My Poison Pen

I'm going to come right out and say it: writing positive reviews for good restaurants isn't fun. There are only so many ways of saying a dish works, that it's tasty, fun to eat, well-conceived, yadda yadda. There are myriad ways, however, of saying something is bad. While a meal might be unsatisfying during the eating aspect of it, the glee I get from trashing it verbally can more than make up for shitty food and worse service. The crazy comments a negative review can inspire are also pretty damn amusing. 

The highlighted text below contains links to my original posts, if you are so inclined to read them.

A long-ago visit to The Melting Pot in Towson left us wondering why anyone would pay good money to eat hot garbage. On the upside, the meal provided me with a fun-to-write blog post. Additionally, some unhinged TMP stan left an outrageous comment while posing as a West Coast food journalist. That got its own blog post.

Milan was a restaurant/club that was not well-received by its Little Italy neighbors. We ate there once. The food was actually pretty decent, but our first impression wasn't so great.

"Stepping into the restaurant, I was immediately struck by a smell. No, not of garlic and shellfish, nor of long-simmered tomato sauce, but of bathroom. A nasty chlorine+potty smell. Granted, we were the first people in the restaurant, and possibly when there are more people in the place and the kitchen is in full swing, the smell isn't noticeable. But it's really off-putting for that to be the first sensation encountered. (I eventually got used to it.)

"Once upstairs on the main floor, I saw that the glossy veneer from two years ago, when the restaurant was new, has faded. The black paint on the wood floor is worn off in paths, the paint on the ceiling has bubbled and cracked, and the tables and chairs show wear. One of the high-backed chairs, which doesn't quite match the others, is patched up with white tape. I'm guessing that the intended effect of the stark white decor with touches of scarlet is "modern" and "classy." And I suppose it is. Classy like a strip club with bottle service. It's a place where Pauly D and The Situation would be completely at ease, hanging out one on of the lounges covered with upholstery straight out of a '72 Nova."

From a write-up about a quick trip to NYC, which included dinner at A Voce in Columbus Circle:

"While the first course was successful, the pici that I ordered for my entree was a total disappointment. Pici is a hand-rolled pasta, somewhat like a thick spaghetti. Imagine making a snake of modeling clay by rolling it between your palm and a table top, and you've got pici. Because they're somewhat thick and about  4" long, picking them up with a fork is like wrestling with a bowl of tarantulas. They're not easily twirled, so a fork full had random ends hanging out in each direction, some of which were happy to slap me in the face as I brought the fork to my mouth. Eventually, I used my knife to cut them into shorter bits. In any case, awkwardness was the least of the dish's problems. The sauce was a bolognese in name only. It had an agrodolce (sweet and sour) thing going on that could have been quite delicious had the sauce had any other thing going on, too. The tiny nubbins of ground duck (which could have been any meat - turkey, rattlesnake) served as a textural element only, and I couldn't taste the cocoa in the pasta. After three or four bites, I was bored with the dish. Thankfully, it wasn't a large portion, so I pushed on and finished it, knowing that a doggie bag wouldn't safely survive the three-plus hours it would take me to get home."

Restaurant Week is always a fine opportunity to eat crappy food. I have always thought that the reason for Restaurant Week is to lure in new patrons with a reasonably priced menu, hook them with amazing food, and turn them into repeat customers who are willing to pay full price. Apparently that memo is only in my head. A 2008 RW meal at Tabrizi's had a high point or two, but was otherwise unexceptional.

"This unadorned plate of worms/bran buds/Plah-Doh after a trip through a Fuzzy Pumper play set is actually Mr Minx's chocolate mousse. Or, more accurately, chocolate ganache - melted chocolate whipped with heavy cream. If it was real mousse, with egg in it, I'd be very surprised. It tasted ok, but really wasn't worth the effort of washing out the ricer."

