Writing With My Mouth Full

Beer-Braised Sichuan Chicken

This Henan Chinese recipe was adapted from Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese Food, a Sichuan restaurant that opened in New York City with a lot of promise but, to me, lacking of flavor. I looked forward to the San Francisco-based restaurant opening here, but when I finally made it with my friend Lauren, I was disappointed that there was no depth to the spiciness of their dishes.

Sichuan food tops my list of favorite cuisines and I’ve always tried to cook it at home. They require a lot of ingredients, but once you buy them, you won’t have to do it again any time soon. (Well, unless you cook as much as I do.)

With the dried chiles and Sichuan peppercorns I smuggled from my trip to Bhutan, the search for good spicy recipes has been resurrected. I think toasting the spices here is key even though the original recipe didn’t call for it–maybe that’s what I mean when I think of depth of flavor. Before I ladled to serve, I used a flour sifter to strain the spices from the liquid. (I didn’t have a fine-enough strainer.) You can use a spice bag if you have it handy, but I wanted all of the flavor to fully soak while cooking.

Oh, this is probably the only time I’ve ever bought Budweiser, too! Any lager-style beer like Tsingtao is okay as well.

Ingredients:
8 chicken pieces
1 1/2 tbsps salt
2 tbsps fish sauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil
5 pieces dried red chiles, toasted
2 tbsps Sichuan peppercorns, toasted
2 tbsps fennel seeds, toasted
2 tbsps cumin seeds, toasted
2 pcs star anise, toasted
4 pods green cardamom, toasted
2 tbsps Sriracha hot sauce
2 cups chicken stock
16 oz can of Budweiser
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup sugar
a handful of fingerling potatoes, washed
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped

1. In a large bowl, season chicken with salt and fish sauce and let sit 5 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, set a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat and add oil. Once oil is hot, work in batches to brown both sides of chicken pieces, about 6 minutes per batch, transferring chicken to another bowl as you go.
3. Return chicken to pot, increase heat to high and add all remaining ingredients except the parsley. Bring pot up to a rolling boil, cover and cook until chicken and potatoes are tender and sauce is reduced, about 20 minutes.
4. Before serving to a bowl, use a fine strainer to get rid of all the solid spices and discard.

Aska at Kinfolk Studios

90 Wythe Avenue corner of North 11th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
$120 each for 2 people, without drinks, without tip
718/388.2969
♥ ♥

I never got the chance to check out the Kinfolk Studio space when it housed the pop-up Frej, but when my friend Josh started working at what is now Aska, I really had no excuse not to support him.

The last time I’ve been to a restaurant where the food on my plate looked more like some kind of art piece rather than a meal was at Alinea in Chicago (in 2006!), but even there, the dishes looked like I was going to get something out of them. At Aska, I was in doubt the whole time that I was ever going to be full, but there was something about the combination of ingredients and the timing of the presentations that somehow worked. By the time the last course of beef was served, I was pretty satisfied even though it was just a single kalbi-like slice of short rib.

There were 7 courses including dessert, but I counted at least 3 amuse-bouches and a pre-dessert palate cleanser. There were a couple of cocktails, a bottle of wine, and a digestif that helped, too.

Best:
1. Cocktails that take forever to make!
2. The most humble cabbage dish with a tiny piece of monkfish and its liver
3. Sunchoke presentation

Weird:
1. Service – It’s a small space so they seemed to have too many staff members hanging out. At one point, we looked up from our conversation and there were 5 people at the pass. They all seemed to be stressed out and I felt very pressured to finish my plate to give them something to bus. But we did break a bottle of wine at the bar and they were nonplussed about it as they cleaned it up.

Chicken Biryani

I live across the hall from a Pakistani family I’ve grown to know since I moved in the building 3 years ago. I know the wife stays at home because I always see some piece of furniture keeping their main door open whenever I leave or return home. It’s to keep the smell from staying in, she told me, when I peeked inside one time and called her name. I told her that I knew the purpose because I can smell the fragrant spices from the elevators.

When she was done cooking, I heard a knock on my door. It was her with a bowl of homemade chicken biryani for me. Ever since that first time, I’ve also been sharing some of the meals I’ve cooked and the goods I’ve baked with her family. I’d be stupid to break a Pakistani home-cooking connection.

