Week 7 - Braising

The Week 7 challenge came up as braising, and while I knew it was a repeat of a challenge I'd done in a previous year, I wasn't unhappy about that because I remembered that experimenting with braising recipes was something I had enjoyed. Of course, that's probably because I was thinking about the beer and onion braised chicken carbonnade I made in 2014, which was actually for the Belgian challenge. That was the first time I had really intentionally braised anything, and it became the first of many, as I discovered I really liked how the dishes came out. For the actual braising challenge, I had done a Korean braised tofu that was part of our regular rotation, so not really an experiment but still a great dish.

Three cup chicken and bok choy

For this challenge, I looked around for a while for something that would work for our family of three, and once I stumbled upon three cup chicken (san bei ji), I knew that had to be it. I've always been intrigued by three cup chicken, named for its focus on three main flavors - sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine, and although I've still never been able to try three cup chicken from any Taiwanese restaurant, I hoped that whatever came out of our kitchen would be a good approximation of it. The recipe I found on The Woks of Life looked amazing, so I figured that would be a good starting place.

Ingredients:

I followed the recipe for the most part, and I actually measured things here to try to get the proportions right. Of course, we made some adaptations, most notably substituting chicken thighs for chicken wings since that worked better for our little one, and omitting the red chili in the aromatics so it wasn't too spicy for baby B.


- 1 tbsp sesame oil ($0.30)
- 2 tbsp grapeseed oil ($0.30)
- about 1 tbsp ginger paste ($0.20)
- 6 cloves of garlic, chopped ($0.33)
- about 1.5 lb boneless chicken thighs ($7.60)
- 1/4 cup warm water ($0)
- 1/4 cup shaoxing wine ($0.20)
- 1 tbsp dark soy sauce ($0.15)
- 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce ($0.20)
- 2 tsp sugar ($0.10)
- 1 small batch of scallions, chopped ($0.99) *

* We intended to use both Thai basil and scallions, but neither Wegmans nor Whole Foods carried Thai basil when we visited. I probably should have known that since Whole Foods through Amazon didn't have Thai basil as an option to buy, but I thought I had remembered seeing it at Wegmans before. Alas, I was wrong, and we ended up with no Thai basil, which we think would have been great in the dish.

The chicken portion of dinner cost approximately $10.37, and when combined with our second dish (bok choy with garlic) and rice, the total was about $13.38. We didn't have any leftovers, but still not a bad price for dinner for three. The chicken thighs were the bulk of that price, but if we made this again with chicken, I'd probably just defrost some boneless skinless chicken breasts, which would drop the price by a few dollars. The original used wings, and I thought the boneless flavor equivalent would probably be chicken thighs, but prepping those fatty chicken thighs was no fun and I don't really want to do it next time when chicken breasts would work just fine.

Three cup tofu experiment

Since the time we made this for the challenge, we've used the same recipe but made it with tofu instead and some of our modifications, adding an extra tbsp of sesame oil with the soy sauce and wine, adding a bell pepper and an onion, and using basil (regular basil, not Thai basil since we still haven't gotten a hold of that, but the internet was right and regular basil worked just fine). The total for the three cup tofu was a little over $8. It was so delicious that this may be the way we do it more often in the future!

Steps:

I generally stuck to the recipe for the steps as well to try to make this as accurate as possible, since I couldn't use any memories of the dish or its flavors as my guide. The steps were:

1. Heat wok over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp grapeseed oil, ginger, and garlic. Stir the ginger and garlic in the oil for a few minutes until fragrant.

2. Add chicken and stir-fry until mostly cooked. [Note that the recipe raised the heat to high here, but our medium seemed to be pretty high, so we just left it where it was. Next time, would probably use a slightly lower heat on the aromatics and then raise it.]


3. Add 1/4 cup warm water, 1/4 cup shaoxing wine, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1.5 tbsp light soy sauce, and 2 tsp sugar. Stir so that all the chicken is well-coated and covered with the sauce. [Note: I would add another tbsp of sesame oil here, since that flavor was mostly overpowered at the end without it.]

4. Cover the wok and reduce heat to medium low, letting it simmer for about 20 minutes.

5. Remove cover and add scallions. Mix well. Turn the heat up to reduce the sauce, stirring the chicken the whole time so it doesn't burn. [Our sauce was almost completely reduced already, so this step did not take very long.] Add chopped up basil and remove from heat.


