also have 2 buffets and a regular menu. We both opted for the dine-in buffet, which included a delicious chaat, dokla (a cream of wheat cake with hot peppers), paratha (whole wheat buttery bread), basmati rice, dal and 3 main dishes for $10.00. My favorites were the first two but everything overall was very tasty. I've had versions of their main dish offerings prepared better at other restaurants, but not so much better that i wouldn't go back to Sukhadia's. On the contrary, i'd definitely go back to order individual chaats at the "Chaat Corner" and to get sweets. I don't know the names of many of the sweets, but i know that i've loved almost everything i've tried. They also sell pre-packaged snacks and the fried puffs to make pani puri - oh yeah!
It was an A$ day; after the library, work and a mass mailing we partook in an Ice Cream Break. She invented Ice Cream Break a few years ago - i don't recall which year - but it's stuck around at the Workshop ever since. It always occurred around 5:00PM and was completed with the consuming of either a Baskin Robbins scoop (cup or cone, didn't matter) or a Haagen Daaz bar from the deli. Ice Cream Break occurred almost every single day during hot weather, much to the annoyance of those that did not partake. For those that did, it was a satisfying moment in an otherwise harried, non-profit day.
Somewhat later, A$ invented Pro-Treat. When one was "Pro-Treat," it was time for a candy bar, pastry, chocolate-covered pretzel or whatever miscellaneous treat that one was pro. Usually, Pro-Treat didn't include ice cream, as that was part of Ice Cream Break. In addition, some coworkers enjoyed dairy products in other forms. I recall summer 2003 was filled with quarts-of-milk-chugging and the following lactose-intolerance of some.
I've been very pro-ice cream lately. I suppose it's my lone effort to combine both of A$'s inventions with a quiet summer. It's funny how certain individuals play off each other to enjoy food and the consumption of food in all its forms. I'm lucky that all of my close friends have loved eating as much as me. Or maybe it's because i judge and choose friends based on their relationships with food?
But back to the ice cream: lately i've been very fond of
Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. The mango-papaya sorbet is amazing so i generally get a scoop of that, but last time i chose almond cookie in a sugar cone. It was a wonderful mix of creamy, sweet vanilla with dense, chewy cookie pieces - like cookies n cream but with almond cookies instead of Oreos. I also tried the wasabi ice cream which is flavor of the month right now. It's a pale light green, slightly sweet ice cream with wasabi powder mixed in. At first, you couldn't get at the flavor but with a bigger taste, your scalp burns and sinuses tingle like it's saying, "I'm in here, haha!" Overall, i thought a little spoonful was enough. I can't imagine someone eating a whole bowl of it!
be's started his addiction to
Fla-vor-ice again, consuming upwards of a dozen per day. He's also been eating
Good Humor Chocolate Eclair bars like mad, like 5 per day! Meanwhile, i'm trying to ration my boxes of Strawberry Shortcake and the new Cherry Pie, only 2 per day. Cherry Pie is interesting because the cherry filling is jammy like real pie filling, with pie-like crumbs on the outside of the vanilla ice cream. At first i wasn't into it, but it's grown on me.
All this talk - now i must eat an ice cream bar! Next up i must check out Max & Mina's in Flushing, the
Lemon Ice King of Corona and pay a visit to our friends at
Uncle Louie G's on 39th Street in Astoria!
Queens Represent
A big thanks to
John Roleke, the About.com guide to
Queens, New York for plugging beXnlog! (To read his post, scroll down to June 23rd.)
From John Roleke:
Too long has Queens lived in the shadow of Manhattan. We might not have its money (or attitude), but Queens has sights, tastes, and dreams all its own.
Over two million people live here: everyone from artists and hipsters to Wall Street types and immigrants with small businesses. Half of Queens is from another country, representing over 100 nations. It is the most diverse place in the world.
When i first moved to New York in early 1998, i slept on a friend's couch on the Upper East Side for a month. After that, my first real room was a 3-month share in Rego Park, Queens - a good fifteen minute walk from the Queens Mall in a little neighborhood abundant in quarter waters and plantains. From the summer of 1998 to the summer of 2002, i called Brooklyn home - back when 5th Ave in Park Slope didn't have wine shops and Atlantic Center was a sad beige thing. Ever since i hooked up with a Queens boy in 2001, it made sense to look to his home borough in an effort to escape escalating Brooklyn rents. I was a little hesitant at first; after all, i got to know New York through a sunny Brooklyn fire escape, and Queens was such a large, unknown world (besides the long walk from the Queens Mall to Lefrak City).
