As unprofessional as it is, I sit here at work making a blog post. No, I'm not 'fraudin' my company or anything of the sort, but rather, I'm waiting for a migration (RoR thing... don't worry about it) to run and I'm bored as hell. Anyway, I figured it's about time to look back at the terrible fail that took place on Wednesday, on this gorgeous first day of spring (it was snowing this morning... wtf is that?).
I took a personal day on Wednesday since I was, again, running out of food. So in the morning I did the whole gym thing, checked the weather.com website, and headed out along Riverside expecting a nice breezy run in 45 degree weather. Um... no, 6 miles of 15 mile an hour wind in my face from the South West made for windchill of low 30s. Whatever, it wasn't that bad... I was running so it was moderately acceptable weather. In any case, I stopped at 14th street since I wanted to check out Union Square's Farmers Market, as well as Trader Joe's (which... don't laugh, I'd never gone to before). Union Square Market was pretty sweet, cheap ass apples, expensive dairy, and apparently Ostrich eggs(?)... who knew? I planned my route so as to hit the apple stands on the way back from Chinatown, so after a quick survey, I headed Eastward toward 'Joe's.' Holy crap was I impressed, it was basically healthfood central... with good prices to boot. Again, just a quick swing through, and I was on my way to Chinatown, where I'd grab lunch and do some grocery shopping.
At first I wanted to hit up the 'Wah Fung No. 1 Fast Food' joint for their $2.25 roast pork over rice. It's an aluminum container stuffed to the brim with white rice, some greens, and topped with some of the fattiest pork, all covered with the soy honey glaze... delicious. I really should have gone with my gut (haha, get it?), but against my better instinct, I trekked deeper into the confines of Chinatown towards Hong Kong Supermarket, ending up on Doyer. Now, I could've salvaged this trip by walking into 'Excellent Pork Chop House,' but no... I kept walking to the next shop, Super Tasty Hand-pulled Noodles. Ugh... what a mistake this turned out to be. Honestly, I was tricked by the sign in the window that said they had 'Shandong (山東) style knife cut noodles,' which I later found out, suck ass compared to 'Shanxi (山西) style.'
Even as you look from the outside, the storefront looks clean. This should've tipped me off that it wasn't awesome, but no... I figured there's no way beef noodles can go wrong. Inside, I found a series of tables linked together to be shared by the guests. This is alright, pretty authentic, since in Taiwan, noodle joints tend to be communal eating places... places where you'll often end up elbowing someone in the head when you pick up the bowl to drink the soup, and places where you'll get splashed by someone else's soup broth. Yeah... nostalgia haha, but back on point, I was there for the noodles... so scanning the menu, I went with my favorite... 'beef tendon noodle soup w/knife cut noodles.' I asked for it hot, to which I was promptly given a bottle of Sriracha... seriously, wtf... that's not the same as cooking it with extra chili oil... at $5.25, isn't the least you can do to cater to your customer better than the other noodle shops?
To be fair, there was one positive, it came fast. Like... 1 minute after ordering, and it was hot (temperature wise, not spiciness). The problem was obvious when I stared at the bowl though, the noodles weren't cut like I had thought (the whole Shanxi vs. Shandong thing). Instead of being the thick cut type of shard noodles, what I was given was basically Chinese linguini with retarded edges. Whatever, I could deal with it... I was hungry as a hippo... I had just ran 7 miles in cold weather! After dousing the bowl in Sriracha, which I'm still sort of annoyed with, I dug in. Oh no... another fail, the 'meat' was just tendon. Now you might be saying, "Isn't that exactly what you ordered?" Yes... I guess so, but in Taipei... tendon noodles are actually 1/2 tendon, 1/2 brisket. FAIL FAIL FAIL! I'm sorry, but at this point I was so angry at myself for 1) picking a more expensive place (more than 2x the cost of Wah Fung) 2) getting noodles that were subpar by my standards and 3) getting something other than what I had in mind that I didn't even finish the soup. I paid the ridiculous bill and left. Super Tasty, congratulations... you've done the impossible... you made me regret ordering beef noodle soup.
