An Effing Foodie

These Are a Few of My Faaavorite Things: Oxtail Soup, Asahi Grill, Honolulu

So...the EF has been felled by her ancient nefarious nemesis...food poisoning.

Once you've clocked a certain number of hours grasping porcelain for dear life, it's important to get right back on the horse and shove some nutrients back into your betrayed body. 

It's times like this that we bust out our personalized short lists of Never-Fail Food (one notch more crucial, particular and reliable than mere comfort food).

As I rubbed my wounded, whimpering belly in a guest room in Virginia, one thing kept coming to mind:

 

Meet the Hawaiian answer to Jewish penicillin: Oxtail soup.

Sadly, most of the oxtail temples of my childhood have shut down since I've swapped to the East Coast, but my last visit home, my BFF Allison clued me in on Asahi Grill, a newer kid on the block with old-school sensibilities and killer oxtail soup.

There are no frills involved; just tender, bone-in hunks of long-cooked oxtail suspended in consomme-clear broth scented with star anise, cilantro, peanuts and ginger.  No matter where you order this is Hawaii, you'll always get 2 scoops of rice and a little bowl of grated ginger to go with it.

Ironically, it's been an exact calendar year since I was sitting at Asahi Grill with my family, coating my insides with collagen-rich broth.  As I slurp down conciliatory Campbell's, I concede that this may be a sign from mischievous deities that I should visit the motherland more often.

Or at the very least, call Allison more.  Alli, I MISS YOU, I LUV YOU...SEND SOUP!

Humane Crustacean Handling (AKA How to Avoid Bandito Lobsters)

This is what immediately comes to mind as I read studies on the most humane method of cooking lobsters:

When you're talking about preparing a live animal for consumption, what's considered "humane" is tricky at best.  Precautions/procedures to minimize stress on the person cooking is most important, as you're more likely to be more mercifully expedient if you're confident, rather than dragging along in wincing lobster empathy:

When I asked Robert Bayer, a professor of animal and veterinary science and the director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine...he told me that “there are a couple of ways to minimize trauma to the person that is doing the cooking.” Wait! I said the lobster, not the cook. But that was exactly his point: the cook is the one most affected by cooking lobster...They concluded that chilling lobsters in the freezer or in salted ice water...will adequately numb them so that when they hit the hot pot they will move very little. He also suggested that you could put them in fresh rather than salted water. The change of environment will not slowly suffocate the lobsters, as some would believe, but will instead put them to sleep...

--Jill Santopietro, NYT

To review: Dunk critters into iced fresh water until sluggish, then head-first into boiling lobster pot, to therefore avoid possible Lobster Bandito Retaliation.

Super-Expressive Foods: ChikaLicious Dessert Club's Espresso Ice Shot

I'd like to think I'm slowly getting better at taking appetizing piccies of eats, to ultimately provoke the lot of you into mid-day, mid-cubicle hunger.

But I still end up with 'lil beauties...

<====like this fella.

BEHOLD, the Many-Eyed Affogato Monster! BLAUGH!!!

Be kind.

He's a little misunderstood...and apparently, as curious about you as you are of him!

More importantly, he's darned tasty! Billed as "Espresso Ice Shot", Many-Eyed Affogato Monster is a caffeine-bathed balm on your summer-sapped senses--vanilla bean soft serve, chocolate-coated crispies, and a shot of espresso.

He's a bit heavy on the soft serve to be affogato proper, but if you want less ice cream, I'm sure the affable (if overwhelmed) purveyor of sweets would be happy to oblige.

You'll find him at the ChikaLicious Dessert Club (right across the street from the original ChikaLicous Dessert Bar on E 10th St) in the company of some good-lookin' cupcakes (including an INSANE toasted-marshmallow-topped s'mores specimen), cookies, puddings, smoothies, and a rotating sorbet.