PREFACE
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 1

After a couple of weeks of pickling plum in salt, it extracts all the water out of the plums, which makes umezu (plum vinegar). Once the liquid rises above the plum, it’s time to add red shiso (perilla). You can either do it or not do it since the shiso basically just adds color, not much flavor. Since I couldn’t find red shiso at any market this summer, I thought I would just omit this process. Then I realized, I planted red shiso seeds that Kayoko gave to me in my pathetic garden outside of my apartment.

The shiso leaves are so small, but I decided to use them all anyway.

First, wash the shiso to get rid of all the NYC grossness. Dry the leaves, then rub with salt. Then squeeze the juice out, discard, then rub again. This process gets rid of bitterness out of the shiso.

All those leaves only yielded this much, after salting:

Nicely pickled ume:

Sprinkle shiso over the ume:

Then, put the weight back on. By the way, using water as weight wasn’t heavy enough, so I used this year’s umeshu (plum wine) for the weight. Pressing ume with umeshu, cool, huh?

I will leave these for about another two weeks or so, then I’ll need to dry them under the hot sun. I don’t know when orwhere to do this. I may bring them to work and use the rooftop here to do it. Let’s see.

After seeing the Ume Project on the west coast, I was intrigued. I like umeboshi (pickled plums) and every time I go home to Japan, I bring back my mother’s homemade ones. After all, I am from Wakayama, where Japan’s best umeboshi is made. I should have the umeboshi making gene in me.

I’ve seen Japanese ume (plums) at the grocery stores, but they are very NYC in size and price. Ten of them for $4 or something. There’s no way I could get a box full of them here, nor find a tree full of ume in someone’s backyard. I am jealous of the large land and abundant fruit harvesting on the west coast.

I’ve made umeshu using expensive ume, but I’ve never thought about making umeboshi. Ume season is VERY limited. They are only available for like two weeks, then they get too ripe. They are not ideal to use for any ume-related products, except for jam or something.

The other day, I was walking around the farmer’s market, and found yellow plums, which I used to make plum liqueur last year. The size was just about right to make umeboshi, and I immediately went to my desk and started researching whether I could make umeboshi using different plums.

And there were people in western world who have tried to make umeboshi with their country’s native plums. It is such a Yamahomo kind of project, so I went back to the market, and bought three pounds of them. Since I can’t eat raw fruit (see my allergy post), I asked my colleague to taste it and she said it was very sour outside, and pretty much flavorless inside. This somehow sounded perfect for me to make umeboshi.

I got home, and washed them pretty well, then dried them. Making umeboshi is apparently a constant fight against mold, so all the process must be done with sterilization.

After plums are dried, use about a cup of vodka (or 80 proof or higher flavorless alcohol will do), and 15% of salt. Put them in separate bowls.

First dip them in vodka. This sterilizes the ume, plus it is easier this way to roll them in salt.

And roll them in salt.

I found this container at home and decided use it, lining it with big ziploc bag first.

Wipe the entire interior surface with vodka before putting the ume in it.

Dump vodka/salt coated ume in the container, then all the leftover salt on top.

Unlike the west coast, I don’t happen to have bunch of bricks in my apartment, so I decided to use water as weight. Place double layered ziploc on top of ume, and pour in water.

Seal the ziploc full of water.

Then, you seal the big ziploc bag full of ume. Try to extract as much of the air as you can.

Let’s see how it goes. According to the recipe, in about 3-4 days, liquid (ume-zu, or ume vinegar) will cover the ume entirely, then lighten the weight to about the same weight as ume so that you don’t crush them.

PREFACE:
Battle ReCPY: Madeleines (Mary Ann + Marcus)

Valentine’s Day is so overrated. Why do people pay extra for red roses? Why do you have to buy new lingerie? WTF is up with all the chocolate? I don’t understand what’s so romantic about today–it’s just a regular Monday to me. Us consumers are so manipulated by Don Draper and his crew.

Having said that, today’s ReCPY is a perfect homemade gift idea for this not-so-special day. Elegant, buttery and soft, madeleines are perfect for post-coital munching. After my Mary Ann and Marcus failures from last week, I was determined to master the madeleine.

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
100g flour
60g sugar
30g honey
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 stick of butter

METHOD

This recipe is the same as before, sans the browned butter. You can totally just melt the butter and use it immediately, which is what I did.

