Writing With My Mouth Full

Brick Lane Curry House

306-308 East 6th Street on Second Avenue
212/979.8787
about $200 for five, without drinks, without tip
â™¥

I’ve never heard of phaal until it made the Omnivore’s Hundred from verygoodtaste.co.uk. From that site’s must-eat list, I checked off 75 items that I’ve tasted and eaten. Among the other 25 is phaal, or phall, a South Indian curry dish that is supposedly spicier than the more familiar vindaloo. I was intrigued.

My co-workers wanted to order lunch delivery and Brick Lane Curry House’s menu satisfied the meat eaters plus the vegan and vegetarians among us. It took about an hour for the food to come and when we opened the lids of the containers, I have to admit I was very disappointed at the small amount of food. The lamb chops, infused with tamarind, ginger and garlic, while tender and tasty, were small and didn’t hold up to my growling stomach. I had to compensate by eating extra portions of rice. I only had a small taste of the vegetarian and the vegan curries, and I couldn’t tell the difference from the two sauces except for the fact that the vegan version had a smattering of white onions. The Goan fish dish was the best in the mix with its green chiles and coconut flavor enhanced by vinegar. Was it buttery? Oh, yes, it was.

Now back to the phaal, exaggerated by the restaurant as an “excruciatingly hot curry” but correctly described as “more pain and sweat than flavor”. Need to know more than that? When the sauce hits your tongue, you get the sting right away and then it sits and slowly burrows. (Un)fortunately, as soon as your tongue goes numb, the spiciness is replaced by bitterness, and at that point, all you want is either some more rice or more Goan fish curry. Michael above, though, talks about how it hit his sinus right away; he didn’t even feel the spiciness in his tongue.

I’ve had my share of spicy food, and up to this day, nothing beats the pickled Scotch Bonnet peppers I had in the Big Corn Island in Nicaragua. Go taste the phaal for yourself at Brick Lane Curry House and get a free bottle of beer when you finish a whole serving on your own.

Tomato Paella

Paella seems to be in the news lately. Mark Bittman featured this vegetarian-friendly recipe a few weeks ago and I took note to recreate it for our August Supper with Strangers. Over the long weekend, a grilled version was featured in the Sunday Times Magazine.

I had time to test Bittman’s recipe, but I found it hard to cook the rice in under 30 minutes. I tried his way the first round using the oven but some parts remained undercooked. I felt like there was so much maintenance to make sure the rice was evenly cooked. For my second try, I left it on top of the stove but it still needed so much attention I just had no patience for it.

So for Supper, I committed the worst paella sin there could be and used a rice cooker to make sure the dish went well for six guests. It did: the rice was fluffy, not sticky, and I didn’t have to keep adding vegetable broth. The initial few cups I used kept it cooking with just a simmer. It’s almost blasphemous, I know, but the paella turned out well. I grilled some lamb chorizo to go with the dish and some thinly-sliced aubergines as a vegetarian alternate. I topped both versions with grilled tomato slices and poured over salted tomato pulp to make it moist.

Ingredients:
4 cups of short-grain rice
1 pack of vegetable broth
1 large heirloom tomato, thinly sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsps paprika
1 tbsp tomato paste
half a bunch of parsley, finely chopped
oil, salt, pepper

If using:
1 eggplant, thinly sliced, seasoned with salt and pepper, grilled
1 rope of lamb chorizo, grilled, and then sliced

1. Heat a skillet and add some oil. Sauté garlic until golden brown. Add onions and cook until translucent. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in tomato paste and paprika and cook for another minute. Add rice, stirring constantly, making sure everything is well-combined.
2. Transfer everything to a rice cooker and add vegetable broth. Cook like you do white rice.
3. Five minutes from being done, when the rice has settled but there is still some broth simmering, top with tomato slices to cook in the remaining steam.
4. When cooked, turn off the rice cooker, stir the rice and sprinkle with parsley. Let sit in the cooker until ready to serve. Served with grilled chorizo or eggplants.

Saravanaa Bhavan

81 Lexington Avenue corner of 26th Street
212/684.7755
about $45, with one drink, with tip
â™¥

The Dr. remembered a suggestion he received from one of his co-workers for some dosas in Murray Hill but the name escaped him; all he knew was that it was long and unpronounceable. Luckily we caught a glimpse of Saravanaa Bhavan’s sign as soon as we turned the corner on Lexington Avenue.

I wanted something new and I decided on two dishes I’ve never heard before after scanning the menu. (The Dr. stuck with the more familiar vegetarian dosa.) The adai avail reminded me of the hard work I put into making my own chataamari, grinding the lentils by hand using a simple mortar and pestle while watching TV. It was pasty but the texture was still grainy: unmistakably homemade.