We settled in "Astoria," which i now learn is really Long Island City, right in the middle of a neighborhood where gourmet groceries, custom rims and wedding dresses are all equally, easily accessible. The bakeries abound! Fresh produce everywhere! Greek, Thai, Brazilian, Mexican, Italian, Bangladeshi and Chinese food - whatever you want, anytime, all the time. You can say hi to the mail carrier and sit on doorsteps chatting with neighbors OR step back into your own reclusive world.
We started exploring other neighborhoods in Queens, finding numerous shops, a
certain empanada joint and beautiful, tree-lined streets everywhere. The Queens boy would recount stories. The Queens friends took me to eat. My love for Queens grew and grew.
It's been 3 years now, 3.25 if you count the Rego Park stint, and i'm happy to call myself a Queens girl even though i wasn't born here in the borough. But the great thing is - more than half of us weren't!
More Assorted Bits
1) S's intern-farewell event was at
Plate NYC, a new Asian-Latin tapas place in Soho. Waiting out a sudden summer rainstorm, we were quite late meeting up with her but we had the restaurant to ourselves because of the weather. The decor was very modern yet warm; we had a booth in the middle section right before the covered "backyard" part. The
menu is mainly meaty but they were willing to adapt dishes for vegetarians. I opted to just order 2 side plates: the sweet corn croquettes and sauteed Chinese broccoli. The broccoli was good, crispy and hearty, seasoned quite well but not as simple as just sesame oil. The croquettes, however, were too oily on the outsides and too runny in the insides. It was an attempt at "corn nuggets" but the creamed corn insides weren't prepared right. I'm not one to talk since we have yet to make an edible batch, though! Everyone else got assorted meat plates and seemed to really enjoy them. Finally, for dessert we shared a trio of sweets: strawberry mouse, a passionfruit sorbet and a chocolate brownie-wafer. All of the desserts were excellent! Overall, it's a great place for groups since you can share dishes, especially seafood lovers!
2) Goodness gracious. P learned how to make a Thai chile-garlic-vinegar sauce from her dad and i was the lucky recipient of a cup! I ran errands after work and i was salivating from just smelling it in my bag! As recommended, i used a few spoonfuls in a bowl of ramen, in which i also added egg and fresh spinach. It was the best ramen ever: the sauce added a wonderful garlic taste and aroma, while the vinegar added a great sour bite. The ramen soup stock diluted the hotness of the chiles somewhat, but P suggested using the sauce AND the roasted, crushed Thai chiles from her dad. I'm scared of how good that's going to be!
3) This season's strawberries are quite tasty! So far the best batch in the U.S. has been from the
box, but batches from Whole Foods and Stop & Shop have been delicious, too. I never liked strawberries that much growing up - they were always so puckeringly sour - but i enjoy them now that i know what good ones taste like. You should always try to get organic strawberries if possible, since they can have very high concentrations of pesticides. In the stores i've seen, there usually isn't a price difference or if there is, it's minimal.
4) I just also love fresh corn on the cob! We've been steaming ears in the microwave (clean off husks and silk, place on plate and cover with plastic wrap, vent in a few places, cook for 2-3 minutes per ear) and it's so yummy. I don't use butter and salt because fresh corn is already so sweet and juicy. To tell if your ear is fresh, poke a kernel with your thumbnail; it's fresh if corn juice squirts out. I just ordered some stainless steel corn picks from
CB2 and i can't wait to use them!
5) I should've brought my sister to
Viva Natural Pizza when she was here in New York. Midtown pizza really sucks, but this place is quite good. It's kosher so all the meats are fake, they have soy cheese and whole wheat or cornmeal crusts and offer healthy toppings. When i was last there, they had a "falafel pizza" which had falafel chunks, lettuce, tomato and tahini sauce on a white flour crust. I had a plain slice: good crust, sauce and cheese but i would've preferred it baked crisper. I've also had the pesto pizza which is dripping with oil but really tasty. They sure beat all the other Midtown pizza slices i've had.
6) I'm in love with the "Mexican Salad" at the Union Square Whole Foods buffet. It's a julienne of jicama and apple with dried cranberries and sliced red onion, tossed in a cilantro-lime dressing. Jicama is an ultra-crisp, starchy root vegetable that has a texture similar to Asian pears. The salad is so refreshing and complex! I'm going to make a giant bowl and not give any to be - the onions, you know. Note: overall, the USWF buffet is much better than all the various Midtown buffets. I would be happy eating there every day.