Since I was expecting guests, I doubled the recipe this time. I also made a regular flour version, and a rice flour version, the MOdeleine, to add to my MO-Dessert series. Remembering my past mistakes, I made sure I sprayed the pan very thoroughly this time.

I also decided 425˚F oven was way too high, and I set it at 390˚F this time.

In this photo, the top half are the MOdeleines (a bit paler), and the bottom half is the regular madeleine batch.

You want to fill the shells to about a half and inch below the top line (as you can see below), to avoid the fatty Mary Anns.

These came out very nicely. This bulge, or nipple, or erection is what you are looking for.

For whatever scientific reason, the MOdeleines did not get an erection. Maybe rice flour is asexual. Wait, an erection for a girl? Maybe Madeleine is a transvestite.

They are very pretty. I was confident I made Madeleine and MOdeleine perfectly.

Nice edge, with a very cute shell shape.

Totally erect.

I served them for my guests, and I also took a bite. Something was off. That’s when I realized I screwed up the proportions–I had doubled all the ingredients, except for the BUTTER! I needed two sticks of butter for each batch, but I only added one stick. The texture was more bread-y than cake-like, and tasted way too healthy. This wasn’t Madeleine at all. This was her skinny Swedish model friend, Marta.

After our guests left, I melted another stick of butter and added it to the existing batter.

The next day, I went and bought an additional madeleine pan to expedite the process, and prepared a well-buttered batter.

Since the batter had been chilling overnight with enough butter in it, the dough was harder than I hoped. I wasn’t sure if this would melt, but put them in oven anyways.

Yep, they did. This is it!

For some reason, the MOdeleines came out darker than the madeleines. After all, it’s rice flour, so maybe MOdelaine is an Asian, not Caucasian.

I don’t know if you can see the difference, but left is Marta: the texture is rougher, looks too healthy. The right is Madeleine, very soft, buttery and  light in texture.

Finally, I am proud to present Madeleine and MOdeleine.

Now that I’ve covered the basics, I can start adding different ingredients to them to create something brand new. Maybe I will add more baking powder for bigger “boobs”, and call her Jwoww.

Since I got a nice Williams-Sonoma gift card for the holidays, I went there to hunt for things I wanted, but didn’t necessarily need. Aside from multi-color paper muffin cups for my MOffins and new sheet pans for my macarons, I also picked up a madeleine pan. I don’t know why but the shiny pan, with its non-stick coating was calling for me. The shell shape is so elegant, and the presence of madeleines make any gathering look so grown-up. Another great creation by skinny French people.

But these madeleines are super unhealthy, though. One entire stick of butter in 12 of them. No wonder they taste so good.

INGREDIENTS

2 eggs
60g (or about 1/4 cup) of sugar
3 tbsp honey
1/2 tsp baking powder
100 gram flour
1 stick of butter

METHOD

For the first batch, I made browned butter.

After you melt the butter, it starts to sizzle. You want all the water in the butter to evaporate, and shortly after you don’t hear any noise, it will to brown. As soon you see some color, immediately take it off the heat since it will continue browning from the heat of the pan. Set it aside.

Browned butter smells very nutty.

Mix the two eggs and sugar over a double boiler to melt all the sugar completely.

Add honey, mix altogether, then mix int he flour/baking powder. Once everything is combined, add butter, mix well. [Sorry there's no pictures for these processes]

What’s very important here is to rest the batter in the fridge for at least two hours. So when you are making this, think about when you want to serve them. I usually make the batter a day before, and keep the batter in fridge for a day.

Then pour the batter into the pan.

IMPORTANT POINT #1: DO NOT FILL THE MADELEINE MOLDS WITH BATTER COMPLETELY.

I somehow only filled ten out of 12. Some recipes say to fill it 3/4, but 1/2 is fine.

Failure #1: Over-filled the pan. By over-filling the batter, it takes longer to bake, and the burn as well. These were baked at 425˚F.

They do not look like madeleines at all–they look like Madeleine’s fat cousin in America, Mary Ann.

No strong shell shape:

With a sharp kitchen shears, I trimmed the sides. They look alright.

Some edges were crispy, others were totally burnt.

As you all know by now, when I fail at cooking something, I have a re-battle to perfect it.

So I tried again with the same recipe, and didn’t fill the pan this time.

Failure #2: Oven temperature might have been too high. These were at 425˚F again.

Edges are a bit burnt.

You can see the shell shape, but something was off.