The onions were apparent in the kaima idli, and I couldn’t stop eating. The spiciness also lingered after several spoonfuls. I slathered it with the raita, the yogurt-based dip, to keep it together. I found a new favorite and I was addicted. The salted lassi wasn’t exactly the best match but I just had to try it and cross it off my recent must-try list.

Go to Saravanaa Bhavan if you want to stray away from the usual curries and if you don’t feel like paying double at SoHo’s Hampton Chutney. The scene is a New York City one, full of family life and color.

Rayuela

165 Allen Street between Rivington and Stanton
212/253.8840
$103 each for a group of 8, with 3 bottles of wine and tip
â™¥

As soon as we walked up the steps to sit at our 8-person table, I thought Rayuela had promise. It was a bit too dark to read the menu without holding it up against the lamps, but the lighting made for a very intimate ambiance. We had a reservation and didn’t have to wait to be seated and except to remind the sommelier to bring out our third bottle of wine before our desserts came, service was pretty attentive.

But what about the food? Rayuela bills itself as a Freestyle Latino which “respects yet redefines contemporary Latin American and Spanish cuisines”. It stays loyal to that all throughout their extensive menu but what’s missing was the warmth of home-cooking I’ve always loved about those cuisines.

I probably ordered the best ceviche in the group: Siete Potencies or lobster, shrimp, scallop, crab, clams, mussels and octopus in a green tomatillo sauce. The crab and shrimp ceviche in lychee and guanabana citrus sauce was too sweet for me. Did I already mention that all the ceviches came in martini glasses? I could have done without that style.

I liked my steamed white asparagus with crabmeat, spinach, onions and roasted almonds just fine tossed in a lemon vinaigrette, as well as my octopus and chorizo served with paprika, tomato and olives, which lead me to think that sometimes you should just stay safe rather than sorry. I feel like the more traditional dishes just about made it and the more experimental lacked a coherent bind. Two of us split the duck breast marinated in sugar cane and it didn’t work with the pan-seared foie gras. The arepa was like a hurried addition to make it more Latin. Another person did good damage to her tenderloin, but left all the mushrooms untouched. The Ecuadorian seafood stew, I heard, wasn’t worth the $24 price.

At least the unlisted Malbec bottle the sommelier offered us for under $60 kept the group happy enough to fork over their hundred dollars. Nice try, Rayuela, but I think I’m okay with arroz con pollo that’s not $22.

Sichuan Chicken

Sometimes, the best part of leaving filthy New York City is coming home to it. A day after I returned, I picked up my latest farmer’s share and got back in the groove of cooking again. In the Philippines, all the food we ate was done for us whether it was from a restaurant, from a street vendor or from one of my many relatives who cooked us a meal. When I picked up my share of scallions and green peppers, I thought of a stir-fry dish that would be easy to make for my first dinner back.

I was eating a lot of pork while I was in the Philippines so it wasn’t weird when I wanted to eat something with chicken. I had already gotten the sushi out of the way my first night back–my way of cleansing my system after returning from a vacation–and a quick toss of greens with breast fillets was a no-brainer as a next step towards getting back to my routine.

I marinated the chicken here overnight, but you can certainly spend less time and just marinate while you chop the rest of the ingredients. I also skipped the peanuts and used sherry vinegar instead of Chinese vinegar for the sauce and that’s why my version is paler than the traditional one. You can use balsamic vinegar as well to get that dark color.

Ingredients:
2 lbs boneless chicken breasts, without skin, sliced in smaller pieces
1 green bell pepper, seeded, chopped
4 scallions, white parts only, chopped
4 garlic cloves
a small knob of ginger, peeled, thinly sliced
3 Thai chiles, seeded
1 tsp whole Sichuan pepper
a handful of roasted unsalted peanuts (optional)
peanut oil

For the marinade:
2 tbsps light soy sauce
2 tbsps rice wine
2 tbsps cornstarch
1 tbsp water
salt

For the sauce:
3 tbsps sugar
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp light soy sauce
3 tbsps sherry vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tbsp water

1. Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a large container with the chicken pieces. Mix well and set aside in the fridge until ready to cook.
2. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl. Set aside.
3. Using a large skillet, add some peanut oil and heat over a high flame. When the oil is hot but not yet smoking, add the chiles and Sichuan pepper and stir-fry briefly until they are crisp and the oil is spicy and fragrant. Try not to burn them.
4. Add the chicken and the bell pepper and fry over a high flame, stirring constantly. As soon as the chicken pieces have separated, add the ginger, garlic, and scallions and continue to stir-fry until the chicken is cooked through and white. Feel free to drizzle some more peanut oil to add some moisture.
5. Give the sauce a stir and add it to the skillet, continuing to stir and toss. As soon as the sauce has become thick and shiny, add the peanuts, if using and stir them in.