san bei ji, taiwanese three cup chicken

So the plumber came and fixed our sinks and now I can cook again. Joy.

I'd gone to Bangkok Center Grocery on Mosco St in Chinatown to pick up some Thai basil for this and ingredients for pad thai (which I haven't made in a few years).

Since I'd had them for a few days the basil leaves were starting to wilt and go dark.

I had a clay pot from the awesomest takeout idea ever at A-Wah. When you order a clay pot dish from them to go they give you the clay pot to take home in a handled paper bag.

So I wet the pot in the hopes that I hadn't left it too long and to prevent it from cracking during the cooking process.

I used a couple recipes online to make something that I think tastes ok.

~1/4 c sesame oil
1/3 c rice wine
1/4 c soy sauce
black sweet soy sauce ( I used the Healthy Boy brand I got from the Thai grocer).
ginger
garlic
scallions
a pinch of palm sugar
a dash (or more) of aleppo pepper
chicken (I used a family pack of chicken thighs that I cut up into bite size pieces but left the bones with some meat on them and included them as well)

This is pretty much all I used except that I happened to have cooked bacon in the skillet earlier so I used some of that oil mixed with the sesame oil.

Ok, so take a skillet and heat the oil up. While you're prepping this, get your clay pot all nice and toasty on another eye so that the temperatures will be about even.

I didn't measure the sesame oil but I poured quite a bit into a skillet and sauteed the scallions, ginger and garlic till the garlic started to go golden.

Add the chicken in and brown a bit.

Add the rest of the ingredients and toss a few times then, using tongs, place the chicken into the clay pot.

Carefully pour the liquid from the skillet over top the chicken and cover.

It's ok if you have liquid left over. I reduced it a bit in the skillet then added it to the clay pot when the liquid level had decreased enough to warrant it.

Cook for about 20 mins or as long as it takes your rice/rice cooker to be ready. I cooked it longer as I wanted the liquid to reduce more.

 Serve with vinegar on the side for a bit of extra kick and to cut some of the oily goodness.

gramercy tavern & how I almost got sick before the meal started

So I love bread and I love butter, right?

Gramercy Tavern has awesome bread while you wait, right?

Well we went there for our anniversary on the 18th and I lovingly slathered soft butter all over a piece of bread. I sprinkled a pinch of sea salt they provided and then I began to devour this piece.

Moments later I had that feeling.

Y'know, the feeling you get when you're allergic to something and you get nauseated?

The feeling of saliva rushing from the depths of your mouth to flush it clean of the offending item. The feeling I hadn't had since I ate a raw almond offered at a Hindu temple in high school.... yeah that one.  It hit me full force and nothing on the table could cure me of the feeling.

And I still don't know what it was. I refused to experiment lest I get sick and not be able to eat anything.

After I ran to the bathroom to rinse my mouth out with water I felt much better.

Now onto the food.

For starters I had the special which was lamb with corn, roasted baby peppers and these cute little tomatoes I forgot the name of.

He had the paparadelle with lamb ragout which looked mouthwatering, but he said had too much swiss chard. I ate what he didn't.

For the main course he had the hanger steak with fingerling potatoes, red Russian kale and bourbon sauce.

Lots of kale, not too many potatoes. I ate the kale since he's not as fond of it as he thought.

Now onto my main course... you're going to frown at me when you find out what I ordered because I let out a deep sigh once I saw it in front of me.

I got... the meatball.

It's just one huge meatball and I think I might have enjoyed the ones I got at the meatball place on the LES better.

The potatoes were the best part.

I made up for it with dessert.

He got the chocolate pudding with salted caramel brioche croûtons.

I got the apricot bread pudding with sour cream ice cream and caramelized white chocolate. I also got one of the croûtons as garnish cause he's cute.

I wasn't too enamored of the ice cream but the pudding and caramelized white chocolate combined with it to make something amazing happen in my mouth. It almost completely erased the memory of my nausea earlier.... until I crunched down on one too many hazelnuts.

hamburgers with swiss and cripsy salami

So we're out of bacon and I didn't feel like going out.  I had some salami I bought at Cerellio today and figured, "why not?"

I smushed garlic powder, toasted onion powder, soy sauce, worchestershire sauce, smoked paprika and a dash of liquid smoke into a pound of ground beef. I formed this into 5 balls and let it sit.

Heated the oven to toast the buns and crisped salami in a cast iron skillet.

After I removed the salami I formed each ball into a patty and placed it inside the skillet with a  pat of butter.

I sliced thin bits of swiss and when I flipped the burgers over I placed these on top to melt.

Once they were done I briefly dipped the buns into the oil and assembled the burgers.

Served with easy peasy nathan's fries.

pan seared strawberry balsamic duck breasts and Buitoni quattro formaggi agnolotti ravioli

So I was browsing one of my favorite hair  boards the Moptop Maven and noticed she'd posted a recipe for chicken breasts, ravioli and spinach with pancetta.

Well that sounded like a good idea, but I didn't want to make chicken so I picked up some duck breasts from Ceriello in Grand Central Market.

I paired this with some Buitoni quattro formaggi ravioli that I had laying about in the freezer.

First I steamed broccoli and set it aside to cool.

I seared the duck breast skin side down in a cast iron pan then popped them into a 400 degree oven for 11 minutes.

While the breasts were cooking I plopped the ravioli in to boil and drained them.

I let them rest for a bit and then cut into the juicy flesh.

In the same pot I added butter, more balsamic and some spices. I let this bubble then tossed the ravioli to coat.

I used this blaze strawberry balsamic glaze. It's ok, I could've done better by reducing my own, but it does save time.

[source]

230 Fifth: Sometimes I take pictures of people too

So this summer, and pretty much for a year now, I take pictures for a friend who happens to be a clothing designer.

Csilla Somogyi has awesome events at different bars/clubs around the city to get her brand name out there.

The first event I went to was at Libation and I had just got my new toy (my rebel XSi so I wanted to bring it just to take pictures of something). The rest is history.

On Monday a little corner of the rooftop of 230 fifth was saved for an "intimate" gettogether of about 50 random people I mostly didn't know. This was sponsored by Grey Goose. They had a lot of different drinks made with vodka. My favorite was the iced tea one with lemon vodka in it. There was a lemonade with pear vodka one that the guys seemed to like and one with  cranberry in it that was a pseudo cosmo on the rocks. There was also one with cherries in it, but I didn't get to taste that.

I also managed to spot the wonderful bartender of Oz that works at Klimat. It really is a small world. Of course no one else with me remembered until I said "Australian bartender," so wamp wamp to that.

People ate and (mostly) drank, but free is free so there was plenty of both.

I handed out a few moo cards, but I'm shy with people I don't know so I suppose I should get better at that. Everyone who saw them said they were awesome. :D

So they have food at 230 Fifth. It was ok. I was kind of underwhelmed.

They had chicken strips (a little dry) with this yummy barbecue sauce that was the best thing of the night.

There were curry puffs that needed  sauce because they were 1) too dry and 2) not so flavorful without it. Both the chicken and the veggie ones were meh.

There were shrimp and pork wontons that were ok and served in the little soup bowls. It just made me go get real soup dumplings down in Chinatown yesterday, though.

There were sliders... these are NOT sliders.. these are big square wads of meat with thousand island and pickles and stuff on a too thick bun. You can't slide this anyway but into a napkin and onto the bus boy's tray.


Anway, getting people to stand together is like herding cats and nothing like taking pictures of food that will, at worst, melt on you.

fin.