IMPORTANT POINT #2: BE SURE TO GENEROUSLY SPRAY PAN WITH NON-STICK SPRAY (or butter), even if the pan is non-stick coated.

Otherwise, the madeleines look like this:

They look like Madeleine’s crippled nephew in London, Marcus.

Since these are way too high in calories, it’s not an every day dessert. But I need to perfect these. I am also thinking about making a batch using rice flour, to make MOdeleines.

The battle will continue next week…

Welcome back to another Yamahomo baking battle. Now that I have completed my macaron battle (yeah, I can still come up with different colors amd flavors, but this basics are covered and completed), I needed something else to tackle. When I saw Anders’ post on a flødeboller from Summerbird in Copenhagen (basically a chocolate covered marshmallow; said to have been created in Denmark over 200 years ago, according to Wiki), I decided this is the one.

Remember when Anders posted this? It’s beautiful.

The hard part is, there’s no Danish bakery around me in NYC (I don’t think?) to try out the real kind and master each step. So for now, I am basing this on Anders’ explanation on how to make and assemble it.

This is what he said composed his flødeboller:

1. Macaron base-layer of crusty, rough almonds.
2. On top of the base a chocolate ganache
3. Inside of the ganache, a chocolate ball is hidden, containing apple compot.
4. On top of that, a caramelized piece of apple is placed.
5. The foam is a mixture of caramel and vanilla.
6. On top of, a sprinkled mixture of spicy almonds.

Let’s tackle this one step at a time, per Anders’ directions.

1. Macaron base-layer of crusty, rough almonds

I researched around recipes, but there aren’t that many.  Many said the bottom crust is basically a dried marzipan, but I don’t like the taste of marzipan, so I decided to make a crunchy cookie layer.

1 stick of butter, softened
5 tbsp sugar
1/2 cup of almond flour
3/4 cup of flour

Mix everything together, and roll out into a 1/8 inch thick slab of dough. Since this has a lot of butter, it is better to make the dough into a disc and rest it for a while, then roll it out, put in freezer for about ten minutes, so that it doesn’t stick.

Roll out, using flour as dust so that it doesn’t stick.

Since I don’t have cookie cutter, my Assless Chap Man tumbler works wonders here.

Bake these in 390˚F oven for about 10 minutes. It looks good, but a bit large. Instead of the two inch thickness I wanted, they rose to be more like four inches.

2. On top of the base a chocolate ganache

This one was easy, warm heavy cream, and add to chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet).

3. Inside of the ganache, a chocolate ball is hidden, containing apple compote

This is rather complicated. I am not a professional baker to surprise my clients with a chocolate ball with secret apple compote inside, so I decided to take an easy road.

I simply grated three apples, added 1/3 cup of sugar, 1/2 of lemon juice, and about 1tbsp of brandy. Cooked this down for about 30 minutes. Let’s see how this one works.

4. On top of that, a caramelized piece of apple is placed

Cut one apple into a piece like the pic below, saute with butter, one tbsp brown sugar, and a dash of cinnamon until tender/caramelized.

5. The foam is a mixture of caramel and vanilla

As I was researching around for recipes, people were making this foam part either with meringue or marshmallow. I thought meringue might be too soft to hold it when coated by chocolate, so I decided to take marshmallow route. Original version may be vanilla flavored marshmallow, but I wanted to add an apple flavor to it instead, so I boiled down apple juice.

I cooked it down to 1/5th of the original juice.

Marshmallow is gross. I don’t necessarily like it, but for this recipe, I followed something like this.

2 cups of sugar
1 cup of water divided
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/4tsp salt
3.5 packages of gelatin
2 egg whites
3/2 cup of apple concentrate (above boiled down apple juice)

First sprinkle gelatin into half the water, and wait for five minutes. Add sugar/syrup/water/salt into a small pot and boil it until it reaches 250˚F.  You should buy a candy thermometer.

When the sugar mixture is about to reach 250, start mixing the egg whites.

Once the sugar mixture reaches 250˚F, remove it from the heat and add gelatin. It will melt pretty quickly. Once it melts, add the hot stuff into egg whites. It looks quite soupy in the beginning, but as the temperature comes down, it solidifies. When the bowl is just a bit warmer than room temp, it’s done.

At this point, my kitchen is filled with dirty dishes, spatulas, spilled chocolate, flour, sugar– it’s a complete mess. I’m also starting to lose patience and interest.  But you can’t leave the marshmallow for too long since it starts firming up, due to shit load of gelatin in it.

