Bastardized Troisgros sorrel cream sauce...

So after the shrimp in cava reduction at El Quim de Boqueria, I really wanted to get back in the kitchen and deduce the recipe. My brother & his gf were in town, and I wanted to hang out with a really good friend of mine after coming back so it was perfect to host a mini dinner! Somewhere along the planning process--what greens to serve it with etc--another friend tossed me a link to cream sauce just in case I wanted to use sorrel...AND THERE IT WAS.

Again, there was a licking of the ladle and pan. Very little seasoning involved, not that hard to do actually--lots of waiting and reducing and blahblahblah. It's actually not the straight up Troisgros brothers recipe, but one adapted by Daniel Boulud that I came across, which I also merged with this recipe for the shrimp marinade to satisfy my cava reduction needs (and also usage of chanterelle in the sauce) :) I have to say tho, the cream sauce definitely would work better with a fish in terms of matching consistency, than with shrimp. DO THAT NEXT TIME.

*********************SHRIMP in CAVA-TROISGROS SORREL CREAM SAUCE*********************
Shrimp marinade:

- 2 pounds of shrimp
- 3 tbsp shallots
- 1 cup of cava (more or less)
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste

Mix mix mix, and dump in a bag/tupperware. Let marinade for 30min to an hour, no more no less. Discard marinade after.

Sauce:

- 2 cups of cava
- 2 cups of heavy cream
- 5 tbsp of champagne vinegar (more or less)
- 3 tbsp shallots
- 1/2 pound to 1 pound of chanterelle (I like them so i added more than 1/2 pound)
- 4 ounces of sorrel torn in pieces, not julienned (i kind of eyeballed this one)

Sautee mushrooms first with shallots until a little soft, then add cava and champagne vinegar. Reduce until almost all the liquid is evaporated. Add cream! Reduce reduce reeeeduce on low heat until it thickens so that it coats a spoon (or more :P). Some recipes call for straining the sauce but I really like having the mushroom in there so I kept it. (Plus chanterelles are expensive!!) Add sorrel. Sautee shrimp, throw on sauce!

Serve quickly b/c the sauce cools pretty quickly.

YAAAAAY!

Barcelona pinxtos, etc...

I had a mix of pinxtos (tapas on bread pretty much) and some regular tapas. ALL WERE DELICIOUS...and not even at noted places. (Logistically, it was easier to roam nearby wherever I was at and or yelp it--yes, yelping abroad!)

Patatas bravas at El Quim de Boqueria at mercato boqueria on las ramblas. Lick the screen. just do it.

Shrimp in cava reduction--I attempted a version of this but with cream, kind of a bastardized version of troisgros sorrel sauce. WILL POST. so good. so...so...good that I gave my friend the ladle to lick in the end and she gladly, enthusiastically obliged :) I, on the other hand, took a spoon and finger to the pan to snack on the residue. No shame. no. shaaaaame!!

ON TO THE PINXTOS:

Boquerones:

Elvers:

Anchovies:

Tortilla espanola:

Iberico ham:

Discuss, while I prep the other saucey stuffs

Tchoup Shop pop up restaurant!...

Uh....so...friggin' delicious and flavorful and layeredddddd....ON WITH IT!!

Crispy chicken biscuit with handmande red pepper jelly:


Seriously. SERIOUSLY LOOK AT IT:


...AND LOOK AT IT ONE MORE TIIIIME!!!




Soft shell crab po boy with red cabbage and some kind of remoulade:




Peel & eat shrimp w/thyme (i think?), bay leaf, lemon and other goodness I don't know:


LOOK AT IIIT...



LOOOOOK AAAAAT ITTTTTTT!!!!! :) :) :)




Creole corn on the cob:


HELLO DELICIOUSNESS:



bloody mary's (from DBA, not Tchoup Shop. Twas aiites):


CLEAN PLATE CLUB!

An Nhau: so good I wrote my mama about it...

No seriously, I emailed my mom that I was excited about An Nhau opening and she responded:

Good luck to your friends' business, it's good for U to have a good place to hang out but hope U don't waist [sic] time joining them & their cool business.

Mama Ly's cheeky no? I'm half certain she thinks my foodie devotion and food photography has somehow stolen me from my rightful path to Med School :D ...and possibly serves as a looming threat to steal me away from my second Masters too :P I'm also under the impression my mom thinks I'm at Bayside High (go tigers! ;)) and this place will be my new "Max's" ...which...you know, I don't remember any asians on Saved by the Bell!! >:( Hehe. ANYHOODLE, Mama Ly didn't know the name of this place was....An Nhau...which would...make quite a diff initial impression :P More on that later :) This is going to be quite a disjointed entry for now--I'm trying to just rush this one out.