Another fun post to write involved our 2011 meal at Alchemy, in Hampden. It was Restaurant Week, and clearly Alchemy couldn't handle the extra-ness of it all. Though we normally eat on the early side of dinnertime, when the restaurant isn't busy, the kitchen still had a problem getting the courses out on time. The first course took forever, and the entrees came out while we were still eating our apps. Our waiter, who had promised to "take care of us," never gave us a second look, even while we were juggling five plates of food on a tiny table. The food itself was uneven, perhaps too ambitious. Dishes had multiple components that were under-seasoned or improperly cooked, though the proteins were pretty good. My dessert, a cabernet blackberry sorbet, was outstanding, and the only thing that would prompt my return to Alchemy. As it was, we never went back, and the restaurant closed a couple years later. If you check out the post, do read the handful of entertaining comments.

Occasionally, friends rave over a restaurant enough that Mr Minx and I have to try it. Over the years, I've learned that not all of my friends have good taste. One couple in particular loved Silver Spring Mining Company. I suppose lots of people like the place, as the restaurant has multiple locations. We, however, were not impressed. The food we ate was...edible...but not good enough for a return trip. I took umbrage to a mixed-protein creole masquerading as a jambalaya, and a "Reuben" sandwich that had rye bread and thousand island, but not corned beef, sauerkraut, or Swiss. Additionally, it contained a "razor-thin slice of nearly-white supermarket blandness that is a sin even during the Winter, but worthy of eternal damnation during tomato season." I stand by that opinion.

Some people think I'm a food snob, but that's not true at all. I just expect good-tasting food that is properly made and falls within standards that are acceptable to any local health department. My BFF's 50th birthday party was held at the Kentmorr, a seafood restaurant on the Eastern Shore. The only thing I remember about that meal is being served tepid crab soup, one of those half-and-half jobbies that was a mix of Maryland crab and cream of crab. Apparently, someone had accidentally turned off the burner under the pot of cream of crab, which remained on the stove long enough to get cold. Soup with cream and seafood in it. Yeahhh....no thanks. 

Occasionally an otherwise decent meal has dishes that fall short of expectations. And sometimes those dishes are pretty bad. But that makes them fun to write about.

Barcocina dip

"The Barcocina dip, listed on the menu as "an Oaxaca queso fundido" had a curious fluffy texture studded with odd rubbery and flavorless bits of chorizo, topped with a whole poached egg (not fried, as the menu indicated). While the yolk was runny, the white was very firm and required a knife to cut and distribute through the dip. The accompanying tortilla chips were weeny, as if made from taco-sized tortillas, and not big enough to scoop up a decent amount of dip."

While we adored Jesse Wong's Hong Kong, a restaurant on the lakefront in Columbia, we felt the opposite about his Hunt Valley restaurant. Jesse Wong's Kitchen served various Asian cuisines, including sushi, but wasn't particularly good at any of them. At least not the food we tried on our two visits. After our disastrous first meal, a lunch, I swore I'd never set foot in the place again. Then we received a gift card from my Dad's girlfriend, which made me eat my words. Sadly, they were tastier than the food at Jesse Wong's Kitchen. Turns out the gift card had no balance, and I had to pay for the crap we ate. I was pretty pleased when the restaurant closed, though I was sad that Hong Kong eventually shut down as well.

I'm sure I've written about several more poor restaurant experiences over the years, but I want to include just one more in this post. It's another Restaurant Week meal, this time at Oyster Bay Grille. The problem was not the meal itself (which was pretty good), but the way management handled a situation.  

"In a few moments, the man who had shucked the oysters came by, ostensibly to apologize. Now, let me give some pointers on apologies for restaurants. Restaurant Apologies 101, if you will. The very first thing to do is to say, 'I'm very sorry.' The next thing to do is to offer recompense. 'Let me take the oysters off the check,' or some such. And that's it. Then go away and let the diners finish their meal. Sticking around to make excuses like, 'they were hard to open,' and 'this is why we put oyster forks out' are not acceptable. (Especially when there was only one oyster fork present, and it was jammed into the rind of a lemon. Were we to wrestle it out and then share it?) You work at a damn oyster bar--learn how to shuck a fucking oyster. Bleeding customers are not happy customers, and Mr Minx spent the rest of the meal in a foul humor. Especially when another man, presumably an owner or manager who had been randomly wandering, came around to say he saw something going on at our table. He did not offer an apology or anything else; it seemed that he was there simply out of curiosity. When each of these men returned to our table yet again, individually, to ask 'you ok?' later on during the meal, it must have been the thought of liability niggling them. It just plain annoyed us." 