I quickly placed the bottom cookie layer onto a wire rack.

Smeared ganache on each one.

Apple compote on top of ganache.

Pipe out a single layer of marshmallow, then add the caramelized apple.

Cover the apple with additional layer of marshmallow.

Kinda cute and ice cream looking, don’t you think?

Damn, I fucked up. The melted chocolate wasn’t smooth enough, and I tried to dump the above into chocolate, and the whole thing fell apart. I then decided to drizzle chocolate over it, and that didn’t work either. I thought the chocolate was too thick. Without thinking, I was like, I need to thin this out, so I warmed more heavy cream, and added into chocolate. Yep, I basically made another batch of ganache, which meant the outer layer wouldn’t solidify. Fuck. Not only did this look quite ugly, it is so chocolate heavy.

You can still see apple parts inside, but it’s basically chocolate with some kind of foamy thing (no apple flavor), and some fruit (no apple flavor either). Chocolate is WAY too overpowering.

This is shit, literally.

Up until the chocolate coating, I think I did pretty well (size is too big though), but I only tasted chocolate. This needs to be investigated further. Since I am not a big fan of chocolate, this was gross. I need to figure out how to dip this thing into chocolate without it falling apart, and how to make the apple part so that you can still taste apple when you bite into it.

To be continued.

PREFACE
Yamahomo vs. Ladurée (Part 1 & 2)
Yamahomo vs. Ladurée (The Battle Continues)
Yamahomo vs. Ladurée (Trial 4, 5 & 6)

Since winning my Ladurée Battle at Trial #6 two years ago, I haven’t made macaron for a while. But when looking through the Best of UM posts, I was tempted to make another batch. Umamimart can be such a useful recipe search tool. Since I don’t keep notes of my own cooking, I often times look for my own old posts here. UM is my very own recipe book!

RECIPE
4 egg whites
1/4 cup of sugar (used for meringue)
275g powdered sugar
140g almond flour
20g green tea powder

After many trials, and research, I figured out that the key to perfecting macarons are egg whites. In the past, I said that there’s no need to “rest” egg whites since American eggs are not that fresh anyways. But I was wrong about this. By leaving egg whites on the counter for a day (or three in my case), it develops acid, which makes the meringue very stable. I cracked my eggs on Thursday morning, and I made macarons on Saturday morning.  48 hours of resting this time. Finally, well-rested egg whites.

Also another key is to sift all the dry ingredients together. For this batch, I used green tea powder.

Prepare piping bag. I always cut a Ziploc bag instead of a real piping bag. This way, you can just throw out the bag after usage– how convenient.

Another good tool to have is a large spatula. When you fold in dry ingredients into the meringue, larger spatula mixes quicker, as less air will be broken.

Whip egg whites until very stiff and stable.

Dump dry ingredients into the meringue at once. Since meringue is very stable, you don’t have to worry too much about breaking the air bubbles. In the beginning, this will be scary since it looks like it’s not going to mix. But don’t worry.

Gently keep mixing.

Finally everything starts to incorporate.

Almost there.

Final consistency should look like below. Not too thick, but not too runny. When the batter can almost fall off from spatula, you are good to go.

Very important point, buy a Silpat, and invest some money on cookie sheets. I bought these heavy pan ($27 a piece at Williams-Sonoma!!) just for macaron baking. After you pipe them out, be sure to let them rest for about 30 minutes, or until the surface dries up.

Bake these in 350˚F for about seven minutes or so.

Oh, an important point here: don’t bake two sheets at the same time. Even if you are in a hurry, make sure you bake these one sheet at a time.

How perfect!

Once they cool down, sandwich with your favorite cream of choice. I used chocolate ganache this time.

Macarons aren’t easy, but if you follow the above steps, and be patient when mixing the batter, you should be able to get good results.

Macaron porn.

Sunlight makes huge difference in photography.

