An Effing Foodie

Recipe Reeeeeemix: Chicken Long Rice with Green Curry and Leeks

I dig braised meats, deep-fat frying, and charred chops as much as (who am I kidding, grossly-more-than) the next eater, but I've definitely hit a brown-food wall.  I'm a 'lil fatigued of things that taste like they're meant to prepare you for hibernation.

Which makes me cuckoopants-nostalgic for local Hawaiian food.

Which makes me dig through the pantry...and realize that I'm a couple of staples short of a faithful reproduction of chicken long rice. 

(Perhaps in the next life, I'll learn to keep a non-sprouting hand of ginger around.)

What is chicken long rice, you ask?  It's basically broth-bathed, ginger-scented bits of vermicelli noodles suspending tender chunks of chicken, usually spooned over rice.  It's a pretty Hawaii-specific thing, amorphous by nature--neither Chinese nor Japanese, too thickened to be soup-noodles, but too thin to be stew. 

No matter! I'm recklessly tweaking the beloved, monotone classic of chicken long rice to suit the contents of my fridge and my selfish mid-winter needs.

At home, they usually make long rice with round onion and finish it with green onion; I didn't have either, but I did have some pert leeks.  Using both the white and the green parts of the leeks made a fine (if blaringly inauthentic) substitute. 

I was also missing the aforementioned ginger, which is tougher to duplicate.  But my eye landed on a jar of Thai green curry paste crouching in the fridge door.  Why not?  It's got galangal in it--not quite ersatz ginger, but closer than anything else I had on-hand--plus, the heat from chilis and citrus notes from the lemongrass and kaffir lime leaves would be an eye-opening off-beat to a generally one-note dish.

And hell, since we were taking it to curry paste, why not season with Vietnamese fish sauce rather than salt?  Let's flip in some star anise, too, as a shout-out to the Chinese.

The result?  Not a chicken long rice you'd find at a luau or plate lunch place, but a bright, soothing bowl that I'd be happy to serve to NYers and kamaaina alike.

Lovin' in the LES: BaCorn @ Roni Sue's Chocolates, Pancake Month @ Clinton St. Bakery, NYC

Accursed holiday conventions aside, my ever-so-patient man deserves treats.  (Nope, this is not mushiness--this is an admission of guilt on the part of an irrational, food-crazed unladylike-type.)

So if the V-Day makes it easier for The Man to get his comeuppance, then HURRAY!

Enter Roni Sue's Chocolates...yup, I wrote about them last Valentine's, too, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. 

Where else are you going to find 6 handmade truffles for $10 (or $2 a piece, $18 for 12 pc, $22.00 for 15 pc), honey-and-tea lollipops ($1.50 each), or the CrackerJack™-cum-pig creation, BaCorn ($5 a bag)?

A $5-bag that goes WAY TOO QUICK, in my humble opinion; molasses-y popcorn that's not too sweet, with a scattering of chile-seasoned pine nuts and candied nuggets of bacon (of which there were too few, sayeth The Man--in a positive way, not a I'm-feeling-deprived way).  Love means being unembarrassed about your yen for candied pork.

The Man was tickled about the truffles I'd picked out too; no snoozy or overly fancypants fillings here, RS is willing and ably embracing chocolate-minded booze hounds.

L to R, top row then bottom: Dark-n-Stormy (ginger and rum), Manhattan (Knob Creek bourbon, sweet vermouth, bitters & a cherry), Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Caramel, Portly Fig (dried figs infused with Port wine), Pomegranate (Poma liqueur), and one Three-Layer Hazelnut Truffle (Dark, white & milk chocolates, each mixed with hazelnut praline).

Ladies and gentlemen, singles and couples, that's a lotta love for $10.

But what if you're not the candy-buying type?  What if an eyelid-sagging, satisfying brekky says l'amour to you?

Well, it's Pancake Month over at Clinton St. Bakery, and in honor of forced seasonal intimacy, on Feb. 13th and 14th, the special featured pancakes will be decked in Strawberries and a Champagne Zabayon.  I hate waiting in line for food more than your average chowhound, but the Clinton St. pancakes...they do something to me.  Check out the chocolate-chunk specimen ($12) that I shared with the Soft-Spoken Feisty Lady!

 

Tender, moist, studded with bittersweet chocolate, these somehow managed to be indulgent but not cloying.  We were sad to see them disappear so quickly (but happy to be the lucky co-culprits).  Pancakes are usually something SSFL and I avoid--I'd rather Benedict than have to soak dry disks of dough with liquid sugar to make them palatable--but these babies didn't even need the warm syrup doodad (butter rum?) off to the side.  Yes, yes, a thousand times, YES!

And speaking of Benedict, they managed to churn out an off-the-hook variation of that, too:

 

'Twas another special of the day, the Corn-and-Clam Fritter Benedict ($15).  It's as exactly as dirty as it sounds--hot hush puppies with chopped clam and corn topped with poached eggs and an Old-Bay spiked hollandaise.  Though I couldn't really taste any clam besides a welcome hint of brininess, and the eggs were done a little hard (medium, no oozy yolks) it was still damn good, and went perfectly with the pint-o-peppery Bloody Mary ($9). 

Plate-licking most certainly crossed our noggins, but somehow SSFL and I managed to show some restraint. 

But YOU won't have to! 

**Wink** 

Hot Trends: Hospitality and Culinary Skills! (GASP!)

Recession-Proof: $6.50 @ Pam Real Thai

After weeding through the predictably a*sinine pile of beginning-of-year food trend predictions, the EF hath birthed up a few of her own!  Ready?

Restaurants and restaurant staff, desperate not to get sh*t-canned, will start treating guests with attentive respect.  They will smile, become efficient and courteous with seating and reservations, take a genuine interest in the enjoyment of your now-more-reasonably-priced meal, and will overall behave in a way that will encourage you to come back.

Novel, right? 

La Bruni and Epicurious beat me to it, sans irony.  Which scares the poop out of me.  Those who categorize basic courtesy and value as trends can go f*ck themselves for lowering the bar for the rest of us.

EF goes on to predict that the "trend" will trickle into the back-of-house, where spoiled, whiny cheflings who used to have budgets for hydroponic microherbs, sous-vide Jacuzzis and chickens fed only with grains pooped by the pope will be forced to do what their less-appointed grannies have been doing all their lives.   Cook.