Cooking – Feta and Spinach Phyllo Pie

Posted on 1 January 2012 by christao408

To ensure a tasty start to the new year, I cooked a simple but fulfilling brunch for Tawn and myself, a feta and spinach pie made with phyllo dough. The recipe was based on one in Jamie Oliver’s “30 Minute Meals” series, which is available on iTunes.

The filling is eggs, feta cheese, cheddar cheese, and sauteed spinach seasoned with a little nutmeg, dried oregano, and salt and pepper. I modified the recipe slightly, substituting provolone for the cheddar and also sauteeing an onion to give the filling more flavor. The exterior is formed of sheets of phyllo dough, splashed with extra virgin olive oil and a dusting of sweet paprika. The dough is folded over the top to create a sealed pie and then baked in a skillet in the oven for 20 minutes.

The result is a flaky crust and an oozy, rich interior – a combination of flavors and textures that is very appealing. When paired with a mixed greens salad (in our case with some steamed beets and persimmon), it is a very pleasant meal and a tasty start to 2012!

Dining in LA: Lukshon

Posted on 26 December 2011 by christao408

While only in Los Angeles for a few hours between flights, it was time enough for my cousin Jackie and me to join Gary and William for dinner at Lukshon , a small plates restaurant in Culver City where chef Sang Yoon turns out clever takes on food from across east Asia with precision and, for the most part, a lot of flavor.

Lukshon is located in the Helms Bakery complex between Washington and Venice boulevards, just a few doors down from the chef’s other restaurant, Father’s Office. Jackie and I arrived on a Tuesday evening about 6:00, just as the restaurant was opening for business. Some corporate function was being set up on the outdoor patio and the two of us were the first customers into the restaurant.

We sat down at the bar to enjoy a drink while waiting for Gary and William to join. The bartender was an affable man who displayed a stunning breadth of knowledge about the wines and the cocktails on the menu. There is an elaborate machine in place for dispensing wines, a restaurant owner’s dream in terms of portion control I suppose. The nice thing was that we could get tastes of several wines before selecting one we wanted to order.

Over dinner, I tried one of the restaurant’s signature cocktails, the Yokohama Romance. It features Prunier VSOP cognac, cherry heering (a Danish cherry liqueur), kaffir lime, lemongrass, and shaoxing wine. What caught my attention was that while Jackie and I sat at the bar enjoying our wine, the bartender was preparing this drink in front of us. The last garnish is the kaffir lime leaf, which he placed in the palm of his hand then smacked with the other hand. This bruised the leaf, immediately releasing the very pleasant aroma. Intrigued, I ordered one over dinner and found it to be enjoyable and complex in the way a cocktail should be.

There are two parts to the dining room: a brighter space featuring the bar, some long tables, and the clean and modern open kitchen. The other part of the dining room is more intimate, with tables and banquettes set among a cozier ambience.

The menu, as the bartender explained it to us, is intended to be a journey through eastern and southeastern Asia, tracing the paths that various ingredients, techniques, and dishes have taken across the region thanks to migration and trade. As an example, I’ve written before about northern Thai style curried noodles that owe much to a Muslim region of southwestern China. Chef Sang Yoon plays with these culinary ethnographies.

Gary and William joined us soon after and we moved to the table, where they used their experience from previous visits to help guide us through the menu. The menu is composed of about 20 small plates, 3 noodle dishes, and 5 rice dishes. Everything is served family style which means that it is placed in the middle of the table for sharing by all diners. Here’s what we enjoyed:

Choosing a rice dish was a challenge as they all sounded good. We settled on XO rice, which is jasmine rice stir fried with XO sauce, long beans and scrambled egg. XO sauce is a sauce made of seafood, usually scallops, and chilies that is somewhat similar to Worcestershire sauce. Only “somewhat,” though. This was a pleasant dish but odd that it arrived first since fried rice is usually more of a concluding dish. The portion was modest, though, so no worries about us filling up on it.

The baby Monterey squid stuffed with Chiang Mai style pork sausage, candlenut, mint, and rau ram. This dish was technically well-made but didn’t inspire me as much as I had hoped. The squid was fresh and not too chewy. The pork sausage was a less common variety using fermented pork. The candlenut and rau ram provided nice flavors. Each component was solid but when the flavors came together I found it interesting but didn’t long for another bite of it.