OBG's chef read my post and, in a comment, offered a free dinner. Because he knows how to treat guests properly. We declined, but I had enjoyed my rockfish entree enough to request the recipe for one of our books. 

Have you had any bad meals or bad service recently? I'd love to hear about it....so leave a comment!

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Our Go-To Restaurants

Pre-COVID, we Minxes dined out at least once per week and sometimes 2-3 times if we were invited to restaurant events. Our regular night for dining out was Tuesday, the same day we did our grocery shopping. For the most part, it made sense to eat in restaurants that were close to grocery stores. The Weis Market in Towson Place (still Eudowood to me) is our favorite grocer, so we ended up at Red Robin entirely too often. Sometimes we would go to Spice and Dice for Thai food, or Gino's, and if we were especially tired of all of those places, we'd go to Glory Days Grill. Sometimes we'd go to a different grocery store because they all don't carry the same products at the same prices. Wegman's had a good by-the-pound buffet, so we ate and shopped in the same building. At other times, we'd go to ShopRite in Timonium, and we'd dine either at the Nautilus Diner, Il Basilico, or Yamato Sushi. Eventually, we soured on Yamato. While the fish was always fresh, the rolls were too large and seemed bland for the high price. We started going to Yama Sushi in Hampden/Roland Park/Whatever that area is called and consequently added the Giant in the same shopping center to our list of favorite stores.

in the car with the local bird from Ekiben

During the early days of COVID, we stopped dining out entirely. Our rare trips to the Weis Market were a quick in-and-out involving masks, rubber gloves, and lots of hand sanitizer. We ordered lots of carry-out and delivery from regular favorites Red Pepper, Kathmandu Kitchen, and Yama Sushi. We also discovered how delicious the burgers are at Alonso's, that giant fried chicken sandwiches from Ekiben taste just as good when eaten in the car, and that fries and wings from The Local Fry actually travel pretty well. Once summer hit and restaurants offered outdoor dining, we ate at La Cuchara as often as possible and celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary at a table in Petit Louis' parking lot. 

Now that things are pretty much back to "normal," except for the fact that there still is a pandemic going on, we're back to eating indoors on a weekly basis. We still don't go grocery shopping all that regularly, thanks to Amazon Fresh, but we do have a regular Saturday restaurant date. I do Whole30 off and on most of the year, which limits our restaurant choices. However, there are three places that are pretty safe for me, and we end up eating at them fairly frequently.

Lorenzo salad and wings @ Earth, Wood, & Fire

Earth, Wood, & Fire (1407 Clarkview Rd, Baltimore, MD 21209) serves one of our favorite pizzas in town, and they also have really good burgers (which are available on gluten-free buns). A pizza and a large Lorenzo salad (endive, arugula, grapes, macadamias, bleu cheese, in a lemon vinaigrette) constitutes our usual order, but on Whole30 days we each get an order of their spicy dry-rubbed wings in place of the pizza. To be honest, we can make the wings at home because I was able to cajole the recipe out of the chef, but we like the restaurant and want to continue to support them by eating there.

patty melt @ Nautilus Diner

Nautilus Diner (2047 York Rd, Timonium, MD 21093) has the typical huge diner menu with lots of carby breakfast options that aren't my thing even when I'm not dieting. I usually go for a slab of lasagna or moussaka, but now that I've discovered how good their patty melts are, my regular order may change. On diet days, however, I get a giant 3-egg omelet, with home fries, hold the toast. Broiled or roasted chicken--no stuffing, please!--is also a good choice, with a baked potato, veg of the day, and bonus cup of Maryland crab soup. Even I can't eat an entire half chicken, so there are plenty of leftovers to take home for a lunch later in the week.

