Hearty Eating in Taipei and Hong Kong!

I recently returned from a trip to Taipei, Macau, and Hong Kong to visit a friend living abroad.  I was eager to try the food because Taiwan is known for dumplings (which I’m obsessed with) and Hong Kong is the birthplace of dim sum, one of my favorite meal-traditions.  My expectations were definitely met, if not exceeded by the scrumptious and wallet-friendly dumpling-paradise that I ate my way through.  Dumplings, however, were not the only tasty morsels I came across.  I had a fantastic Japanese-style in the food court of the famous Taipei 101 building:

Taipei also has great dim sum (not quite as good as Hong Kong) but very similar. One of the most famous places to have dim sum there is a popular chain called Din Tai Fung.  We went to the location in the basement of the Sogo department store, which is surrounded by a wonderful up-scale grocery store full of interesting bites to sample and gawk at.  Here are a few of our dishes from the meal:

Din Tai Fung was really good, but the dim sum we had in the mecca of dim sum definitely trumped it.  Without too much struggle, we found a very nice dim sum place I had read about called Fu Sing.  When we arrived, we discovered it specializes in shark fin, but don’t worry, we did not try that out. Luckily a member of the wait staff spoke a bit of English and we were able to order quite the assortment of my fav dim sum items:

While the BBQ pork really knocked our socks off, it was the steamed pork buns that really stole my heart.  Best steamed pork buns I have ever had.

And of course I can’t talk about food in Taiwan without mentioning bubble tea, which is a Taiwanese creation.  My first night in Taipei we went to one the night markets, which was a very stimulating scene but unpleasantly marked by the stench of stinky-tofu (I think it’s similar to nato).  I did enjoy a large traditional bubble tea – just the milk tea flavor:

IMPROVISING

How do I eat for a week without buying groceries?  Improvise! That’s a fancy way of saying scrape the bottom of the barrel of whatever I have in the kitchen. My best improvisation by far was a take on the Post Punk Kitchen’s vegan brown sugar muffins at http://www.theppk.com/2009/04/brown-sugar-peach-spelt-muffins/.  I, however, not having half the ingredients, IMPROVISED and used regular whole wheat flour instead of spelt, extra oil instead of applesauce, and omitted the peaches altogether.  They turned out surprisingly well (and made my kitchen smell gingery and sugary and delicious):

I call them my vegan brown sugar improv muffins.  And I ate the whole batch in three days…. oopsies

The next improvised meal was just brown rice, peas, and a fried egg covered in siracha.  The last egg in my fridge – it went to good use.  I call it my improv-siracha-don:

The last MAJOR IMPROVISATION happened while camping over Labor Day.  What do you do when you are in the middle of the woods with five pounds of ground buffalo, a camping stove, and zero/zip/nil cooking utensils?  Improvise! This extreme improvisation consisted of cooking buffalo burgers with a machete.  Yes, a machete.  Pretty bad-ass, right?  And it turned out to be delish~ we topped them with spicy mustard, bleu cheese, baby arugula, and red onion.  YUM

So cheers to winging it – it usually turns out pretty yummy in the end.

Amazing Chocolate Buttercream Caramel Hazelnut Cake!

Super Sweet! (Literally)

This was the cake to end all cakes!! A family friend and pastry chef made this bad-boy for my graduation party from law school. The intense chocolate buttercream frosting paired with the crushed hazelnuts on the outside made it taste like Ferrer Rocher truffles. And can you believe how beautiful it is!? Such a sweet sweet celebratory treat!!

Birthday Afternoon Tea at the Brown Palace

How did I spend my birthday? Doing my favorite thing in the world – partaking in the hallowed tradition of afternoon tea at one of the nicest and most traditional hotels in Denver, the Brown Palace. The afternoon tea at the Brown Palace is exactly what you would expect from a good hotel: live piano music, beautiful lobby, three-tiered platter with scones, coddled cream, jam, finger sandwiches, and divine chocolates and pastries. Drooling yet? Here’s the picture:

Brown Palace Afternoon Tea Platter

Yes, that is a glass of champagne. Naturally I opted for the “royal” tea. Cheers.

Caribbean Fare in Costa Rica

I recently took a fabulous spring break vacation to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. We stayed in a fun little surf town called Puerto Viejo, which was filled with surprisingly good restaurants and bars. Unlike most of Costa Rica, the cuisine on the Caribbean coast is more Afro-Caribbean than Latin American. YUM. We also found they substitute yucca for potatoes in a lot of dishes – a fantastic switch. Snapper is the go-to fish, and it was fresh and delicious. If you happen to find yourself in Puerto Viejo, my top recommendation for food and drink is Koki Beach. For lunch on the beach, go to Salsa Brava, and for a nice hotel meal, try Le Cameleon. Enough talk, here are the photos:

Yucca chips with pico de gayo and guacamole from Salsa Brava

Caribbean-style snapper with mashed potatoes and vegetables from Koki Beach

Watermelon "mojito" from Lazy Mon

Cheers!

Back in the Kitchen!!

After being abroad for seven months I am finally back in my beautiful Boulder kitchen, equipped with all the gadgets necessary to get my bake on.  So what was my first dinner back? Feeling inspired by this glorious fall weather, I made “Roasted Chicken and Vegetables” from Great Food Fast (a Martha Stewart Living cookbook).  I really enjoyed buying all the vegetables for the dish at the Farmer’s Market.  Here is the recipe:

1 acorn squash, halved lengthwise, seeded, and sliced (the thinner, the softer)

1 lb cremini mushrooms, halved

1 lg red onion, sliced

8 cloves of garlic (I used a garlic press, worked really well)

1 tbs olive oil (I used way more)

salt and pepper

4 bone-in chicken breast halves

1 tbs dry crushed rosemary

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.  Mix all the veggies with oil, salt, and pepper into a roasting pan and toss.  Roast for 15-20 mins.  Meanwhile, rub the chicken with rosemary, salt, and pepper under the skin.  Put the chicken on top of the veggies and roast for another 35-40 mins.