A stand-out dish (one also mentioned by many professional reviewers) is the spicy chicken pops. These feature chicken drumettes cooked in a sauce of garlic, kecap manis, and Szechuan pepper. Think Asian style buffalo wings. Kecap manis is an Indonesian style sweet soy sauce. Szechuan pepper, which is not related to black pepper or to chili peppers, has a mild numbing effect on the tongue and, in larger quantities, the lips. This was a dish for which I could have done something very un-family style: hogged the entire plate.

Another interesting dish was the Chinese eggplant, which was braised with tomato sambal (a chili sauce) and served with fennel raita (a kind of yogurt sauce) and eggplant “fries.” It was a very satisfying dish, comfort food that seemed very appropriate given the cool weather LA was having that evening.

Our next dish was a lamb belly roti canai. Roti canai is a flatbread with Indian roots that is common in Indonesia and Malaysia. Here the tender lamb belly is served with chana dal (split peas), cumin, mint, and pickled cauliflower and topped with a raita (yogurt) sauce. This had a lot of pleasing flavors and was also very enjoyable.

The next dish to arrive was som tam, the Thai green papaya salad. Made with a lot of carrots and only a bit of green papaya, the dish also had cherry tomatoes, long beans, peanuts, crispy shallots and fish sauce. Now, maybe I’m a bit biased because I live in Thailand and received this dish with certain expectations, but my thought was that it was a poor representation of som tam. Not only was the kitchen stingy with the green papayas, but the dressing was very one-note. Normally, you have a combination of sweet, salty, umami, and acidic all in one dish. Here it was mostly sweet.

The next dish was garlic pork belly, stir fried with do ban jiang (a Chinese style paste made of fermented beans, usually soy or broad beans, and often with chilies), small nuggets of mochi (glutinous rice cake), cabbage, and garlic chives. This was another comforting dish with lots of full bodied flavors and some interesting textures (still crisp cabbage, chewy mochi). Serve this with a bowl of rice and you’d have a nice meal just by itself.

Our final dish was dan dan noodles, a Szechuan classic that features a spicy sauce made of preserved mustard greens, chili oil, Szechuan pepper, and minced pork. Think spaghetti with meat sauce done Chinese style. While I’m no expert, this version of dan dan noodles was very similar to what I’ve had at other restaurants, reminding me especially of a version I had in Taipei at Kiki Restaurant with Andy and his parents.

Dinner concluded with a plate of complimentary desserts, three types, each with small portions. I don’t recall specifically what they were, something like custards with sorbet on top, all of which featured Asian flavors. While I didn’t write down the details, I do recall that they were flavorful and at just two or three bites each, were a satisfying end to a pleasant meal.

All in all, I found Lukshon to be a meal that was not only tasty and reasonably priced (about $30/each including a drink) but mentally engaging, too. Add to that the pleasant company with whom I dined, and it was a memorable meal with which to end my visit to the United States.

Visit to Omaha

Posted on 21 December 2011 by christao408

Near the end of my trip, I drove up to Omaha to spent a night with Andy and Sugi. It is normally about a three-hour drive form Kansas City to Omaha. After about the first hour, I started to encounter snow which grew heavier the further north I went. By the time I hit the Iowa border, I was passing cars that had spun off the road and took that as a clear warning to slow down. Arriving in Omaha to sluggish and slushy late rush hour traffice, my trip took about an hour longer than normal.

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Sugi and Andy at the Mexican restaurant they took me to, Cilantro’s. Sugi managed to order the really good dish, a mixed fajitas that included some tasty chorizo. Andy had some tamales that were decent. My fish tacos totally missed the mark. Using tilapia, the tacos had a muddy flavor that I couldn’t get past. All in all, I decided not to post pictures because the dishes pretty much looked like American style Mexican food from just about any American style Mexican food restaurant. That said, the company was fantastic.

Now, I’m not totally unfamiliar with snow. But at the same time, I live in Bangkok so it isn’t something I have to deal with very often. Here’s a short video capturing my impressions.

View of Andy’s street the morning after my arrival. My poor little rental car really wasn’t up to the task. I wasn’t able to get it all the way up the driveway without it slipping on the ice.

The culinary highlight of the trip to Omaha was a drive across the river into Councli Bluffs, IA, where Tawn and I were married a bit more than two years ago. In the downtown area, just a few blocks from the courthouse, is Dixie Quicks, a combination restaurant and art gallery, which just recently relocated from Omaha.