7) be's boss and his wife bought various items from an Asian grocery to give them a try, all in a fit of adventurosity - and they ended up disliking everything! They passed the bag onto be so we've been eating yummy Vietnamese sesame candy disks, sandwiched in between rice wafers, "vegetable crackers" and Thai tamarind candies. be actually can't eat the tamarind candies since they're too hot for him, which is fine with me cause it's more for me!
8) Last night we made our first, officially real batch of fondue. No mixes or cheesy packets, but real grated Gruyere and Emmenthaler cheeses, white wine, lemon juice, cornstarch, garlic and white pepper. We didn't have any Kirsch (cherry brandy) but i couldn't tell it was missing. The fondue smelled and tasted just like those $8.00 packets from Europe; it was so cheesy and delicious, but the texture was a little runny. As the sterno bubbled away liquid, the mixture got thicker and stringier which is closer to the packets, but we never got it super creamy-smooth. Nevertheless, it tasted great. We dipped toasted baguette cubes, apple slices, cornichons, steamed cauliflower chunks and sauteed button mushrooms.
Have You Eaten Yet?
Alert:
MoCA's awesome exhibit on Chinese restaurants, "
Have You Eaten Yet?," is closing on June 30th! I took my sister to see it today and she really enjoyed it. Even though this was my second time i still found it fascinating - tons of crazy old menus (mostly from Harley Spiller's* collection), a binder of personal stories, weird games with plastic chopsticks and information on the history of the Chinese restaurant in the U.S. We also caught most of Cheuk Kwan's "
Chinese Restaurants" documentary episode on the Chinese community and restaurants on the islands of Mauritius, Trinidad & Tobago and Cuba.
Today i also found this free e-book of Shiu Wong Chan's "
The Chinese Cook Book," originally published in 1917 by Frederick A. Stokes Company in New York. I was on RK Chin's site
A Journey Through Chinatown and got to it somehow. I haven't studied the recipes yet but it's really interesting seeing something from that time.
AND while on the topic of
RK Chin, here's an awesome
New York City Chocolate Guide he created! This will come in handy on our NYC Choco Tour ... one day.
So be sure to visit MoCA before the end of the month and check out this exhibit. After that, be sure to have the pan fried noodles with mushrooms and fake ham at
Vegetarian Dim Sum House!
*
Harley Spiller has a collection of over 10,000 Chinese restaurant menus from over 80 countries, dating back to the late 1800s. Check this
article for a review of the MoCA exhibit and scroll down for more info on Harley's menu collection.
PfeffErminZ
A few nights ago i counted be's
PEZ candy dispenser collection - it was so nicely displayed one could not help but admire it. There are 30 different dispensers, each row arranged on tiered pieces of wood. (I think one of his PEZ dispensers is worth $30!) I have 2 dispensers: an "Adult PEZ" that i picked up at the supermarket, which is a plain white dispenser without any head; and a purple, orange and yellow whistle that i own for nostalgic reasons. I have a very strong memory of playing in the basement of our house in Maryland; my brother was with me and we were trying to figure out the whistle PEZ dispenser that our parents gave us. Being the oldest, i was throwing out ideas in order to reconcile the plastic whistle with the candy it came with. Ideas such as quickly chewing a PEZ and blowing the whistle before it disintegrated, blowing the whistle with an intact PEZ in our mouths or completely finishing a PEZ and blowing the whistle were some of them. Thinking back, i wonder if my parents didn't hand us the wrapper filled with obvious diagrams, or if we were just too excited to read it. Also, what did i think would happen if i came across the magic combination?
Nowadays, whenever i fill my "Adult PEZ" dispenser, the candy is consumed too quickly to justify using it at all. PEZ candy is some of the best out there! be once got some rare cola-flavored PEZ, which tasted like less-powdery Bottle Caps. My "Adult PEZ" actually came with peppermint PEZ, which as some of you might know is the original flavor. From
Wikipedia:
PEZ was first marketed as a compressed peppermint candy in Vienna, Austria. The candy was invented in 1927 in Vienna by a candyman named Eduard Haas III. Haas invented peppermint candies using family owned baking powders, and decided to serve the mints in small, hand-size containers. He manufactured a small tin to hold the mints, similar to the modern Altoids tins. The first PEZ mint dispensers, known as "regulars", were similar in shape to a cigarette lighter, and dispensed an adult breath mint marketed as an alternative to smoking ... In 1955, the PEZ company placed heads on the dispensers and marketed it for children. Santa Claus, Mickey Mouse and Spacetrooper were among the first character dispensers. After being unavailable for several years, peppermint flavored PEZ candies were reintroduced in the late 1990's along with remakes of the "regulars."
