Chicken Chow Fun, for Dad, because of Dad

5 years ago, I wrote this post, called "Dad." It was the five year anniversary of my dad dying, and so I made a pilgrimage to Chinatown and tried to recreate a dish I hadn't had the sense to learn from him, because I hadn't thought I'd need to.

5 years later, my nephew was here to eat it with us, and this time I'll write it down so that if he ever wants to make it, it's here in cyber space for him. Hell, he already loves to read cookbooks and he's only 18 months old.

1. Head to Chinatown via Vanessa's dumplings on Eldridge, where for a buck you can get 4 fried pork and chive dumplings.
2. Stop and watch the bike polo tournament on Chrystie and eat out of your styrofoam container.
3. Look for the rice noodle ladies. For a while.
4. Find them at Grand and Bowery on the Northeast corner and buy 1 bag of rice noodles for a buck and a bag of bean sprouts for 50 cents. Next door buy ginger, scallions, snow peas, garlic, onions.
5. Buy Murrays chicken thighs at Gourmet Garage.
6. Trim chicken into skinless chunks.
7. In a wok, heat up 2 tbsp canola oil.
8. Cook chicken pieces until cooked through, remove from wok.
9. Fry up some sliced half-moon-shaped onions; add minced garlic, add minced ginger.
10. Add a bunch of cleaned and trimmed snow peas, then a few tbsp soy sauce.
11. add in sliced scallions, rice noodles, more soy sauce.
12. Add chicken and bean sprouts, keep tossing until all is well coated.
13. Forget to take a picture; or if you want to do this whole recipe one better than me, you could actually remember to take a picture. That'd be awesome.

This dish is so insanely good. I want to say, for the record, that I appreciated the hell out of it, even when my Dad was alive, and that I appreciated the hell out of him, too.

Allora: Dad, for you, because of you.

Eating in: not so hard

A week ago I wrote about Cathy Erway’s book The Art of Eating In and about HuffPost’s challenge to its readers to like Cathy did and eat in for one week. So, here goes my progress report, day 4.

For me—as for many of my colleagues—this isn’t so very different from a regular week. I usually make my lunch at least 3 days, if not all 5 workdays. Although lunch eats in DUMBO are better than in some neighborhoods, stuff I can make at home will almost always be better. It seems to be merely a matter of organization/planning, and making the time to prepare something. True, I’ve been eating kale salad for four days running, but it did have blood oranges and avocado on top, and those sweet potatoes I baked in the office toaster oven sure made the office smell good.

On Monday, Anna Lappe came to our office and wrote this lovely piece about the merits of eating in and how it made her lunch date with Josh (Viertel) more fun and more delicious.

I myself found that the challenge got me:
Eating at home with a friend in a very casual and potluck-y way that made both of us think: why don’t we do this more often?
Using up food in my fridge and not throwing out as much as I sometimes do (i.e. no produce was harmed/tossed in the making of this experiment)
Eating less
Spending less money

The bog trick will be the weekend, which is often structured around dinners and brunches and the like. Wish me luck.

Not Eating Out in NY

Day 1:

Not only have I decided to follow the HuffPost's challenge to eat in for one week, I have also decided to try to eat healthier (every once in a while I must remind myself not to eat every single meal as though it were my last). Hence the baked sweet potato and kale/citrus salad I had for lunch. One hour later I felt like gnawing off my own fist.

Note to self: tomorrow, pack protein.

The Art of Eating In

My latest, via the Huffington Post.

Apparently I am going to avoid restaurant eating for one whole week. Easy? Not sure yet. Reports will follow.

Biscuits, 2 ways

Every few months I have the ladies over for dinner. I know lots of ladies, but for whatever reason, this group--mes soeurs--are called "the ladies." Making a nice home cooked meal is how I lure them to my apartment. "Bring wine," I say, and they do. Sometimes they bring their boyfriend/fiance/husband type person, and this is also nice. We have had these gatherings all over this city: in the East Village, in Cobble Hill, and here in UPS depot land (I have also supped with them in Los Angeles, Paris, Santa Fe, North Captiva and beyond but my dinner parties have remained in NYC).

Last weekend we gathered for chicken pot pie, something I hadn't made since an avant garde restaurant menu a couple of years back. After much hunting I found the red ribbon bookmark in The New Joy of Cooking right where I had left it--can you tell I don't use that cookbook much?

I topped it with buttermilk biscuits, a recipe torn out from an old Food and Wine magazine. I did the recipe wrong but liked what I came up with. They're insanely buttery and if you manage not to overwork them, they are flaky and light.

A few days later I made use of the remaining buttermilk and some Mountainview Farms bacon, plucked from the freezer, and made bacon shallot buttermilk biscuits for the 4th annual meat lovers an

d chocolate lovers potluck at my office.