The space is fairly large, much more so than their previous space, and features an eclectic style of decorating. Chef René Orduña’s menu is a hodge-podge of southern, Mexican, and Cajun, done to good effect. It was featured on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” although you shouldn’t hold that against them. The staff is friendly (ask Andy about his new nickname) and the food is good.

A vintage toy robot stands guard on the beautiful terrazo counter. The restaurant definitely has a retro-chic vibe.

A real stand-out item on the regularly changing menu is the cornbread crab cake. Loaded with plenty of lump crab meat, the use of cornbread gives the cakes an added dimension. The sauce is a tomato butter which is made, interestingly, using the steamer on an espresso machine. If I had it to do over, I’d just have ordered three of these and called it a day.

Chicken Tortilla soup with a wonderful mixture of vegetables. Good flavor and the avocado was a nice touch.

Sugi ordered tortas, which were filled with avocados and lots of other tasty things. Served with a side of pickled collard greens. I’ve never had pickled collard greens which were, as you might expect, vinegary. Made for a pleasant contrast. While I liked the tortas, I do think that a crustier bread would have been nicer. Just my preference, though.

My breakfast was chilaquilles, a first for me. A common Mexican breakfast dish, chilaquilles makes use of leftover tortillas, which are fried then simmered in salsa. In this version, tomatoes and peppers are used to create something that is reminiscent of lasagna but with Mexican flavors. Served with black beans and two soft fried eggs, this was a really tasty treat and something I look forward to seeking out at other restaurants.

We managed to get on really well with one of the owners, the one who gave Andy his nickname. Before we had even finished our main courses, two types of French toast had been sent out for dessert, compliments of the house. The chocolate and banana is on the left and fresh berries are on the right. The bread is the same as is used for the tortas and while I still maintain that a slightly crustier bread would be better, it was hard to fault this French toast.

The gallery next door was open for browsing, getting ready for a three-artist show that was debuting that evening. Here, a giant inflatable black squirrel holds an acorn.

All in all, Dixie Quicks was a highlight meal during my trip to the US. A drive up to Omaha is worthwhile if for no other reason that to visit Andy and Sugi. But having this restaurant there provides an added incentive.

How Does My Garden Grow – Pt 4: First Harvest

Posted on 23 November 2011 by christao408

With the US Thanksgiving holiday just a few days away, it seems fully appropriate that I was able to recently celebrate my first harvest from my balcony garden. It was a limited harvest – one beet, one radish, and two cherry tomatoes – but at least it is a start, right? For those of you who have missed my videos, I filmed and edited a new one to mark this momentous occasion.

The harvest was a small one, but I was excited with it nonetheless. On the left is a golden beet, on the right is a type of heirloom radish called a watermelon radish. It is supposed to have a light green skin with a pink interior. The skin was kind of a pinkish white instead. Behind the two roots are my carrots which are slowly growing.

Raindrops on the leaves of my third tomato plant. Once we hit the start of October – the end of rainy season – the weather rapidly changed. We’ve had significant rainfall only two or three times since then and my south-facing balcony has been bathed in direct sunlight for about 7 hours a day. The plants have definitely enjoyed the sun, although I’ve had to be diligent about watering.

One curious thing is that my tomato plants – both cherry and beefsteak – have had a problem with pollination. So far only two fruits have grown. I’ve not seen any bees around my plants but according to my online research, tomato plants are self-pollinating. One technique recommended in some videos is to give the plants a good shake to encourage the pollinating. So far that hasn’t seemed to help. Plenty of blossoms come and go, but few ever become fruit.

And there they are, my two cherry tomatoes. Organic, homegrown, and mighty tasty. Now if I could just get a few more of them off my plant, which is nearly three meters tall!

Inside of the watermelon radish. It had a nice flavor, less sharp than the conventional red radishes you see at the market.

Golden beet. I have only seen red beets sold in Thailand so was very excited to have golden beets. What I’ve decided, though, is that root vegetables are a poor use of limited container space. I need to focus on vertical plants – tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, etc. – where I can get more yield per square meter of soil. Of course, I guess the tomato plants haven’t really panned out yet, have they?

Here’s the video of the autumn 2011 harvest.

The healthy salad I made from mostly store-bought vegetables and my few container garden vegetables. The shredded golden beet is on top, some sauteed beet greens, and the radish. Success! Stay tuned for more gardening developments.

