York Street Noodle, only on Avon Street, in my Kitchen

About a month ago I had a serious craving for Chicken Coconut Curry Noodle Soup from York Street Noodle, only I wanted to learn to make it myself. I considered heading on down to that hallowed noodle joint, sidling up to the counter, and asking if they'd let me have a short-lived unpaid internship, but then I realized that I didn't want to ruin the magic. And I need to work on my sidling technique.

Anyway, I had been thinking that this soup was some sacred in-house concoction, but then I remembered that there is the internet. A vast uncharted sea of recipes. In any case, I looked it up found a bunch of recipes. The great thing about recipe-hunting on the internet is that you can find about a hundred different (or completely the same) ways of cooking any given thing, which allows you to sift through about five or six and figure out a) what's essential to the recipe, b) what's completely not essential, but that some idiot just threw in anyway, and c) what's maybe not essential, but just a really good idea.

I finally stole most of a recipe from another blog (http://thelightersideofme.blogspot.com/), changed a few things around, and the ingredient list ended up looking something like this:

1 lb. chicken breasts
4 cups fresh bok choy
1 (6 oz.) package Udon noodles
1/2 cup frozen peas (they don't need to be frozen, I suppose)
2 tbsp. sesame oil
1/8 cup onion, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp. ginger, minced
3 tsp. red curry paste
2 1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/2 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. coriander
6 cups chicken broth
1 can coconut milk
1/4 cup green onions, chopped
2 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. fish sauce
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper
As much cilantro and lime as you want

First, bring some water to a boil, add the bok choy and peas, and boil for a a couple of minutes before removing them. Then, cook the noodles, just until tender, and then transfer them to cold water.

Chop the chicken into stir-fry size pieces. Heat the sesame oil in a wok, and cook the chicken until cooked through but still tender. Remove from the pan. Then sauté the onions, garlic, and ginger for about a minute. Add the red curry paste, curry powder, turmeric, and coriander, and sauté for another minute. Then add the chicken broth and coconut milk and simmer for a few minutes before adding the sugar, fish sauce, and red pepper. The soup should smell like coconut curry soup now! Simmer for a few more minutes, and then just before serving, add the bok choy and peas back into the mix.

To serve, put a heap of noodles in each bowl, and spoon soup over them. Garnish liberally with cilantro and lime. The cilantro and lime are very important. I can't stress that enough. If you take leftovers with you to work or school, don't forget the cilantro and lime.

BUT there's more. I didn't make this perfectly the second time I made it. I used too much fish sauce, and not enough spice (the recipe above is adjusted). It still tasted good, but not exactly how I wanted. So the next day, I decided I would change it up a little. I diluted the leftovers with a bit more chicken broth, added a bit more curry and curry paste, and added two large potatoes, chopped. I simmered this for about 15-20 minutes (until the potatoes were soft), and then had a great inauthentic Thai-Indian curry soup. It was fantastic. If you wanted to forgoe the noodles the first time around, you could add the potatoes, use less liquid, and serve over rice. That would be awesome, too. The second-day finished product is pictured at the top of the post.

The last piece of advice I have concerning this dish is to have all of your ingredients measured out and ready to go ahead of time. As with any stir-fry, the wok component of this dish is done pretty quickly, and things can get messy in the kitchen if you're not ready. But that's easy. Enjoy!

Have You Ever Eaten a Hot Dog Like This?

I ate a ridiculous hot dog for lunch.

It didn't take long to make, either--I cooked it in between classes! My housemate saw me preparing it and said I always eat such ambitious meals. I said it's just a hot dog.

But I definitely said that in jest, because if you look at it, you can tell it was clearly more than just a hot dog.


It was pretty simple, though, really. If it looks delicious, and you want to have one, read on. So easy.

First cut up some onions, almost paper-thin. This is my favorite way to eat onions: you quarter the onion so you have a flat side, and then you just shave slices off of it as thinly as possible. Heat some butter in a pan over medium-high (to high), and then toss the onions in it. No need to move them around much until they're good and brown.

Then slice the hot dog lengthwise, and put it in the pan with the onions. When it's cooked on one side, turn it over, and put some shredded or thinly sliced cheese (I used mozzarella) on top. Put some fresh basil (leaves torn in half) in the pan, and let it heat for a moment. Then move the basil and onions onto the hot dog, and add some crumbled feta.

Transfer the hot dog to a bun or piece of bread or your hand or a tortilla or over-large cracker, add a little bit of mustard and ketchup, and enjoy!

