Thanksgiving Showdown

Class have been drawing to a close and things have been getting busy, so It's been a while since I've posted something. I'll try and catch up with some things I noted over the past few weeks as soon as I can. To start things off, here's quick look at what was on my Thanksgiving menu this year.


To start the day, I popped open my cans of foie gras and duck rillette. I had bought these on a goose/duck farm when I was in France this summer and had been saving them for a special occasion. I also tried to keep it simple since I had a whole dinner to worry about as well. I served them with melba toast and topped the rillette with some cornichons. Everything was great - rich, fatty, and very ducky...



I've heard so much about Turducken (a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey) that I needed to try it just once. Combining all those meats into one could only lead to ultimate poultry bliss. Being in New York though, Turduckens weren't available at your local grocery store. Luckily, I had found CajunGrocer.com, which sells and ships frozen Turduckens directly to your door. The website was featured on Food Network and the Wall Street Journal. Turduckens they have come in two sizes of pure awesomeness - 15 lbs and 4 lbs (this one is just a turkey breast with duck and chicken meat stuffed inside). Of course, we got the 15 lbs bird(s).


After 7 hours of cooking, the bird was ready and we were ready to eat. The skin had an amazing brown color to it and was extremely savory. The meat was very tasty, but I'm not sure if I really would classify it as a giant improvement over normal roast turkey. At least I can say I've had it and next year I can just go back to normal turkey to make things easier. Other menu items included a sausage dressing (seen above), truffle mashed potatoes and green beans with country ham. Overall, a very satisfying meal with a mountain of leftovers (just as it should be).



For dessert, the easy way out would have been to just buy a pumpkin pie. This year I tried to challenge myself to make everything (from scratch too). Also, I thought why have pumpkin pie when you can have pumpkin cheesecake. The recipe I used was a variation of a Paula Deen recipe (found here) in that I substituted the graham cracker crust for a crust made with ginger cookies (see my earlier post on ginger cookies for the recipe). This by far I think was the star of the night. The filling came out creamy and light; the crust was sweet and crispy. It was a great dessert full of fall flavors (if I do say so myself) and a perfect way to end a great meal.

The Evolution of Coke

I stumbled across this image on Buzzfeed showing the history of the Coke bottle. I just thought that it was really interesting to see how the bottle shapes and Coke logos have changed throughout the years. As you can see, the first Coke bottle doesn't even have any of the signature Coke red on it.

The History of Coke Bottles (Buzzfeed)

Deep Fried Fish Still Alive

This is just crazy. Apparently in China, they can deep fry a fish and serve it all while keeping it alive and kicking. In the video, the person repeatedly pokes the fish with his chopsticks to show that it is still alive. He then proceeds to take a couple of bites from the fish's body. I'm no vegetarian or advocate for animal rights, but I don't know if I could ever bring myself to eat something like this.

Top Ads of the Decade

AdWeekMedia has released their top choices for best commercials of the decade. Nominees include iconic spots like the Nike "Freestyle" and the Budweiser "Wassup" ads. Part of the Best of the 2000s feature, AdWeekMedia will be selecting the best marketing, advertising and media performances over the last ten years. While the winners will be announced in December still, you can go vote for your favorite commercial (as well as a slew of other categories) at Bestofthe2000s.com.

Naturally, some of the nominees include commercials from some of the biggest names in the food industry - Coke, Pepsi, Skittles, Cadbury and so on. From the list, I've chosen my own personal top 3 food and beverage related ads (funny though that all my choices ended up being for beverages). What do you guys think? Is there another food-realted ad nominated that deserves to be in the top 3 or are there any other food-related ads that you think got snubbed from the list of nominations?





As an honorable mention, I wanted to include this Coke ad in the top 3 but I figured that I stick to one ad per advertiser. Just goes to show how awesome some of the Coke ads were these past ten years.


See all nominees for Commercial of the Decade (Non-Superbowl) here.
See all nominees for Superbowl Spot of the Decade here.

Eating In: Ginger Cookies

The holidays are right around the corner, so that means it's time to bake up some holiday goodness as well. My favorite holiday baked good recipe is for Ginger Cookies. I use a Paula Deen recipe, but I substitute the shortening for butter (because butter is always better). I like the recipe because it produces an extremely chewy cookie, but not in a way that makes it seem like the cookie is old and stale. Also, the molasses gives it a saltiness while still having the sweetness everyone wants.

