Beef Rice Bowl And High School

It only happened twice every year during high school. I would wake up (forget when....) 3am, 4am and drive to my school. The air was crisp and I would carry a light jacket just in case. By the time I get to school there would already be a line of people. Talking, sitting, waiting. We had to do this because that was the only way we would get the classes (or summer classes) we wanted and the schedule we wanted. Basically a bunch of high school kids sitting and waiting till 6am (or was it 7am?) to talk to our counselors and hoping to be early enough in line to get the classes we wanted.

Do you remember Yoshinoya? There was one in Times Square but it's long gone now. It's pretty common in LA and back in high school, I would go there a lot. They make a pretty darn good beef bowl, gyudon. I remember one time, while we were all waiting in the dark at our high school, someone had the awesome idea of going to Yoshinoya and grabbing beef bowls for some of us. I think it ended up me driving but when it's chilly and it's 4am and you're hungry. Man, that beef bowl was like heaven in your stomach.

I rarely eat beef bowls nowadays, I'm more an oyakodon person but when my friend, Benson, posted a video recipe on his Facebook for a beef bowl....I decided to give it a try.

Funny how you memory works. While I was eating this, I couldn't stop thinking about that one time in high school.

You can find Benson's recipe for gyudon here.

I like to redo high school.

Matcha French Toast, Hong Kong Style

After reading this WSJ article on why fruits and vegetables in Chinatown are so cheap, I decided to head over to Chinatown to buy some fruits. I was going to just buy one pound of rainier cherries but the lady said I should buy two and she showed me how much one pound was. Good thing I listened to her cause these cherries were crazy delicious and sweet. I probably ate a whole pound that night while Netflix binging.

So the idea for a matcha French toast came to me when I was attending Valentina's food styling and photo workshop few weeks ago. She made a matcha crepe cake during the workshop and that got me thinking because I have a tiny bit of matcha powder left and I should really use it up. Of course being the lazy me, I was not going to make a crepe cake. Instead I decided to make French toast, Hong Kong style.

I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you......the way I tried to incorporate the matcha powder into the eggs totally failed. Haha

I guess in my head, I imagined to somehow smoothly mix the matcha into the scrambled eggs, turning them into green scrambled eggs. But all I did was tiny clumps of matcha powder in scrambled eggs. Maybe I could've blended it with the hand blender.....hm......next time.

Anyways, Hong Kong style French toast is quite easy to make. All you need is bread, oil or butter, and eggs. It's typically slices of bread soaked with the scrambled eggs and fried in butter or oil. Served with a slab of butter.

Things you'll need:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon matcha powder
• 3 slices of bread
• Creme fraiche (or whipped cream if you like)
• Rainier cherry and strawberry compote (or jam or just fresh fruits)
• Butter or oil
• Extra matcha powder for dusting afterwards

Rainier cherry and strawberry compote

• 1 cup of rainier cherries (or regular cherries)
• 1 cup of strawberries
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• Sugar (about 1/4 cup to start)

To make the compote, remove the pits from the cherries and cut all the strawberries in half.

Add the fruits into a pot with lemon zest, lemon juice, and add about 1/4 cup of sugar to start.

Let the fruits slowly cook over low flames. Stir to mix and keep an eye on it. I nearly burnt the whole thing.

Cook the compote till the fruits are soft and has thicken. Taste to see if it needs more sugar.

Let compote cool in the fridge. Good to make the night before.

Matcha French Toasts

Combine matcha powder and eggs together. Try and get the matcha incorporated into the eggs as good as possible.

Get a pan hot on medium flames. Add enough oil or melt enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan.

Dip a slice of bread into the eggs, coat both sides and fry it in the pan until golden on both sides. Repeat for the other two slices of bread.

Place a slice of French toast on a plate, add a layer of creme fraiche, and a layer of compote.

Repeat last step.

To finish, dust some matcha powder on top and add fresh strawberries.

Curry Braised Pork Spare Ribs With Coconut Saffron Rice

So I'm a terrible person. I didn't really take down notes. I did mental notes instead. This is by no means an exact recipe but really how you feel that day and how spicy or curry flavor you want. And also you really should just use 1 onion instead of 2. I had binged on Youtube recipes on French onion soup and had this crazy idea of caramelizing a bunch of onions for this recipe. You certainly don't have to. And of course if you can't wait for 3hrs, go ahead and use ground pork or chicken or fish balls.

Of course the beauty of this dish is to let every cook....slow......and low. Really draw out the flavors of the ingredients.

As for the rice, it just so happened I had a pinch of saffron left. A gift from a friend. It's optional and you can totally experiment with other spices like cardamon or cumin.

