Jerky for Dessert

A Chinatown eating tour...

Last week to commemorate the Lunar New Year, I prepared a pot of Braised Chinese Short Ribs that changed my life. I have never been very well versed in Asian cuisine. I'm familiar with and enjoy the flavors, but being such a minimalist I've always leaned towards food with less ingredients. Despite this, I've been eager lately to dabble a bit more in this area. I found a recipe from a trusted source, which involved cuts of beef slowly braised in a broth flavored with sherry, orange and ginger. I was convinced this would be a winner. Preceeded by a romaine salad with Meyer lemon vinaigrette, grapefruit and watermelon radishes, it was!
Save this recipe for when you have plenty of time. You can't rush these flavors. The meat takes a full 2 1/2 hours to become completely tender, but it's well worth it. The resulting broth is practically drinkable, making even I (who made the dish from start to finish) wonder WHAT mysterious ingredient is in this that makes it SO GOOD!?
The answer is quality ingredients, proper technique, plenty of time, and lots of love.
Follow the recipe and you can't go wrong.

Foodie-kind
Last week after a day of running errands in the city, I unpacked my gear to find a hunk of aged Laguiole raw milk cheese in my gym shoe (relax, it was wrapped in plastic). Desperate for more room in my bag, I remembered putting it there earlier that day during a snack run at Whole Foods. This was the same day I emptied my jacket pocket and unexpectedly found a napkin wrapped around a fantastic oatmeal cookie with dried cranberries and pecans. It was a last minute purchase at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory (2 Old Fulton St), where I have an ice cream loyalty. I don't know why my pocket seemed like the best place for a cookie, or my shoe a good place for cheese, or why when sampling spicy cucumber pickles on the Lower East Side I asked for a napkin and the Pickle Guy offered me his sleeve. Besides not being a germophobe when it comes to eating, it's times like this when I realized what being a serious foodie is all about. It's a commitment, an obsession, even a compulsion. Sometimes the best medicine for people afflicted with foodie-ism is for us to hang out with our own kind.

Which is why I was delighted to spend the afternoon with a foodie friend from Hong Kong, eating our way around Chinatown. I have a love affair with noodles, and he told me about a place that makes fresh, hand pulled wheat noodles every day. Food Shing Restaurant (2 East Broadway) is a generic looking spot I never would have noticed from the street. I asked my friend to order his favorite things, and within a few minutes two steaming hot bowls of noodle soup appeared before us. The slices of slowly cooked beef tendon were much more flavorful and pleasant in texture than I thought they would be, surrounded by the most perfectly toothsome noodles and magnificent beefy broth with hints of ginger and star anise.
Slurping a bowl of noodles doesn't take long, so we were quickly on to our next stop. But not before devouring a perfectly sweet ginger doughnut that I picked up on the way over from my beloved Doughnut Plant (see past newsletter, Food Nostalgia archived on my blog). Mark Isreal's coconut filled doughnut is possibly the most euphoria-inducing food item I've had in my life, but I digress.
On the way to our next stop we peeked in the windows of another favorite Chinatown food spot (Yummy Noodles) , and one of the oldest dim sum and tea houses in the city. In the shadow on the Confucious building, 9 Chatham Square Restaurant is a favorite of the elderly Chinese set. A popular and bustling lunch spot serving Hong Kong style fare, including a beverage made of half coffee/half black tea called Yin Yuan tea.
Try Yummy Noodles (46 Bowery) for their famous claypot rice casserole topped with Chinese sausage, succulent roast duck and "bbq" meats, or a variety of congees (savory rice porrige).

For dessert!
Discovering K.L. Malaysia Beef Jerky Inc. (95A Elizabeth St.) was the foodie highlight of my week. A little tiny place with not much more than a heat lamp and piles of delicious meat treats. This is not the jerky you are thinking of, the oversalted and impossibly tough strips your uncle decided to make after a deer hunting trip once.
Malaysia Jerky has several varieties, all made in small square 1/4 inch thick sheets, with a texture closer to soft fruit leather or thinly sliced spam. If you are one of those people who can admit that spam is actually really tasty (becuase it IS), Malaysia Jerky is for you. The warm, spicy, sweet and slightly smoky pork jerky is cooked over charcoal and just fatty enough to be absolutely mouthwatering. I ate the rest of my purchase the day after, cold, right out of the refrigator and savored every bite.
After sampling even more Hong Kong style street food from a cart at Grand and Bowery (glutinous rice rolls with sweet sticky soy sauce and dry shrimp), I concluded my lunch hour tour, totally stuffed and grateful to live in such a diverse and wonderful city.

Cooking lessons
Whether you want to eat out less, entertain more, learn how to prepare healthy snacks, or just brush up on your efficiency in the kitchen.. a private cooking lesson is a great idea. Choose your own menu, learn to shop for the best ingredients and get professional tips to help make cooking more fun and less daunting!

Rates for private cooking lessons start at $175.

Unfussy Food can help you identify and reach your food goals, whether you need a food coach or a personal chef. Check out our custom services page for more rates and info.


Eat well and be well this holiday weekend!

-Holly

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