The recipe can be accessed through the Food Network website.


On a side note, I recently purchased a pair of Silpat non-stick baking mats (seen in the picture above). I must say that these things are great. Not only do you not have to butter/PAM/wax paper your baking trays but the mats also seem to reduce the chances of burning the bottoms of your cookies. Because of that, it's easier to get nice thin cookies without getting them too crispy.

Street Meat: Biryani Cart

Another 2009 Vendy Award finalist and winner of the People's choice Vendy Award in 2008, Biryani Cart was definitely on my list for street vendors to try. Located on 46th and 6th, it's surrounded by a lot of competition in the immediate area (Jamiacan Dutchy, 53rd and 6th Halal, Kim's Aunt, etc). I went just after lunch and there was basically no line so no trouble getting my food.

My lunch that day was their Kati Rolls. They're made in 4 different styles, each one available with chicken or lamb and wrapped in chapati, an Indian bread that is chewy and and crisp at the same time. I sampled the King Koti Roll - a spicy chicken tikka marinated in yogurt and spices, and the Channai roll - a sweet and tangy roll made with a spicy Thai style chili sauce. You can get any two rolls for $6, which is a pretty good deal. While I must say that they were quite good, I'm not sure if it has won me over to being a repeat visitor. I still think I would choose Halal food over a Kati roll, but I guess that depends on my mood. In any case, you won't be disappointed if you decide to drop by.

Pamplona

A couple of weekends ago, I ate at Pamplona, a Spanish restaurant in the Flatiron district. To start, we had the Pan con Tomate with Jamon (pictured below). The bread was toasted nicely and the richness of the tomato combined with the ham reminded me of how good simple things really can be. As my main course, I had the Cochinillo (pictured above), which was confit of suckling pig with green leaf lettuce, shiitake mushrooms and an apple puree. Pork-anything is definitely my weakness and this pork dish was exceptional. The combination of the sweetness of the apple with the saltiness of the pork (especially the skin!) made the dish satisfying down to the last piece. My only qualm was that there wasn't enough sauce on the plate. My girlfriend had a Mahi-Mahi dish (the last picture below) that was good in its own right (I forget what exactly was in it since it was a special that night) - a good mixture of sour and salty, but I think the pork won that night. Simply put, I would order the pork again, but maybe not the Mahi-Mahi.

Overall, I would say that the experience was satisfying, but the service could have used a bit of improvement as there were times when we had to wait for a noticeable amount of time between courses and when trying to reach the attention of the waiters. With that said, I would still recommend going to Pamplona, but just remember to schedule more time for dinner.

Eating In: Thai Basil Chicken with Cashews

Over the weekend, I decided to make my mom's recipe for Thai Basil Chicken. Whenever I cook I like to make things that have lots of sauce and can easily be scaled up to a large amount so that I have leftovers for the rest of the week. This is my first attempt at writing a recipe, so I'm sure there are going to be some things that need work. Ingredients needed are as follows:

1 pound minced chicken thighs / ground chicken
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon lime juice
2 tablespoons vegetable / canola oil
1/3 cup unsalted roasted cashews
2 cloves of garlic (chopped)
basil (about a small handful of leaves)
black pepper



1. Start by heating 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a wok on medium heat.
2. Once the oil is hot, add the chicken. You can use either chicken thighs that have been minced or ground chicken if you want to save time. Chicken thighs will produce better flavor, but having to chop them up adds time to the process.
3. Cook the chicken until all of it appears to be cooked through.
4. Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. Also, keep any juices that collect in the pan as a result of cooking and set aside in a separate dish.
5. In the same pan on medium heat, add 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil and the garlic.
6. Cook the garlic until it starts to brown, then add the oyster sauce, fish sauce, sugar and lime juice and stir to mix all the components.
7. Depending on how saucy you want the dish to be, add some of the chicken juice set aside earlier to the pan (about 1-3 tablespoons should be fine). Water can be used as well.
8. Once the sauce starts to caramelize (gets thicker and starts to bubble), add the chicken and the cashews, and stir to coat with the sauce.
9. Add pepper to taste and cook for an additional 2 minutes.
10. Remove from heat. Add the basil and stir to combine.
11. Serve with steamed white rice.