My chicken didn’t brown like the picture in the cookbook, but it did stay delightfully moist.

 

For dessert (of course there was a dessert) I made these delicious moist and uber chocolaty/fudgy flourless brownies from The Essential Best Foods Cookbook.  They were actually pretty healthy, which is surprising because they were REALLY good, and even more surprising is the fact that one of the ingredients was black beans! Couldn’t tell at all, which I think is a good thing.

Here is the recipe for the “Black Bean Brownies”:

1 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained (I accidentally only used 1/4 cup and it worked out just fine)

3/4 cup unsalted butter

3 oz unsweetened chocolate

3 lg eggs

1 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla

(the recipe called for walnuts, but I omitted them)

Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Coast a muffin tin with cooking spray.  Puree beans.  Melt butter and chocolate (I used the microwave).  In a separate bowl, beat eggs, sugar, and salt until glossy.  Beat in the chocolate mixture, then the bean puree and vanilla.  Fill the muffin tin (recipe said to the brim, but I wish I had left more room in each cup.  I only filled 10 cups and the tops spread out a little too much and sunk in the middle.)  Bake for 20 mins.  Cool completely (very important step, I tore apart a few brownies due to my impatience).  Refrigerate overnight and served chilled.

 

Interesting Ingredients

Yummmm batter

They tasted better than they looked

 

 

Best Chocolatier in the World

They say Belgium has the best chocolate in the world, but which Belgian chocolatier is the best?  Hands down, the title goes to Pierre Marcolini.  Visiting the flagship store on the Place du Grand Sablon is Brussels can be likened to going to a high-end fashion retailer like Louis Vitton.  The two-level shop is extremely chic with multi-lingual choco-experts to help you navigate the many varieties of chocolate available.  I also came across satellite shops below the Conrad Hotel on Avenue Louise and in the EuroStar concourse at Midi Station.  I cannot put the exquisiteness of this chocolate into words – you will just have to try it for yourself.  If only photos could convey an iota of the taste:

Storefront on Place du Grand Sablon

Scrumptous Truffles

Speculoos = Belgian Crack

Think Nutella on steroids but instead of hazelnut, the flavor is a mix of gingersnap and toffee. Yes, it is better than Nutella. I had to try it to believe it. Speculoos spread is used like Nutella, but once you’ve tried it, you will never be the same. It has little ginger/sugar crystals in it that have the perfect texture and add that extra omph. Belgians are very proud of Speculoos, as it is one of their many fattening traditional foods. Every time you order a coffee drink in this country, it comes with a Speculoos cookie (which is like a lame gingersnap – they should really just stick to the cookie paste). Speculoos might even be worth a trip to Belgium itself. Why is this not an export?

On display at Del Haize

Also see Wikipedia’s explanation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculaas

WAFFLE TRUCKS!!

No, that’s not the sweet sweet music of an ice cream truck serenading my neighborhood – it’s a freaking waffle truck!! I have recently moved to the food capitol of Europe: Belgium. Known for it’s exquisite French-quality in enormous Dutch-sized portions, Belgian food is delightful. How can you have a bad culinary experience in a country best known for chocolate, frites, waffles, and beer? I will get to the chocolate and frites later, but first let’s talk about these ADORABLE waffle trucks. They are quite ubiquitous in Brussels and are always painted in a quaint retro-fashion. Here are three examples of trucks I came across in the Place du Grand Sablon, Koudenberg, and Place Flagey, respectively:

Gaufres truck in the Place du Grand Sablon

Truck on Rue Montagne de la Cour

Waffle truck on Flagey

RAMEN

How could I have lived in Japan and have a food blog without dedicating at least one post to ramen? I can’t. So here is my spiel on these delicious Japanese noodles. When I first arrived in Tokyo I had ramen for dinner almost every night. Then my friend told me that a bowl of ramen has the same amount of fat, calories, and sodium as a big mac, so I had to cut back a little. There are ramen shops on just about every block in Tokyo, but not all ramen shops are created equal. Below is a photo of just a mediocre bowl of ramen I had near my house.

Ippudo in Gotanda is one of the most famous shops, probably because there is also one in New York City that is amazing. There are many blogs solely dedicated to ramen. The New York Times featured an article about ramen in Tokyo in which it referenced a blog called Ramenate!. http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/travel/31ramen.html One of the ramen shops blogged about on Ramenate! was only a few blocks from where I lived in Tokyo. http://www.ramenate.com/2009/10/ramen-jiro-mita-honten.html The shop, called Ramen Jiro Mita Honten, is a mecca of over-sized portions of ramen. Ramenate! does a much better job than I can describing the ramen there, so I recommend that you read it. Jiro Mita Honton is only open from 10:00 to 4:00 Monday to Friday, but if you want to eat, better get there early. A line starts forming around 9:30 and wraps around the block by noon. There are only about 15 bar stools but the patrons wolf down their enormous bowls of ramen with heaping mounds of pork on top at baffling speeds.

The line at 11:00 am

The massive bowl of ramen. I couldn’t finish it – which is saying something coming from me. It ain’t pretty, but it sure was tasty. And the chef loaded garlic on to it, which is rare in Tokyo but extra delicious.