By Yamahomo
Originally posted on March 23, 2009

PREFACE
Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 1
Wedding Cake Perfection – Trials 2 & 3
Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 4
Wedding Cake Perfection – Final Trial

The day came, and went. The reception was wonderful, the couple looked very cute as you can see, food was good, and I got completely wasted. That’s all what counts on the day of the wedding, right? For the guests, sure, but for me, it was a lot more than that. Making the bouquet, dressing the bride into a beautiful kimono, making sure the flow of the evening went without any glitches- I put on my Jennifer Lopez “Wedding Planner” shoes, and made sure everything went smoothly. The only thing that didn’t go quite well as I hoped, was the cake…

It started Friday at 10am. Kayoko and Ryo came to help me, and they measured all the dry ingredients, cut all the strawberries, and I started whipping eggs and sugar. Things went pretty smoothly. Though I estimated about 30 minutes per cake, it actually took just about 20 minutes for making a sheet of cake. We were focusing too much on video recording, and don’t have many pics of the process. Please check out the debut episode of “Gays of Cakes” sometime soon for detailed steps of wedding cake making. Some of the batches didn’t rise the way I wanted, so I ended up making 11 cakes.

The 6th layer from the bottom didn’t rise. I realized I was way over mixing the batter, and made sure the flour was mixed in ever so gently after that.

I finished baking all 11 layers at 2:03pm then ran to my hair cut appointment. I got home around 4:45pm, practiced dressing the kimono on Ryo, ate dinner, and started stuffing the cake with whipped cream and strawberries. As you remember, I decided to add gelatin into the cream to stabilize it, so I had to melt the gelatin and wait until it gets to room temperature. A quart of cream yielded about 2 and a half layers. I sandwiched 6 sheets for the bottom layer, cut three of them and made the second layer. By this time, it was about 10:30pm, and we decided to call it a day. I stored everything in the fridge.

Saturday morning, from excitement and worrying too much, I woke up at 6:50am, and made the bouquet. I used cymbidiums, which were a bit tricky. Each blossom doesn’t have a long stem, so I had to wire and bunch them together. It took almost an hour to assemble it. At 8am, I called Kayoko, woke her up, and she came over around 8:30 to help/witness/videograph the rest of the process. At this point, I also decided to make the third tier by cutting a sheet of cake into 6 pieces, and sandwiched them with cream and strawberries.

Creaming the surface was easy since everything was to be covered by the basket weave pattern, so I didn’t have to worry about smoothing it out perfectly. After creaming, I placed sticks to support the layers, and ever so slowly, I placed the second tier, then top tier. Piping was the biggest pain in the ass. Because the basket weaving tip was thin, and the cream was pretty solid, I had to squeeze VERY hard to pipe. It was a four-hour ordeal to decorate the whole surface.

End product. How BEAUTIFUL it is!!! But every time I moved it, the whole thing jiggled. We were like, “Oh well, the cake is very soft and not covered with fondant, so we just have to deal with it.”

What the fuck was I thinking? I should have realized that the jiggling would cause the complete meltdown later on. But I was too happy with what was in front of me. It was a bit after noon when we all finished the cake. I had enough time to cook lunch for bridal suite, and we were enjoying getting ready. I dressed Aya into one of the most beautiful kimonos I’ve ever seen, and she looked perfect for the occasion. She was GLOWING!

We boxed up the cake, and got into a car. It was a short drive, but New York City roads are not equipped to carry a three-tiered “very light” cake. At every brake, every bump, my heart stopped. But I didn’t want to show that to a nervous bride who was sitting next to me, so I played the “I am cool” card during this nerve-racking drive. We finally arrived at the restaurant. Luckily tables were already set up and I carried the cake to the table. I was like “Ok, now I can start drinking since cake is in the house!” Then I opened the box and saw the horror..

This is me crying in front of the cake. From this angle, it looks fine, but…

Because of the lightness of the cake, bumpy ride made the bottom layer to crack/collapse, and the second tier totally tilted into the crack, which made the top tier completely stuck to the side of the box. I called out to Kayoko with a horrified face. The conversation from here goes like this.

Me: Kayoko, come over here Right Now!
Ka: (after seeing the scene) Oh My God.
Me: I can’t believe this! What should I do? I wanna cry. FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!
Ka: Ok, front side is still unharmed, so let’s move the second tier back up on it.

We moved the second tier with our hands. It was still unstable.

Me (yelling out): Ryo, bring bunch of chopsticks!
Me (to bride and groom): Do Not come here. Everything is fine, but you shouldn’t see this.
Bride and groom nervously smiled at me and the box, but they went on to do whatever they were doing.

Ryo brings 4 chopsticks with the face that said, “What the fuck are you talking about? I am busy putting table cards and can’t you do it yourself?” Then she saw the crime scene and realized the seriousness…

I put bunch of chopsticks in the back of the cake to support the second tier. It looked like a really really bad construction job.