Note that this is not her recipe. I found it online and made my own changes according to what I have in my pantry. I used to make my own ginger-garlic paste and freeze them in sheets, but ever since the Microplane Premium Classic zester came into my life, I just finely grate fresh ginger and garlic now and get the same result I would by using a food processor but without all the parts to wash afterwards. And with the spatula from GIR, or Gear That Gets It Right, I can easily scrape the paste from a bowl and spread it evenly on the chicken pieces.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp cumin seeds, grounded
1 tbsp turmeric powder
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tbsp coriander seeds, grounded
6 cardamom seeds, shelled
salt
1/2 cup tomato purée
a large scoop plain yogurt
a small knob of ginger, peeled, grated
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped or grated
oil
1 red onion, sliced
2 boneless chicken breasts, chopped
2 cups of basmati rice
a pinch of saffron
1/4 cup of milk
chicken broth
a handful of cilantro, roughly chopped

1. On a small frying pan, toast the cumin, turmeric, garam masala, coriander, half of the cardamom seeds and salt until they start to get fragrant. Be careful not to burn. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.
2. In a bowl, mix toasted spices with the tomato purée, yogurt, ginger and garlic with a spatula. Marinate the chicken with this mixture and keep aside for a few minutes, or up to 3 hours.
3. When ready to cook, heat oil in a pan. Fry the onions until golden brown. Add the marinated chicken and cook for 10 minutes.
4. In the meantime, set your rice cooker to cook the rice. Soak saffron threads in the milk while cooking the rice. When most of the water from the rice cooker has subsided, pour in the saffron-milk mixture and add the remaining cardamom seeds. Using the same spatula, mix everything when cooking is done.
5. Scoop the cooked rice onto the frying pan with the chicken. Mix well. If your biryani gets dry and thick, add some chicken broth at different intervals of cooking. Garnish with cilantro and serve hot.

Pork Pozole

To the people of Mesoamerica, corn was a very sacred plant and this pre-Columbian Mexican soup was only consumed during special occasions. Ancient Mexicans believed that the combination of corn and meat was a religious communion of their sacred plant and humans: prisoners were killed in religious sacrifices and served as meat for the whole community. Today, we thankfully settle for pork.

To become hominy, corn kernels are dried and soaked in an alkaline solution and goes through several chemical changes that turns them into nixtamal. (The ground version is made into dough for tortillas, tamales and arepas.) The word hominy is just a Powhatan word for maize.

I love this soup for its heartiness, and yet its lime-cilantro-flavored broth is thin enough to be considered light. Feel free to skip the potatoes here if you want the hominy to be the star of the show.

Ingredients:
2 pounds pork butt, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
1 head of garlic, halved
1 onion, quartered
a few pieces of small potatoes, rinsed thoroughly
1 28-ounce cans hominy, drained and rinsed
2 tbsps dried oregano
cayenne pepper
salt, pepper
a few handfuls of cilantro, chopped
lime wedges

1. In a large soup pot, bring the pork, garlic, onion and about 8 cups of water to a boil. Skim off the impurities that float to the top. Lower the fire down to a simmer. Cover and cook until the pork is very tender, about 2 hours.
2. Discard the garlic and onion. Stir in the potatoes, hominy, oregano and cayenne and season the broth with salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and cook until potatoes are tender.
3. Turn off the heat and stir in some of the cilantro. Serve and ladle the pozole into bowls with the remaining cilantro and lime wedges at the table.

Maison Harlem

As a Harlem resident for the last 10 years, I’m all for new bars and restaurants in the area. The neighborhood has definitely changed. You see more new faces walking around, cafés and boutiques, but its growth is still slower than Brooklyn’s.

Maison Harlem tries hard. A well-dressed gentleman–and may I say good-looking too–approached our table to ask how the food was. He told us that when he opened the place his main priority was good food, and now he’s working on improving the service. His next to-do is to refine the bar which is much needed because when we were there, they didn’t have a cocktail list and could not make me a Dark and Stormy because they didn’t have ginger beer.

Notables:
1. Space – The interior is beautiful and you can’t tell that from its on location on St. Nicholas Avenue. May I request for coat and purse hooks under the bar and by the booths though?
2. Crowd – It was nice to see more Harlem adults out for dinner. It was a mixed crowd on a Saturday night. Harlem is changing indeed.

Watch out:
1. Food – While the food wasn’t bad–my poached egg on my frisée de lardon came out perfectly and my hanger steak was medium-rare–it lacked oomph. We weren’t extremely satisfied after eating as if something was amiss. My steak could have used some salt and the truffled mac and cheese could have been more hearty and cheesier. Props for having Roquefort cheese as an option with the burger; I haven’t seen that cheese on any uptown menus, I swear.
2. Bar – The drinks are on the strong side until they create and refine their signature cocktails.
3. Service – Waiting on 5 ladies is difficult enough and I think we challenged our waiter with our decibel level and flustered him with our endless questions. But we kept him on his toes and he passed our test. I hope they keep it up when it gets more attention.