The actual cooking didn't take that long here, and the steps were simple to follow. As alluded to earlier, the thing that took the longest was the chicken thighs prep, cutting off the fat and slicing the meat into chunks. Not sure how it took the better part of an hour to do, other than the fact that I don't do it very often, plus these were really, really fatty chicken thighs.

Conclusion:

Three cup tofu going into the family cookbook...
We really liked the way this turned out. Is it like the three cup chicken you'd find in a Taiwanese restaurant or home kitchen? No idea, but it tasted good to us. The strongest flavor in the end was the soy sauce, which made the dish a little on the salty side, but we knew it could be worse in the sodium department considering this was the day after our falafel mix experiment. Even with all the soy sauce, it still didn't taste as salty as the falafel. The clean and light-tasting bok choy sautéed with garlic on the side was the perfect thing to offset any saltiness, and together it all worked really well. As mentioned before, we made this again with a couple of tweaks (substituting tofu, adding a little extra sesame oil, basil, bell peppers and onions), and are so happy to have another dish to add to the repertoire!

Flushing Food Crawl

Considering how many food options there are in Flushing, we don't get out there nearly as often as we should. It's only a (relatively) short trip on the 7 train, yet almost all of it has been unexplored by us. For that reason, for one of our dining resolutions for 2017, we decided we should go on a dumpling crawl in Flushing. Last weekend, we did just that (and can finally check off our first fully completed resolution!).

Our first stop was Tianjin Dumpling House at the Golden Shopping Mall in the basement food court. Out of all of our stops on the food crawl, this was the one we had actually been to before, grabbing some dumplings before a wedding a few years ago in case it was like a typical Chinese wedding and the food wouldn't be served for hours. Their specialty is the lamb and green squash dumplings, although the lamb/carrot and pork/chive ones we got the last time (because they were out of the squash ones) were good too. (Just as a side note, probably best to not think of this as your typical "mall" or mall food court; it's a bunch of stalls in a cramped basement that have been there forever just serving good food.)

Each order of dumplings at Tianjin has 12 dumplings, and they range in price from $4 to $7. Really inexpensive. The lamb and green squash ones were $6, which was a great price for 12 dumplings. They were cooked to order so they did take a little bit of time to get, but they were totally worth it. One of our favorite things about the dumplings was the nice chewy wrapper which had sort of an al dente texture to it. We assume that the wrappers are handmade because you can't get that type of elasticity from a machine-made wrapper, and also because the dumplings are all different sizes.

The dumplings themselves had a mild lamb flavor but not an overpowering gaminess. The green squash added an interesting texture. We didn't get much flavor from the squash, but it added something of a "wetness" to the dumplings that helped ensure that they didn't get too dry. For dipping sauces, this no-frills place doesn't have any pre-prepared sauces available. Instead, they have bottles of soy sauce and vinegar and containers of chili sauce and a green-ish garlic sauce. We have no clue what made it green, but it was delicious and had a really nice sharp, garlicky flavor. This was our first stop of the day, but after discussing, we both agreed that it was the best.

Next up was probably the one we had been most excited about - White Bear. We had wanted to go to White Bear for ages, and every time we saw pictures of the wontons in chili oil, we wondered why we hadn't made it yet. These were also $6 for 12, and they came topped with scallions and some pickled vegetables along with the chili oil. (It's #6 on the menu if it's not obvious.) They were also supposed to have good dan dan noodles there, but we didn't want to overdo it and end our food crawl after two stops, so we didn't get those.

We liked the flavor of these dumplings, but we thought that they would be better. The way some people talk about White Bear, we expected this to be something like a life-changing dumpling experience, and it wasn't. It sounds like maybe our expectations were just too high, but while they were high, there was also the fact that we thought our first set of dumplings from Tianjin were better. The wrappers here were handmade and thinner, like a lot of wonton skins are, but that made them less chewy and in some cases, easier for them to fall off the filling. A couple of our wontons were either broken or broke as we tried to pick them up. Flavor-wise, we noticed that despite the chili oil, they weren't really very spicy at all. We've had wontons or dumplings like this before that were much spicier and thought those had more flavor. These were also on the salty side. The pickled vegetables here added some nice freshness and differentiated it from other dumplings we had in the past, but they also contributed to the saltiness.

