Philadelphia 2015

Ah.....last time I was in Philly, it was the winter of 2003. My friends and I took a day trip. We basically did all the touristy stuff. We had a cheesesteak, saw the Liberty Bell, went to Chinatown (well the bus stopped at Chinatown), took the subway...etc. I can't believe it's been 12 years since I last went to Philadelphia. I should really go more often, it's only a 2 hour bus ride. Oh boy and the food....the food scene is so awesome there. Great hummus, GREAT FRIED CHICKEN, awesome Vietnamese food, excellent cocktail bars, and so SO good Italian food.

I was only there for 3 days. I took the 10:45a Bolt Bus and arrived around 12:30p. Walked to my Airbnb (my first Airbnb, it was a weird feeling staying at someone's actual apartment) in Center City and went straight to Cafe Diem for some super delicious Bun Bo Hue.

Next I stopped at the Big Gay Ice Cream shop.

Then in the afternoon, I met up with Mo (friend and old roomie) for some happy hour pizzas and beers at Nomad Roman Pizza. For happy hour, they have $5-$7 pizzas and $4 draft beers. The pizzas were alright but my favorite was the one topped with cherry tomatoes.

And then we hopped over to Franklin Mortgage & Investment Co. for a flight of tiki drinks.

The next morning, I made sure to trek over to Federal Donuts (on Sansom St) right at 11am for their famous fried chicken. I got a half order of fried chicken with a dusting of buttermilk ranch. I finally understand the hype. THE HYPE IS REAL. So freakin good.

After fried chicken, I went to COOK, where Doug and Bryan were doing their multi-dessert tasting event.

When I was looking up pie places (like Four & Twenty Blackbirds and Petee's), I didn't find much except for Magpie. Their special September pie is a Nutella cream pie. !!!!

For dinner that night, I went to Cheu Noodle Bar (thumbs down). I should've gone to Little Nonna's for pasta.

On my final day, I woke up early for some hummus at Dizengoff (same chef as Federal Donuts and Zahav). WOW, just wow. I never had hummus this delicious before. Chef Michael Solomonov is a treasure.

To make myself feel better about the mistake I made the night before for not getting Italian food for dinner, I trekked over to Amis for brunch. Got the rigatoni with sausage and an egg yolk. Mighty delicious.

And then just before leaving, I stopped at Federal Donuts for 6 donuts to bring back. =)

Sunday In A Jar

So last time when I made pie crust cookies, I was left with the dilemma of having leftover pie crust. Obviously there were many things I could've used it for but I was craving something else. Inspired by my favorite Big Gay Ice Cream treat, the Mermaid (which has vanilla ice cream, key lime curd, homemade graham crumble, and whipped cream), I wanted to make a sundae. I thought of using the same pint of vanilla ice cream I used for my pie crust cookie ice cream sandwiches but nope, I had an even better idea.

The one thing I'm good at is making tiramisu. Especially after getting tips from the crew at Brucie in Brooklyn. It's the only thing I'm confident that it'll come out good every time. SO.....why not use the mascarpone cream in the sundae instead of regular old vanilla ice cream?

-- RECIPE

Please note: This recipe contains raw eggs. I used the ones I get from the farmers' market.

Leftover pie crust

Mascarpone Cream: 2 eggs separated 8oz mascarpone 7 tablespoons sugar 1 cup heavy cream

In a bowl, whisk 2 egg yolks and 6 tablespoons of sugar until you get to the ribbon stage. It should be smooth and pale yellow.

Add the mascarpone cheese into the egg/sugar mixture and incorporate completely.

In a separate bowl, whisk egg whites till stiff peaks. Gently fold the egg whites into the mascarpone mixture. This will lighten the mixture.

In another bowl, whisk heavy cream and 1 tablespoon of sugar till you get stiff peaks. Fold whipped cream into mascarpone mixture. The cream gives the mixture body.

To Assemble: Put your leftover pie crust in a ziplock bag or tea towel. Smash it up. It's fine if there are big pieces and small pieces.

In a bowl or a jar or a cup or a sundae glass, put in a layer of pie crust crumble then mascarpone cream then plum sauce and repeat.

And...EAT

Sundae Fun

Big Gay LA: Last Day

Here's the last and final photo recap of Big Gay Ice Cream's LA pop-up...with some very surprising special guests (photo above).

The day started off with brunch hours in front of Susan Feniger's Street and some guy bought everyone in front of him 1 cone so that he could cut the line short.

We had few hours to waste before heading to our final spot at Faultline Bar, so we took the truck around LA for some photo ops. And lucky for us, a Chick-fil-A was just blocks away from us. We just HAD to swing by for some photos. While we were plotting our next move, couple Chick-fil-A employees came out (I thought to kick us out) asking if we were open. HA! For them, yes.

Faultline Bar was the truck's very last LA stop. Did you know that even zombies like ice cream? Doug brought Mila Hermanovski onto the truck to critique Gen's fabulous outfit and later all of us chowed on bacon wrapped dog topped with onions, parsley, mayo and mustard from Rosie (the main reason why the truck was parked there).

Thank you everyone for coming out and supporting the Big Gay Ice Cream. Doug, Bryan, Gen and Martha really kicked ass during this weeklong pop-up and hopefully they'll be back soon!