Previous entries on this subject:

How Does My Garden Grow – Part 1: Defying Gravity
How Does My Garden Grow – Part 2: A Move to the Sunny Side
How Does My Garden Grow – Part 3: Back to Seedlings

Food in Bangkok: Prik Yuak

Posted on 2 November 2011 by christao408

Bangkok’s Chatuchak Weekend Market is popular among locals and visitors alike for its almost endless maze of vendors selling everything from fashion to frogs, souvenir trinkets to silverware for your dinner table. Shopping isn’t the only reason to visit the market, though. Hidden amongst all these vendors are several restaurants that are worth a trip, even if you have no plans to shop. A few weekends ago, we ate at Prik Yuak, a popular place whose good food and convenient location makes it worth a visit.

Prik Yuak is a Southern Thai style khao gaeng place. Khao gaeng refers to the prepared curries (and other dishes) that are served with rice. I shared a bit about this type of food in the third volume of my “Great Eats in Bangkok” series.

Ordering at Prik Yuak is both easy and hard: easy because all you need to do is point and they will plate the dishes up for you. Hard because you have to figure out what each thing is. My advice: so long as you have no allergies, religious dietary restrictions, or adverse reactions to chilies, go ahead and point away!

Portions are small – think “Thai tapas” – and this allows you to try many different tasty dishes even if you come to the restaurant by yourself or just one other person.

The restaurant itself is modest, located next to the edge of the market, immediately adjacent to exit 3 of the Kamphaeng Phet MRT station. In fact, make a u-turn to the right as you exit from the station and then continue back as far as you can go (40 meters or so) and you’ll have reached the restaurant. Grab a table after ordering and they will bring the food to you.

Plaa kem tod – The name of the dish refers to the salty fried fish that is the main flavoring ingredient. In this case, it is being served along with broccoli, although it is also served with other greens. Salted fish is a popular ingredient in Thai food, especially in the south, where it is an easy method of preservation for a region that is close to the sea. For foreigners, the taste can take some getting used to because it is very salty. The saltiness is balanced by the clean, unseasoned flavors of the vegetables, though.

Kai palow – This dish of stewed eggs and pork belly is often prepared with a Chinese five spice sauce. In this case, Prik Yuak uses a palm sugar caramel and soy sauce. This dish is ordered to accompany spicier dishes, as the sweet richness of the dish helps to counter the spice.

Kuag gling moo – Shredded pork fried with spices, most notably turmeric, with a garnish of thinly sliced kaffir lime leaf. This dish, which is spicy hot, has very assertive flavoring, making your taste buds come alive. The texture is also very fun to eat, small shreds of slightly crispy fried pork and fried shallots.

Gaeng tae po – This vegetable dish features something known locally as “morning glory” – not related to the flowers – a tubular green that grows near the water. It is served in a curry and is quite spicy but in a way that is very pleasant.

Panang moo – Panang style pork curry, which is milder than many other Thai curries. It has a heavy dose of coconut milk which provides some richness on the tongue, countering other spicier dishes. What makes Prik Yuak’s version of this dish unique is that they braise the pork first before cooking it in the curry. The result is a bowl full of very tender pork.

Pad prik king gai – Shredded fried chicken, cooked southern style with a dry curry (i.e. no coconut milk). At first glance, this appears similar to the kuag gling dish, above. But the flavor profile is very different. Instead of having turmeric and lots of spices, this curry is made mostly of chilies, ginger, galangal root, coriander root, and lemongrass. It is much more herbal and has a kick to it.

Kai tom yang matoom – A common condiment for the khao gaeng shops is boiled egg. Here we have boiled duck eggs done to a soft, creamy yolk. Again, the richness of the egg helps counteract the spiciness of several of the dishes. It is also an easy source of protein.

To provide some more veggies, a little crunch, and some cooling relief to your mouth, a platter of crudité is served. From left: kamin khao (white turmeric), long beans, and cucumbers.

And to drink? How about a coconut bowl of the favorite local cola: Pepsi. While I normally don’t drink sodas, it is a very refreshing accompaniment to a meal like this.

Conclusion: The food at Prik Yuak is first rate in terms of quality, price, and flavor. Best of all, the small servings allow you to try so many different things. I hope that as you read the descriptions, you noticed how varied the dishes are and how they complement each other. Something spicy, something sweet, something salty, something rich, something astringent – this is the quality of a balanced Thai meal, a feature that is lacking in a lot of western cooking, particularly in fast food America. When I go for too long without Thai food, I find that my palate is bored from the lack of different flavors in a single meal!