We intended for our next stop to be more dumplings, but as we wandered around, we found ourselves in the food court at the New World Mall (this one, a more typical mall and mall food court). We walked around looking at all the stalls and all the many food options until we stopped in our tracks at Cheers Cut. When we were back in Vancouver, we had tried Taiwanese large fried chicken for the first time (post coming eventually in our trip recaps) and it was incredible. We had heard rumors that places in NYC were starting to make this, but didn't really know where to go yet. When we saw that Cheers Cut had large fried chicken, we had to stop the dumpling crawl and get some chicken.

Cheers Cut (apparently with two locations in NYC, as well as one each in Tampa and Philadelphia) had two sizes of large fried chicken - large (samurai) and extra large (ninja). We, of course, went with the ninja ($7.95) so we could try more, and in the choice between pepper and chili topping, went with pepper since it was closer to what we got in Vancouver. In style, it was very similar to what we got in Vancouver (and presumably what they serve in Taiwan, but A never had this there, and M hasn't been to Taiwan) - a chicken breast and thigh flattened into one large piece of chicken, breaded, and deep fried. The dark meat retained some of the bones, even in this flattened form, but there was a mix of white and dark meat in every piece.

While this chicken was good, we preferred the one we got in Vancouver. The breading on that one attached more to the chicken and didn't really get soggy and flake off at all like this one did in parts, there was a little more flavor in the topping, the breading, and the chicken itself in the Canadian one, and the chicken was a little juicier there. That said, until we hear about the location of another Taiwanese large fried chicken joint in NYC, we don't have anything to compare it to in this city, so guess it's the best one for now. Maybe someday there will be other places here to compare, but right now it's much cheaper going to Queens than flying back to Canada.

Our next stop we figured would be one of our last, since it was a full-service restaurant instead of a quick service place - Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao. We were going, obviously, for XLB, but we also heard that they made good scallion pancakes. Since we'd pretty much been eating heavy food without vegetables all day, we also figured we should balance that out with a plate of cucumber and garlic ($4.50). That was nice and refreshing with good garlic flavor, although a couple of pieces of cucumber were a little on the bitter, softer side. It felt really good to eat all those cucumbers though, since we were incredibly dehydrated.

The scallion pancakes ($3.50) came first, since soup dumplings take a little bit of time to make. These were crispier and flakier than the scallion pancakes we're used to getting. Despite the crispy exterior, though, the insides were still soft and chewy just the way we like them. While these were quite good, the ones A's mom makes are better.

The last thing to arrive was the steamer of six pork soup dumplings ($5.95). These were quite delicious. The soup inside was rich and flavorful without being too scalding. The filling was also flavorful and soaked up a lot of the flavor from the soup. The really nice thing was that the wrappers were thinner than most versions you get in NYC. That was always our gripe with the offerings in NYC. While in overall rankings we'd rank higher the ones we got at Din Tai Fung in Asia and others we got in Vancouver, these are probably our favorite of the ones we've tried in NYC. We haven't tried everywhere in NYC though, so we're open to further comparisons, but so far, these are the best we've had here.

After all of that savory food, it was time to end the day with some dessert. We headed back to New World Mall to the food court, as we had been hearing a lot recently about some stall there named Erqal that served Uyghur ice cream. When we went on our walk through the food court earlier, we had seen it and mentally bookmarked it for dessert. With tax, a regular ice cream was only about $3, which was pretty good for such a large cup.

The first thing we noticed about the ice cream was how it was made. There was a giant whirring motor spinning a frozen metal bowl holding the ice cream base. In the bowl was also a large wooden paddle that provided the aeration required to make the ice cream. When it's fully frozen the wooden paddle is then used to scoop out the ice cream into another container so that it resembles a large clump. The ice cream definitely had a different texture from most of the ice cream we usually eat. It had hints of brown sugar and caramel in the flavor, and texturally it wasn't as creamy as any other ice cream we had ever eaten. It was more icy and watery for lack of a better term, and it lent itself to being eaten very quickly. It was an interesting experience, and we really enjoyed the ice cream.