chunky dunker oyster with watermelon mignonette @ True Chesapeake

As long as I stick to the oysters and other seafood items and stay away from the bread and other carb-laden goodies, I can have a fine meal at True Chesapeake. But why torture myself? Though we have gone there while dieting, it's more fun to go when I'm not. 

loaded yuca fries @ La Food Marketa

Another place I like when I'm on Whole30 is La Food Marketa (2620 Quarry Lake Dr, Baltimore, MD 21209). While I can't eat the tacos and such, I will get wings, brussels sprouts, and the loaded yuca fries. (Yes, some of those items have cheese on them, but it's my body, my diet so butt out.) The restaurant has a nice patio, so we tend to eat outdoors when we can. Neal is rather fond of their kobe beef hot dogs topped with street corn, and once in a while I order something different, like black bean soup. Those yuca fries are always on our table, however, no matter what else we get. 

beef kabobs and chicken fesenjan over tah dig @ Villagio Cafe

Most of our go-to restaurants are close by, no more than 10 miles in any direction. One, Villagio Cafe (6805 York Rd, Baltimore, MD 21212), is within walking distance. I think I've had lunch with friends at Villagio more often than Neal and I have eaten dinner there. It's never disappointing. My favorite is the un-lovely tah-dig topped with chicken fesenjan (crispy rice with a stew of walnuts and pomegranate with chicken), but I also enjoy their kebabs and lamb shank. Sometimes, when we want to feel young, we go to The Peppermill (1301 York Rd, Timonium, MD 21093), a restaurant that has been referred to as "God's waiting room." It's an old-fashioned sort of place with the kind of non-trendy comfort foods we grew up eating and where applesauce is considered a vegetable. But any place where I can get stewed tomatoes as a side and a hot fudge sundae or coconut cake for dessert is aces in my book. 

various maki and nigiri sushi @ Yama Sushi

Back to Yama Sushi (1030 W 41st St, Baltimore, MD 21211). I believe that maki rolls need to be small enough that I can fit an entire piece in my mouth without having to take a bite--2" in diameter at the very most, and that's pushing it. The rice of a piece of nigiri should be thumb sized, with the fish not much larger. Also, the rice should be fresh and not cold. Sadly, so many restaurants make giant rolls that are impossible to eat, and drape their nigiri with tablecloths of raw fish. The rice is either overcooked and sticky or cold and crumbly. Yama sushi is the optimal size and the rice is always perfect. Sometimes it's even a little warm. I appreciate an inventive roll, like their Red Devil, topped with lightly cooked, Cajun-spiced tuna, and the Christmas Tree, which wears a garland of seaweed salad. Not only is the food always very good, but the prices aren't astronomical and the service is pleasant. (We miss our regular pre-pandemic waitress who addressed us  as "honey" every time she came to the table.)

fish and chips and baby back ribs @ The Crackpot

Stalwart seafood restaurant The Crackpot (8102 Loch Raven Blvd, Towson, MD 21286) gets our business fairly regularly. It has recently come under new ownership and the menu has changed quite a bit. One can still get steamed crabs and a crabcake that weighs 23 ounces, but also chicken momo, veggie samosas, and chicken or beef tikka masala. I've always been fond of their baby back ribs, which are a bargain $12 on Mondays. I wasn't crazy about their crabcakes (which also came in a gluten-free version) and haven't tried them recently, though I'm curious to see what the new owners are doing with them. 

There are also a handful of go-to restaurants for when we're in a celebratory mood. We used to go to Cunningham's, but now that the restaurant is part of the Atlas Restaurant Group, they no longer get our business. Instead, we go to True Chesapeake, Cosima, or La Cuchara, all three of which were mentioned in a recent post. Others of our go-to dining spots that have also been named in prior posts: Red Pepper, Kung Fu 12, Asian Kebab and Hot Pot, and Il Basilico. Sometimes I think we should branch out and try other places, but to be very honest, we're quite happy with the selection of restaurants we currently visit. That's not to say that we haven't tried others--we have. But none of them have been worthy of adding to the list...though there is one we hope to visit again soon. More on that sometime in the future.

If anyone knows of a must-try restaurant in our general vicinity (Towson), please leave a comment!