Buttery Biscuits

2 1/4 cups all purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (that's 10 tbsp. yup, you read correctly), chilled and cut into thick slices

1 cup buttermilk, chilled

Preheat oven to 425

whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt

cut the butter into the flour using two knives or this cool implement I have that I don't even know the name for

stir in buttermilk until dough is just moistened

dust a work surface with flour; make sure it's cat hair free

turn the dough out onto the surface and knead 2-3 times

pat it into a disk, about 1/2 inch thick

use a biscuit cutter, or the rim of a glass and cut out circles

put the biscuits on a baking sheet and sprinkle with Maldon sea salt

bake for 20 minutes, until golden

[to make the bacon ones, cut your bacon into small pieces, then fry it up, not too much since it will go in the oven later; saute minced shallot in the bacon fat; let both bacon and shallot cool; when you stir in buttermilk to the dough, also toss in bacon and shallots]

Savory Rice Krispie Treats

Although we call it the avant garde restaurant, we've not gone terribly avant garde with the food. UNTIL NOW.

Behold ye: savory rice krispie treats as passed hors d'ouevres. A little snooping on the internets revealed I am not the first person to have this idea. Mainly, I was worried about the marshmallows--would they be so sweet that no amount of savory introductions could balance them out? According to what I read, no, this is not a problem. I stole some ideas, for sure, and settled upon two versions to try today.

I have named them Vaguely Asian Savory Rice Krispie Treats and Crunchy Salty Savory Rice Krispie Treats.

C.S.S.R.K.:

melt 2 T butter in a medium sized saucepan

sprinkle a pinch of turmeric in as it melts

once it's all melted add 2 cups mini marshmallows

stir until they melt

add 1 tsp garlic powder

then 3 cups 365 brand Brown Rice Crisps (or the trad'l Kellogg's Rice Krispies)

then 2 cups crushed salt and pepper potato chips

stir, then press out into a brownie pan, pressing down and flattening

then sprinkle generously with paprika

V.A.S.R.K.:

Same as above but skip the turmeric

once marshmallows and butter are fully melted add one TBSP soy sauce, 1TBSP sesame oil and 1 tsp garlic powder

then 3 cups of the cereal and 3TBSP chopped roasted salted peanuts and two chopped scallions (not the white part)

stir, then press out into a brownie pan, pressing down and flattening

then sprinkle generously with ground ginger

I think these things might rock, in a weird kind of way.

Come Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant next weekend and checkitout for yourself!

post-game update: we went with the V.A.S.R.K. and they were enjoyed by most, if not all. P.L. declared them "gross" but then couldn't stop eating them saying they were "weirdly addictive."

52 Small Bites

The brilliant Amy has a new blog called "52 Bites; a site to help change the way you eat." She, along with everyone else I know, recently moved down South and has been exploring how to eat fresh and local on a budget, in a place that isn't totally obsessed with fresh and local like her old home (Seattle) was.

It's a nuts and bolts guide and breaks down menu planing in a way I find really helpful. I myself go to the farmers market, grab random things that look tasty, then scramble about to turn them into meals. I shop at the supermarket haphazardly and overwhelmed and then do crazy blog-fueled experiments like "Eating down my larder."

Amy is here to help.

As she describes the new venture: "Weekly advice on changing the way you eat over the course of a year. Healthier, cleaner, kinder, better - and without breaking the bank."

Doing things a little bit weird

This summer I learned to ride a bike.  Most regular folks learn to do this in childhood and then spend their days as a youngster, tween, teen etc. tooling around the neighborhood on their hoopties, getting into trouble and feeling the freedom that comes with having their own set of wheels.

What was I waiting for?  It turns out that not only is it easy but it's crazy fun.  I remember I finally tried a mango when I was 21 years old and I couldn't stop kicking myself for waiting so long.  All those years of missed mango eating! Sheesh!

Here I am again, whooping it up on the bike and kicking myself at the same time. 34.5 missed years of bike riding! I might be the stupidest person I know. Or, I guess I just do things a little bit weird.

A BLT is a classic, but because I guess I like to do things a little weird, tonight I made something I'll call:

BLT in a bowl

• Several varieties (different colors, shapes, sizes) of summer tomatoes
  
• Fresh basil leaves
  
• Bacon
  
• Summer corn
  
• oil
  
• baslamic vinegar
  
• salt
  
• pepper
  

Cut up tomatoes and dress with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper

Cook the corn and scrape the kernels from the cob

Rinse and then chiffonade the basil leaves

Fry up thick cut bacon (or, like me, random bacon chunks left over from sliced bacon, sold by Flying Pigs Farm) and slice it up

Toss everything together

Eat with a spoon

Preserving the Dying Art of Cooking

My latest on the Huffington Post.  

Most of the comments are from people who somehow think that I don't know how to cook and are berating me for it.  Which is confusing, since, um, I am saying the exact opposite in the post.