Writing With My Mouth Full

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    • ‘cesca

      164 West 75th Street on Amsterdam Avenue
      212/787.6300
      $280 for four people with eight glasses of drinks, without tip
      ♥ ♥ ♥

      Ah, the upper west side, you keep surprising me. ‘cesca has been on our list of places to eat for the past year because Cameron lives around the corner. After Telepan, I’m more confident to pick a restaurant in the upper west side even if it bills itself as a family-owned Italian restaurant. (I don’t have any good experiences to write about family-owned Italian restaurants in Little Italy and the space next door has turned over more than I can count.) The ‘cesca menu looked good the first time I read it from the outside of the restaurant and it looked good the night we visited. Four of us were seated in the wine nook; a table fit for ten became our own private space for three hours. The sommelier, a giant with a short ponytail, selected for us a light red wine after our glasses of Prosecco.

      The octopus sopressata, so called because it’s dried, pressed and sliced thinly, reminded me of the octopus carpaccio we ate in Prague. The pickle-ly taste offset the bitter mustard greens. I couldn’t pass up the chance to try their veal meatballs. They were served in a clear, hot broth, perfect for the harsh temperature outside. The Parmigiano gave it a beefier, fuller taste. We also shared a third appetizer, the escarole salad with tuna, fennel and pomegranates. While we waited for our two main dishes, we were served a complimentary course of faro wheat. We didn’t really understand how we became so lucky, but our waiter quietly mentioned Babbo when we asked. I think he overheard us talking out our most recent experience at Babbo and appreciated the fact that we like our authentic Italian food. (I think taking photos of food really helps.) The special of the night was a seafood risotto and we divided that with a rack of lamb chops and servings of broccoli rabe and roasted Brussel sprouts that tasted like fresh potato chips. To tell you the truth, I enjoyed my medium-rare lamb so much I don’t even remember tasting the risotto. During our espressos, we split the panna cotta with mixed fruit compote and the warm chocolate cake with créme fraiche. I really won’t make fun of the upper west side again.

      Related post/s:
      Upper West Side isn’t so bad with Telepan there
      But it ain’t Babbo

    • Shrimp Hot and Sour Soup

      Brrrr. It’s winter in New York City! This soup warmed the deepest of my organs.

      Ingredients:
      1 pound of shrimps with heads and tails saved, peeled and deveined
      chicken stock
      1 bunch cilantro, thoroughly rinsed
      1 bunch watercress, thoroughly rinsed
      2 red chilies
      1 small knob of galangal or ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
      1 small red onion, chopped
      1 lemongrass stalk, white part only, pounded with a pestle
      lime juice
      fish sauce
      sambal oelek
      shrimp paste, to taste
      peanut oil

      1. In a large pot, heat some peanut oil and add the shrimp heads and tails until they turn orange, about 4 minutes.
      2. Add the lemongrass and the ginger with the stock. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the stock and discard the shells and heads. Return the stock to the pot.
      3. Add lime leaves, scallions, mushrooms, cilantro and watercress. Cook for less than 5 minutes.
      4. Add the shrimps and cook for another 3 minutes. Adjust the broth taste by adding lime juice, fish sauce, sambal oelek and shrimp paste.

      Related post/s:
      Where to get sambal oelek, lemongrass and galangal

    • Tomato Bread Soup

      I had everything I needed in the kitchen. What could I make that’s easy, quick and filling? This soup took about 30 minutes to make and fulfilled a soup craving during brunch.

      Ingredients:
      3 vine-ripe tomatoes
      3 slices from a day-old loaf of Italian bread, cut into smaller pieces
      1 quart vegetable stock
      5 slices of bacon
      3 cloves of garlic, crushed
      fresh basil leaves, torn
      salt, pepper, oil

      1. Score a cross in the bottom of the tomatoes and place in a pot of boiling water for 2 minutes. Remove and plunge in a bowl of cold water to peel the skin off. Cut the tomatoes in half and scoop out the seeds. Chop the tomato flesh and set aside.
      2. Preheat oven 400º. Bake bacon for 8 minutes or until crispy. Let drain on a paper towel. Chop coarsely and set aside.
      3. Heat some oil in a pot. Sauté the garlic and tomatoes. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring ocassionaly. Add the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium, add the bread and cook until the bread softens and absorbs some of the liquid.
      4. Season with salt and pepper and stir in some olive oil. Top with bacon bits.