Thai Desserts

Posted on 22 October 2011 by christao408

As we wait patiently for updates as to the flooding risk in Bangkok…

It has been a while since I’ve done an entry about food, so I thought I would share with you the plate full of Thai desserts that Tawn brought for me a few weeks ago when I was slaving away all afternoon on the computer.

The full plate – from left: rae rai, khanom tuay, khanom khii nuu (in the cup), and gluay bing. First off, the term “khanom” is an all-purpose word used for snacks or sweets.

Item 1:This is khanom khii nuu. I’m not sure you want me to translate the name as the literal meaning is pretty unappetizing. This dessert is almost like a sweet cous cous made of rice flour instead of wheat flour. The rice flour is mixed with jasmine water to make a paste, then it is pressed through a screen to make small granules. These are then wrapped in a cloth and weighted to press out any extra liquid, then steamed until cooked.

A simple syrup is made with more jasmine water, sugar, and (if desired) food coloring, which is then mixed into the cooked flour granules. Finally, the whole thing is placed in a container along with a jasmine candle, which is allowed to burn to impart additional aroma. It is served with a little bit of shredded mature coconut. The flavor and texture are delicate, almost a bit too delicate.

Item 2: Rae rai are basically rice flour noodles. They are made by mixing two types of rice flour (regular and glutinous) with coconut cream and jasmine water until it forms a dough. The dough is stirred over medium heat for about ten minutes until the flour is cooked. Food coloring is added and the dough is separated into small balls (about the size of ping pong balls) and then extruded through a device that looks a bit like a garlic press. The resulting noodles are steamed and then served with a combination of sugar and sesame seeds and a little bit of salted coconut cream. Also a delicate flavor but a bit more substantial than khanom khii nuu.

Item 3: Gluay bing, grilled bananas. A semi-ripe starchy type of banana is grilled at a low temperature and then flattened. It is then soaked in a mixture of coconut milk and palm sugar. I’m not a big banana fan, so this wasn’t a particular favorite of mine.

Item 4: Khanom tuay, literally a “cup snack”. The dough is made of rice flour, flavored and colored with pandanus leaf. These are steamed in small cup molds and, after being removed, are served with a palm sugar caramel with sesame seeds.

Inside view of the khanom tuay, which has a consistent texture throughout, something similar to mochi, the pounded sticky rice that is common in Japanese cuisine. This was my favorite, especially because of the texture. I like the chewy texture of mochi, caramel, taffy, etc.

So there you have it – Thai desserts to tide you over while we wait for news about the flooding. “The water is coming tonight,” said one of our guards as he inspected the wall of sandbags in front of our condo. Let’s hope when I wake up tomorrow, everything is still dry.

Egg Sausage

Posted on 27 September 2011 by christao408

One commenter on my previous entry about making sausage expressed surprise about sausage being a part of Thai cuisine. Sure enough, Thais like stuffed intestines just as much as about everyone else! After posting the entry, though, I learned from a friend about a unique Thai sausage used as an ingredient in a clear soup. The sausage is called “look rok”.

It is made by filling sausage casings (intestines) with uncooked, well-beaten chicken eggs. Then you boil the sausage until the egg firms up. The sausage is then sliced and, if you want to be decorative, the cut ends are scored into quarters. The pieces are added to a clear broth that has minced pork and whole shrimp added to it. Looks quite pretty, doesn’t it? Seems like a lot of work, though, for just one ingredient in the dish.

Cooking: Making Sausages

Posted on 26 September 2011 by christao408

Making sausages has long be on my “to try” list. They say that sausages and legislation are two things you don’t really want to see being made, but I was curious. On hearing about my interest in sausage making, Jarrett Wrisley, food writer and owner of Soulfood Mahanakorn invited my friend Chow and me to his restaurant for a sausage making tutorial. This was much appreciated since I have neither a meat grinder or sausage stuffer attachment for my KitchenAid mixer.

Halfway through the process, we have a few meters of sausage made and several kilos of bulk sausage left. Which will run out first: the casings or the sausage?

