#IreneRecipes
Here in NYC life is pretty much back to normal post-Irene. Walking the streets of Manhattan, it’s hard to tell that the entire city was on lockdown for the better part of last weekend. To quell the boredom, I prompted people on Twitter to tweet me their Hurricane Irene disaster prep food items, to which I responded with totally killer recipes that will win Studiofeast a James Beard Award.
A recap of our Twitter antics is below. Take a look, have a laugh, and if you enjoyed them, please consider for a moment to donate to the Red Cross to help with the recovery effort in places that were way less lucky than NYC.
Again, Irene sure wasn’t the haymaker we all thought it would be to us NYC-ers, but don’t forget about those in places like Vermont, North Carolina, and Upstate New York where they experienced catastrophic flooding and even fatalities. Let’s all be grateful that we could sit back with a drink and some food while watching the rain out the window, but throw a little love out to those who couldn’t.
Here’s that link to the Red Cross again.
The Future of Food: A Video Interview on PSFK
I sat down with the fine folks at PSFK to talk a bit about this thing of ours and to give my take on the future of dining experiences. Check out the video here:
We have new dinner events in the works that will be a bit more intimate than what you’ve seen in the past, those announcements should be coming soon for the Fall.
Get on the mailing list and follow/like us on Twitter & Facebook to stay in the loop.
Grandpa’s War Shu Duck
My Grandpa Tong used to own Stanley’s Place, one of the first Chinese restaurants in downtown Detroit in the 50s. At one point, he had 100 employees which included 16 line cooks, 6 people solely dedicated to taking phone take-out orders, and 1 person who did nothing but make rice in a jacuzzi sized rice maker. The whole family worked there and it’s been a big inspiration to why/how I cook for people.
After a visit home to Michigan, where I had the pleasure of cooking for him, he laid down some knowledge and explains his recipe for one of the restaurant’s most popular dishes: War Shu Duck.
War Shu Duck is a whole duck that’s skinned and deboned, then the meat is minced and combined with ground pork (“you can use Cantonese roast pork too” he says). The skin is then used as a wrapper to surround the ground meat and covered in an egg wash with corn starch and sugar. You deep fry the whole thing and cover it with duck jus. Grandpa recalls that Detroit Mayor Coleman Young would call in advance to order 4 of them at a time for take out. From what I gather, it was the Momofuku Pork Bun of its time.
I’m dying to try this thing out and will report back with results. Hopefully it lives up to Grandpa’s standards, or at least Mayor Bloomberg’s.
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Here’s a Yelp listing for the spin-off sister restaurant to my Stanley’s Place, cleverly named “Stanley’s Other Place.” My grandpa’s original restaurant was sold in the 70s and converted into a church, but the Other Place lives on.
Hacking the Dinner Party @ ITP
I recently had the pleasure of teaching a session at NYU’s ITP Camp entitled, “Hacking the Dinner Party,” which was an introduction to Sous Vide and Activa.
“I Scream,” at Eyebeam NYC
This past Saturday at the Eyebeam Art + Technology center, I was invited by Stefani Bardin and Brooke Singer to present at their Counter Kitchen event series. The Counter Kitchen brings in guests to deconstruct items that are in the mass marketplace and often have chemical ingredients of questionable nature.
Last Meals: The Top 20 Items – Pt 2
Part 2 of 3, recounting the inspiration and process behind Dec 2010′s Last Meal. Read the first post here.
Our initial approach was to read through the list one by one and flag the meals we thought were most interesting. Dishes that were clearly of a certain ethnic origin and that we had never heard of made the cut instantly, or at least until we could Google the dish and decide if it’d be a good (“Kokoretsi“) or bad (“Turron de Dona Pepa“) idea.
Last Meals: Thinking About Pleasure – Pt 1
For four years we have asked this question on our mailing list request page: ” You’re about to die, what’s your last meal?”
There are no right answers to this question, just having an answer that you believe in is enough. If you care enough about food and what it provides beyond mere sustenance then you’ve hopefully thought about this question before. You were who we wanted to cook for.
I Scream: Decoding A Frozen Treat
Sorbitol, Lactitol, Polydextrose, Tricalcium Phosphate, Polysorbate 80…What is this and why is it in ice cream? Is it bad? Or just misunderstood? How did something as pure and simple as ice cream become so complicated?
As part of Brooke Singer and Stefani Bardin‘s “The Counter Kitchen” series workshops at the Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, I will be breaking down the ingredient list of Breyers Carb Smart Neapolitan Ice Cream and spinning some ice cream of my own on March 19th. We’ll start by talking about basic ice cream science and ingredients, explain the multitude of additives in manufactured ice cream, then do some damage with a bit of liquid nitrogen to cap it all off.
Come one, come all. Tickets and information are found here.
A Valentine’s to Fu#%ing Remember
On Sunday, February 13th we had the great pleasure to cook at The Noble Rot for their “Happy Fu#%ing Valentine’s Day” event in Williamsburg, at the home of Fine & Raw Chocolate. This is the second time (here was the first) we’ve cooked at The Noble Rot and I can’t say enough how enjoyable it is to work with them. They are State-Certified gentlemen through and through, and I look forward to collaborating with them soon.
36 Hour Short Rib
Short Rib: cured overnight with a 60/40 sugar/salt mix, five spice and coriander. Vacuum sealed with butter and into the immersion circulator at 61.5C for 36hrs. We’re serving this with XO Sauce, celeriac puree, pickled onion petals, and roasted beets here.
