Salmon, not salmonella

I was talking to RT today about how I don't often cook meat—along with its cost, and its toll on the environment, I'm just not crazy about its smell when raw and the cold, slippery feel of it. Plus, I always feel like I'm spreading bacteria all over my kitchen whenever I tackle the stuff.

But I do cook fish. For some reason I find sea creatures easier to handle than, y'know, land beasts. This particular salmon recipe has an extremely short list of ingredients (salmon fillets, miso paste, chopped garlic) and an almost-as-short list of directions (thin out the miso with water, slather that and garlic over the salmon, let marinate, pan-fry, serve). When I have scallions I'll use those instead of garlic, which is good too. And I imagine you could thin out the miso with soy sauce, or sake, or some other flavorful liquid instead of just plain water, but I haven't experimented much with that. The slaw underneath is another super simple dish: shredded cabbage marinated overnight in rice wine vinegar and a bit o' sugar and salt.

These are both sort of old standards for me because they're dead easy and tasty. Neither are particularly refined, so generally I just make them for solo weeknight dinners, but I've also served the salmon on short notice for guests since I usually have the ingredients on hand and it's quick. With a pot of rice and some steamed veg on the side, miso salmon is served!

Soup du jour: salt.

Unbearably salty vegetarian black bean soup and okay whole-grain baguette from Panera. I find myself at this place much too often, and am too-often dismayed at the completely soulless food on offer here. The food is generic and cafeteria-like. The pastries are always stale. Everything is oversalted or too sweet.

It would be one thing if they didn't put so much emphasis on "tradition" and "artisan" and "fresh-baked." But they do.

It's true; everything's better deep-fried

Deep-fried stuffed avocado from Izakaya 10. I gotta say, I was skeptical but this was pretty awesome. The avocado was creamy and sweet, and the salmon roe added bursts of salty brine. The accompanying tartar sauce worked beautifully as a bright, tangy counterpoint.

Egg Tards

For the Lunar New Year, I wanted to bring in something tasty to share with my coworkers. In previous years, I had made kai kou xiao, or "laughing cookies": round, sesame-encrusted sweets that are so named because the split that appears in the cookie after it is deep-fried has the shape of an open, laughing mouth. However, this year I wanted to do something different, so I opted to bring in a bunch of dan ta, or egg custard tarts.

The night before Lunar New Year's Eve, my brother and I ran around five or six different bakeries in Chinatown, hunting for the best versions before I had to make my way to Amazing 66 for this meal. In one bakery, from which my brother ended up picking up a few dozen, one woman gave me a dan ta made with only egg whites to sample. To my surprise, it tasted just as eggy as its yolkier brethren, which I suppose makes it a good choice for people trying to watch their cholesterol levels (just don't fool yourself into thinking that it's healthy).

Unfortunately I don't remember which bakery I ultimately purchased mine from. What I do remember is that I cleaned out the last ones remaining, so the case you see at the top actually had a tray of tarts sitting in there just moments before. Alas, we are only left with Egg Tards.

These were okay, but I've had better. I generally prefer the crusts that are flaky and in layers, as opposed to the crusts that are more like shortbread cookies. This was certainly the flaky kind, but something about the crust just seemed flavorless. It was also a bit soggy, but as I only sampled one the next day, I assume they would be fine eaten fresh.

I always love dan ta, though, no matter what the crust.

Delicious 66

Two nights before the Lunar New Year, I and eleven other food-loving friends met up at Amazing 66 for an early celebration. This wasn't my first time here, as it was for a number of those in attendance, but I was happy to have the opportunity to try other dishes I hadn't gotten to last time. Everything was pretty delicious overall, so here I'll just go through some highlights.

The above is one of two dishes that I had to order a day in advance. A whole chicken, innards and bones removed, stuffed with sticky rice and then deep fried. It was essentially a giant chicken-shaped mass of rice encased in crispy skin. Soooo over the top.

"Salad prawns with walnut" is definitely the oddest dish ever, but it's always had a special place in my heart. Fried shrimp! Candied walnuts! Melon cubes! Broccoli! Cherry tomatoes! Sweet mayo! It doesn't get much trashier, but I'm not complaining. This version was especially well executed, with giant, practically greaseless fried shrimp that were still crispy under a glaze of sweet mayonnaise.

Half order of the "roast chicken with preserved vegetables." The chicken was juicy and tender, and the saucy, salty-sweet veg on top went really well with it (the magical preserved veg was tasty on a bowl of rice as well).

I originally ordered the full size, but the waiter had looked at me disbelievingly: "You already have the sticky rice chicken—you want TWO whole chickens?"

So I gave in and settled on the half.

"Mixed fried seafood." This was fresh-tasting and well fried. Someone in the kitchen is doing a great job at the fry station.

