We were able to encounter some and this time, we encountered some good eats going around Jersey, NYC and Atlantic City! I just came back from having a delicious slice of chipotle pizza in Fort Lee. CHIPOTLE PIZZA! It had cheese, rice, roasted red peppers and a creamy cajun sauce drizzled over it. It was some of the best pizza I ever had! Thank you, Julia~
So now that we've licked our chops, let's start with fish in NYC. A few weeks ago at Saigon Grill, we went out with our friends Mihae and Paul for a birthday party and grabbed a bite to eat in the city. We ordered some stir fry noodles, spicy coconut mlik soup, some beef cubes and a whole deep fried seabass with sweet and spicy sauce. The names are quite interesting : Bun Xao, La Sa Ga and Bao Loc Loc are and the only name I can't remember was the highlight of the night. That's not a problem because the fish can easily be ordered simply by describing it. For those faint at heart, this dish is NOT for you, but for those who don't mind intense looking dishes and love soft, flaky, deep fried fish covered in sweet and spicy sauce, this is for you! A whole sea bass is deep fried and has has cherries for eyes making it look intriguingly scary! The eyes serve more purpose than to make the fish look scary though. They're good indicators of the location of the best meat. Just under the eyes are the fishs' cheeks and the cheek has the most tender morsels of meat. If you are a man, ALL the cheek meat is meant to be given to your significant other. ;) Dark picture! Hopefully you can see us lurking in the dark.
At the end of the meal, the guys put a taro chip in the fish's mouth. It looks like a fish chillin' in a dark lounge doing shady things. *Puff Puff*
We walked over to Whole Foods and picked up some honey wafers and some Tahitian Vanilla ice cream. The honey wafers had thin chewy caramel layer that gave it a perfect little resistance. It also comes in Hazelnut flavor. Our ice cream was good and it came in a curious container. It looks like a container of face cream! We put scoops of the Tahitian Vanilla ice cream onto the honey wafers and scarfed it down. Saved a few bucks this way and had plenty of dessert for four. :)
Moving on, but back to fish, we gave the striper bass from last week another try since we had plenty left. We tried to make something using things left in our fridge. It was still in the ginger soy glaze like last time, but this time, I took the idea of the Crostini and fused it with the fish, adding a little over-easy egg on top as well. I saw this on a the foodnetwork where they put it over something that was fried. The egg was good on the "crostini", but it didn't make a big presence in taste because the ginger soy glaze was strong and countered it. I think the over-easy egg may be something that just compilments the fried stuff. In between the egg and fish, we added some thinly sliced greens and it ended up looking like this:
Note: crostinis are usually smaller in size.
Note: husband patiently waiting to eat while I photograph his food.
It turned out alright, but a more successful attempt was made by my friend Shirley. She added asparagus for her side and tapped into her artsy side and served it with a simple and elegant presentation. It made the fish look absolutely delicious! See the white flakiness of the fish in the middle?
And last weekend, Kee and I had the privilege of going over to my friends Anna and Mitch's house. Anna did it again. She floor us with her cooking! Mussels in white wine sauce, penne alla vodka and chick parm! We were stuffed and happy. :)
Hats off to our chefs Shirley and Anna! :)
ATLANTIC CITY
Kee and I went to Atlantic city for some good seafood and fun to celebrate our 26 months of dating. Some of you may have already seen the pictures we posted, but the oysters and food at Docks and crabcakes at Phillips seafood were worth mentiong again. It was so delicious!
Docks Oyster House
www.docksoysterhouse.com
2405 Atlantic Avenue
Atlantic City, NJ 08401-6630
(609) 345-0092
You must try the Oysters. They have 8 different kinds!
Phillips Seafood
One Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic City, NJ 08401
You must try the crabcakes. Crab cake stuff't with no filling.
Drool factor level 10
Korean Kitchen
Now into the Korean kitchen! I tried a Korean Dish that has very simple ingredients, but extremely nutritious. It's good for energy and is an excellent recovery food from sickness and colds. What is this super food? Sullungtang!
Sullungtang is made by boiling ox bones for a VERY long time to get the goodness out of the marrow of the bones. Essentially, this is marrow soup. If you've had bone marrow, you know it's YUM. If you are short of patience when it comes to food, head to Broad Avenue to get you a steaming bowl in 10 minutes or less,otherwise, prepare yourself for a chunk of time in the waiting room as your bones get doctored up.
Finding the recipe for this was pretty difficult, but I found one that worked out ok. It called for mixing beef brisket broth along with the broth from the bones. I found that it diluted the creamy whiteness of the broth that comes for the ox bones so it's better without mixing the two broths. The recipe below doesn't mix the two. With all the run around that it required trying to find a working recipe, here it is for you. :)
(Thursday, May 13, 2010 )
Gooooood eatin' mates! Have you been experiencing culinary goodness? :)
We were able to encounter some and this time, we encountered some good eats going around Jersey, NYC and Atlantic City! I just came back from having a delicious slice of chipotle pizza in Fort Lee. CHIPOTLE PIZZA! It had cheese, rice, roasted red peppers and a creamy cajun sauce drizzled over it. It was some of the best pizza I ever had! Thank you, Julia~
So now that we've licked our chops, let's start with fish in NYC. A few weeks ago at Saigon Grill, we went out with our friends Mihae and Paul for a birthday party and grabbed a bite to eat in the city. We ordered some stir fry noodles, spicy coconut mlik soup, some beef cubes and a whole deep fried seabass with sweet and spicy sauce. The names are quite interesting : Bun Xao, La Sa Ga and Bao Loc Loc are and the only name I can't remember was the highlight of the night. That's not a problem because the fish can easily be ordered simply by describing it. For those faint at heart, this dish is NOT for you, but for those who don't mind intense looking dishes and love soft, flaky, deep fried fish covered in sweet and spicy sauce, this is for you! A whole sea bass is deep fried and has has cherries for eyes making it look intriguingly scary! The eyes serve more purpose than to make the fish look scary though. They're good indicators of the location of the best meat. Just under the eyes are the fishs' cheeks and the cheek has the most tender morsels of meat. If you are a man, ALL the cheek meat is meant to be given to your significant other. ;) Dark picture! Hopefully you can see us lurking in the dark.