    • Crayfish Creamed Corn Soup

      I had enough crayfish meat and crayfish broth leftover from the crayfish rice that I decided to make soup. At first, I was just going to use the broth and add some vegetables, but after tasting it, I knew something was short. My mother said she imagined the soup to be thicker because the crayfish taste was so concentrated. So I put on my coat, braved the winter weather with pajamas on and ran to the corner deli and bought a can of corn and a pint of milk. Using a blender, I made my own creamed corn. I wanted to test it first before I used the rest of the broth so in a smaller pot, I simmered a small dollop of the corn with some of the broth. When the mother hen approved, I made a bigger batch good enough for four people at work the next day.

      Ingredients:
      2 pounds crayfish, washed
      bacon
      1 can of kernel corn
      1 cup of milk
      2 ribs of celery, cut in smaller pieces
      1 red onion, halved
      1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
      1 green bell pepper, finely chopped
      1 chayote, peeled and diced
      salt, pepper, oil

      1. Make crayfish broth. Separate the crayfish heads from the tails. Put the heads in a big soup pot with some water and let it boil. Add onion and celery ribs with some salt. Simmer until ready to use. Peel tails and devein. Chop in smaller pieces.
      2. In a skillet, render fat off bacon until crisp. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel. When cool enough to handle, finely chop bacon. Set aside.
      3. In a blender, purée corn while adding a little bit of milk slowly. The consistency should be creamy without being too thick.
      4. In a soup pot, transfer the crayfish broth without the solids. Simmer and add the vegetables. Cook until the chayote is soft. Add a little bit of the creamed corn slowly until desired consistency. Season with bacon bits and pepper. Serve with country bread.

      Related post/s:
      How to cook your rice with crayfish

    • Crayfish Rice with Bacon

      Tomatoe, tomatoh. Potatoe, potatoh. Crayfish, crawfish. No matter what you call these small lobster lookalikes, they’re good to go in a big soup pot. And you know what? They’re even better with bacon. They were selling them alive in Chinatown but they were left out in the cold–that made it easy enough to pull their heads from their bodies. I put all the heads in a soup pot to make broth while I chopped up some vegetables for this recipe. Peeling the tails was another story. It’s a lot of work with so little yield; I should have gotten more than two pounds. But in the end, my rice was delicious and it was even better with some barbequed pork.

      Ingredients:
      2 pounds crayfish, washed
      bacon
      4 ribs of celery, 2 finely chopped, 2 cut in smaller pieces
      1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
      1 green bell pepper, finely chopped
      2 cloves garlic, minced
      2 red onions, 1 finely chopped, 1 halved
      3 cups rice
      salt, pepper, oil

      1. Make crayfish broth. Separate the crayfish heads from the tails. Put the heads in a big soup pot with some water and let it boil. Add the halved onion and the big celery ribs with some salt. Simmer until ready to use. Peel tails and devein. Chop in smaller pieces.
      2. In a skillet, render fat off bacon until crisp. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel. When cool enough to handle, finely chop bacon. Set aside.
      3. Using some of the bacon fat, sauté garlic and onions. Add crayfish, celery and pepper and sauté until tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add rice and 3 cups of the crayfish broth. Cover and cook the rice in medium fire. Check often and add more broth to keep it from drying. When rice is almost done, fluff with a spatula and mix until combined well. Turn off the fire, cover the pot and let the remaining heat finish cooking the rice.

      Related post/s:
      Crayfish Creamed Corn Soup

    • Ushiwakamaru

      136 West Houston Street off Sullivan
      212/228.4181
      $150 for three people with six drinks, without tip
      ♥ ♥

      I’m always walking on Houston Street, but I have to admit that I never pay attention to the restaurants on the street. There are a few off Sullivan Street, right before you turn towards Bleecker, but I’ve never been inclined to check them out. We wanted sushi one night after a few after-work drinks in SoHo but Blue Ribbon was, as usual, packed and there was quite a wait at Nagomi. Yama or Tomoe are not good options to me so I was delighted to eat good sushi at Ushi Wakamaru. The uni was fresh and the ankimo creamy. The otoro was still the most expensive on the menu but it was still less than what Gari would charge. They accommodated my requests for salmon skin and shiso leaf makimo before we closed our tab. They didn’t take unfamiliar requests like shiso with pickled carrots and daikon–something Sushiden wouldn’t refuse–but they pretty much met my expectations.

