Writing With My Mouth Full

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    • Pasta with Peppers and Balsamic Vinegar

      It’s officially autumn in New York City! Even though bell peppers seem to be a summer vegetable, I used them in this pasta dish with balsamic vinegar to bring out a different flavor. I chose red, yellow, and orange and skipped the more raw green kind. With the vinegar, their colors seem more muted and fall-like rather than bright and summery.

      I used penne here because it’s what I have handy, but feel free to use rigatoni so that the ridges hold the vinegar in for a more dramatic presentation. Parmesan cheese is the way to go, but again, I used what I had and that was a beautiful truffled cheese. I used it minimally because I didn’t want the truffle smell to overwhelm the fragrant peppers and vinegar.

      Ingredients:
      3 bell peppers, seeded and sliced
      oil
      salt, pepper
      1 red onion, thinly sliced
      2 cloves garlic, minced
      a handful of parsley, finely chopped
      2 tbsps balsamic vinegar
      a handful of grated truffled cheese
      about 2 cups of penne

      1. Put all the peppers in a large frying pan over medium heat with a little olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper. Cover and cook slowly for 15 minutes until softened.
      2. In the meantime, cook the penne al dente and drain. Set aside until ready to assemble the dish.
      3. Add the onion to the peppers and cook for another 10 minutes. Add the garlic and parsley and cook while tossing for about 3 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar and let it sizzle away.
      4. Add the cooked pasta and toss with the cheese and more parsley. Drizzle with a little bit more olive oil before serving.

    • Uncle Boons

      7 Spring Street between Elizabeth and Bowery
      $216 for 2 people, with a lot of drinks, with tip
      646/370.6650
      ♥ ♥

      What?! I can’t hear you!, was my reply to our waiter when he tried to tell us that squeezing some lime juice on our food will make them taste better.

      The truth of the matter is that I am getting too old for loud restaurants. I couldn’t even decipher what music they were playing because it was so loud inside with all the chatter. I’m all for chatter and activity in some restaurants but it becomes a problem when I have to scream to make conversation with my friends. It becomes a problem when the most quiet place you can go to is the bathroom. There’s music in there, too! Are we still in SoHo or did we move to the Meatpacking District in between courses?

      But speaking of courses, the food was quite tasty. I appreciate that there’s finally Thai food in Manhattan that’s spicy enough to call Thai. One of my pet peeves is when restaurants do not give their diners enough credit and tone down the spiciness of their food. We like to eat! We can take spiciness, you know? The lines to get in Mission Chinese Food and Pok Pok New York should be telling enough. When I want Thai food, I don’t want the Chinese version of Thai food. I want to be reminded of the street food I had in Bangkok and the hawker stall food I had in Singapore. And when I want Thai food, I don’t want to have to go to Queens to get it.

      I liked the dip made of smoked catfish and pork that came with French breakfast radishes, sweet peas, and Thai eggplants. To some people, it might be weird to have sliced raw vegetables on a plate without the greens, but it was a good palate cleanser in between the monkfish “cheeks” with noodles in ginger sauce and the grilled sausage and octopus.

      Oh, that octopus; I could eat 20 more of those little suckers! I would have been happy to try more of their offerings, but our 2 main courses were as large as the appetizers were tiny. I wished we were able to order the mains in smaller portions as to not miss out, but I suppose I’ll just have to make a return trip–with earplugs on.

    • Lemon Chiffon Cake

      I’ve been making this cake for 10 years now and I’ve only had one fail, Haewon told me when she gave me a copy of this tried-and-true Martha Stewart recipe for lemon chiffon cake. Haewon’s version was so fluffy and light–it was the cake for me. Even after I stored mine in the fridge overnight, it did not harden.

      You’ll need a tube pan for this, but I got away with an antique bundt pan that I bought for 50 cents at an estate sale and skipped step 6 below. If you’re using a bundt pan, make sure you invert it right away on a smaller bowl as soon as you take it out from the oven. (I thought that the air will still circulate with a bowl rather than inverting and suffocating it onto a plate.) It will only take a few seconds before it collapses and you want to avoid that as much as possible.

      My cake did stick on the bottom a bit because of the old pan. The recipe does not call to butter or flour it and I didn’t want to experiment more by lining it with parchment paper. I had to make a more gentle effort to remove the cake from the pan. I could not make a prettier slice than this photo, but hey, it still tasted like a lemon chiffon cake!