Street Meat: Halal Food at 53rd & 6th

Probably the current most popular New York street food vendors at the moment, Halal food carts can be found all over the city. The most famous of which can be found on the corner of 53rd St and 6th Ave across from the Hilton and is aptly named 53rd and 6th. The cart is open from 7:30 - 4:00 AM each day, but there is an unaffiliated vendor (pictured below) there that is there during the day that is quite good as well. Every night the line for 53rd and 6th can easily stretch to over 20 people. In terms of food choices, I always get lamb over rice - lamb meat with lettuce and tomato over yellow rice generously covered in "white sauce".

Baoguette

Since my class schedule is primarily at night, I usually make it a point to grab some takeout on my way home for dinner. Last night, I was in the Cooper Union area since so I decided to pass by Baoguette Cafe, the sister restaurant to Michael Huynh's Baoguette in Murray Hill (pictured below), for some banh mi action. (For some reason, Baoguette Cafe and Baoguette have different websites, with the latter only listing the Murray location while the former listing both as well as a West Village location. Also, the Baoguette website allows for online orders, while the Cafe website doesn't. Very strange and confusing to say the least.)

I had the standard Baoguette (pictured above) - pork terrine, pate, pulled pork and fresh herbs all in a crisp baguette. As usual, it was extremely satisfying, a great mixture of savory, sweet, spicy and sour. You can't quite beat a mixture of three kinds of pork in a sandwich, especially for $5. I also had an order of Shrimp and Green Papaya Salad (pictured below). The papaya salad was basically the greens they had put in the Baoguette, but it was still light and refreshing as a compliment to my sandwich.

Fish dinner at Aquagrill in Soho

My girlfriend had a craving for some fish the other night, so we decided to try out Aquagrill. I had one of the specials of the night, Halibut with sun dried tomato gnocchi and a roasted garlic emulsion (pictured below). My girlfriend had the Miso-glazed Chilean sea bass with kimchi and wasabi-miso sauce (Pictured above). Both dishes were extremely flavorful but I would have to say that the sea bass was the winner, as the tartness of the kimchi balanced out the dish well.

Street Meat: The Jamaican Dutchy

I truly believe some of the best food you can get is on the street. Good street food should be satisfying (in way that you know is probably not good for you), but most of all it should be cheap.

I heard about The Jamaican Dutchy (corner of 51st and 7th ave) through its Vendy Award nomination this year and decided to give it a try. I got the Jerk Chicken Mini Meal (which I think is more than enough food for lunch) which cost $6.50. Although I think the plantain and rice that came with it wasn't that great, the chicken itself was extremely flavorful and spicy. More pictures below...

Bo Ssam at Momofuku

Last weekend, I celebrated my friend Mark's birthday at Momofuku Ssam Bar. The main purpose of going to Ssam Bar was to order the Bo Ssam - whole roasted pork butt, oysters, bibb lettuce, two kinds of kimchi and two sauces combined in any manner that pleases your taste buds.

I can't say I've been convinced that pork and oysters go well together, but the meal was simply amazing. More pics below...

Back From the Grave

I haven't updated this thing in ages, partly because I've been lazy and partly because I've been trying to figure out what the best format/perspective I should take for this blog. After some thought, I think that my writing is neither exceptionally eloquent or interesting for that matter, and I've decided to continue posting to the blog with much more images and much less text. I also just came from Europe so I have wealth of mouth watering pictures to share with everyone.

To start things off, here is a picture of the first meal I had on my trip to Europe, Mussels cooked in White Wine (which apparently should be Muscadet) and Creme Fraiche. Gotta love French cooking... a touch of butter or creme fraiche at the end makes everything taste beter.

The Red Bull Dog

What's the best way to get your fair share of beer, wine and liquor? How about a Red Bull Dog at Blockheads Mexican Diner. The drink basically consists of the following: Get a frozen margarita, add some sangria, then stick a Corona in it. The best part is that the entire thing only cost $7.50.

Skittles Shots

If you're growing tired of scarfing down Jell-O Shots, here's a new way to get your sweet fix while getting inebriated. Mix That Drink has a step-by-step tutorial, including pictures, on how to make Skittles-infused vodka. Aside from having some super sugary vodka on hand, I think the brightly colored bottles would be a visually interesting component for any bar. I would be careful though as drinking too much will probably make you not just taste, but see the rainbow as well.

Skittles Vodka Tutorial (Mix That Drink)