March 23 - Yam Cubes, Noodle Bowls

Such donuts!

No, this post has nothing to do with donuts. I just had to pick up two dozen of them from Top Pot for a thing at work, and I'd never been in possession of so many donuts before. It was a little magical. I mean, just look at them!

Aaaanyway. . . . I've been a little preoccupied with sweet potatoes and yams lately. I blame this one on my dad. I don't think he likes them, so we never had them when I was younger. This was also the case with brussel sprouts. And music videos. So now, having discovered them as an adult, I'm completely OD-ing on them. I'm sure the sweet potato-related madness is setting in as I type this. It makes them no less delicious. Like, for instance, when I decided to dice, toss with rosemary,salt and pepper, and fry them in a little oil.

Cubes = 3D goodness

I liked how this cooked them faster - I've found that yams seem to take much longer to cook than regular potatoes. Or even sweet potatoes, which I guess are different. Who knew.

They seemed like a great side dish for the pork dish that I think I found on Serious Eats, which involved a pork tenderloin cut into medallions, seared, then finished in a sauce containing brandy, mustard, tarragon, and cream.

Are we tired of pork yet? Of course not!

It was pretty simple, although I misjudged and undercooked the pork slightly. I guess I still have to fine-tune my meat-ometer. Not to be confused with a meatometer. Still, after adjusting the cooking time they turned out quite lovely. Especially perched atop some fresh asparagus next to those lovely yammy cubes.

Presentation is half the meal. Um, right.

Having an entire international district at my disposal has proven to be one of my favorite things about this great city I live in. It provides me with the opportunity to indulge in lots of great food for not so lots of money. It's also great because there seems to be a never-ending supply of tiny eateries I have yet to check out.

On Saturday night following a stop at the Punk Rock Flea Market, a few friends and I decided to check out Szechuan Noodle Bowl. It's a tiny place with about 10 tables, but we were determined to sample their wares. It turned out to be pretty worth it.


Check it out! As we were awaiting our food, a couple of ladies came out to the dining room and starting making dumplings. By hand. This seemed to me a very good thing, and of course we had to order some of those dumples.

Discs? Chop chop!

And my god they were awesome. We had the pork dumplings, which were tender and lovely. They were swimming in a lightly spicy sauce which complimented the mildly porky innards just perfectly. Honestly, they were my favorite part of the meal. And I ate most of them. But I don't even care. Ha!

DUMPLINGS!!

Mostly because of course, since I was there, we didn't have to worry about not ordering enough food. Aside from the dumplies we also got a green onion pancake for the table, which was also of superior quality. It had a nice light crisp to it, and it was thick without being too doughy or heavy. It also wasn't greasy as I've experienced other, lesser pancakes to be. Success.

Would it be good with maple syrup? I wonder. . .

Sean, who had suggested this restaurant to begin with, ordered the house specialty: szechuan beef noodles soup. It had a really nice flavor - deep and subtle with not super spicy overtones. I'd say this was a winner too.

Beefy!

That boy of mine ordered the pork noodles with brown sauce, which was accompanied by cucumber sticks. Man I love cucumber sticks. I'm not sure why I ever consume cucumbers any other way. The little cubes of pork had a nice flavor to them, and a slightly springy texture. I'm curious as to how they're made, but I find it's best not to question things like that. Just accept. And enjoy.

Porky!

I think the best part of the meal (aside from those luscious, lovely dumplings) was the noodles. They were so chewy and soft and fresh tasting - it makes me want to make noodles from scratch all the time. Then I remember that I'm lazy. But it's okay, because I can go to Szechuan Noodle Bowl and enjoy them at relatively low prices. Mmmm. . . noooooooooodle. . . . .

And here's a picture of Moos looking silly. This is what fresh noodles do to people.

Silly!

February 25 - Purple and Porchetta

So fancy.

Corporate America likes to business lunch. In this spirit, my department went out to Purple Cafe and Wine Bar to welcome a new girl to the team. Sweet. Purple has been a place I've wanted to check out for a while now.

We started out with the cheese platter, which was awesome. I didn't take a picture of it because I felt weird photographing my food in front of my co-workers, but the cheeses were lovely. The waiter described the best one as "like frosting, only it's cheese." This was oddly accurate. I couldn't describe it any better. It's weird, I know. I think it was delice de bourgogne, but I'm not totally sure. It kinda looked like this:

I ordered the pork loin lunch special - a pork loin with broccolini and cranberry relish. I don't know why they add the -ni to the broccoli, it didn't make it taste any different from regular-type. The cranberry stuff was a little intense on its own, but overall the flavors came together pretty nicely. And yes, I did take a picture of my food. And yes, I got made fun of.

Mmmm. . pork.