At the end of the meal, the guys put a taro chip in the fish's mouth. It looks like a fish chillin' in a dark lounge doing shady things. *Puff Puff*
We walked over to Whole Foods and picked up some honey wafers and some Tahitian Vanilla ice cream. The honey wafers had thin chewy caramel layer that gave it a perfect little resistance. It also comes in Hazelnut flavor. Our ice cream was good and it came in a curious container. It looks like a container of face cream! We put scoops of the Tahitian Vanilla ice cream onto the honey wafers and scarfed it down. Saved a few bucks this way and had plenty of dessert for four. :)
Moving on, but back to fish, we gave the striper bass from last week another try since we had plenty left. We tried to make something using things left in our fridge. It was still in the ginger soy glaze like last time, but this time, I took the idea of the Crostini and fused it with the fish, adding a little over-easy egg on top as well. I saw this on a the foodnetwork where they put it over something that was fried. The egg was good on the "crostini", but it didn't make a big presence in taste because the ginger soy glaze was strong and countered it. I think the over-easy egg may be something that just compilments the fried stuff. In between the egg and fish, we added some thinly sliced greens and it ended up looking like this:
Note: crostinis are usually smaller in size.
Note: husband patiently waiting to eat while I photograph his food.
It turned out alright, but a more successful attempt was made by my friend Shirley. She added asparagus for her side and tapped into her artsy side and served it with a simple and elegant presentation. It made the fish look absolutely delicious! See the white flakiness of the fish in the middle?
And last weekend, Kee and I had the privilege of going over to my friends Anna and Mitch's house. Anna did it again. She floor us with her cooking! Mussels in white wine sauce, penne alla vodka and chick parm! We were stuffed and happy. :)
Sul Lung Tang:
Ingredients:
8 cups of water
1/2 lb brisket ( if you have a meat lover in your house like us, up it to 1lb!)
8 large ox bones (you can find them at your local hanareum. Not expensive at all)
4 cloves of garlic ( put more)
4 leeks
rice noodles
sea salt
The large bones look like this and they have a lot of marrow on the inside. I took the picture after 13 hours.
Seasalt:
Rice noodles
beef brisket:
1. bring a pot of water to a boil and add the brisket.(separate from 8 cups above) Add enough water to cover the brisket.
2. Once boiling, reduce the flame to simmer and let it heat for 3 hours.
3. Separate the broth from the brisket. Let the brisket cool for an hour and slice thinly and save.
4. Save the beef broth for future use in other dishes.
Bone soup:
1. Soak the beef bones for 30 minutes and rinse well
2. Put beef bones in a big pot with cold water and bring to a boil for about 45 minutes
3. Throw out this broth (should be very murky)
4. Rinse bones and bring them to a boil with clean water for several hours (i boiled for13 hours on simmer once it boiled. Thank you all utilities paid house!)
5. Add garlic, leeks, and onions to the soup
6. Continue to let it boil, while adding water at the same time
7. Once it has a snowy white color, let the broth cool
8. Put the broth into the fridge for a 1-2 hours
9. Trim the layer of fat on top
10. Boil some rice noodles for serving.
10. Serve with salt, pepper, and scallions. Add 4-5 thinly sliced brisket from above and serve. Add the rice noodles and you can add rice as well. Kimchi goes excellent with Sullungtang.
And along side our korean dishes, I experimented with some banchan from leftover ingredients in our fridge that were still good. It's wasteful to throw away food that's perfectly good! I made a radish kimchi, soy bean sprout banchan and a zippo banchan. Zippo ("jee-puh") is cuttlefish and it's usually eaten after heating it over the oven flame with beer and nuts as a snack. Have you ever seen a cuttlefish? It moves by rippling the fin around the back of it's body! It's so cute!... until it starts moving around its mangy tentacles!
We had some in our freezer and since it's a chewy and sweet texture, I felt that I could try something a little different with added creativity. I remember my mom made white, thin strips of squid into a spicy and sweet banchan and the texture and taste of the thin, squid strips share some similarities with zippo. I trim the zippo down to squares, and made a red pepper paste based banchan. A version of the very same TV show CHOP'T in my kitchen where the chefs are given certain ingredients and they have to make a dish! Creativity is useful in the kitchen.
Pah hearts appear in your soup once in a while if you look closely and use your imagination!
and some other good eats happening in the kitchen that many of you have probably had are:
Gamjah Tang
and pork ribs with Salt Lick BBQ sauce from Texas!
and not so yummy: my hubs and I were doing this three day diet where we had to follow a menu. It was a lot of veggies and tuna! You can make a good attempt at making it look more appetizing, but how exciting can vegetables be without any kind of sauce? An attempt:
Finally, back to real food and to finish with dessert, I tried some hodduk! Hodduk is a Korean flat bready cake with brown sugar and sesame seed filling in the middle.
It is best served warm and right off the pan!
Well that's it for today. We're off to Puerto Rico tomorrow so we'll definitely have some unique food reports for next time!
Au revoir and as always, Bon Appetite!
Y
