So Many Recipes, So Little Time
We’ve been to Razza in Jersey City before when they just opened and were on a first-come-first-serve policy. That day, we arrived by opening time and somehow wiggled ourselves in. The memories of the food were great but overall experience not so. Last week, the stars placed us in Razza vicinity with some time…
Quite an undertaking for an average weekday dinner. Nevertheless, a woman of purpose and power, she persisted and, after six hours, we had a Jordanian Maqluba on a Tuesday night. This version is a compilation of different recipes but the main one I pushed from is Maqlubet el Foul el Akdhar from Falastin. Maqluba means…
Steamed Crab and Pork Shumai flavored with ginger, shallots, and scallions are much quicker to shape compared to regular dumplings. And only eight minutes in a streamer. WHAT WENT IN— small wonton wrappers (about 3” in diameter or across if square) FOR THE FILLING— 6 oz lump crabmeat— 6 oz ground pork— 1 Tbsp minced shallot— 1…
Savory Snow Balls. These pork and shiitake meatballs covered in sweet rice do look like mini snowballs and make the table so festive. They take under ten minutes in a steamer and can be steamed at the table. WHAT WENT IN— 3/4 cup sweet rice, rinsed and soaked in water for 2 hours— yuzu-kosho, for…
Donabe winter months go on. That was the day to pull out Mushi-nabe — a steamer kind of day. Steamed Shrimp on Tofu from Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking. These are absolutely ingenious shrimp tofu bites — chopped salted and peppered shrimp mounded on bite size pieces of tofu. Sprinkled with potato starch…
What can I say — the moment if feels everything has been said about potatoes, Nopi potato salad shows up. Crushed potatoes with caper berries, pink peppercorns, and roasted garlic. Exactly what it is in the title, that what makes this salad stand out: garlic roasted with herbs in oil, caper berries, pink peppercorns. Every…
Last night it was back to Elmhurst. The food scenery there is hard to beat. We loaded up on fermented tea leaves and crunch for lahpet thoke, watched an amazing street al pastor activity, scouted for sambals at a local grocery. A few weeks ago, we came here specifically for a restaurant from our list…
As long as I remember myself, Uighur food has been one of my favorites. It is forever associated with Central Asian republics possible only during summer vacations, mom and dad off from work, vegetables unavailable in cold Moscow, exotic flavors. Inside the Iron Curtain, from Moscow, -stan republics and their food were the mysterious “Abroad.”…
Although geographically moving West from my childhood home, somehow my mind has always been drawn East. Probably like the place where I come from — neither West or East, or both. When we moved from Manhattan to suburbs to start a family, one of my very first friends was Japanese. An artist by training, she…
After seeing a lot of deconstruction happening lately in a cooking community, I’ve decided to deconstruct something of my own. To experiment, I pushed off Anya von Bremzen’s recipe from Please to the Table. Dishes from this book taste exactly like what mom used to make back in Moscow when she did all the cooking…