If i didn't just brush my teeth, i'd totally go eat some!
All Kinds of Fried
Dinner tonight was at
Buddha Bodai, the newest vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown. Like many vegetarian restaurants in New York, it's kosher certified and serves brown rice. (No one in my family eats brown rice except my sister; i know it's much better for you but if you grow up with white, it's hard to change!) The original branch is in Flushing, Queens, where i once had the lunch special.
My sister had tofu and vegetables with brown rice, while be, my mom and i shared:
1) Fake roast pork (char siu), complete with crispy honeyed outside. be exclaimed, "It's like i'm eating fat!" The owner recommended the dish as their house specialty; it was by far the best fake roast pork i've had.
2) Vegetarian Snail, aka deep fried battered mushrooms. They finish the mushrooms by sprinkling fine salt onto the crisp coating. I don't think this dish can be replicated in a home kitchen; the temperature of the frying is just too high.
3) General Tso's Fake Chicken. Battered, fried fake chicken chunks stir fried in a sweet hot glaze. Even the typical broccoli surrounding the dish was seasoned and cooked until crisp-done; usually you get plain steamed broccoli at other restaurants.
4) Buddha's Pan Fried Noodles. Thin noodles, pan fried until crisp and covered with vegetables, gluten and mushrooms in a brown sauce. This is a true Cantonese dish, one that we all love - which means we're really picky about it. Hands down,
Vegetarian Dim Sum House makes it the best. Buddha Bodai's version was too-soft noodles in a too-thick sauce.
For 4 people, dinner cost less than $60.00 and we carried home a 4 lb. bag of leftovers. Their portions are big! The owner is also really nice & funny. Final plus: they serve 3 kinds of jook (rice porridge), one with fake ham and peanuts - my favorite!
Cheap Chow Now!
The Village Voice's
Cheap Chow Now! 100 meals to be had for ~ $5.00 in New York City!
Places i'm gonna check out:
A&A Bake & Doubles (Trinidadian), Carolina Creek (Southern American), el Vincentino (Salvadorean), Dosa Hut (Indian), Hummus Place (Middle Eastern), Indian Oasis (Indian-style Chinese), Kashkar (Uighur (Chinese)), Ko Hang Soft Tofu (Korean),
OMS/B (Japanese),
Papa's Empanadas (Colombian), Sentosa (Malaysian), Shake Shack (American), Spicy & Tasty (Sichuan (Chinese)),
Sukhadia (vegetarian Indian)
KitKat O.C.
I'm a sucker for certain candy bars, KitKat being one of them. When i first saw the mini KitKat bars of dark, milk and white chocolate i went nuts! I bought numerous bags and made more bags of KitKats in ziplocks to pass out (it's the Halloween love in me).
Today i found 1 sole bag of Limited Edition Orange & Creme KitKats at the drugstore! They're mini bars, wrapped in orange with white lettering. I thought they would have an orange flavored coating with white "creme" between the wafers, but it's really a creamy-orange coating with your regular chocolate filling between the wafers. Q hated them, E and i liked them.
Here's some
KitKat info from
Wikipedia:
This chocolate bar was originally launched in the UK as "Rowntree's Chocolate Crisp" in 1935, and renamed "KitKat" in 1937. The name is believed to have come from the Kit-Cat Club, an 18th Century Whig literary club whose meeting place had such low ceilings that paintings hung inside needed to have sections snapped off. Another explanation is that it is the sound made as one opens the packaging: "kit" as the foil snaps beneath one's thumb, and "kat" as a finger is broken off to be eaten.
But did you know about these KitKat flavors?
KitKat Green Tea - Japan
KitKat Peanut Butter - Canada
KitKat Lemon Cheesecake - Germany and Japan
KitKat Blood Orange - UK
KitKat Apple - Japan
KitKat Passion Fruit - Japan
KitKat Banana - Japan limited edition
KitKat Christmas Pudding - UK limited edition
KitKat Coffee - US sample
We're stuck with such boring flavors, it's a good thing Orange & Creme came out.