Kinda looks like a lovingly gnawed thumbs up right? hehe...and it is!! super perky pokey enthusiastic thumbs up with 3 snaps in Z formation for An Nhau! :)

What you need to know is, this is one of my fave spots now EVER in the city and it has galvanized me to publicize the place and the owners vigorously b/c they're so earnest, dedicated, and chill. They get my beef with the ills and ilk of 'vietnamese' crap and pseudo vietnamese hotspots blowing up in the city that the dilletantes fawn over in the new exoticization of a cuisine and leaving some like us in the dust when all u want is a taste of home--or just a taste of food you are accustomed and entitled to! :) I don't have a lot of fave restaurants in the city--or in my life period...I think An Nhau has become the 3rd ever! :) I'm probably imbuing more to the presence of this restaurant in my life than just...a new restaurant I've been looking for ever since I moved out East. I'm definitely not looking through gossamer-veiled eyes...An Nhau has room for improvements and I anticipate some growing pains, but the potential and promise, and based on what I've gustatorially lived with the stuff they've given me, I'm positively glowing with optimism!

In Vietnamese ăn nhậu refers generally when to the older menfolks get together for (many) drinks and tapas-like feasting. Think...a home-grown edition of lads at the pub gaily, raucously feasting on various meats and homegrown beers. Think...a crew of Bourdains with Bourdain-sian appreciation of asian charcuterie, complete with Bourdainsian cheeky dialogue wherein the mens rib on each other and heartily chortling and beer flows as freely as the small plates do. I dunno it's been a while since i've been anywhere near the vicinity any of my dad and his friends' festivities, which could vary in mellowness as well but just...u know, overall lads at the pub feel! with the vitality of youth...for the most part :)

The thing i'm MOST excited about is that food we/vietnamese eat at home--the staples we eat w/ rice that we don't eat in restaurants when I grew up in Sai Gon (kinda like the 'loofah' soups and claypot fish thing and rau moung etc)...the stuff that's always around for family events, at temple (no not as in yeshiva but buddhist) and communal meals etc--like trung duc or the braised pork belly w/ eggs and our version of curry and....lots of things that don't even pop up in restos in California and vietnamese-central BOLSA! Strikes a low timbre, thick, hearty chord in me :) That...is new and edgy indeed :)

Don't you love that little nub of tendon/ meat?? I always get such a kick out of it when I eat drumsticks and that pokes out more often than on ribs. TEEHEEE!! I really liked the ribs--the seasoning is vietnamese though I can't place what's in it right now since it's been a couple days, but I loved it! You wouldn't think of it as Vietnamese but a lot of things like 'trung thit kho'--which is the long awaited braised pork belly w/ eggs isn't somethign strikingly Vietnamese when u look at it but it is...definitively so (and a northern dish) that u eat with rice. My grams makes me tubs of it when I visit and it stores well so I can eat that with pickled mustard greens by the barrel when I get back to the city :D

ANYWAY, the restaurant itself (on N. 8th & Bedford) adjacent to its bánh mì shop (which i heart many times!) is meant to be more of a slowed down, chilled out version of what I remember the dins and vibrancy of when people ăn nhậu (yes it's a verb phrase)...kinda like the idea of tapas bars as in Spain minus the frenzy and bustle but who knows, maybe that's what Dung (the owner) is looking for (in my interpretation anyway). Mellow spot where ya'll come and hang out and grab something to eat,bounce out w/ relative ease and quickness.

The bestest was...pretty much a deconstructed banh mi and very typical fare for...an nhau hehe. Honestly, they invited a bunch of us over for a tasting of a small fraction of the menu and had this around just to nibble on--which we special-requested during the soft opening too! ^_^ and then we proceeded to convince the people adjacent to try some and then pushed it on more people like pate-crack! :) the Mayo...seriously...this is a whole 'nother entry...which kinda defeats my usual elaborations on the food period, but I'll fawn and nitpick and digress to semantics in cooking but....yeah!! i even made...hearts of it after! :P

And...this is what i proceeded to do! Honestly I just felt very at east and relaxed and filled with youthful enthusiasm for everythign they brought out! The salad could've been a little bigger, with more of the green than red cabbage (personal reference)--which could expand into other things but anyway...RIBS were my fave, the imperial shrimp was mystifying--it was apocryphal but I knew what I was eating tho it didn't look wholly familiar!

The back patio is lovely w/ about 4-5 garden day bed with awning things and other tables. Having watched Dung and his partner Vu/David put together each piece slowly over the past couple mos, it's been interesting to see it come together, the stories of where each piece was picked up, what for--the mantle of the bar itself is pretty much...a giant sliver of a tree complete with gaps and nooks and crannies where the tree divides or took root.

