Walking into El Vez (Philly), you may think that it looks too trendy and festive to be good Mexican food. I tend to look for hole in the wall places where no one over 30 speaks English when I look for Mexican food. Those are the places where I am most likely to find some of my favorite Mexican meats, like cabeza. You will be surprised with El Vez, I have eaten there twice and have had exceptional meals.
It’s raining in NYC today, and I didn’t feel like running to the market for groceries. I’m really really low on ingredients, but decided to see what I could come up with. For the last month(s) I have had some venison chops in my freezer, and have had no idea what to do with them. I decided to make a stew, and use potatoes, dried peppers and Japanese dashi as a base. It turned out pretty well. The venison, and especially the fat in the venison have a really rich flavor, so it added well to the stew. I cooked it in my pressure cooker. I also found some nasu (Japanese eggplant) which were probably going to go bad soon, so I broiled them with a resuced sauce made from two types of miso, sugar, mirin and sake, then added negi and goma on top. I also made a cocktail, which I love to create, but never blog about, that is very special. This Christmas my mother gave me her homemade cranberry liquor. It’s like limoncello, but cranberry. I mixed that with Contreau, rhubarb bitters and lime.
I found out about the soft opening of a new dish at Moko Moko bar in Manhattan. From this week they will serve ramen. Here is an exceprt from the invite:
“Mr. Kubo is a ordinary “salary-man” works for a company in NYC. He loves Ramen sooo much and he has been studying how to make Ramen over 10 years. He even took Ramen boot camp which was offered by a Ramen noodle company in Shikoku island.”
I would really like to learn how to make noodles, and the broth, so I was particularly interested to see what a “salary-man” could come up with. 1/2 size bowls of shoyu and shio ramen were served. I would give his cha-shu a 9, broth a 7 and noodles a 6. All in all not a shabby bowl of ramen. I don’t think he is going to take a chunk of business from Ippudo, but it’s inspirational none the less.
Well, I have been really lazy about posting for a while. Again. But, I have not slacked on shooting, so over the next few days, I am sure a bunch of posts will flood in. First up is my dinner tonight! I have had chicken wings sitting in my freezer for quite some time, and tonight turned out to be the night to cook them. They were coated in ginger, sake and corn starch, deep fried at 340ยบ then tossed in a mix of mirin, sake, shoyu and shiro goma. I served them with a light salad and yuzu dressing. I tried to get my best friend to eat them with me, but he is on a healthy kick, which I should probably adopt too…
I was asked to take the lead in a new family tradition this year. Each child will cook a full dinner for the rest of the family on Christmas eve. I am taking on the first year as the oldest (of four). I decided to cook some of my Japanese food favorites. There were actually a few more courses that did not make the cut because I hastilly shot the photos while trying to get 8+ courses out to 7 people. From top to bottom: Saba sashimi with pickled eggplant, hiyayako, deep fried shishito, yama imo, and a daikon soup with negi and kinoko.