      Ingredients:
      3/4 cup non-self-rising cake flour
      1/4 tsp baking soda
      1/4 tsp salt
      3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp white sugar
      3 large eggs, separated
      1/4 cup vegetable oil
      1 tbsp lemon juice
      2 tbsp grated lemon zest, from about 4 lemons
      1/2 tsp vanilla extract
      1/4 tsp cream of tartar
      confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

      1. Heat oven to 325º and prepare an ungreased 7-inch tube pan. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, salt, and 3/4 cup granulated sugar. Set aside.
      2. In a large bowl, whisk together egg yolks, vegetable oil, 1/3 cup water, lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla. Add to the reserved dry ingredients and beat until smooth.
      3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat egg whites on medium speed until foamy. Add cream of tartar and beat on high speed until soft peaks form, about 1 minute. Gradually add remaining tablespoon of sugar and beat on high speed until stiff peaks form, about 2 minutes.
      4. Fold egg-white mixture into the batter. Start by folding in 1/3, then fold in the remaining 2/3. Mix a little bit to combine. Pour batter into pan. Using a spatula, smooth the top.
      5. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean and the cake is golden, about 45 minutes.
      6. Remove cake from oven; invert the pan over a glass soda bottle for 2 hours to cool. Turn cake right-side up. Run a table knife all the way down between cake and pan; invert again, and remove cake. Dust cake with confectioners’ sugar before serving.

      Related post/s:
      Haewon bakes at Purplepops

    • Umami Burger New York City

      432 6th Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets
      $68 for 3 people, with drinks, without tip
      212/677.8626
      ♥ ♥

      I’ve tasted an Umami burger in Los Angeles before but the craziness that surrounded its New York opening sent me on a Citibike to check it out. Jase, Dash, Harry and I put our names down around 6:45pm. We went in to try and get drinks inside but because they have reached their room capacity, they didn’t let any more people in which I actually liked because then people are not screaming at your ear at the bar or hovering over you while you eat your burger.

      We opted to walk down the block instead to take advantage of Happy Hour drinks and oysters for the next three hours. The crowd that was milling around in front of Umami died down then and we were seated as soon as the next table for 4 cleared. We wondered if the staff was also shipped from California because they were so nice even after they’ve had to deal with the crowd since they opened at 11am.

      Our waitress gave us the speech about how Umami is different from other burgers because of science–the meat grounded in-house and the Portuguese-style bun–but all we wanted to do was order and eat! (None of those were scientific to me by the way.) We ended up ordering four different kinds to taste as much as we can: the original Umami with shiitake mushroom and Parmesan crisp, the Truffle burger, the Manly with beer-cheddar cheese and bacon lardon, plus the duck special. They were all good but it starts to get difficult to tell them apart when you’ve been holding out for 3 hours. The truffle and Parmesan flavor from the 2 burgers stood out, but everything else melded and tasted like, oh hey, regular (but juicy) burgers!

      Skip the duck with peach-apple chutney (above) though. The chutney was a tad too sweet and just wasn’t burger material to me. The caramelized fennel and “Madagascar pepper” just seemed too silly: it’s California trying to fit in New York City. We New Yorkers are pretentious, but we’re not that pretentious! The beet salad is surprisingly good, a nice respite from all the meat. Don’t miss the fries and tots as sides but feel free to skip the special sauces to get more of the unadulterated meat taste of the burgers.

      So was Umami worth the 3-hour wait? Of course not; nothing ever is. But go and be nice to our California friends and show them what New Yorkers are made of: we’re there because it’s the place to be at the moment.

    • Mussels with Chorizo and White Beans

      New Yorkers got respite from the summer heat this week when temperatures dropped to 70 degrees. There was soft rain and a chill in the air–the perfect time to tuck in a bowl of mussels with a 2012 Rosato di Cabernet Franc from Channing Daughters.

      Ingredients:
      olive oil
      3 garlic cloves, minced
      about 4 inches of dried chorizo, diced
      10 cherry tomatoes, halved
      red pepper flakes
      salt, pepper
      1 15-ounce can cannellini beans, drained
      2 pounds mussels, scrubbed and debearded
      a handful of parsley, roughly chopped

      1. In a large Dutch oven, heat the olive oil and sauté the garlic until light brown. Add the chorizo, the cherry tomatoes and red pepper flakes, and season with salt and black pepper and cook for 3 minutes.
      2. Add the cannellini beans, mussels and 1/2 cup of water, cover and cook over high heat until the mussel shells open, about 3 minutes; discard any mussels that don’t open. Turn off the heat and toss in the parsley and mix well. Transfer everything in deep serving bowls and serve with crusty bread.