Prior to starting out on the project, I spent some time learning about sausage making. I borrowed a copy of Susan Mahnke Peery’s “Home Sausage Making: How-To Techniques for Making and Enjoying 100 Sausages at Home” from my friend Nat. Then I did some browsing on the internet to find some recipes that sounded interesting. The day before heading over to Soulfood Mahanakorn, I bought my ingredients, cut the meat into cubes and froze it (for easier grinding), and mixed the spices and seasonings.

Chow and I met Jarrett at the restaurant just after noon. First off, we enjoyed a casual lunch of freshly baked baguette, mustard, and ham that Jarrett had made in his new smoker. Smoked with the cuttings from various Thai herbs, the ham had a fantastic flavor, perfect to set the mood for some sausage making.

First step – grind the meat. I used two different meats, pork and chicken, to make two different sausages: Polish and chicken apple. Chow made a third type of sausage, an herb and curry infused Northern Thai sausage known as sai oua.

The ingredients for the Polish sausage: pork belly, pork shoulder, water, garlic, salt, marjoram, black pepper, dry mustard, and ground coriander seed.

The ingredients for the chicken apple sausage: apple cider (reduced to a syrup), chicken thighs (with skin), dried apples, salt, black pepper, sage, dried ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and dissolved chicken bouillon.

Chow made her sai oua using her grandmother’s recipe, or at least as much of it as she was able to pry from her grandmother’s cook. The secret ingredients she is adding to the ground pork include shallots, garlic, cloves, kaffir lime leaf, ground coriander seed, salt, fish sauce, turmeric, dried chilies, and a mixture of southern and central style curry pastes. And if you think there are any exact proportions to this recipe, you’re crazy!

Jarrett fries up a test batch of the Polish sausage. He explained that his cooks will just taste the mixture raw to check the seasoning, presumably spitting out the mixture after tasting it. I’m not sure I want to be eating raw pork, even here in Thailand. Plus, since you will be eating the sausage cooked, it makes sense to me to actually taste it cooked.

After we tested all three mixtures and were confident we had the seasonings correct, it was time to stuff. No fancy sausage stuffing machines here and certainly no synthetic sausage casings. We used pig intestines fresh from the butcher’s, which had been rinsed countless times and treated with a little bit of lime juice to freshen the smell.

While I generally don’t consider myself a squeamish person, when you are making sausage with natural casings, there is no getting around the reality of what you are doing: filling a previously excrement-filled intestinal track with ground meat and seasonings, with the purpose of cooking and eating them.

Eeew. Reminds me of those acts where a magician pulls an unbelievably long scarf from his mouth.

Fun stuffing. Instead of using a stuffing machine, we hooked up the end of a length of intestine to a plastic funnel, tied off the other end of the intestine with some twine, and started stuffing. It is labor intensive, although not quite as much work as you might imagine. The biggest challenge is that you end up pushing lots of air into the sausage. Later, you need to prick the sausage with a skewer to let the excess air out.

Perhaps a new profile picture for me? “I will stuff your guts!”

After about an hour of stuffing, we ran out of casings. The result was about 3 kilos, or 6 pounds of stuffed sausage, which I later tried twisting into proper links with a modest amount of success. We used only about two-thirds of our sausage mixture, though, so everyone went home with links as well as some bulk sausage.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the cooked links, due to operator error on my part. (Note to self: you should not delete the pictures from your camera until ensuring they have actually copied onto the hard drive of the computer.) I do have photos of one of my experiments with the bulk sausage: frying up patties of the sai oua and making sandwiches from them.

Tawn was skeptical at first because “this isn’t how sai oua is eaten.” Put it on a fresh baguette with some lettuce, tomato, carrots dressed in rice wine vinegar, a splash of fish sauce and a sprinkle of cilantro and you have a fusion between a Vietnamese bánh mì and Northern Thai sausage. It tasted wonderful.

As for the overall sausage making experience, I would most definitely make sausage again. The ability to control your own flavors and ingredients is worth the effort. Next trip to the US, I’m buying a meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachment for my mixer.

Food in HK – Another Tim Ho Wan Location

Posted on 21 September 2011 by christao408

In April 2010, Tawn and I had the opportunity to visit Tim Ho Wan, the Michelin star winning dim sum restaurant in the Yau Ma Tei area of Hong Kong. When you hear “Michelin star” the normal image is of a big, swanky restaurant. Tim Ho Wan is quite the opposite, a modest twenty-seater emphasizing their food and little else. Because of the chef’s success, a second location was opened in Sham Shui Po, the fabric district in Kowloon. While in Hong Kong earlier this month, we stopped in for a visit.