We had a pretty productive day exploring Flushing, trying different foods from all over China, checking off our resolution to go on a dumpling crawl, and even seeing bits of history from the colonial era on our walk, like the Kingsland Homestead. We should definitely explore more neighborhoods in the city more often.

9th Ave Food Festival 2017 Part I

Last weekend was the annual 9th Avenue International Food Festival in Hell's Kitchen. We've missed it the past couple of years because of scheduling issues, but made it on both days this year. The first day of the festival was on the cooler side (low 60s following days of summery weather) and a little bit cloudy so even though it was plenty crowded, it wasn't as packed as it could have been which was more pleasant for walking. We walked the entire length of the fair both ways, but most of the food we got on the first day came from the southern part of the festival. After we got to the end and took a short detour to pick some stuff up at Whole Foods, we realized that we weren't really that hungry anymore and that it would be best to leave the other stuff that caught our eye for the next day.

Part of the reason we were probably so full was because our first stop was Daisy May's for BBQ. We've had Daisy May's BBQ several times before (and even went for the World Cup challenge in 2014), so the pulled chicken and mac and cheese weren't anything new but they were quite tasty. We had debated between the pulled chicken and the pulled pork, and in the end chose the chicken. It was drier than the pulled pork usually is, but it wasn't that bad. The sauce, as always with Daisy May's, was very good. It had an excellent balance of sweetness and tanginess to pair with the chicken. The mac and cheese was rich and creamy, and the parts with the crusty, cheese-infused breadcrumb topping were the best. Unfortunately they didn't give us much of it, but we enjoyed what they did give us.

Our next stop as we made our way up the avenue was the Spam house (aka the "Spam Tiny House of Sizzle") which was offering free samples. There was no way we were skipping free stuff, so we got on line not knowing or caring what the samples were. By the time we got to the front, there were three options - Spam fries (which we thought might have been fries topped with Spam but were just griddled Spam cut up into fries), Spam sliders, and Spam musubi. We got one of each of the latter two and split them.

The Spam slider had a thin slice of Spam on a King's Hawaiian roll with some wasabi mayo. The Spam itself was most likely griddled, and it produced a nice caramalization on the meat. Paired with the sweetness of the King's Hawaiian roll and the spicy creaminess of the wasabi mayo, it was our favorite of the two options. The Spam musubi was exactly what we expected it to be. A took the first bite, and he had a little trouble biting through the seaweed wrapper. He thought there wasn't a ton of Spam flavor to this despite the rather large slice of Spam. Also, a lot of the rice seemed undercooked to A, but M didn't seem to have that same issue as it seemed fine to her. She also tasted more Spam flavor but that could be because she ate some of the rice on its own first before eating the entire Spam-rice-seaweed combination together.

Next up we stopped at A-Pou's Taste, a street cart we've visited before on the Upper West Side but hadn't seen in a while. They specialize in Taiwanese-style potstickers, and we had always found them tasty in the past. This time we got an order of five pork potstickers which were covered in hot sauce and soy sauce. We really liked these potstickers, and they were just as good as we remembered them being before. This wasn't too surprising as they basically brought their regular cart out to the event.

By far, the busiest block of the entire festival was the one taken up by the Big Bite Tour. A bunch of promotional tents giving out samples, and obviously there was going to be a crowd. Free stuff! There were samples of Mentos gum, Nestea iced tea, Blue Diamond almonds, Wholey Cheese crackers (which we were so excited to see as we had recently tried them for the first time, but that's for another post), Allegra (also extremely exciting and money-saving for us), and Turkey Hill ice cream, which ended up being the last thing we ate from the festival.

Without planning it, we got two different flavors of ice cream - vanilla bean and salted caramel. The vanilla ice cream was good. You could see the vanilla beans mixed into the ice cream itself, and that always makes a huge difference when comparing vanilla ice creams. A thought the salted caramel was just okay. It seemed more caramel and less salted, but in the end the overwhelming flavor in his mind was just sweet. M's not a huge fan of salted caramel, so she didn't feel like trying it, especially if A wasn't raving about how good it was.

We enjoyed our time at the festival other than having to dodge oblivious and/or inconsiderate people in the crowds. The one thing we did notice on the walk though was the absence of one of the vendors we had always looked forward to - Millie's Pierogi. No idea when they stopped coming since we've missed the festival for a couple of years, but we always stopped by their stand. Guess we'll have to look for them in Massachusetts to get our fix.