---

INGREDIENTS

Curry Pork Ribs

• Pork ribs
• Couple potatoes
• 2 medium size onions
• 1 stalk of lemongrass
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon grated garlic
• Coconut milk
• 2 tablespoon curry powder
• Salt + pepper
• Scallions

Coconut Saffron Rice

• Rice
• Coconut milk
• Pinch of saffron
• Pinch of salt

Get a real big pot or Dutch oven hot on a stove. Season the ribs with salt + pepper. Add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot and brown all the ribs. Do in batches if needed. Remove the ribs and let them hang out a bit.

Add more oil if the pot is dry. Toss in the lemongrass and grated ginger and garlic. Stir. Add in the onion slices. Stir to mix everything together. Lower the heat to medium and slowly cook the onions till they start to caramelize, about 15-20mins. Sprinkle in the curry power and stir well.

Add the ribs. Add a whole can of coconut milk and than pour enough liquid (water or stock) to barely cover the ribs. Turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it start to boil, lower the heat to low, cover, and let it braise for couple hours.

Give it a good stir every 30mins.

2 hours later.....give it a taste. More coconut milk? Too much coconut milk? More curry powder? This is a good time to tweak it to your liking.

Add in the diced potatoes and cook till the ribs and potatoes are tender.

* I really wanted a thick curry, so I turned up the heat, after putting in the potatoes, and let the mixture cook without the lid.

To make the rice, cook the rice according to the directions on the package/box. And since it was my first time making coconut rice, I did half coconut milk and half water. Add saffron and a pinch of salt. Stir the uncooked rice. Cook the rice.

To serve, scoop the rice onto a plate, add couple ribs, add sauce, and sprinkle some scallions.

Bordeaux Wines

Do you get lost when people start describing wines to you? Yeah, it happens to me. Like a lot of people, I will drink whatever is given to me or at least make sure one of my friends I’m dining with has some wine knowledge. But I’m always up for learning new things so when I was asked by Bordeaux Wines if I wanted to try some of their wines while dining in Harlem as a part of Harlem EatUp!, I jumped at the chance.

The first thing I did was to find a restaurant. The nice people at Bordeaux Wines gave me a list of BYOB restaurants to pick from. I was immediately drawn to A Cafe New York because I was intrigued by their French Caribbean dishes. Before I headed out to dinner, I was given a tote bag with three bottles of wine. I had no idea what sort of wines they were going to give me so the surprise of finding out at the dinner table was kind of fun. Sitting down at the restaurant, my two friends and I took a little bit more time with the menu because we were trying to figure out what each of us was going to eat and plan which wine to drink first, second, and last.

We started off with the white wine, a 100% Sauvignon Blanc from Monsieur Touton. Drinking by itself we all agreed that the wine was more semi-dry than dry. It was quite sweet and fruity. But when I paired it with the broiled Bourgogne escargots with pastis in a cilantro chili butter, it totally changed. The sweetness of the wine complimented the buttery sauce nicely. My friend also enjoyed the pairing between the wine and his grilled Hass avocado and vegetable terrine in a shiitake sesame dressing. Though my other friend said the wine masked the flavor of the brie cheese crust on her baked Scottish pheasant pate.

For the main course, I went with the duck confit with jerk spices in a citrus jus reduction. Duck confit is something I order all the time if I see it on the menu. Crispy skin and fatty duck meat, what could be better? And to pair it with the red wine from Chateau Deyrem Valentin was an easy decision. The wine, a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petit Verdot, and Carmenere, was fruity and smooth. It also went very well with the spiciness of the lamb merguez sausages that my friend was enjoying. The coconut creme fraiche sauce in the dish was most excellent for dipping the complimentary bread in. My friend that ordered the wild mushroom ragout with tofu, Caribbean beans, and alfalfa sprouts switched back to the white wine. He found the alfalfa sprouts didn’t quite pair well with the red but the white tasted excellent with his dish.

And finally dessert. When we first walked in, the waiter was nice enough to chill the bottle of rose for us. So by dessert time the Jaillance Cremant de Bordeaux Rose was nice and cold. That night, the restaurant had tiramisu, chocolate mousse cake, and a warm almond tart with pear. We got one of each dessert. The rose was fruity and fizzy and super drinkable. The fizziness helped cut the heaviness of the tiramisu and the chocolate mousse cake. And finally we all agreed that the best thing we ate was the warm almond tart with pear. Wow, just wow.

Overall, it was a great night with great friends, awesome food, and fantastic wines. One or two things didn’t quite pair well together but that’s the fun of it. You learn from it and try a different pairing.