Crepes and Scapes - a belated Independence day post (part 2)

I separated these out so that you don't feel obligated to read the whole thing at once :)

So I have a huge fondness for bean dip. I mean, who doesn't - it's flavorful, creamy, and a perfect complement to salty chips. However, it was hot and sunny outside on the Fourth, so I wanted something light and refreshing for my afternoon snack. Light and refreshing aren't usually adjectives I would use to describe bean dip, but I remembered seeing a recipe from the New York Times for Garlic Scape and White Bean dip.

What on earth is a garlic scape? you might be wondering. These are garlic scapes:

They're the green tops from a garlic plant. They taste like if a scallion tasted like garlic - giving a lighter, sweeter garlic flavor with the refreshing crunch of a green. We bought ours from the Wooster Square farmer's market - they're hard to find in grocery stores. Anyhow, here's the recipe (adapted from the one I saw in the Times):

1 can cannelini beans
2-3 garlic scapes
olive oil
lemon juice
sea salt

Drain the cannelini beans and give them a good rinse in cold water to get all that salty bean juice from the can off:


Coarsley chop the garlic scapes, then add the chopped scapes and beans to a food processor. You can add as much scape as you want - if you really like garlic, add a bunch in, if you're not so sure, go on the conservative side. Give the food processor a whirr until the mixture looks like the picture below.

Before whirring:


After whirring:



I know, I know, it doesn't look all that appetizing yet. As you can see, we have a tiny-ass food processor, so I had to do the proccessing in batches.

Scoop the bean and scape mixture out of the food processor and into a bowl. Stir in olive oil, lemon juice, and sea salt to taste. I didn't measure any of this - you just have to go slow and taste along the way. If you want the dip to be creamier, add more olive oil. If it tastes too thick and you want it to taste fresher, add more lemon juice. As for the salt - well, you know what salt tastes like. Stop when there's enough. Once it tastes good to you, throw it back in the food processor and whirr it again for a few seconds, just to make sure everything is uniformly combined. Serve it with Triscuits and Wheat thins like we did, or with raw veggies or anything else you think would taste good. This literally lasted twenty minutes between five of us:



You should definiely try it - it's an awesome summer afternoon snack, super easy, and you'll really impress people by using an ingredient they've never heard of :)

Crepes and Scapes - a belated Independence day post (part 1)

For dinner on the Fourth, we did pretty much what everyone does - Ferraro's hot dogs and veggies on the grill, watermelon, beer, and a delicious berry cobbler (I use the term loosely) thing courtesy of some friends :) While delicious, our culinary escapades earlier in the day were significantly more exciting, or at least unusual, and thus the topic of this post.

After rolling out of bed Saturday morning, we decided to kick off our celebration of America with something decidedly un-American: Crepes

For some reason, crepes don't often appear on the tables of your everyday American family. They're actually super easy to make - definitely on par with pancakes and waffles. So, next time you're in the mood for a tasty brunch, dessert, or snack and think "wow, I really wish there was a crepe stand down the street because those things are so thin there's no way I can make them myself" have no fear - here's how to do it.

Here's the batter recipe, courtesy of Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything"
1 cup all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
1 Tbsp sugar (if you're making sweet crepes - which, I mean, why wouldn't you be?)
1 1/4 cups milk
2 eggs
2 Tbsp butter melted and cooled, plus more for the crepe pan

Whisk together all the ingredients, and, if you're feeling patient (which Ben and I never are), refrigerate the mixture for at least an hour and up to 24.

A note on melting butter: if you're like any other 21-year old in the country, you'll want to do this in a microwave. Which is fine, but heed these instructions - microwave in VERY small increments. I'm talking like ten seconds, taking out and stirring in between. Otherwise, the butter will spatter and you'll lose half of it. It's also smart to put something like a paper towel over whatever you're microwaving in, so that if it does spatter, the inside of your microwave won't be covered in butter.

Anyhow, once your batter is ready, put an 8 or 10 inch skillet over medium heat, wait a few minutes, then add a small pat of butter (enough to grease the pan)

Getting the right amount of batter in the pan is the hardest part. You need enough so that it can swirl around and coat the bottom of the pan, but not so much that it gets thick and un-crepe like.
Pour in a few tablespoons, and swirl it around the pan as Ben is so graciously demonstrating here:

When the top of the crepe is dry (after about a minute), flip the crepe over and cook for another 15-30 seconds, until it just starts to brown. DO NOT let it get crispy.

Swirling and flipping the crepe correctly will probably take some practice, so don't be disheartened if the first few are a little ugly - they still taste good, I promise.

Once you've removed the crepe from the pan, it's filling time! On this particular occasion we used various combinations of nutella, chocolate chips, butter, cinnamon and sugar, honey, and frozen raspberries and blueberries (hey this is starting to get patriotic!)