Me: Let’s take it out of the box.
Ka: Wait, we should leave the cake sitting on the box so that whatever else collapses further will remain on the box, not dirty Chinese restaurant table cloth.
Me: No, let’s just take the whole thing out of the box.
Ka: No, I really think we should keep the cake on top of the box.
Me: No, I really think we should get rid of the box.
Ka: Fine, fine, you do whatever you like (with a dismissive voice)
Me: Yeah, that’s what I am going to do (with a “I fucking hate you Kayoko” voice)

I placed the cake on the table, and at this point, everyone saw what was happening. They didn’t want to say anything. They knew better not to come and say “it’s ok”. I must have looked pretty awful.

As I said, front side was not as damaged as the back, so we made sure no one saw the back side.

Styrofoam in the back was used to secure the cake in the box so that it doesn’t move, and we used it to prevent the bottom tier to collapse even further… This is like Jekyll and Hyde…

Everyone was supportive of the situation. Despite my emotional distress, the bride and groom didn’t seem to care too much, and everyone else was like “you can’t see anything wrong on the front side”. The emcee of the evening, Drae was like “Broken cake makes a stable marriage”

It was fine at the end. I mean it wasn’t fine, from the cake baker’s point of view, it was a complete failure. But everyone LOVED the cake. Unlike regular fondant cake, which looks gorgeous but usually doesn’t taste good, mine was light genoise with real whipped cream and fresh strawberries. What is not to taste good here?!

Almost all the cake (this was basically for 150 people, but we had 100 guests) was gone by the end of the evening.

I talked to one of the guests who is a caterer and he praised my effort so much and told me someone he knows asked for strawberry short cake as wedding cake, and the shop told them that they can only make one tier cake because it is too light and fluffy to tier up. Duh…. There were other options I could have done, such as assembling them on site, but I couldn’t be bothered and thought it would be too stressful. The restaurant said they won’t be ready with prep work until 5:00pm (reception started at 5:30pm), so I didn’t think I had enough time to assemble on site.

I learned a lot from this experience:
1. Wedding cake should be made by a professional with professional cake construction knowledge. Thinking you can do it by watching bunch of episodes of Ace of Cakes is a bad idea.
2. Wedding cake shouldn’t be a strawberry shortcake. If it’s strawberry shortcake, it must be one tier.
3. I can’t bake/dress bride/make bouquet. Separation of duties are very important.
4. I overestimated what I can do. Three tiered cake isn’t something I can do…
5. Transporting a cake in New York is a bitch.
6. Dealing with disaster with dignity (not me, but Kayoko was) is a virtue.
7. No more wedding cake baking for me.

Again, everyone loved the cake, and no matter how pretty or not pretty it might look, taste counts, and in that regard, I satisfied all the guests bellies with a very tasty cake.

I am happy it’s over. I am sad it didn’t end with a perfect appearance. I am proud of my trying something very important and special at heart to the bride and groom.

It’s over… It’s fucking over… Maybe I will leisurely make some macarons this weekend.

To kick-off the unveiling of the book based on the wildly popular website, This Is Why You’re Fat (TIWYF), NYC is getting its very own Food Truck Twitter-Off next Thursday 10/29. It is guaranteed to be a day of gorging fattasery, in what will be a massive, city-wide scavenger hunt. What fun!

Aptly titled the Eat N’ Tweet Challenge, six of NYC’s most reputable food trucks will be creating the grossest, fattiest, craza-amaziest TIWYF Special especially for this event. Here’s how it’ll work:

- Starting at 11am, the Twitter feed, @tiwyf will begin posting info about the first TIWYF Special created by one of the six participating food trucks.

- Every 20 minutes, a new special by a different truck will be announced until all six have been twittered (I refuse to use the word “tweeted”).

- Contestants must post a photo or video of themselves at the trucks eating the dishes to @tiwyf.

- The first person to hit up all six trucks, take pics and twitter their TIWYF Specials wins a private food truck party for 25 and they all get free copies of the book.

- The TIWYF Specials will all be “off-menu” – meaning that unless you are aware of the Eat ‘N Tweet event, you won’t know to order it as it won’t be on their menu.

Participating food trucks include:
The Treats Truck*
Cupcake Stop
Cravings Truck
Wafels & Dinges**
Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream
The Bistro Truck

Dude, how badly do I want my own private food truck party??? That’s flipfloppin’ AMAZING!!! I would kill to be there next Thursday, it sounds like such gluttonous delight!