Taiwanese Treats

Due to the amazing phenomenon known as Linsanity gripping this nation and world, and in honor of his fantastic game against the Lakers last night, M and I celebrated with a Taiwanese meal split between the two of us.

The only place we know of that advertises straight-up Taiwanese fare is Bian Dang. Bian Dang has a storefront in the Food Gallery 32 Asian food court located in K-Town and also a food truck that is currently closed for the winter. We had a Groupon deal for one chicken or pork rice plate and an order of dumplings. M and I opted for the chicken plate.

Fried chicken with rice covered in pork sauce with vegetables, soup, and dumplings
The chicken at the store is fried a bit more than the chicken from the truck, and M and I both agreed that it's better from the truck. The rice and pork sauce, though, is always a hit. The scallion and ginger infused sauce mixed with the minced pork is heavenly on the palate, and the pickled vegetables accompanying it adds a nice crunch and a touch of sourness to everything. The soup was just sort of there. It was simply chicken stock with some diced tomatoes stewed into it. The dumplings came steamed. We were expecting pan-fried so the steamed was nice. Overall they weren't the best dumplings we've ever had, but they had a good texture, good flavor, and the added hot sauce finished the dumpling nicely.

Tianbula

I took today off from the Thanksgiving Sandwich Project since I heard that Bian Dang was giving out a free lunch in connection with the LevelUp app. Originally, I had been thinking of taking the lunch off for the $1 Groupon specials, but there were so few and none of them were nearby, so that idea was quashed fairly quickly. Not only was Bian Dang near me, but the deal sounded easy. Order up to $10, pay with the LevelUp app and you're done! Free!


The free lunches were to launch their new loyalty program on the LevelUp app. I think this is a genius idea. My problem with most of my frequent buyer cards is that I always forget them. But, using the app, it's all on your phone and I always have that with me. What a great idea.


I got the tianbula (fish cake) over rice with extra pork sauce and a tea egg. I had wanted to try the fish cake last time I was at the truck but they ran out, so I figured this was a good time. I was very tempted by the zongzi (as I love zongzi) but I thought I should try something new. Lunch was exactly what I expected, and a nice filling meal. The fish cake meal is usually $8, but I added extra pork sauce and the tea egg and used up the whole $10 credit on the app.


I wasn't sure if I would like the tea egg as I don't usually eat hardboiled eggs. A told me it was similar in taste to the eggs in the zongzi, which I really like, and he was right. I took the first bite of egg and that's exactly what it reminded me of - the delicious egg yolk in the zongzi. Now I want zongzi...


There was definitely an extra serving of pork sauce. Doesn't it look so good? As for the fish, it was interesting. It reminded me a lot of schnitzel.


What a good lunch. I would definitely pay for it... but it's even better for free!

It's so strange to me that, with all the good food available, people still go their generic spots. As I left the truck with my awesome free lunch, I walked by an office building with a large group of people who had just bought sandwiches or salads or something else. Right across the street from their office they could have gotten free food! It's not like there was a long line to avoid or something difficult needed to be done to qualify for the deal. Why would you turn down free Taiwanese food? I obviously wouldn't!

Priceless Chicken Leg

The second truck at Bryant Park for the PricelessNY event was the Bian Dang truck. After picking up the slim taco at the Pera truck, I decided to also pick up a coupon for Bian Dang. Together, they made for a good lunch.

The line at Bian Dang was much shorter, but I don't think that was from lack of interest in Taiwanese food. They just seemed better at moving the line along quickly and efficiently than Pera. When I got up to the window to order my food, I learned that they had just run out of the tianbula (fish cake) that I had been planning to order, so I went with the Taiwanese-style chicken leg over rice.


The portion size for the free lunch was smaller than the regular sized lunch, but it was still a nice size (especially compared to the single taco from the other truck). The chicken leg had a lot of meat. I didn't clean the bone as well as A would have, but I never do. I did my best though!


One of my favorite things about the lunch plate is the pork sauce that comes over the rice. It's delicious! The rice and pork sauce together would make for a great lunch, with or without the fried meat/fish topping. The speedy line and filling food made me much happier with this half of the Priceless event!