When your crepe is done cooking, take it out of the pan and place it in a baking dish:


Note: Ben is not demonstrating proper crepe technique here. It's not smart to dangle your crepe so precariously over the floor, especially if you have a dog.

Place your selected filling on the bottom third of the crepe like so:


This one has berries and chocolate chips. Roll the crepe up like a burrito, and arrange it in the pan with the others.



For the last few crepes, we added some cocoa to the batter to make chocolate ones. If you want the insides to get nice and gooey and heated through, put your pan in the oven on low heat (325 or so) for about 10 minutes. Here's the finished product:


Top them off with syrup or whipped cream, or just eat them plain - the best thing about crepes is how personalizable they are. These were a great start to a day filled with delicious food.

Braised Pork Shoulder: The Gift that Keeps on Giving

I have a collection of photos stockpiled from our various cooking endeavors over the last month or so, but it's only fitting to start this blog with a post about its namesake: pork shoulder braised with vegetables, beer, and gin. For those who are unfamiliar, braising is a cooking technique that is maximally rewarding in every way possible: rich, complex flavor, an enormous quantity of meat that only tastes better when it is reheated after days or even a week, and, not insignificantly, ease of cooking and cost efficiency.

Braising is simple: take a large, tough cut of meat, brown it in a pot on the stove, pour a bunch of liquid (preferably a combination of stock and alcohol) and vegetables and stuff into the pot, and then put the pot in the oven on low heat for two to three hours. What you get out of the deal: meat that is so tender that it can't even hold onto the bone, vegetables that are soft but not falling apart, and a sauce that won't disappoint in the slightest.

We bought a seven-and-a-half pound pork shoulder from Ferraro's, a fantastic grocery store in Fair Haven--at least if what you're looking for is any kind of meat imaginable (Ferraro's at Yelp)--which cost around eight dollars.


It's on the bone in the picture there, and although you can't really see the scale, it's huge. Way too big for the pot. I had never worked with a piece of meat this big, let alone tried to butcher it. Here's the security cam footage of the scene after I murdered this poor, lonesome swine.

Sporting the Lady Macbeth:


After the massacre, I cut up a lot of vegetables. There is no need to measure if you're going to recreate this. Just cut up a bunch of carrots, celery, onions, and garlic. Heat olive oil in a large pot on the stove, and allow the vegetables to cook until they have softened slightly. It's best to do this in batches.


I'm shifting into recipe mode here; I don't just have poor consistency in my verb conjugation. That's a note primarily for my parents.

Now, remove the vegetables and add the drawn and quartered slabs of animal flesh to the pot, browning them briefly on all sides. Salt and pepper them beforehand. Don't overcook them (a stupid imperative to mention, since "overcooking" is by definition something you don't want to do). Just a touch on each side is enough. Throw the vegetables back in the pot, and mix it up so there's a bit of everything at each elevation in the pot.

Now comes the important part: add whatever you want to the pot if you think it will taste good. We used an adaptation of a Mark Bittman recipe. He wanted us to use a dark beer and juniper berries, so we used one bottle of Guinness, one bottle of Hooker IPA (because it was in the fridge), a healthy slug of gin, and I think a small amount of chicken stock. This sounds complicated, but it's not. You're literally pouring liquid into a pot with stuff you heated in the pot beforehand a little bit.


Liberally add fresh herbs to the mixture (we used rosemary and thyme, but anything not too exotic will work), and bring the pot to a boil. Let it boil for a minute, and then transfer it to the oven at about 350°. The liquid should be at a low simmer, and it should smell great. Periodically check on it to make sure it's not boiling, without letting out too much heat, and about an hour in, rotate the meat pieces through the pot, and stick it back in the oven for at least another hour, maybe an hour and a half.

When it comes out of the oven, it looks like this:


We didn't own any tongs when I cooked this, so I used a set of crudely carved wooden salad utensils to lift the enormous amount of food out of the pot and transfer it to another dish. The next step is to reduce the sauce a bit by simmering it while skimming the fat off of the top. Then, serve the meat with bread (to sop up the intensely delicious sauce), and enjoy. Set aside some time, because it's a total sensory experience. By which I mean it pretty much works one over on your body like it's Thanksgiving. Only cheap, it doesn't taste the same every time, and I doubt you'll want to leave room for pie.


Finally, the estimated cost of the whole meal? Around 18-20 dollars, but it makes about 10 hearty servings over the course of a week. Remember how I called a braise the gift that keeps on giving? The leftovers are just as good, and they make a ridiculous pork sandwich with barbecue sauce. Ridiculous. I use Sweet Baby Ray's, which costs a dollar fifty at the grocery store. Try braising something--you'll never again think that you can't afford to eat incredibly rich, tender, high quality meat on a budget.