Tim Ho Wan

(Second Location)
9-11 Fuk Wing Street
Sham Shui Po
Kowloon
‎

Food: Amazing
Service: So-so
Ambience: None
Price: Bargain

Located roughly equidistant between the Sham Shui Po and Prince Edward MTR stations, the second location of Tim Ho Wan is fairly easy to get to. Recognizing it will be a bit more challenging if you don’t read Chinese – there is no English signage. However, the street it is on seems to have no other restaurants, and most of the time you will see a queue out front, so that’s your clue that you are in the right place.

There is also a third location now open in a decidedly more upscale and easier to reach spot: the MTR Airport Express Hong Kong station. Look for store 12A on level one. This way, you can zip into the city from the airport on a four-hour layover, have time to eat the Michelin star earning dim sum, and then head back to the airport!

We headed to the restaurant about 11:00 am on a weekday, sneaking in between the morning crowd (the restaurant opens at 8:00) and the lunch crowd. That meant no wait for us, although just thirty minutes later the other tables quickly filled up. This second location is probably three times larger than the first, so waits are reportedly much shorter than at the first location, where waits longer than an hour are common.

As for the food, it was still very good but I would dare say the quality and care of preparation is lower than we experienced at the original location. And, in one case, the hygienic standards were lower, too.

The cheong fun, wide rice noodles filled with pork, steamed, and served with soy sauce, remain a favorite of mine. Tim Ho Wan prepares them beautifully, with the most delicate and silky noodles I’ve ever had.

Close-up view of the cheong fun, called “vermicelli” on the menu. The dish is just HK$15, about US$2, and even at three times the price, I would classify it as a must-order dish.

Another dish the restaurant is acclaimed for is its char siu bao, or barbecue pork buns. These are baked with a crumb crust on top and have a delightfully flaky texture.

Inside view of the barbecue pork bun. As I understand it, the origin of these bao is that restaurants would use the leftover pork from the previous evening’s banquets as the filling. Of course, that is probably not the case at most restaurants these days. Tim Ho Wan’s are made of very high quality pork and I could eat a few servings of these buns and call it a day.

Another winning dish is what the menu calls the “glue rice dumpling”, or glutinous rice dumpling. Filled with sausage and other goodies then wrapped in a lotus leaf and steamed, this is the most generously-sized item on the menu – about the size of my hand with fingers open wide. The quality of the ingredients is very high and the rice is very aromatic.

The pan fried turnip cakes, another dish that is usually a favorite of mine, disappointed. On our visit to the original Tim Ho Wan location, these cakes were fantastic, with a nicely browned crust and a flavor that comes from only the most seasoned of griddles. In fact, at the original location, this was my favorite dish. Unfortunately, the version at location number two was undercooked and uninspiring.

We made a wrong turn with the steamed beef balls in bean curd (tofu) skin. Commonly nicknamed “Chinese hamburgers”, these meatballs were cooked very rare. While I enjoy rare beef (steak tartare is wonderful), the texture didn’t work well in this dish. Additionally, one of our dining companions found a hair stuck in one of the balls. We brought this to the attention of a server, who replaced the dish but did not offer any compensation. While I know that Hong Kong doesn’t have a reputation for good customer service, the least I would expect at a Michelin starred restaurant (at any decent restaurant, for that matter) is that we not be charged for the dish that had to be replaced.

We headed back on track with the siu mai, steamed pork dumplings with shrimps. These mainstays of dim sum were tasty, although there was nothing particularly impressive about them compared to siu mai I’ve had at a dozen other dim sum restaurants.

Dining companions Tehlin with her daughter. When I ordered, I ordered for four hungry adults, forgetting that a child isn’t going to eat nearly as much. Oh, well, more for the rest of us!

Chris, Tawn, and Chinese aunty.

For dessert, we ordered two types of warm, sweet soup. One was the corn and purple glutinous rice and the other was green peas with sea lavender (a type of fragrant seaweed). Both were tasty but didn’t photograph very well. The third dessert, described as “tonic medlar & petal cake”, was tasty and beautiful. It is a gelatine of dried flowers, probably Chrysanthemum, that was beautifully golden and wonderfully aromatic. This is the type of dessert that is at once very simple – Jell-O! – but also very dramatic.

