Chicken a la King!

One of the few dishes that I love that I remember from college, that I could only have when I had family visiting (because it was too expensive for even my bloated student budget), was chicken a la king.  I first had a taste of this creamy chicken dish at the French Baker in SM North EDSA.  In the 9 semesters that I spent at UP, I believe I've only had this dish about 3 times. 

 

 This is a creamed chicken dish with carrots, celery, bell peppers, chicken chunks and spices over a pastry shell, and served with a side of a garden salad and carrots and corn.  The French Baker used to only serve this with the carrots and corn, and frankly, the side salad didn't amount to much gastronomically for me. 

I still remember how I love this dish - how the multi-dimensional cream sauce played with my palate, and with my trips to Manila the past month, I have been able to indulge myself and have this wonderful dish again. 

turkey leg!

One of my indulgences when I lived in the United States were theme parks.  There wasn't a year when I didn't travel to Florida and go visit Islands of Adventure, Universal Studios, Disneyworld, Sea World and the water parks.  Almost always, I would only have enough moolah on the budget to spend for admission to the parks, and some money for food.  Being on a tight budget had me spending on sensible food, and not on whims.

Well, a totally different thing happened last year. My cousin (in NY) and I went on vacation with family in Central Florida (Kissimmee, Orlando area), and we went to Tampa for a couple of days.  Our family treated us to free admission tickets to Busch Gardens, and for the first time, I was able to buy something to eat out of curiousity!  We got turkey legs!  It's not like chicken legs that are soft and easily eaten.  These are huge drumsticks of meat, with a lot of connective tissue that sometimes gets in between your teeth.  I wouldn't say I hated it, but I wouldn't say I liked it either (Althought the photo doesn't look like I didn't care for it much.)  I guess turkey leg is a bit of an acquired taste.

Italian food in White Plains, NY

When my Florida family visited over the New Year (2009), they stayed at the Ritz Carlton in White Plains, NY.  I commuted to them a couple of times, and the good thing about visiting family is the great food that you get to have.

One of my staples is fried calamari.  For a non-fish eater, I am surprised at myself for loving fried calamari.  My first encounter with calamari was at Carmine's in the Upper West Side, and I have to say, it was love at first bite.  :-)

The Zanaro version of fried calamari came with marinara sauce and a chipotle mayo dip, and half a lemon on the side.  Squid when cooked wrong will be leathery.  This calamari was perfect, the right amount of crunch and seasoning.  It didn't have a fishy taste either.  All in all, a good calamari in my book.

I had the Veal Parmigiana for my entree.  The meat was tender as veal should be.  The pasta on the side was well cooked.  The Sunday sauce it came with was red-wine based, and had the right amount of tang and flavor.

 Zanaro's is located at 1 Mamaroneck Ave. in White Plains, NY. 

Rodic's tapsilog!

Tapa! Sinangag! Itlog! 

TAPSILOG!

In my culinary adventures, nothing beats Rodic's tapsilog as a breakfast (or even anytime) meal.  I first encountered Rodic's tapsilog as an 8 year old listening to my uncle's stories of their bar review classes at UP Law. Little did I know that 8 years later, I'd be in the same campus, walking the same halls (of the UP Shopping Center) and partaking in the same dishes!

I was in Manila the past couple of days to interview for a German/Schengen visa, and with my spare time, decided to traipse around my old stomping grounds in UP Diliman.  Of course, food would be on top of my list, and boy, did we do food!  Rodic's tapsilog was one of the highlights of the visit.  

This is a type of tapa that I still have to learn how to make. It's all savory and sweet shredded goodness! And the way they cook the sunny-side up eggs are perfect!  I'll have to replicate this somehow.  Any ideas?

Drool.

arroz con pollo!

Due to the dearth of international food in Dumaguete (especially Latin American cuisine), I have been forced to make do with what I have.  Yesterday, I had a hankering for Colombian-style arroz con pollo (literally chicken with rice).  My favorite Colombian restaurant in NYC, La Pollera Colorada, in Sunnyside, served a great arroz con pollo that hasn't been surpassed by any of the other Latin American restaurants I've been to in the US (and trust me, I've been to a lot!).

So, I made up my mind and came up with my version of arroz con pollo.  It was a little difficult finding turmeric and cumin in the city.  Thank goodness Fortune Mart had it. :-)  And luckily, I was able to find most of the other stuff I needed at the supermarket.

As for the dish, the flavors were true to its origins (yep, definitely no soy sauce!), and I have to say, I'm impressed with what I made.  All I could ever add is that vinegar condiment and the platanos that La Pollera Colorada serves it with, and I should have been set!  But this is Dumaguete, I'll take any foreign flavors I can get!

Kaon ta! (Let's eat! in Cebuano)

Cimbali goodness!

One of my finds here in Dumaguete is Cimbali's Cinnamon Nut Raisin loaf at the basement of Lee Super Plaza. One of my family's favorites, it is especially tasty when you get it still warm! Ah! The gooey goodness of cinnamon sugar!

banana cue!