      Related post/s:
      Buy one of my favorite rosés this season

    • Watermelon Salad with Farro

      I’m not going to take credit for this easy summer watermelon recipe. Thanks Mark Bittman, I now prefer ricotta salata over feta cheese!

      Ingredients:
      3 cups watermelon, deseeded, cubed
      2 cups of farro
      1 small red onion, thinly sliced
      ricotta salata cheese, crumbled
      a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
      olive oil
      lemon juice
      salt, pepper

      1. Cook farro in boiling water for about 15 minutes, or until farro is chewy. Drain and let sit to cool. Fluff with a fork.
      2. In a large bowl combine all the solid ingredients and toss gently. Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss and serve.

    • Day 2 in Bhutan: Sunday Market in Paro and Namsiling Valley

      We spent our first full morning at the Paro Sunday Market where we joined the locals selling and buying different kinds of produce. We just had breakfast in our hotel, but as soon as I saw one of the sellers eating momos with chile sauce, I asked Dorji where we could buy them. He eventually found the lady selling the Bhutanese dumplings in a plastic bucket and we bought 5 pieces stuffed with cabbage and beef. My numb lips finally understood what kind of spice Bhutanese cuisine uses: Sichuan peppers!

      Throughout our walk in the market, we also bought fried dumplings, vegetable fritters, and a papadum-like chip–everything dipped in the same chile sauce. I think Dorji immediately realized what kind of tourists he was dealing with.

      We started our drive towards the east and made a stop at Namsiling Valley and hiked along a rice field to visit an old temple. Unfortunately, the caretaker was not there but it was still a beautiful morning to walk off all the food we ate under the sun, sweat a little and cross a bridge with prayer flags.

      Related article/s:
      Photos of the Paro Sunday Market on Flickr
      Photos of Namsiling, Bhutan on Flickr
      I highly recommend using Smile Bhutan as your guide

    • Ippudo Westside

      321 West 51st Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues
      $115 for 2 people, with drinks, with tip
      212/974.2500
      ♥ ♥

      Ippudo without the wait? You don’t say! We stopped by the new Ippudo in Hell’s Kitchen during their soft opening week and were whisked upstairs to sit in front of the still-unused kitchen covered in subway tiles. The space will remind you more of Momofuku rather than Ippudo East Village because it’s brighter and lighter inside.

      It was quite hot outside, so we decided to nosh on appetizers and try as many dishes as we could and just split a bowl of ramen for our main course. The Hirata steamed buns filled with eggplant and eringi mushrooms were really good. I loved the subtle crunch from the tempura (or was it panko?). The beer-battered fried chicken came with blistered shishito peppers and were probably the best appetizer on the menu. We weren’t as thrilled with the zucchini-potato dish because they were unexciting compared to their other tastier options.

      For our ramen, we opted for the Shiromaru Hakata Classic, a tonkotsu soup noodle with pork loin chashu and sesame kikurage mushrooms, plus additional toppings of mustard leaves and pork belly. True to Ippudo style, the noodles were cooked perfectly: tender and just the right amount of bite and chew; the broth so satisfyingly rich and full.

      Don’t wait until it gets cooler outside to make your trip uptown. You’ll be waiting in line soon!

    • Costata

      206 Spring Street between Sixth Avenue and Sullivan Street
      $155 for 2 people, with drinks, with tip
      212/334.3320
      ♥ ♥ ♥

      Matt wanted to buy me dinner while he was in town, so naturally I dragged him to the newest Michael White restaurant I can’t afford. It was 10pm and I was a bit worried that they wouldn’t let us in because kitchens usually close at that time. We walked in and they sat us right away. Our cocktails were pretty amazing and because we skipped on the steak (next time someone else wants to pay for dinner, promise!), the food came pretty fast.

      While we waited, they brought out the fresh bread with this little guy on the table: lard in olive oil. It’s a heart attack-inducing treat that we couldn’t stop eating.