      Related post/s:
      Nagomi, around the corner
      Gari for more expensive sushi
      Go to Sushiden for shiso with pickled carrots and daikon

    • Cote-d’Ivoire: Tilapia with Alloco

      This recipe was very close to my heart because Filipinos fry plantains and fry fish, too. It’s always cool to find out that a country so far from the Philippines have the same way of serving an ingredient. Esther told me that this recipe is a very famous goute, or a small meal eaten between 3 and 6pm, in the Ivory Coast. (That’s merienda to the Filipinos.) Her recipe included one Maggi chicken bouillon but I used homemade chicken stock instead. I grew up with Knorr bouillons in our cupboard and know that it has a lot of salt so I decided to skip it even though the African store in my neighborhood sells them. I wanted the dish to be flavorful without using artifical ingredients. The stock gave the sauce some flavor and at the same time kept it from drying up. In New York City, it’s impossible not to find plantains in any bodega. You can certainly substitute plain bananas but they’ll fall apart when frying, so if you do, try to use the firmer ones.

      Ingredients:
      1 tilapia, cleaned
      3 yellow ripe plantains, halved and then sliced lengthwise
      1/2 cup chicken stock
      1 large tomato, roughly chopped
      1 medium onion, roughly chopped
      red pepper powder
      salt, oil

      1. Make the piment d’alloco, or thick, hot tomato sauce. In a saucepan over low fire, heat some oil and sauté onions. Add tomato and simmer until thick, about 20 minutes. Slowly add chicken broth to keep it from drying. Season with salt and red pepper. Set aside.
      2. Prepare the alloco. Using a skillet, heat some oil and fry plantains until both sides are lightly browned. Remove to a plate lined with paper towel.
      3. Rub salt all over the tilapia. Using the same skillet, fry the fish in hot oil until both sides are golden brown. Serve with the plantains and pour over tomato sauce.

      Related post/s:
      More Cooking the World recipes: Indonesia
      About Cooking the World: Global Gastronomy Food Project

    • Tia Pol

      205 Tenth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets
      212/675.8805
      $84 for two people with three drinks, without tip
      ♥ ♥ ♥

      If you’re looking for a good tapas place in New York City, Tia Pol is most likely recommended. I rarely make it around the Chelsea neighborhood, so I visited about two years after the entire city has already fawned over it. Ever since they opened in 2004, the wine hasn’t stopped flowing and the customers haven’t lost their patience waiting for a spot. We waited for about 45 minutes to be seated with our glasses of wine one warm winter night. When we finally made it, it was as if the bartender was waiting for us all along. She was very busy, yet attentive. She forgot to bring out the lamb but everything else we ordered lifted our spirits. The food brought us back to Catalunya. The owners of Tia Pol say they opened a tapas bar because of an on-going love affair with Spain. I give it three stars for the same reason.

    • Stir-Fry Flank Steak with Shiso Oil

      I also used some of the shiso oil I made for a beef stir-fry dish. It’s the oil that keeps on giving!

      Ingredients:
      1 pound beef flank steak, cut against the grain in strips
      enoki mushrooms
      baby bok choy
      shiso oil
      soy sauce
      1 medium onion, roughly chopped

      1. Marinate beef. In a bowl, combine beef, shiso oil, soy sauce and onions. Mix and let sit for at least 20 minutes.
      2. When ready to cook, heat a large skillet and stir-fry marinated beef for 6 minutes. Add vegetables after the first 3 minutes. Serve immediately.

      Related post/s:
      Homemade shiso oil
      Where to buy fresh shiso leaves
      Shiso-wrapped tempura prawns

    • Shiso-Wrapped Tempura Prawns

      For this recipe, I made my own shiso oil to drizzle the prawns with after flash-frying them, but I also used the leaves to wrap them. A toothpick can hold the leaf in place but I ended up using one of the prawn’s harder feelers as a replacement.

