Bamboo House, Newark, DE

On our way back from the Delaware seashore, the blog crew stopped in Newark and had dinner with my parents at their "local." Some people have neighborhood bars... my parents have a Chinese restaurant where everybody knows their name. The kind of place where I always have to wave at tables full of people I don't know as my parents tell their friends that their daughter has come home to visit.

Because like most Chinese restaurants these days this one serves sushi, my parents always have us order a couple rolls to start, even though they don't even like sushi. The one in the middle was pretty good with fried oysters inside.




We also had ma la fish (top), tender flaky filets with that great Sichuan spice; pepper-spiced lamb (above); and minced shrimp to be eaten in lettuce wraps (below).








Recommended by the owner was bok choy with smoked pork. They smoke the meat themselves at the restaurant. The owner told us when they started making it, they'd choose leaner cuts knowing that Americans prefer lean meat, but it just wasn't as good and besides more Chinese ordered it anyway, so they went back to fatty pork.








And last but not least, was three-cup chicken, a stew made with one cup soy, one cup sesame oil, and one cup shaoxing wine, along with plenty of ginger and basil. BrookLEn liked this so much, he asked me to dig up a recipe for him.

Bamboo House
721 College Square
Newark, DE 19711
(302) 368-9933

The Fractured Prune, Ocean City, MD

I've seen Fractured Prune donut shops in Ocean City for a few years now, but never went in. The name always made me think it was a health food chain - boy was I wrong! A long line at Dunkin Donuts finally got us over to the Fractured Prune, which had an equally long line, but once I smelled those freshly fried donuts and saw the concept, we had to wait.

Fractured Prune donuts are all hot and glazed to order. You can choose from a list of specialty combos that they've made up, or design your own. Or you can just order them plain and hot. They were truly fresh out of the fryer - almost too hot to pick up, crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside.

Here's the list we had (written on the box then passed back to the donut glazer in back to fill the order). My favorite was French toast, moist and eggy, dripping with maple syrup, dusted with cinnamon.

Doughnut Plant in Tokyo

Fougoo and I knew that there were Doughnut Plant franchises in Tokyo, but we were totally stoked when we found a branch a few blocks from where we were staying. Of course, we had to go.
The store had a lot of the same doughnut flavors from the New York store including the classic Tres Leches, the Chocolate Blackout, Vanilla Bean, and the Valrhona Chocolate doughnuts. I think the cake doughnuts were a little smaller than the ones you can get in New York, but the raised ones were the same size.





We were in Japan for the Golden Week, and the store had a Green Tea Fair special, featuring a raised Green Tea doughnut, and Green Tea and Creme filled doughnut. The store, unlike it's American counterpart, also made bagels and served lunch in addition to the doughnuts.







We got several doughnuts to try. It was very Japanese of them to individually wrap each doughnut we ordered in it's own napkin.
I quite liked the green tea doughnut- it had a nice sweet flavor and went well with the yeast doughnut. Fougoo wasn't too impressed with their bagels, but hey, who wants to order bagels at the Doughnut Plant.

Berger Cookies

New York has it's Black and White cookie, but Baltimore is known for the Berger cookie. I don't think I've seen these outside of this region, but man are they delicious.
Imagine a tiny sugar cookie topped with a giant dollop of fudge. It's so rich and sweet that you can only really eat just one before demanding some milk to get it down.
So wrong it's right.

Farm Share produce

I went in on a farm share for the first time this summer. I'm sharing a 1/2 share with a friend (so essentially a 1/4 share) at Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville. Above is only a fraction of last week's haul - I didn't pile up the bags and bags of loose greens. It's forcing me (and occasionally redneckhunter) to eat my green things.

I find that I've fallen into a routine of how to cook them, though. Large leafy greens like collards, kale, and chard, I've been doing southern style, boiled with bacon or ham with some red pepper for kick and eaten with a little lemon juice. Small leafy greens like spinach or beet greens, I've been doing Chinese-style, sauteed in a wok with garlic. Last week I sliced and oven-roasted the turnips. We've had sugar snap peas, which I munch on raw, and arugula, which I like raw too but this stuff is so good it's almost too spicy to eat! Oddly enough, the heads of lettuce and bags of leaf lettuce pose the most difficulty for me. I just hate making salads! Last week, I actually sauteed lettuce in the wok (and I felt like my mom doing it, as Chinese really don't eat anything raw...) but luckily this allows for a vast amount of bulk to be consumed in a far condensed form.

The routine has already started to wane, though, and I think I need to look for more veggie recipes... will post any great ones I discover. Also, the girls (since I think we're all doing shares from the same farm) have decided that one of these weeks we will hold an Iron Chef showdown featuring kale or collard greens or whatever veggie we end up with a lot of - stay tuned!

Crab Season

Summer in Maryland means one big thing for locals- Crabs!
When I lived elsewhere, I made it a point to come back to Maryland during this time of year because I had to get Maryland steamed crabs. Now that I live in Maryland again, I can get crabs many times a year.
It must be a vegan's nightmare to watch people tear apart these little creatures and consume every bit of their insides. I love it!
Personally, I think that my crab dissection technique is quite honed after 3 decades of destruction (WWF reference).

A couple of my guidelines are as follows:

1. go for the heavier crabs- more meat inside
2. once you start, avoid wiping your hands- the spice buildup on the fingers will flavor the meat as you eat it. just don't touch anything else especially your eyes.
3. eat all the crab- even the little legs- they are too expensive to waste.
4. mustard- it's like butter and egg yolk an in one delicious flavor- use it, eat it, relish it. do not fear crab gut.

These are pictures of what are called "lollipops" - a perfect single bite of delicious crab. The one on top is the big brass ring- the lump crabmeat! The bottom is the crab claw.
This meal was at Obrycki's, my current favorite crab restaurant- sure they don't use Old Bay, but I love it nonetheless.

Japanese Kit Kats- Dark Chocolate

The last Kit Kat we got in Japan was the dark chocolate version. Fougoo felt that this was the best of the batch, and I would agree.
They used genuine dark chocolate, and the bitterness went well with the wafer inside.

Bali Nusa Indah, NYC

Last Friday, we went to Bali Nusa Indah, an Indonesian restaurant in Hell's Kitchen. It had been recommended by a Singaporean guy that one of my friends had met. The above appetizer is Cumi-Cumi Isi, stuffed squid with minced shrimp and java soya sauce. While very pretty, both brownie and I thought it was rubbery and chewy. Not only the squid was chewy but also the filling inside. It was the only criticism, though, in an otherwise great meal.

We much preferred our other appetizer/side dish, the Pepes Tahu, innocuously described on the menu as broiled bean curd with banana leaf. The soft tofu was the texture of slow-cooked scrambled eggs, seasoned with lemongrass, ginger and a little kick. I'm not even sure what else was in this - dried shrimp perhaps?

My second favorite dish of the meal was Ikan Pepes, broiled red snapper fillet with lemon grass sauce wrapped in banana leaf. You may think by the names and description that the 2 dishes above would be similar in taste, but they weren't. The tomatoey sauce for the fish was wonderful and the fillet was tender and flaky.


We also had Rendang Padang, beef simmered in coconut-chili sance and Tumis Cumi, stir-fried squid with black bean sauce.

Afterwards, we head down the black to Kyotofu for dessert and this pretty kumquat caipirinha.

Bali Nusa Indah
51 9TH Ave, NYC
(212) 265-2200