Storm King

Andrew and I took a bus to Storm King on Saturday to kick off my summer vacation. The place is pretty magical as is, but even more magical when you're with the Wiz (yeah, you can barf now). I don't think we could have had a better day in spite of some light rain and accidentally sloshing through some swampy grass.

Maya Lin created these huge grass waves, which were cool but a little underwhelming. I liked the models and sketches that were used in planning Wavefield. Totally minimal.



I packed stuff to make turkey wraps there so as to avoid eating soggy wraps. I used red pepper hummus instead of mayo. Andrew thinks mayonnaise is demon semen. We also packed some darling clementines. I can't believe we ate one and a half wraps each, a bag of bagel chips and a bag of goldfish. Such piggies.


If a tree falls...


The sculpture from Beetlejuice, yes!


Can't wait to go back!

Ca Hap + Goi Tom

Last Thursday, I had a few people over for dinner. There was no real occasion although it was sort of an end-of-school year hurrah for me. I made (or approximated) an oven-steamed striped bass moms used to make. I steamed it in foil since I didn't have any parchment paper along with some bean thread noodles and tree ear fungus. I seasoned it with a generous amount of soy sauce, some kosher salt and pepper, slices of fresh ginger and drizzled it with sesame seed oil. I served it with fresh green leaf lettuce, Chinese chives, sliced cucumber, and fresh mint leaves all wrapped up in rice paper. The nice thing about this meal is that it's interactive since people are wrapping their own rolls. I also made a red cabbage and mango salad with grilled shrimp. And Olivia also brought some cupcakes from sugar Sweet sunshine that were retardedly good. Her assortment included red velvet cake, strawberry (from fresh strawberries, in season!), and some yellow cake one. The strawberry seemed like everyone's favorite. It was a lovely and stomach-satisfying night.

Olivia thinks the salad is boss.


The Salad


Ca Hap aka Steamed Fish


Sugar Sweet Sunsheeeeeine!!!!

Fridays with Brandon

Brandon and I usually call each other on Fridays around 3. He can blow off early from work and I'm the only one who is done at 3. This last Friday we went to Sweetwater to have a late lunch. I like the burgers there because they serve them on English muffins. I had the lamb burger, which came with a watery yogurt sauce and an undercooked lentil salad. I'm usually not disappointed by the food there, but I think this guy's energy really fucked with the place. In case you were wondering, this is not Brandon.

Fat Campers: Arts & Crafts Table Edition

I hijacked one of Andrew's white t-shirts and started to make these fabric rosettes that I plan to affix to a t-shirt. I also plan to tie dye them, a favorite pastime of mine. Young and I tie-dyed together on one of his visits here. He tie-dyed and dyed just about everything he had packed in his suitcase. Needless to say, our color trip (refrain from making acid trip jokes, please) was a complete success. But I digress. I need more practice making these. Right now one appears to me like a butt hole (bottom-ha ha) and the other (top) a vagina (or an oyster?). They were very easy to make and fun fun fun. I experimented a little between the first one (butt hole) and second (vagina). I see a summer full of obsessive flower making. Lord knows I will have plenty of time as school lets out on Friday. Wow, lots of parentheses.

Peanut butter Nutella shake

Those who know me know that I have a massive sweet tooth. Usually I love pastries with some kind of sugar on top or inside or around it. But sometimes, I just don't want to chew. That's when a milkshake comes in handy.

My years of working as a server at Johnny Rockets has taught me one thing: vanilla ice cream is the key to a good milkshake. If you want a chocolate shake, start with vanilla ice cream and add some Hersey's syrup. If you want a strawberry shake, add some real strawberries in syrup. There's no excuse for a bad shake.

Tonight Patrick wanted a milkshake, so I had him to get the ingredients at the store (with MY money). We got milk, peanut butter, and vanilla ice cream. I had some Nutella laying around, so I decided to use that as well.

Measurements are as follows:

Splash of milk (not too much or else it'll be too runny)
2-3 big scoops of ice cream
1 heaping tablespoon of peanut butter
1 heaping tablespoon of Nutella

If you have a milkshake machine, use it. If not, you can use a blender instead. Pour in the milk, add peanut butter and Nutella (if you don't have Nutella, just double the peanut butter). Then put in the ice cream. Blend on a lowish setting until everything is smooth. Make sure you poke the mix with a spoon to make sure all the chunks of ice cream is blended. Pour into a glass and enjoy.