One of the things I have missed for being away so long are these delicious deep fried caramel-coated goodies on sticks. They're good piping hot and you can buy them for about PhP 5 - a far cry from the PhP 1 I used to spend when I was in grade school more than a decade ago.

We've tried recreating this in NYC, but it was just too difficult. We somehow couldn't get the sugar to caramelize AND coat the bananas the same way as here.

Yum!

home and Taster's!

It's been 2 weeks since I got back home on an extended vacation. Sabbatical, if you may. I have been trying to decide changing the tag line on this blog, however, I believe I'll always be a New Yorker at heart, so it'll stay the same. This will just be a more worldly journey at this point, as I don't know where I'll end up in the next couple of months.

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Two weeks and I've already been around a ton of food. First and foremost is my favorite burger of all time. Taster's Delight Sandwich Style Burger. My family has a long history with Taster's Delight. We've been going since I was in kindergarten, I think probably after N's Pizza Plaza closed down. Even when my brother and I were in Manila for college, we'd get our monthly/weekly ration of Taster's siopao frozen via Air Philippines. The lady who takes orders there (who's been there 18 years at least) knows all of us and has known all of us since us kids were.... kids. And she tells us so too.

mobile posts

So the past 3 mobile posts I did didn't really go through. Once I get to a real computer, I'll edit them and post the photos.

Right now, on to Maricel's for some birthday food!

Sushi post 1C

This was Nic's sashimi lunch special. He got tuna, flounder, salmon and one
other fish I forgot. Maybe shark? Just kidding. After some cajoling, he got
me to try the tuna. It was my first time having sashimi, and I have to say
it was a good experience.

I have always been afraid of raw fish, and my greatest fear with sushi was
that it would be rank with the fishy taste. The sashimi at Maru was good
though, although I'm not sure I'll order it on my own.

- sent from Gelo's google phone

Sushi post 1A

My friend Nic and I went to Maru Sushi (2nd Ave bw 33 and 34 Sts) for lunch
a couple of weeks ago. Nic was visiting from Abu Dhabi and he mentioned
that he liked sashimi. I know that there are other places I could have
brought him to, but for our purposes that day, Maru fit perfectly well.

I ordered a spider roll (soft shell crab roll) and a shrimp tempura roll
(shown here). The sushi was great! Both seafood in my rolls were cooked and
fried, so I can't really attest to it's freshness. I applied what I learned
from one the sushi books, and that is, to eat sushi with my hands.

Nic ordered sahimi which I'll talk about in the next post.

Bon appetit!

- sent from Gelo's google phone

(edited using Gelo's computer)

French Toast at Bakers' Dozen (blech!)

After not being able to sleep due to a warm winter night (yeah, 18 degrees celsius in the winter! Hooray for global warming?), I decided to walk down the street to my neighborhood bakery for breakfast.

I was feeling french toast and coffee, and seeing that they had it on special ($3.25 including tax), I ordered it! The food came out a couple of minutes later, and I'm sad to say, I didn't enjoy it.  The french toast, albeit served in a huge portion, came out with a heavy dusting of cinnamon and with (I doubt it was maple) syrup on the side.

My first bite made me choke, and subsequent bites weren't about to redeem it. So, I threw it out and just had coffee instead. Blech!

This is not to say that Bakers' Dozen is a bad place, since I love their Manhattan special (hot pastrami with swiss cheese and sauerkraut on rye), it's just that their french toast sucks! They do have other stuff like bagels and muffins and other baked goodies, so I'll still go back for those. They also have a good selection of flavored cream cheeses and salads too.

Bakers' Dozen is located near the intersection of Lefferts Blvd and Austin St in Kew Gardens.

Merry Christmas!

Happy holidays from the city that never sleeps!

(Vodka Cranberry at midnight)

Authentic Lechon Paksiw (bisaya-style)

For the holiday party with my Filipino friends, we ordered lechon (whole roast pig) cooked the bisaya way.

I haven't had lechon in more than 3 years, and neither have my friends, so this was a treat for us. About $30 well spent for each.

The lechon was just as we all remember it, cripy and very tasty!  No one could resist picking on scraps of meat left on the tray after the lechon was all chopped up. However, we all know that what's good with the lechon after the feast is paksiw.

So, in the wee hours of the morning after the party, my friend and I cooked two different versions of paksiw, reflecting the culinary traditions of the different regions we are from. I made mine bisaya-style, stewing the lechon in vinegar, bay leaves, peppercorns, garlic and a touch of soy sauce.  The other version was similar to mine but with liver sauce added.

Both paksiw dishes came out really good.  Mine was sour with a hint of sweet in the thin sauce, while the other balanced sweet and sour with the added liver sauce.  Both dishes are best served over steamed rice, like pictured above.

We all savored it!

Happy holidays!

Snow in NYC! (not food related)

In the past week, New York City was inundated with a ton of snow AND THEN a cold front brought the city into a deep freeze. This was taken just after the heavy snowstorm (Austin).

I didn't think leafless tress would be pretty, but with the snow, they are beautiful!

Mobile blogging!

This will hopefully help me keep this blog updated more than it is now. :-)

Vietnamese food in Chinatown-NY!