The "beef short rib in pumpkin" is a showstopper, as the waiter brings the steaming pumpkin over to the table whole, and then proceeds to rapidly slice it open, revealing its meaty innards. This is the other dish I had to order in advance, though I think that might not be necessary anymore. At my previous meal at Amazing 66, I thought this dish had came out a bit cold, but this time there was no such problem. MH did complain that the meat wasn't as tender though. Ah well!

We also ordered e-fu noodles with mushrooms, sauteed pea shoots, an oyster and ginger/scallion casserole, pan-fried noodles with seafood, and a whole steamed flounder. And at the end they brought out orange wedges and bowls of hot red-bean-and-tapioca dessert soup, which made for a perfectly sweet ending.

I think we all ate until capacity that night, and to my awe we ended up with only a few leftovers to pack up. But I'll be back again: there have been murmurs of Peking duck for the future!

Loafin' while loafing

I combined the remaining two portions of dough from this attempt to make this one large loaf.

When I got home today I immediately took the bowl of dough out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter while I showered, changed, and otherwise settled in. When I was done, I took the dough out and shaped it all into one round loaf, covering it with plastic wrap for its second rise. Then I took a nap.

Due to my special talent at hitting the snooze button, the loaf rose for about two and a half hours before I finally got myself out of bed to deal with it. It was nice and poufy by then. I preheated the oven, sprinkled the loaf with flour and slashed the top, and then dropped the dough (lopsidedly) into the pot and baked it for twenty minutes covered, ten minutes uncovered.

I was much happier with this loaf, although the flavor didn't seem to change much despite sitting in the refrigerator for over a week. I loved the chewy, moist interior; the crust was still a bit wimpy. But this is a good, serviceable bread, and the dough, being less wet than the no-knead, is a lot easier to handle.

I will still try a loaf or two using all white bread flour instead of mixing in white whole wheat. Hopefully this will change how much the loaves rise and the flavor profile. Otherwise, I may routinely double all my dough from now on, as I am much more into this large size (better inside-to-crust ratio).

Still not photogenic, but at least they're nonpareil

This batch was made with the remaining dough in the freezer from this first attempt.

As I was bringing these to a Superbowl party I rolled the edges in blue nonpareils in honor of the Giants (I'm a New Yorker after all!). I wish I had found a darker blue closer to the actual color of their uniforms but the cake supply shop I went to only had them in this shade.

These sliced better after being frozen overnight, though they still got a little sticky and soft as I was cutting. I baked these for somewhere between 10-11 minutes instead of 12, and this seemed to help keep them from drying out too much. Those pale spots you see in the cookies are clumps of cocoa that I had failed to properly incorporate. Um, I did mention I'm a novice, right?

I realize that with the cakey texture (from the cocoa I used?), these are sort of like dry brownies in cookie form more than anything else. They are decent and satisfy any chocolate cravings, but I'm not sure I will revisit this recipe, at least not without the proper cocoa to see if that makes a difference.

And my fingers are still stained blue. . . .

A feast from Flushing

I was dropped off from a ski trip (during which I did not ski, but instead consumed large amounts of beer and vodka) in Flushing around noon. I called up SYB to see if the trains were running normally, who then insisted that I pick up food from around the area and go over to his place. Seizing an excuse to indulge, I went off in search of a vendor who had originally occupied a space in the hidden food grotto of J & L Mall, which had closed several months back due to the owner's failure to pay the electricity bill.

My dad told me that the vendor had opened an entire new shop for himself—now called Shen Jing restaurant—and was serving his steamed buns, da bing, and sesame bing a few blocks away from the Flushing Library. I stopped in and ordered a da bing, three sesame bings, and two lamb-filled steamed buns. On the way back to the train station, I also picked up some cheung fun (shrimp-filled and yuo tiao–filled) from Mayflower Bakery, and some bok choy.

At SYB's place, in an effort to fool myself into thinking I was about to consume a healthy meal, I steamed some bok choy and drizzled it with a bit of soy sauce to go along with the assortment I had picked up.

The multi-layered sesame bings were amazing, as always. I fell in love with these after my first bite when I was introduced to them about a year ago. They're fragrant with sesame and flaky, tender, and crisp-edged all at once. They're good at room temp but become absolutely delicious warm. I'm pretty sure there's a big glop of lard somewhere in the ingredient list for these. And there's this unique salty, sandy texture I've been trying to figure out. O sesame bings, you are mysterious.

The yuo-tiao cheung fun held up pretty well even after the forty minute subway ride.

I meant to get the fluffy, raised version of this pancake, but this was fine. Basically a scallion pancake without scallions. A little tough, but they also probably suffered from sitting in a plastic bag for a while during transit.

Sadly, these lamb buns were mediocre at best: much too stingy with the filling, and way too much bland dough. I don't feel any need to order these again another time.

I felt awfully sluggish afterward, despite trying to match bok choy for bun and bing while eating. Clearly, only one of the three b's was good for me.