My dear friend Kiwa of Suite 2046 actually conceived and organized this entire kickass event for the book’s publisher, HarperStudio. She is such a fucking rock star, mucho props to her! If this event isn’t the most ingenious marketing ploy in publishing history, I don’t know what is.

*Did ya’ll catch the Treats Truck reference on Gossip Girl last week? HOLLER! Although god, the show is just unwatchable this season. I want the nasty Chuck Bass back! NO FUN!

**Wafels & Dinges won a Vendy Award earlier this month, holler.

So I’m back in the metropolitan New York area from my travels in the Midwest, where I had a little too much time to nosh. Along the street I lived on were several Chinese food joints which tempted me in the times I’m not already eating banh mi. I decided to visit, er, frequent some of these establishments and quickly found a favorite.

The beauty of the Chinese joint is the LUNCH SPECIAL. You know, the kind where you get a generic main course, rice, and an egg roll/soup/etc. (choose one or some places get all the add-ons) all for one low price.

I particularly like it when the term “lunch” is taken loosely from the time from 11am to 4pm or so. BUT, one of the joints I found, Hong Kong Noodle (HKN), had not only a lunch special, but a “DINNER SPECIAL” which ran from 3pm on weekdays til closing, and ALL DAY on Saturday and Sundays! Granted, it’s the same menu from lunch sans the free soup, and it’s a buck or two more, but STILL! Chinese food = bargain bonanza! (Did I really just use the term bonanza? Wow.)

Anyway, so, already HKN has more going in its favor than Village Wok, which was recommended to me by a Minneapolis native who also used to live nearby.

HONG KONG NOODLE
So, like I said, HKN has awesome dealz, but it’s generic Chinese food. I secretly love generic Chinese food, much to my mother’s dismay. It’s also a good thing I’m not MSG-sensitive, either.

Mongolian Shrimp + Fried Rice. I don’t really eat a lot of meat, but I do enjoy my seafood. I got this with fried rice instead of white. I’m not sure it was worth the extra dollar. It was basically oily rice with egg. That’s okay. There were more shrimp than expected, and they use the larger kind, not those tiny ones that you often see.

Skinny view. I love takeout when it’s still piping hot. Notice the condensation in the sweet and sour sauce container.

This was spicy with a nice kick from a great deal of chili peppers, onions, and green and red bell peppers. I liked that I didn’t see those white styrofoam-type noodles they often place under Mongolian Beef at restaurants. Or maybe that’s what makes it Mongolian?

Standard egg roll that comes with the meal. Since it was dinner, I didn’t get any soup, but the egg roll was nice, perfectly fried in what I assume is days-old oil (which gives it that Chinese restaurant flavor, no less) and wrapped in a wax paper bag.

Nice view of innards. Standard cabbage and carrot. Some sort of meat. I’m assuming it was pork. I don’t know, it usually all tastes the same to me. Dip it in the standard way-too-sweet-hot-orange sauce and your postprandial slump will carry you well into the next day.

I’ve had some of the other “specials” including the Kung Pao Shrimp and General Tso’s chicken. I would stick with non-fried dishes. The Kung Pao had a generous portion of peanuts (which I really enjoy), I would say even TOO MANY peanuts, and they used the larger shrimp as well. The sauce was very well done. Like I said, stay away from fried. The General’s chicken was a big soggy and wayyyyy too drenched in a tasteless, NOT HOT sauce. I thought the General was all about the hot sauce, and it was way disappointing because usually I am a big fan of fried anything.

Reading up on HKN, they’re quite good at other dishes, but I never ventured into them, maybe because I like the idea of all-in-one meals and not having to serve myself family style solo.

VILLAGE WOK
VW was a lot closer to my place but it was a lot shadier looking. AND the staff was basically rude, and didn’t know anything about their food. I think it’s because the staff was all young Caucasian individuals who I gather were on some sort of combination of recreational drugs.

Apparently they are really good at seafood dishes, and since I’m a stickler for the combo-dish-for-one-low-price, I sought out the “dinner specials” which were competitive in price to HKN, but without the option to choose fried rice or noodles on the side, and the selections were kind of awkward. Like, chicken in black bean sauce. Or shrimp and bamboo shoots.