Then there's the pho--rocks! my socks! My grams said the key isn't so much how long you need to let the stock simmer or reduce--but that you season it well prior to adding the bones (which should def be roasted to bring out more flavor prior to adding to the stock!) She was really confused and gave me a 'bish pls' look when i gawked at her saying good stock only takes 2 hours generally. HHEHEHEHEEH...

That's a proper piece of beef my friend. And--I think Chi mentioned there was meatballs available!! ^_^ our meatballs are diff from....other cuisine's meatballs, and comes often as a variant on pho which isn't readily available in nyc it seems!

ANDDDDD...if u look at closely at the preceeding pics, u can see a golden ephemeral film of fatty micelles which comes from the nước béo!! It's like...the In-N-Out secret menu dude...u just gotta know the off menu things. This...is the mark of 'authentic' I HATE THAT WORD but...Dung obvy knows what he's doing and gives a shit enough to have it around and put it to use instead of watering down or sterilizing things here and there to make it a commercial success.

Here's dessert b/f I start railing about tangential things...

So back to the inclusion of the fatty skimmings from the broth (which is what is is so u know it adds more depth of flavor too ^_^)...Like I've mentioned w/ Sorella, there are times when you can tell the chef/restaurant is thorough and thoughtful with a dish. Sometimes things seem so small and insignificant but its inclusion kinda just shows you the dedication and attention to detail that's is very heartwarming to see. It's about the food, about something to take pride in!"Scary" ingredients, components and all--it's insulting when people get 'scared' of certain things in a dish--i don't mean the hesitancy and whatnot, but the resistance to get the real deal, as is, when people 'want to experience' the food of other cultures. (I hate the word "other" in context of 'othering' and 'normative' -.-).

Sorry but good 'ethnic' food is how food is in its genuine form, not scrubbed out and spiffed up with a polish to be accepted and questioned as 'authentic' by dilletantes with a itchy trigger finger on yelp. And the restauranteurs so anxious to placate the noob tongue with an inflated, egoist sense of taste -.- that's another story :) And the younger new vietnamese restauranteurs in the city--I get the difficulties in having straddled the cultural/generational palate divide but...just b/c u can get away with being sloppy with construction of a dish and a little thoughtless/forgetful in the enormity of what goes into a dish...or maybe you want to add a new twist to it (which I'm guilty of consciously or subconsciously)...but just b/c u can get away with it and perpetuate it past the aforementioned n00b tongues doesn't MEAN you've done grand task for yourself or your foods -.-

There's been a proliferation of crap in the hype of Vietnamese food being the next "it" thing, and with the cult-like fanaticisms for all things hip and trendy in NYC, it seems other parties are at the helm which only inwardly fuels further miseducation and misappropriation of a culture and its foods--this is much different in this day and age, and in this city given the power of the twitterati and the mentality of millenials and those on the cusp of this new...crazy user-generated rage...but...there's more, and this isn't the forum and my blog is far from a soapbox. I RANT...and digress...and...I end here. When their full menu is up, which...will cover so much important ground neglected in restaurants in CA and anywhere else--tapping into that home cooking that seldom sees the light of day let alone the food that still hasn't made its debut to the NY/East Coast culinary stage and palate.

Seriously...so good I wrote my mama about it...a gleeful bridge in culture and generational gap--let alone the...pop culture gap :P

A Foray into Spicy...and Baby Octopi/Octopodes/Octopuses!....

Betcha didn't know all 3 forms of plural "octopus" was correct!! (insert suleyman and...progeny joke here). Here's what I made on Fri for dinner: slow simmered baby octopuses in a spicy tomato reduction with asparagus, scallops, shrimp, and squid.

back story! :)...so all day Friday @ work I had this major fixation with making seared scallops again, but with the porcini risotto i had posted about--and maybe some baked asparagus b/c I was feenin' some greens and baked produce. And when I went to Whole Foods I saw baby octopuses, mussels, shrimp, bass, mexican scallops in addition to the jumbo Cape Cod ones my head kind of exploded!

...and after seeing all these pictures of my friend's crawfish extravaganza and all these clam bakes on Man vs. Food in Boston and Seattle...I had all these ideas running thru my head--and remembering my flight on JetBlue a while back wherein Mark Bittman showed u how to cook octopus around the time I discovered grilled octopus (period) @ Kefi...

I paced back % forth at the seafood counter for like a good half hour and the guy at the counter thought i was nuts b/c i bought half a pound of everything :P I wisely left back the mussels for another day.

Strangely...NO FISH SAUCE in this one!! But I think in some other incarnation of this (which will resemble my mom's shrimp in a tomato/garlic thing...it's nuts...it's like casserole level thickness in sauce).