All told, we had twelve dishes and tea for four, and the bill came out to UK$177, about US$24 for three and a half people. While we did have the hair in the meatball incident and three dishes that were only average, the remaining dishes (especially the cheong fun and char siu bao) were fantastic and well worth the effort to find the restaurant.

Baking: Chocolate Raspberry Bundt Cake Soaked in Raspberry Syrup

Posted on 18 September 2011 by christao408

Chocolate Raspberry
Bundt Cake

Soaked in Raspberry Sauce

Recipe Source:‎

Week of Menus

Time: About 2 hours
Taste: 4/5
Fancy Factor: 4/5

One of my favorite cooking-related websites is Week of Menus. Written by Joanne Choi, a mother of young children who tries to provide, as she puts it, good cooking for people with too much on their plate. I’m sure we can all relate to that feeling. Recently, she’s done a series of recipes about bundt cakes and the chocolate raspberry bundt soaked in raspberry syrup caught my eye.

Something nice about bundt cakes is that they have a high degree of fancy with a relative minimum of work. The pans themselves are very grandly designed, some with arches and vaults worthy of a cathedral, others with giant ridges, and still others with rose patterns. With such a beautiful cake, there’s no need to frost or ice them, although a nice glaze moistens the cake and makes the architecture even more beautiful.

The ingredients are pretty simple (you can go to Joanne’s website for the exact recipe): All-purpose flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, unsalted butter, granulated sugar, eggs, vanilla extract, sour cream, a chocolate bar broken into pieces, and raspberries.

First you combine the flour with the salt, baking powder, and baking soda. The recipe does not call for sifting the flour, but the organic Australian flour I buy here in Thailand is a little coarse, so sifting helps combine the ingredients while also lightening the flour. Next step, cream the butter in a mixer until it is light and fluffy, then beat in the sugar.

After the sugar and butter are combined, add the eggs one at a time, beating for about thirty seconds between each addition. Of course, you need scrape down the sides of the bowl every so often along the way (or buy a BeaterBlade, which combines the paddle attachment with silicon edging that scrapes down the bowl as it mixes) so that the ingredients are well-combined.

Then start adding the flour mixture and the sour cream (to which I had to add a little bit of yogurt as I didn’t have quite enough sour cream) in alternating parts.

The final step is to fold in the broken chocolate pieces and about half the raspberries. Now, the recipe calls for fresh raspberries but I found that frozen works just fine. Manually incorporate the chocolate and berries instead of using the mixer, so that you are sure they are evenly distributed.

Put the batter into a bundt cake mold and bake. I didn’t have a bundt cake mold but had been thinking about buying one. This recipe gave me the incentive to make the purchase. While comparing models, I decided to buy my first silicone baking mold. It is less expensive and supposedly easier to use (no need to butter and flour the mold – it just peels right off) than metal baking pans.

Overall, I was impressed by the ease of use, but for some reason the batter shifted in the pan, causing one side of the cake to be larger than the other. Maybe I need to place the pan on a tray before putting it in the oven?

While the cake baked, I made the glaze. This is a combination of the remaining berries, some sugar, and a little bit of orange juice. The berries are pureed and strained so you get a rich raspberry juice. The juice is then combined with the sugar and orange juice and cooked for a few minutes until the sugar dissolves. You can easily imagine how other fruits could be used instead of raspberries to produce tasty alternatives to the raspberry cake.

After the cake was done and had cooled a bit (although not completely), you begin brushing on the glaze. Notice how lopsided the cake is! I also think it is a little overcooked. When I checked the cake initially, the toothpick was coming out dirty, so I gave it a few more minutes. By the time the inside was done, the outside was a little too brown. Perhaps I need to lover the oven temperature a little?

I added the glaze in two layers, allowing about ten minutes for the first layer to absorb. There was a point where the cake seemed adequately glazed and I had used only about two-thirds of the raspberry glaze. In hindsight, I would go ahead and apply a third layer as there is not much risk of the cake being too moist.

The final product, served with some white chocolate and raspberry ice cream from New Zealand Ice Cream. You can se this slice came from the thin side of the cake! Overall, the flavor was nice, although I think the cake was slightly overcooked and just a little dry. I would like to play around with this recipe again, maybe adding more berries to the batter or else maybe a little more sour cream. In any case, thanks to Joanne for this nice recipe!

christao408

The adventures of an expat American who moved to Bangkok for his husband.

Tag Archives: food