When I inquired about the latter, the dude helping me was like, um I can’t really describe it. Sorry. UH YOU WORK HERE I ASSUME YOU’VE BASICALLY EATEN EVERYTHING IN THE RESTAURANT HOW CAN YOU NOT TELL ME AT LEAST WHAT KIND OF SAUCE IT IS SMOTHERED IN!? Frustrating. Needless to say, it was my last visit.

Salmon in black bean sauce with white rice.

Notice it’s a fillet of salmon (actually there was another smaller fillet underneath, if I can recall) and too much of that short-grain fluffy rice which I only like on certain occasions. My takeout order took half an hour, which I thought was pretty unacceptable (let me reiterate, TAKEOUT).

The sauce was decent, pretty bland, not spicy although there were copious red chili peppers. The salmon was steamed or something first, I think it’s the kind you get from a bag at a wholesale club. I guess at least this was healthy. Also, no egg roll or soup came with this. Apparently when you takeout a dinner special from the joint, you don’t get the soup that comes with it. LAME.

Closeup. See the fish congealing in the left lowerhand corner? I hate that.

If you have no idea where “WHO IS IT VERSUS?” is from, you need more exposure to a little phenomenon called It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Just a little tip from me to you.

Image pulled from The Phoenix.

Anyway, you can probably guess who won. No, not the Nightman. Hong Kong Noodle. At least when I walk into HKN, I get my order taken by a Chinese female who yells at me and not some punk kid who doesn’t know what sauce goes where.

HONG KONG NOODLE
901 Washington Avenue, SE
Minneapolis, MN
T: 612.379.9472

VILLAGE WOK
610 Washington Avenue, SE
Minneapolis, MN
T: 612.331.9041

*Thomas Parke D’Invilliers resides in Brooklyn and covets the Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton luggage set featured in ‘The Darjeeling Limited.’

I actually made this a week after the first trial, hence my memory isn’t too clear.

So after the first trial, from when I bought cheese curd at Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, I was determined to make the very best mozzarella. Unfortunately it’s very difficult to find curd in the city. Even a store like Western Beef makes their own mozzarella, but when I inquired if I can get some curd, she was like, “No it is all mine to make cheese with, ain’t gonna give it to ya,”… So i decided to take the long way and started from scratch.

The very best milk you can get in the city is probably Ronnybrook, and fortunately there is the shop at the Chelsea Market where bought a gallon of it. $14 for a gallon?! WTF! This better be good.

As you see, all you need to make mozzarella is a gallon of milk, 2 tea spoons of citric acid (you may apparently substitute with lemon juice), and rennet. I bought rennet online, and 10 tablets for about $10. To make cheese out of a gallon of milk, you need 1/4 of a tablet, so I can make shit load of cheese…

Pour milk into stainless steel pot (can’t use aluminum), and add citric acid. Meanwhile, break rennet and mix it with 1/4 cup of water (they say to use bottled water, but I didn’t have it and used regular tap water). Heat milk to 88 degrees (my candy thermometer starts at 100, so I had to guess), then add rennet mixture, turn the heat off, and wait for 3-5 minutes.

This was pretty amazing how it started curdling up. Looks like tofu, doesn’t it?

Scoop curd up, try to lose as much whey (water) as possible, and pour it into a glass bowl.

Out of a gallon of milk, this is all you get. No wonder cheese is so fatty.

You can use whey for something (don’t know what), but it tasted like sour weird water.

Microwave cheese for about 1 minute, then squeeze more whey out, and repeat this until cheese is too hot to touch. Meanwhile, keep squeezing out the water every time you take it out of microwave.

Once most of the water gets squeezed out, add salt (I think I put about 1tsp) and start stretching. Caution, it’s damn hot, and too bad I didn’t video record this part. This cheese was cursed out.

Stretch and squeeze. You kinda see little speckles, which I don’t know why. Maybe I didn’t warm it up enough (though it was hot as hell). More stretch, more stringy cheese, and less stretch, more moist cheese. Also during this part, my apartment smelled like a house with a baby. You know that smell of baby and milk? I barfed a little in my mouth. I don’t like milk, nor that baby house smell.

Seriously $14 gets you this ball? I am going to try with regular milk next time. Flavor wise, it was fine, but I didn’t find Ronnybrook to be that different from any other mozzarella.

Fall has come, and cooking season has started. I will try a couple more times. Meanwhile, if you are in NYC and interested in making your own mozzarella, I can give you a rennet since there’s no way I will use it all up. You can buy citric acid at Zabar’s, or Chelsea Market’s Buona Italia.