Diametrical
My mom and sister are visiting. They eat quite differently so mealtimes have been difficult. Satisfying one of them usually means the other is left hungry. For instance:
My mom likes: Chinese food, Italian food, meat, seafood, corn
My mom hates: Americanized Chinese food, sandwiches, anything hot & spicy, any cuisine she's never had before
My sister likes: organic produce, cheese, apples, tofu, whole grains, avocados
My sister doesn't eat: meat, refined grains, too many carbohydrates, too much fruit, anything with added sugar
Saturday: Our first meal together was at
Dim Sum House so luckily everyone was happy; my mom loves their pan-fried noodles and my sister enjoyed fried tofu with vegetables. They also offer brown rice but she didn't get any. Meanwhile, be and i gorged on assorted dim sum greatness.
Sunday: My sister was really hungry so i suggested
Angelica Kitchen. A lot of people think it's the best vegetarian restaurant in New York but i think it's overrated. Sure, they use 95% organic produce and ingredients, it's nutritious & healthy and accommodating to vegans, macrobiotics, hypoglycemics, low-cholesterol and low-fat eaters, BUT the chefs need to improve how they prepare the food. For example, the "wee dragon bowls" that be and my mom ordered were essentially a plate with a scoop of brown rice in the middle, surrounded by mounds of plain, steamed vegetables and some plain raw tofu, with brown gravy to pour on top. If this isn't the epitome of American vegetarian food, i don't know what is. However, on a good note the walnut-lentil pate is really quite tasty, and my sandwich was surprisingly good. Of course, my mom HATED dinner.
Monday: My mom decided she wanted to cook dinner: the mushrooms were left to soak all day in my giant metal bowl, tofu slabs were left to press out as much water as possible, vegetables were washed, peeled, cut and parboiled; and jasmine rice was prepared in a pot on the stove. The pressed tofu was then pan fried in my big cast iron skillet, stir fried with the vegetables, and held together with a cornstarch-based brown sauce. There is just something amazingly perfect with my mom's fried tofu. It's texture is nicely chewy on the outside while soft on the inside. Even with scallions and soy sauce it's so yummy. One day when i make the perfect panful, i'll finally be awesome.
Tuesday: Since my mom was out on Long Island with the cousins, my sister and i went to have vegetarian Thai at
Pukk in the East Village. be and i ate there a few weeks ago but tonight's meal was even tastier! We started with 2 appetizers: the portabella skewers were 4 large mushroom pieces on 2 sticks, grilled with minced garlic and a peppery, smokey marinade, served with a side salad in a light, chile-infused dressing; the stuffed tofu was 2 deep fried tofu triangles filled with carrot and cucumber shreds, doused in a slightly sweet, peanutty sauce - both were so excellent, we couldn't decide which was better! My sister ordered the green curry with fake chicken and brown rice for the main, while i got my usual pad Thai. D loved the green curry so much she claimed it was the best she ever had! To drink, i ordered Thai iced tea; their version is made with soymilk and isn't as sweet as other restaurants. D ordered plain soymilk, which was really beany like Chinese soymilk but without the crazy sugar. So good, we'll be going back later this week!
Meanwhile, my mom had 2 Chinese feasts on LI with lobster, shrimp, roasted meats and noodles. I guess today was a good food day for everyone. Even our lunch of Pret a Manger sandwiches was tasty; their lentil soup is awesome! Let's see how the rest of the week goes.
Protection
(Happy beversary!)
Luckily, i didn't need one of these back in college; we really respected each other's ice creams (and they never lasted that long anyways) but this would be useful in other, not-so-nice housing arrangements. Thanks O!
This idea came from one of our fans! He wrote us about how he lives in mental turmoil after buying Ben & Jerry's. He was so afraid that his roommates would eat his pint...he couldn't concentrate at work! He suggested we sell our pints in stainless steel, bulletproof containers with a little padlock. While we couldn't actually do THAT, we came up with the Euphori-Lock!
The Good and Bad of Cheese
Bad: Remember when i said the mac & cheese at Macy's was good? Well i take that back! Instead of the yummy dish they used to make, now it's too bland, too creamy, too mushy and with no chewy top.
Good: I love the crunchy cheese products from
John WM Macy's! The smoked jalepeno cheese crisps are so good. I can eat boxloads of this stuff!
