A Chinese Feast

As a thank you to Son and Pat for always taking me out for fabulous dinners and never letting me pay, I cooked them up a Chinese feast last week. I decided to prepare some of my favorites: dumplings, spicy green beans, fish-flavored eggplant, and pork belly.

First up were the dumplings. I do more a Tibetan-style beef momo than the crescent shaped Chinese pork dumpling. The filling is a mixture of ground beef, minced garlic, minced ginger, and chopped scallions. To form the dumpling take a small amount and place it in the center of a dumpling wrapper (I usually get them from the store but they can be made from just flour and water). Then rub the edges of the wrapper with some water and fold the sides up over the meat filling and pinch together to form a little packet. Next place the dumplings in a steamer basket over boiling water. They only need to cook for a few minutes. I usually just grab one from the basket when they look done and cut it open to see if it's cooked all the way through. 

These dumplings are serious.

The dipping sauce for the dumplings is easy. Just mix together soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sesame oil with some garlic, ginger, and scallions. 

Fish-flavored eggplant and spicy green beans were two of my favorite dishes when I lived in Chengdu. I served up these classic dishes with some white rice.

Fish-flavored eggplant got its name because the same seasonings used to cook fish were used to cook the eggplant. So it's not that the eggplant actually tastes like fish--just that it was prepared similarly. The version I made had eggplant, ground pork, Sichuan numbing pepper, dried red chili, garlic, ginger, scallions, soy sauce, MSG, chili bean paste, sugar, and rice wine vinegar. Delicious.

For the spicy green beans I went a little bit heavier on the numbing pepper and dried red chili peppers. 

So what exactly is numbing pepper? These little peppers abound in many Sichuan dishes, offering an interesting cooling and numbing aspect to the otherwise intense chili heat of the food. It is called huājiāo, which literally translates to flower pepper—an apt name as the outer husks of the shells used in cooking resemble opened flower petals. The flavor of the numbing pepper adds the quality of mala to any dish—that of numbing spiciness. When eating a Sichuan dish, the first moment is usually marked by the heat of the chili. But when it subsides the numbing pepper takes over. The fires in the mouth are cooled by the strange sensation of the numbing pepper, and truly, the tongue will go numb.This spicy green bean dish was always one of my favorites for riding the hot and numbing wave of Sichuan food.

For the final dish we had braised pork belly. Sonya and Pat had missed out on the pork belly I made for one of our holiday dinners, so I used the same recipe and cooked up the rest of the food while the pork belly simmered away on the stove for a couple of hours.

Since I needed sake to cook the pork belly we also sipped on sake throughout the meal. We had a large bottle of classic, cheap Gekkeikan sake, as well as a bottle of unfiltered, cloudy sake that Sonya likes. The rice wine was definitely a great accompaniment to our delicious Chinese feast.

There's nothing like a home-cooked meal to say thanks. It was my honor to cook dinner for two of my favorite people as they prepare to bid adieu to the island of Manhattan. And the best part? Watching a new episode of Jersey Shore as we devoured our meal. Classic.

Ice-Cream Cone with a Cherry on Top

Get ready to pump your fist and check out the new single from Jersey Shore's Angelina--"I'm Hot"--with slammin' lyrics like "I'm hot, so hot, like an ice-cream cone with a cherry on top." It's sure to be the new hit at the club...

Quote of the Week: Pickles

"Pickles is my thing."

--Snooki, Jersey Shore

Jersey Shore (Season 1) - MTV Shows

Nice Matin

Last week I headed into the city for some Halloween debauchery with my sister, her boyfriend, and some of their friends. It was destined to be a memorable night, and I even got to create another alter ego. Maya “Off-the-Hook” Rook—a tough, guidette bitch from the Jersey Shore. (Note to my readers: if you don’t have an alter ego I highly recommending getting at least one. I now have two, and they are both fabulous.)

But before hitting up the New York City nightlife scene, we had to eat. My sister treated me to a wonderful meal at Nice Matin, located at 201 West 79th Street. The menu was inspired by Chef Andy D’Amico and Simon Oren’s trip to Nice, France. The result? An excellent menu and lovely restaurant.

After we each ordered a glass of red wine, first up for the meal was the escargot, which was baked en cocotte with tomato fondue, garlic butter, and bread crumbs. The bread crumbs that topped the escargot were crunchy but quickly melted into a buttery, cheesy softness in the mouth. Each little dish had two snails rather than one, which is how I’ve usually had it. Bonus snails! It was a perfect appetizer—garlicky, buttery, warm, and succulent. 

I knew I needed real food. For the past week I’d had my nose to the grindstone with grad school work and I’d also run out of money, so basically I’d been living off of bread and pasta and vitamin supplements. Not cool. My body was craving vegetables and meat. It was an easy choice to order the soup du jour—butternut squash soup.

When I usually make butternut squash soup I do it as a puree, so I assumed that’s how it would be prepared here. Au contraire, mon ami. Instead, it was a hearty soup with large chunks of butternut squash, mushrooms, onions, and lentils, all simmered in a lovely chicken stock. With the first spoonful I felt my body start to revive. It was exactly what I needed—delicious, healthy, and satisfying.

Sonya ordered the spinach salad, which I partook of as well. Her plate brimmed with baby spinach, aged French goat cheese, roasted beets, pickled onions, hazelnuts, and nut oil vinaigrette. The spinach was fresh and green, the cheese was luscious and creamy, and those beets…wow. They were really incredible, like little cubes of ruby goodness sprinkled over the plate. I really need to start integrating beets into my own cooking. The salad was superb.

After my body replenished itself with the vegetable loveliness of the soup and salad, it was time to move on to meat. I ordered the Raviolis Nissarda—short rib ravioli flavored with orange and sage, red wine daube sauce, and parmesan. It was exquisite. Each ravioli was a pocket of hearty short rib decadence—the perfect balance between pasta and meat. I opted for the smaller order, and it was just the right size for me. I was able to enjoy every tasty bite without being too full.  

Instead of ordering dessert, we each ordered another glass of wine. That’s just how we do. I don’t think I could have eaten another bite, but if I go back I’d definitely want to try dessert—the menu looks phenomenal.

After the meal I was replenished with delicious food and good conversation with my sister. The sun had gone down and darkness was setting in over the city. It was Halloween weekend, and now I was ready for shit to get off the hook…