The ingredients


Yum

worst food blogger ever

It's not as though I lack content as I have to eat multiple times a day--I just keep forgetting that I have a food blog now. And by the time I remember again that I have a food blog, I've already eaten the thing I want to take a photo of. Such was the case today.

So there's this new Vietnamese Banh Mi place that opened recently in Williamsburg that I've been curious about, and tonight Andrew came home with two sammies for us. He got me the classic and himself the bbq'd pork. They mixed up the sandwiches, and we weren't paying attention to what we were eating until we had finished our first halves, so we ended up getting to try both. Our review: not impressed. There's something Vietnamese banh mi places can't seem to get right in New York, which is also the most important component: the bread! (whoa, lots of colon use.) The bread was doughy and chewy, not light and airy with a crispy crust that hurts the roof of your mouth. They skimped on the meat in both, which in the case of the bbq'd pork was probably a good idea. The bbq'd pork was bland and gristly and fatty.The cold cuts in the classic were sliced way too thin. Oh, and the pate was the faintest smear. And what's with NY banh mi places not pickling daikon? Andrew asked for spicy, but the jalapenos were no where to be found. I guess the cucumber was good...

I always miss the banh mi in San Jose. I was always torn between Dakao and the one on Tully road right the 101. (Help me out, Young. Was it Huong Lan?) The sanwiches were always so cheap. When I moved a few years ago, they were still $1.50. In NY they range from $4 to $8, some fancy place even charges $12! But the best was how these places also carried so many other goodies, like banh cuon, goi cuon, or nem chua.

maybe it's not too late to open a banh mi place of my own.

coming soon (with pics and if i remember): full review of other banh mi places in williamsburg, including (full disclosure coming up) my dear friend an's over at Bep. There's been a weird proliferation in new york recently. just read this article in the new york times.

Vietnamese food with a Vietnamese friend

I went to San Jose to drop off a car I borrowed to go camping last weekend. While I was there, Eugene called and asked if I wanted to go to Denny's with him for a late lunch. Of course, I said. I love places like Denny's. I know the food's gonna be crap, but I love the chain restaurantiness of it.

So we're at Denny's (the one on S. Bascom right across the street from where Uyen used to live) and it's 3pm, so not very busy at all. If you've been to a Denny's before, you won't be surprised that we didn't get served for a long while. During this time, Eugene told me about this Vietnamese restaurant he really likes and we both got to wishing we had chosen Vietnamese instead. So I convinced Eugene to drive downtown to the other restaurant instead. Meanwhile, no one has come to our table yet so it made it that much easier to get up and leave. Also, one of the three girls in the booth next to us was on the phone talking about how they're eating at Denny's right now and are going to a pool party right after and then go dancing after that. WOOOOOOOO!

Anyway, I'm glad we got Vietnamese instead because I LOVE PHO. Eugene got some weird dish where the pho noodles were deep fried and the sauce and veggies on it were more Chinese in texture and flavor than Vietnamese. Whatever Catfish wants, I guess. FYI, the restaurant, Dac Phuc, made their own hot sauce which is really, really hot. Another FYI, I went to Johnny Rockets afterwards and got a strawberry shake.

Here are the pictures.


Pho before.


Pho after. Notice how dark the broth got. It's a mixture of too much hoisin sauce and too much of the really, really hot hot sauce.


And then there's Eugene/Catfish with his fried pho.

Zucchini bread

It's summertime, and that means lots of zucchinis. I've been pretty lucky with my batch of zuke seeds. The plants are huge and the fruits are equally enormous. Even the cold San Francisco weather can't stunt their growth. I picked a few this morning (see above) and decided I wanted to try and make zucchini bread, something I've never made before. As always, I consulted allrecipes.com and found a good recipe.

Here is the original recipe, with my changes afterwards:

INGREDIENTS

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 1/4 cups white sugar
3 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups grated zucchini
1 cup chopped walnuts


DIRECTIONS

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).

2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.

3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.

4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

From the above recipe, I substituted 1 1/4 cup of brown sugar for the white sugar. I think the flavor's much better than white sugar when baking. I left out the walnuts since I didn't have any. Instead of 2 cups of grated zucchini, I put in about 3 1/2 cups (I like moist bread and that was how much two of my zucchinis yielded). If you'd rather have dry, disgusting bread, go ahead and reduce the amount of zucchini. Also, for some stupid reason, I only have one loaf pan, so I filled it up with the batter and then put the remaining batter into a muffin tin.