I also decided that since the octopus/seafood orgy was going to take like at least 45 min to slow simmer, I'd bake myself a version of the asparagus I used to do--but this time with shaved pecorino, lemon, and this Borsari citrus salt I got @ Whole Foods that was particularly intriguing!

I also decided to go with white asparagus to try to break down the difference for my own palate...and with manchego cheese slivers of course. And for shiz and giggles--threw some fresh pecans in there to roast as well!! Def helped calm the flavor :)

I grossly underestimated the flavor reduction in the prosciutto (AGAIN) with the "reduced" pecorino shavings too, so the drippings mixed with the Borsari citrus salt (pretty light hand this time around) with the lemon juice was WAY intense but SO FRICKIN' AMAZING. I mean it felt like I was scrounging around for things to sop up the drippings and was a pretty big hit w/ my roomies too. The manchego melted well and balanced out the strong tart savory flavor with a little musky, "creamy" taste. Maybe a little smokey? I can't pin point the descriptor!

* * * * *

"RECIPE" for SPICY SEAFOOD PASTA:

...not giving it the long sexy foodie fetish name :P...

1/2 pound baby octopus in a sauce pan with 1/4 cup olive oil, 2-3 bay leaves, lightly sauteed shallots/garlic (just personal preference to have both--and I like to put in like half a bulb or more of garlic!!) :) season as u will...dump 2 cups of halved grape tomatoes in there (I ended up throwing in about 4 roma-sized tomatoes diced in there too b/c i like my reduction really thick and tomato-y esp since I don't wanna use tomato paste).

1/2 pound shrimp (maybe less is better), 1/2 pound scallops (the baby/mexican scallops are probaby a better choice), 1/2 pound squid sliced. I seared these lightly b/f dumping them all into the pot to slow simmer for ~45 min on REALLY low heat, stirring occasionally. I tried to add in chili pepper (i usually don't cook spicy) but couldn't taste anything and was worried so I put in pepper flakes...and then cayenne pepper eventually :) It was of adequate heat, suffice to say--even for a chili n00b like me :)...

* * * * *

BAKED ASPARAGUS:

wrap thin slices of prosciutto--I think stripping the normal slice into 3 long strips would be ideal. Don't be fooled that it doesn't look pretty or whatever proportional when wrapping it around the thin strips of manchego around the asparagus stalks. Shave some pecorino or parmesan or whatever other cheese u wanna play with. I squeezed half a good sized lemon over it all with a nice sprinkle of the Borsari salt. Bake @ 350-375 for about 15 min. YAY.

Celeste...

Went to Celeste on 84th and Amsterdam last month w/ Carolyn!! YAAAAAAY to Carolyn moving back from Espagna (I hadn't seen her in like 5-6 yrs!), and yay to Celeste. Jun took me here a while ago and ever since our office relocated uptown I pretty much go here as much as I can.

Italian gets thrown around here a lot so it's great I get to practice (sorta, when I'm not too meek or caught up to start tossing phrases out here and there). The ownder is a lean faced man with bony features, longer hair...an affable man that I guess goes to the fishmarket all the time so much that the Sushi chefs know him (just not by name!).

I only recently got into mussles--this is a basic garlic and white wine sauce but the quality of the mussels are amazing (which makes the owner's little stories believable, and endearing vs. some ridiculous braggadoccio BS!) It has a tinge of sweetness, succulent, well seasoned but lightly seasoned so u really just get...the quintessence of the mussels in what you're slopping around in ur mouth as opposed to stuff that sits in the yummy broth you're sucking down.

I had the Homemade Papardelle Special which is reminiscent of their old Shrimp Papardelle (which now comes with cabbage, goat cheese, and i forget what else). CLOSE UP!!...

But this incarnation has scallops, asparagus, and a light tomato marinara sauce. The pasta really is something to experience (well, the paparedelle anyway) b/c u can more plainly feel the different texture of hand-made/rolled/whatever pasta versus the shit u just pop in and boil at most restaurants.

Carolyn got the Butter-sage cheese ravioli that Julia's gotten too. It was def tasty and the sage was strong but pleasantly so b/c i feel like i don't get to really enjoy sage in a lot of things, and not as a focal point. (pumpkin ravioli @ fig & olive still def rocks my socks!!)

The thing I like about Celeste better than Pisticci's is that Celeste has more distinctive and rustic flavors, a little more pungent in comparison--but I mean the two are so restrained in their seasoning and composition, everything works together well and stand on their own. It's simple, and clean--just Celeste is a little more hearty, but...Pisticci's has so many different and refreshing ideas in their dishes! It's like talking about 2 very diff things joined by an effortless composition of tastes and fantastic ingredients!

...i like to finish my plate :D