Happy Halloween!

So this is not dinner for tonight, but it did seem like a fitting post for today. We got back from Maine and I was lobster-ed out and sugar-ed out and craving home-cooked Chinese food. It was decided that the afternoon activity was to walk to Chinatown and buy groceries for a quiet evening in and watching 'Brothers & Sisters.' Bizarrely enough, when we got back to NYC around 4pm, I was hungry again! We happened to run into Jon on the street, which was perfect, bc I wanted a Vietnamese sandwich, and Jon knew exactly where to get them. We all went to Nicky's in the East Village and shared a pork chop banh mi. Yum yum.



After our little snack detour, we finally made it down to Chinatown. I knew I wanted to make soup, and I knew I wanted copious amounts of vegetables. But as we were walking down Grand, live lobsters caught our eye bc we'd been discussing all weekend long how cheap they were by the lb in Maine, if you bought them at markets vs eating them at restaurants. Lo and behold, they were only about $4.99/lb in NYC too. But more importantly, we saw these little guys.



It put the perfect touch on my menu for the evening.

Boiled live crustacean guys
Chicken Feet Soup
Xian Gan Rou Si - Bean Curd and Shredded Pork(?)
Lots of Chinese Veggies

It was cathartic to cook and soothing to have the house smell of warm chinese cooking. The live crayfish (or whatever they were) were squirming all the way home and almost dead, but still moving, when finally dropped into the boiling water - and looked lovely when cooked.





They were a pain to eat, and I probably won't get them again, but a fun experiment nonetheless.

I also had extra chicken feet from the soup, so I decided to throw together some chicken feet stew. It turned out pretty well, but both Stan and I were afraid of the fat content so only ate a few each. The rest remained as decoration. And the rest of our meal was actually pretty simple - nothing scary about it, just basic, home-cooked yumminess.





Stewed Chicken Feet

12 chicken feet
3 tablespoons dark soy sauce
2 tablespoons rice wine
3 slices ginger
2 cups water
2 fresh red chili peppers, chopped
spoonful of brown sugar

Combine all ingredients and simmer for 1 1/2 hours. Easy, huh?

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Chinatown Ice Cream Factory

Janice and I had our own little tour of Chinatown last night. We had beef noodle soup at Super Taste, got beef, pork & squid congee for Jon (who had his nose broken yesterday for his deviated septum) at Big Wong's, pearl tea at Tearrific, and then ice cream at Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Aren't Chinese ppl so creative with their store names? Super Taste, for super tasting noodles! Tearrific, bc it's terrrrific!

Also, Chinese ppl have no shame. We were walking down the street and some funny man was singing Chinese opera at the top of his lungs. Can you imagine if some normal looking dude in his mid-40s was walking down Bleecker busting out non-sensical foreign tunes? But what I love most about Chinese is their raw appreciation for cheap, no-nonsense, yummy food.


I had never been to Chinatown Ice Cream Factory before, but they have some pretty neat flavors. They had a seasonal pumpkin pie flavor, which really did taste exactly like pumpkin pie, but the color was a tad bit too artificial for me to feel comfortable with it. Stan has said his favorite was Almond Cookie, so I got a pint of that to take home for him. And it's also Janice's favorite, so it was two for one. But other ones to try next time?

Pandan - a Malaysian leaf used to flavor savoury and sweet dishes
Chocolate Pandan - chocolate + the leaf?
Dan Ta - chinese egg tart
Durian - stinky fruit
Taro, Black Sesame, Avocado, Wasabi... and the list goes on.

Almond cookie was delicious. Stanley had three mini-cups at home. :) Is this not the funniest logo you've ever seen for ice cream??

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Momofuku Bo Ssam

So, I have yet to decide whether or not I will keep this a pure food blog, write about cooking only, cooking + restaurants, restaurants only, include my friends, or write about something totally different altogether, oh, say, shoes. But since I haven't decided yet, I'll write about whatever I feel like for now.

My girls came to visit from SF this past weekend, it was a blast. Of course, we ate pretty much everywhere south of Union Square that anyone would want to eat. We also had the infamous bo ssam at Momofuku Ssam Bar.

It was a glorious piece of pig butt and a phenomenal group eating experience. You use baby tongs and wrap up pieces of pulled pork together w/ raw oysters and a melange of special sauces in perfect pieces of bibb lettuce. Okay, not perfect pieces, for some reason, they all had little holes in them.





You would never expect raw oysters and pork butt to go together, but boy was it yummy. I was delightfully surprised at the party in my mouth. Our only regret was that we didn't order more oysters. As you can see from the photos, the massive amounts of pig butt generated very excitable dinner guests.





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