      Ingredients:
      5 prawns, peeled but with heads intact, deveined, feelers and arms chopped
      5 shiso leaves
      shiso oil
      rice flour
      club soda
      red pepper flakes
      lime
      salt, oil

      1. Wrap each prawn with a shiso leaf. Use a toothpick to keep the shiso leaf in place.
      2. Make batter. In a shallow bowl, combine flour, red pepper flakes and salt. Drizzle club soda slowly and mix until it has that pancake batter consistency. Cover each prawn with batter.
      3. In a skillet, heat some oil and flash-fry for about 4 minutes, turning each prawn gently with tongs after two minutes. Remove to a paper towel-lined plate and squeeze with lime juice. Serve immediately.

      Related post/s:
      Homemade shiso oil
      Where to buy fresh shiso leaves
      Shiso-marinated beef stir-fry

    • Homemade Shiso Oil

      I’ve never seen Ming Tsai on TV before so when I happened to flip to PBS and saw that his ingredient of the day was shiso leaf, I tuned in. Perilla, or shiso leaf to the Japanese, is a member of the mint family. There’s no mistaking that after you take a bite. It has a nice kick to it that’s why it’s perfect as a palate cleanser after a few pieces of sushi. What I like to do when I’m at a Japanese restaurant is to ask the sushi chef to make me a small shiso leaf maki after my omakase meal. It ends the night with a piece of rice and a bright taste in my mouth.

      Ingredients:
      about 30 pieces of shiso leaves
      grapeseed oil
      1 tbsp ginger, peeled, minced
      1 tsp sugar
      salt and pepper

      1. Prepare an ice bath in a small bowl in the sink. Boil some water in a pot with a lot of salt. Blanch shiso leaves in boiling water for 1 minute and immediately remove to the ice bath. Squeeze in a ball and cut in smaller pieces.
      2. Put shiso leaves in a blender with the ginger, sugar and a little bit of salt and pepper. Blend while slowly drizzling a little bit of grapeseed oil into the mix. Season to taste. Use for shiso-wrapped tempura prawns or shiso-marinated beef stir-fry.

      Related post/s:
      Where to buy fresh shiso leaves
      Shiso-wrapped tempura prawns
      Shiso-marinated beef stir-fry

    • Pork Chops With Rye-Bread Stuffing

      In 1959, The New York Times published a recipe using pork chops. Because pork chops are an inexpensive cut of meat, it was then “dinner on the cheap.” Everything is expensive nowadays but three thick chops are still affordable at $9 from Dom’s in SoHo and a knob of rye-bread from Balthazar only cost me $3. I didn’t have caraway seeds for the stuffing so I grounded some fennel and cumin seeds to substitute. It was also a good time to use the parsley I planted last year because it’s been growing like crazy on my window sill. I didn’t seal the pork pockets with toothpicks after stuffing them but they held together nicely and didn’t fall apart. I boiled some pasta during the last few minutes of cooking, tossed it with the pork chops fat and served it with these delicious chops.

      Ingredients:
      3 bone-in 1-inch-thick pork chops, sliced to form a pocket
      a small knob of rye-bread, thrown in a blender or food processor to crumb
      1 medium onion, roughly chopped
      1 clove garlic, minced
      1 tsp fennel seeds, grounded
      1 tsp cumin seeds, grounded
      a small bunch of parsley, roughly chopped
      1 egg, lightly beaten
      3 tbsps butter
      3/4 cup chicken broth
      salt and pepper

      1. Preheat the oven to 350º. In the meantime, make stuffing. In an ovenproof pan, melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat and sauté onion and garlic until softened, about 5 minutes. Add to a large bowl with the bread crumbs, fennel and cumin, parsley and egg. Season with salt and pepper. Mix with a fork until well combined.
      2. Season both sides of the pork chops with salt and pepper. Fill the chops with the stuffing. Arrange in the same ovenproof pan and bake, covered, for 45 minutes, turning them over gently after 25 minutes.
      3. Switch the oven to broil, move up the oven rack and brown the chops for 3 minutes per side, uncovered. Transfer to a serving platter and keep warm.
      4. Set the pan on the stove over medium heat and add remaining butter and broth. Reduce the pan juices to a thick glaze. Simmer, scraping up the pan drippings, until thick enough. Season to taste. Strain over the pork chops.

      Related post/s:
      Where to get pork chops and rye bread