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I went down to Chinatown for some Vietnamese food, my style. He's partial to this restaurant close to the subway, while there's this place that I like that has pretty good vegetarian and seafood fare in addition to the regular meat options, but which is a little bit of a trek, especially with the unpredictable rain during the Fall.

We went to my favorite Vietnamese place in C-town called Pho Viet Huong on 73 Mulberry St. (N, R, Q, J, M, Z and 6 trains to Canal St.)

View Larger Map

For appetizers, I usually order a shrimp summer roll, however, this being fall, we decided to get salt and pepper calamari. The squid rings were lightly floured and and fried crisp while maintaining the tenderness of the meat. A mixture of spices including chopped chili peppers was then tossed with the fried calamari. A lot of restaurants overcook the calamari, however, we got ours perfectly cooked, with a good spice and heat.

We ordered two different entrees for our meal. One was a vegetarian dish called Fresh Gluten with Hot Peppers and Lemongrass. The good thing about New York City is that I get to meet a lot of people with a wide range of interests, and this allows me to explore an even wider range of cuisines and dishes that I myself would normally not try out. Such is the case with this dish.

Gluten is favorite meat substitute used in vegetarian/vegan diets and it is a protein product obtained from the endosperm of some grains including wheat and rye. The gluten in this dish tastes and has the consistency of real meat, but it's not. :-) The combination with bell peppers and lemongrass makes for a very aromatic and tasty dish. Definitely one of my vegetarian favorites (even though I'm not vegetarian!).

The second entree we ordered is Yellow Curry Shrimp with String Beans. This seems pretty self-explanatory. However, the yellow curried shrimp at this place (relative to the other Vietnamese places I have been to in NYC and elsewhere) is pretty good. The curry brings out a sweetness in the shrimp that I can't describe. The accompanying string beans were also perfectly cooked, crisp and not soggy.

To wash things down, my friend ordered the Salty Plum drink, which basically pureed (or mashed up) salty plum with soda water. The drink comes in a tall glass with the mushy salty plum on the bottom topped with ice cubes. You then have to pour soda/carbonated water into the glass and then stir to mix the soda water and the plums. I have never had this drink before, and I doubt I will ever order it on my own. He had me taste it, and all I can say is that it is really sour and salty.

(The photos in this post were taken by Daman's iPhone.)

Ack!

I have been really bad at making posts on here, however, that's about to change. I hope. I do have a number of photos of new food places I've been to that I want to write about, so, I'll get to that as soon as I can.

Please bear with me.

Yakitori (plus dessert)!

After having a hankering for grilled meats in an otherwise not-grill-friendly city, a couple of friends and I from college met up and had dinner at Yakitori Taisho, in the East Village several months ago. According to wikipedia, Yakitori (焼き鳥 やきとり, Yakitori), or grilled bird, is a type of skewered chicken in Japan . In other words, sinugba.

At Yakitori Taisho, they featured on their menu a variety of grilled meats and veggies, including pork, beef , liver, chicken, scallions and mushrooms. Having all met at the University of the Philippines, we've all had our share of isaw (grilled chicken or pig intestines) and atay (liver), so we ordered what was familiar to us. We got a platter that included, among others, chicken liver, chicken skin and pork belly. I think there was balon-balonan (is it gizzard?) too.

It was yummeh! Yakitori Taisho has been one of my favorite restaurants in the city since I discovered it a couple of years back, and I've been coming back every time I get a good group of people together. I'm guessing business has been good to them too, since they opened another restaurant a couple of doors down, and every time I pass by, there's almost always a line.

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After dinner, we all decided to hit the Dessert Truck, that we all passed by when we were walking towards Yakitori. This truck is a new concept here in NYC (and there's a bunch of them new ones, gastronomic concepts that is), so we just had to try them out. These aren't your run of the mill desserts, but are essentially gourmet. They sell individual desserts for $5, and servings are usually good to share. We ordered the molten chocolate cake, the vanilla creme brulee (real vanilla) and the goatcheese cheesecake. Holy cow! or goat! These were good! My personal favorite is the goatcheese cheesecake. Be warned though, goatcheese is an acquired taste!

Here's a photo of the MBB folks (all grad students at SUNY-SB, BrownU, SUNY-SB respectively) enjoying their desserts! I think I'm the only one not pursuing a PhD here, but oh well. lol.

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Yakitori Taisho is located at 5 St Mark's Place (near 3rd Ave) in NYC.
The Dessert Truck makes it's rounds of NYC, however, from 6pm onwards, it can be found at the intersection of St Mark's Place and 3rd Ave.

German and Bavarian fare

Last week, my volleyball team and I went to Zum Schneider in the far East Village for beers and food after our game. At this biergarten (beer garden), we had large beers (1 liter mugs) and the Riesen Schlachtplatte, which is this huge platterful of sausages.



There were five different kinds of sausages served with roasted potatoes over a bed of sauerkraut. And I do mean a bed of sauerkraut. That was good! And then we had the apple fritters with vanilla ice cream for dessert.

I have to say, that platter was no match for 6 grown men after a volleyball game. lol.

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Zum Schneider is located at the corner of Ave C and 7 St in NYC.