      My favorite were the crudo razor clams marinated with fennel and small pieces of soppressata. At $22 for 3 pieces though, they’re hard to swallow. I would gladly eat 10 more of them if I can afford them.

      The casarecci pasta al nero was to die for. I’ve had squid ink pasta before, but they’ve usually been spaghetti with the squid ink in the sauce. These look like cute little leeches–sorry to say–served with shrimp and cuttlefish with a wonderful chile kick. I’m still dreaming about this dish.

      And as if we weren’t full enough, we couldn’t help but order my favorite pasta, the cavatelli, smothered in a super-rich braised oxtail stew. If I could coddle a bowl of this during rainy days with a bold glass of red wine, I would be a happy human being.

      Michael White restaurants never disappoint when you want really refined Italian food. Go when you’re on someone else’s tab or celebrating a milestone because it’s definitely pricey for just a regular weeknight.

    • Day 1 in Bhutan: Rinpung Dzong and the National Museum in Paro

      After a long flight from New York to Dubai and a brief stop in Kathmandu, Nepal, we boarded a small plane to Bhutan. We were on a small propeller plane and saw Mount Everest. It’s the world’s highest mountain at 29,029 feet and it’s that black one towards the left. The view blew every Instagram photo anyone has ever taken from a seat of a plane:

      The light was beautiful in Bhutan that it was difficult not to keep snapping photos. We saw a lot of this kind of view: mountain ranges in different layers and shades just like how a painting would depict them.

      In Paro, we met our guide and driver for the duration of our trip: Dorji and Karma. They were wearing the traditional dress for men called gho and they welcomed us with silk saffron scarves just like how Hawaiians welcome their guests with leis. (The saffron color is the Theravada Buddhist monk color, the oldest surviving branch of Buddhism.) I might have drank the Kool-Aid early, but I swear I instantly felt some kind of peace as soon as that happened. The moment reminded me of when I was welcomed the same way in Luang Prabang in Laos, but this time, I was glad to be traveling with friends and not solo.

      After we stopped for tea at a local shop in Paro, we drove to our first dzong, the Rinpung Dzong, a fortress architecture that now serves as both administrative and religious building to the district. The conch-shaped watch tower now-museum was under construction after the 2010 earthquake, so we went inside the temporary space across the alley instead.

      One of the many giant prayer wheels we spun on our trip:

      And the ubiquitous prayer flags:

      In the beginning I made wishes for myself, but as our trip progressed, I found myself wishing good things for my family and friends; I found myself sharing the fortune I had in being in the Kingdom of Bhutan. It sounds cliché, but this trip was very enlightening for me.

      Related article/s:
      Photos of the National Museum of Bhutan on Flickr
      Up in the Air photos from Nepal to Bhutan on Flickr
      I highly recommend using Smile Bhutan as your guide

    • Tanoshi Sushi

      1372 York Avenue between East 73rd and 74th Streets
      $100 each for 5 people, omakase with 3 shared appetizers, with tip; BYOB
      646/727.9056
      ♥ ♥ ♥

      You know when a restaurant review comes out and it fucks it up for everyone else? This is it.

    • Betony

      41 West 57th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
      $120 each for 2 people, with drinks, with tip
      212/465.2400
      ♥ ♥ ♥

      The disclaimer here is that I know someone in the kitchen at Betony. I met Josh in 2008 when I went to the Spotted Pig for Fergus Henderson’s visit from the UK. Josh came all the way by bus from Delaware just to eat the chef’s food and we immediately got along and shared our plates. Since then, he’s worked in several other restaurants and we’ve shared more than just pig’s face to eat. It was a given that I would support him at his latest gig even if Betony was not started by his old friends from Eleven Madison Park.

      Betony brings the food experience back to basics, or at least it makes you feel like you’re eating very simple dishes. Josh’s marinated trout roe with cucumber looks just like that: trout roe served on a rice cracker, but I found out later that the puffed rice was made from scratch, the roe was marinated in dashi and the cucumber was a bavarois using the cucumber juice that was turned into a fluid gel.

      The shellfish ragout is one of their best dishes. The lobster with the season’s peas was decadent, and the cured pink snapper subtle and clean.

      Eleven Madison Park won all those awards not because of how fancy their food was but because of how simple they made everything look. It’s the quiet simplicity that will make Betony successful; New York City diners will just have to make room for more excellence.