Because pork is delicious, I decided to try my hand at porchetta - which I think is just oven roasted pork. I picked up a pork shoulder roast and some sweet potatoes for dinner. My first step was to butterfly the roast and remove the bone, which was surprisingly easy.

I guess it kind of looks like a butterfly. . .

Then I added some seasoning - salt, pepper, rosemary, garlic, anise, and just a touch of cayenne pepper.

Herbacious.

Then I tied it all up with kitchen twine.

Tied up too tight.

I put it fatty side up on a foil-lined pan in a 400 degree oven, with the potatoes, which I had poked with a fork, coated in vegetable oil and sprinkled with Kosher salt.

It was kind of awesome, because everything finished at the same time. Apparently a 2.5 pound pork roast and giant sweet potatoes will cook in about an hour and fifteen minutes. I used a probe thermometer to tell me when my pork had reached an internal temperature of 160 degree Fahrenheit. Otherwise known as the temperature of no intestinal parasites.

Golden brown and delicious.

When I removed the twine and sliced the pork and I was pleased to find that it had cooked up all moist and tender. The flavors were nicely incorporated throughout the pork since I had cut it apart and seasoned it before rolling it back up. The potatoes were totally awesome - crisp and salted on the outside while llight and fluffy on the inside and delectably sweet. With butter, of course!

Dinner is served!

The coolest part about all this (besides being crazy delicious) is that 2.5 pounds of pork roast and two giant sweet potatoes fed me and my boy two meals each for a grand total cost of about $5. Cooking at home rules.

I'm going to close with a picture of the lunch I packed for work last week. Because I think it's cute and my mom would be pleased at how balanced and healthy it is: broiled salmon onigiri (in a cute wrapper I bought at Daiso!), tasty fat blueberries, cucumbers with ranch, and jasmine tea.

Adorable and tasty!

February 20 - French food, processed food

So beautiful.

Happy! I've taken another step towards becoming a decent home cook - I've gotten myself a shiny new food processor. It's a thing of beauty, to be sure. It came with 2 work bowls and a ton of attachments. It's my new favorite toy. Thank you, Macy's, for putting it on sale at a questionably low price.

You can imagine how difficult it was for me to make it through my work day while dreaming of my new food processor. I was counting down the hours until I could go home and play with it. Lucky for me, Ron and I had plans to head to Belle Epicurean for lunch.

I should have had one of each.

I'd been hearing about this little French patisserie/cafe for a while, and was pretty excited to try it out. Fighting my urge to just order a bunch of pastries and gorge, I perused the lunch menu and decided on something sensible. Well, sensible for French food.

I went with the ham feuillette, which is basically a brioche cup filled with ham and gruyere cheese, mingling with an herbed bechamel sauce. Translation: butter butter ham butter cheese butter and butter. It was delicious.

Don't let the salad fool you.
This is not a healthy lunch.

Ron went with something ever so slightly less buttercentric. The fool. I guess it still looked good: a deviled egg salad on a croissant with a side of the house mushroom soup. I was kind of bummed that it's the only soup they offer, since mushrooms taste like dirt to me, but I got over it. The salad was fresh and tasty, and I pretended not to notice the pleasure with which Ron slurped his soup.

Better than the egg salad in your lunchbox.

Feeling that I had not quite tripled my suggested butter intake for the day, I got a berry. . . pastry. . . thing. I don't remember what it's called. I just know that it was delicious when I got to eat it at work later. My cubicle buddy was, undoubtedly, green with envy. And I didn't share even a little bit.

Making the office just a bit more bearable.

At long last - food processing time! I decided to take full advantage and process some onions - which usually make me cry like a neglected child of divorce. It worked like a dream.

You'll best me no longer, onion fumes!

I decided to make ground pork patties - something my parents used to make with rice noodles and lettuce for family lunches. I took about a pound and a half of boneless pork ribs and sliced em up good.

Pork: food of the gods.

Then the cool part: I dropped them into my shiny new food processor and the came out lookin like this:

Minced meat!

I then put my freshly savaged pork in a bowl with my processed red onion, some salt, pepper, msg, and fish sauce, and squished it all around. I shaped this squish into patties and tossed them into a pan on medium heat.

Mmmm. Char.

Ideally, I would have had rice noodles and lettuce to eat these little guys with, but I didn't plan this very well. I opted instead to serve them up with rice and cucumber, as well as the secret sauce. You want secret sauce? Fine

1/2 cup plus a bit more fish sauce
1/2 cup white distilled vinegar
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup sugar
squeeze lemon juice
chiles to taste

Mix it all up. It's delicious with lots of stuff. Like this for instance.

Ignore the magnetic ribbons.

Focus on the food.

It was equally tasty in my bento box the next day.