Basically, I walked out of the store... disappointed? no, that's an understatement, kinda pissed I guess. So on my way to Hong Kong, I spotted the Xin Jiang (新疆) BBQ man, with his assortment of skewers, all for a dollar. Of course, having just ingested a crapload of noodles, with no meat (yeah, tendons by themselves don't count in my book) I quickly scanned the menu for something that would satisfy my lack of protein haha. He has a decent collection of fairly exotic things, with the normal lamb, chicken, and beef, but then you notice that there's cuttlefish, grilled corn, fish balls, and tofu... but anyway, I went with the beef to make up for the noodles. All he asks is "Do you want it spicy," a request that apparently Super Tasty is too retarded to fulfill, let alone ask. Basically, this just means as it's being roasted, he lays on a thick layer of chili oil... yum.
How was it? Pretty satisfying for a buck, there's enough on the stick for a solid 5 or 6 bites. It's fatty enough that the juices flow down the stick, but not so much that it overwhelms the flavor of the smoked barbecue or the original flavor of the meat. As for the spiciness, well... it wasn't something that'd make you cry, but it definitely hit the spot, more on flavor than on the pain. Honestly, if I had known how good this was, and how crappy Super Tasty would be, I would've saved my money and just gotten one of each skewer here, it'd be the same cost, but way more fun and delicious having more skewers than I could try to hold at once. All in all, I'd definitely recommend this spot as a cheapskate spot, and tell everyone to avoid Super Tasty, hell just go next door and grab a pork chop from Excellent's. After that, things were looking up. All that remained was shopping done at Hong Kong, Trader Joe's, and Union Square market. I picked up my standard fare, some tofu, lots of Asian greens, pork belly from HK (and a crocodile steak from Deluxe Market... note: MAD good). At Trader Joe's I just bought egg whites and bread, and to support our local growers, I bought 3 pounds of apples from the farmer's market. Hopped on the 1 train and went back to Columbia. I guess the day was sort of redeemed, as it wasn't 100% useless, but still...
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See if you can figure out what I did/plan to do... (note the first pic is unrelated, it was just dinner one day last week, I thought it looked nice lol). It was actually just a quick stir fry of onions which I caramelized with some garlic, thrown in with some broccoli. On the other side, I just reheated some leftover brown rice from some Chinese delivery, and broiled a veal shoulder steak (thanks Morton Williams for your 'meat of the day!') which was done up with a nice dry rub of basil, pepper, and salt before being covered with a thin layer of honey for a sweet crust. No recipe here, it was thrown together hastily, and is probably too easy of a meal to require directions to replicate. Onto the main point of the post...
So if you saw the progression of photos and immediately thought char siu dumplings, then you and I must think exactly alike lol. After cutting the remainders of the first pound of pork belly (still another pound left!), I wasn't really sure what I should do with it. I could've made a noodle soup yes, I could've just sliced it real thin and eaten it with eggs... I mean it is bacon. So as I was slicing the fat off the edges, which I conveniently bagged for later rendering, I decided I'd go with my favorite application of pork belly, which is char siu, but this time, I'd make it in bulk haha. Anyway, to the left is the glorious remainder of fat that I placed ever so delicately in a ziploc bag. Seriously, if you've never cooked with pork fat before, you don't know true flavor (sorry vegetarians).
In any case, onto the preparation for the roast. I went with the same marinate first time, but tripled the recipe to account for the massive increase in surface area. Going through the motions, I waited several hours, baked for 30 minutes, and when I went back to look, the meat was grilled ever so red, with the fat that I left on the pork still sizzling coming out of the oven.
I love the smell of roasted Asian meats at 5 in the morning haha. So as you can see on the right, there I have 3 pieces of nicely charred and uncut char siu, but what do to with it. Having stopped by Woorijip (which I learned means 'our house' in Korean) and having purchased a cheap bag of dumpling wrapper, the thought hit me that char siu tastes pretty damn good in bread, tastes pretty damn good with noodles and rice, why wouldn't it taste good in pan fried wrappers?
So the night before I actually planned on cooking, I just sliced and diced one piece of char siu, a sprig of scallion, and went to work filling some skins. For the one piece of meat, I ended up with 12 dumplings, which works out pretty well in terms of filling actually, but let me tell you... I hate filling dumplings, I hate doing the water pinch thing, and I hate the fancy crimping. It all just takes too long. Yes it's satisfying, but when you sit there for 15 minutes and your finished plate is 2/3 empty, you don't exactly beam with pride. So how did they come out? well, uh... that's for another post, since at the original time of posting for this one, I had put them in the refrigerator (it was 9 at night, and I wasn't about to go about frying a plate of dumplings to eat right before bed).
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