See how the muffins are in cupcake cups? Yeah, don't do that. I instinctively lined the muffin pan before pouring the batter in. No need for that, just make sure it's well-greased so the muffins will pop right out.

Comfort food

Chicken soup, oatmeal, and mashed potatoes are comfort foods to some people here in the states...but for an immigrant from Viet Nam like me, nothing says home like a nice plate of broken rice with BBQ pork (even if it's served in a restaurant). Vietnamese cuisine is, hands down, my favorite. What I particularly love about Vietnamese food is how amazing the food tastes, yet is relatively easy and inexpensive to make. Herbs, spices and sauces are all key to the big flavors.

For my two cousins' graduation from high school, their parents took everyone out to celebrate at the Vietnamese restaurant across the street from their house. This was in San Jose, so we drove there.

Here are some tips for dining at a Vietnamese restaurant:

• Don't worry if the menu's a little grimy, that just means it's authentic. (Same goes for the table tops)


• Now that you're at an authentic restaurant, it probably wouldn't hurt to wipe down the authentic grime from the spoons, chopsticks, etc.


• Hoisin sauce and Sriracha sauce go well with most things. Use them generously.


• Slurping is ok.


• At the end of the meal, tip what you feel is appropriate. But if you're low on cash, a dollar or two would be perfectly fine, yoo.

The condiments and utensils: various kinds of peppers, vinegar, soy sauce, chopsticks, forks, spoons.


One of the most delicious dishes (besides a bowl of pho): com tam thit nuong, or broken rice with barbecued pork and veggies and fish sauce.

Like fried chicken in New York, the best Vietnamese food is usually found at Uyen's place.

Jacques Pépin

He was kind of a looker, eh? I am not much into celebrity chefs, but I've always been a fan of Jacques Pépin. When I was in college, I lived with a boyfriend and every Saturday we woke up and watched Jacques Pépin's cooking show, Cooking with Claudine. Claudine, his daughter, was totally useless. Thanks to Jacques, however, I know how to butterfly a chicken, sharpen a knife, carve swan out of a honeydew melon, and a host of other kitchen tricks. And what did I learn how to make this morning? A caramel cage.

Buttermilk Fried Chicken Dinner

Andrew and I finally found a place in Williamsburg that serves the best fried chicken--our motherfucking apartment! I also made some garlic-sauteéd kale and buttermilk mashed potatoes. Of course we ate the chicken with Sriracha, which the NY Times wrote a little piece on last week. As usual, I cooked enough to feed an army, so I had leftovers for lunch. Why is cold fried chicken so good? Apologies for the poor-quality cell phone pics. (Remember when digital cameras with 2 mega pixels were considered decent?)

I usually cook more by feel, so measurements below are approximate. If your chicken tastes like shit, it's not my fault.

Ingredients:
whole chicken, cut up
hot sauce (I used Tapatio)
all purpose flour 3 1/2 cups
cayenne 2 tb
paprika 2 tb
garlic powder 2 tb
salt 2 tb
blackpepper 2 tb
buttermilk 1 quart
frying oil (i like canola) 2 quarts

1. In a large bowl, season chicken with 1 tb each of salt, pepper, and hot sauce. Mix thoroughly.
2. Combine 1/2 cup of flour with 1/2 tb each of garlic powder, cayenne, and paprika, salt, black pepper.
3. Let marinate for 1-2 hours if you have time. Otherwise, however long you want.
4. Combine remaining dry ingredients and mix thoroughly in a baking dish.
5. Fill another shallow dish with buttermilk and mix in 2 tbs of hot sauce.
6. Dredge chicken in buttermilk then in flour. Make sure that all the buttermilk is absorbed by the flour. Repeat, repeat, repeat.
7. Heat oil.
8. Fry. I'd say if your oil is hot enough, the cooking time is about 3-4 minutes on each side. Careful not to put too many pieces in at once because that brings the temperature down and the oil could overflow.
9. Drain on paper towel or brown paper bag.
10. EAT.

hot taco

score one for the perverts who got hot tacos on the menu. the t.v. commercial features a cheesy money shot on the taco.

Don't call me a foodie, or I will kick your fucking ass.