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Stuffing My Face in New York - Day Two

I did and didn't eat as much on Day Two as I did on Day One. I ate fewer meals, but the sandwich I had for lunch was honestly enough food for the entire day. Read on.

My regular NY breakfast habit is a stroll down to Dominique Ansel Workshop in Flatiron. I've never been to the original bakery on Spring Street so have never eaten a Cronut. But I have eaten gingerbread croissants, pear tarts, canele, and kouign amann at his Workshop. This time I tried a coffee creme brulee pull-apart bun, made with the same laminated dough as most of his pastries, filled with a blob of coffee cream and topped with a wee creme brulee. Sweet, crispy, creamy deliciousness. I love that they serve La Colombe coffee, a brand out of Philly, and had one with some oat milk, which I sipped as I sat at an outdoor table and watched a crew of people unload what looked like pieces of a set from an enormous truck.

Daisy and I had both recently read about All'antico Vinaio, a Florentine import that opened last November on 8th Ave near Times Square. Though I had wanted to eat mostly Asian cuisines on this visit, after I looked at their menu, I was game for an Italian sandwich. La Paradiso, in particular, caught my eye--mortadella, pistachios, a pesto-like pistachio cream, and stracchiatella (fresh mozzarella soaked in cream) layered between slices of schiacciata, a bread that seemed the love child of focaccia and ciabatta. I thought we could share a sandwich, since these babies appeared to be around 8 inches square and 2 inches thick, but Daisy seemed shocked at the suggestion. We each ordered a sandwich and had them cut in half so we could share. Her choice was La Schiacciata Boss, with Tuscan ham, Pecorino, and truffle cream. Both sandwiches were stellar, with great bread, just crusty enough on the outside, and tasty fillings.  

top: Boss, bottom: Paradise

After that massive lunch, I just wanted a nap; instead we hopped on a bus for a trip to sniff fragrances downtown. We spent quite a bit of time at Mizensir, a narrow boutique filled with the creations of master perfumer Alberto Morillas. He is the creator of familiar fragrances like CK One, Acqua di Gio, and Marc Jacobs Daisy, as well as Must de Cartier, Penhaligon's Iris Prima, and Thierry Mugler Cologne. My rather vast collection of scents includes those last three, and may well include a Mizensir fragrance in the future.

At some point, Daisy suggested we stop for tacos, and I looked at her like she had three heads. I was still working off that colossal bologna sandwich! I did find enough room for a tiny bit of gelato from Gentile. I noticed that they had sorbetto flavored with chinotto, a variety of bitter citrus popular in Italy. Recently I sampled fragrances from Abaton, which specializes in scents made with the fruit, and was curious to taste it. To balance the icy sorbet, I also got some plain fior de latte gelato.

Later that evening, we stopped into the new Manhattan outpost of Nan Xiang, a Flushing, Queens favorite for xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings. Daisy chose the popular pork version of the dumplings, and I went for the Lucky Six combination platter that included pork, chicken, scallop and pork, pork and crab, pork and truffle, and gourd/shrimp/pork. While the oversized dumplings were tasty, the wrappers were somewhat uneven and doughy in places. Still, I enjoyed them, though I really didn't need any more food at that point.

It's amazing I got any sleep at all on this trip, with all the food I ate so late in the day. Perhaps my body was simply exhausted from all the digesting it had to do? Or maybe the 44,000 steps I walked in three days had something to do with it.

If you missed Day One, you can find it here.

Read about my sole meal on Day Three here.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Stuffing My Face in New York - Day One

My eating adventures in New York have been a regular feature on Minxeats for years. Check out the posts found here, here, here, here, here, here, and so on. Neal and I always ate well when we visited NYC, but since I met my friend Daisy in 2017, food consumption has gone up quite a bit. When Daisy and I get together, we may have 2-3 full meals, a couple of snacks, and a stop for drinks in an 8-hour period. Now, it's not constant eating; we do pop into various shops and boutiques that seem interesting, and always make time to sniff perfumes. But still--it's a lot of food consumed in a relatively short amount of time.

On my most recent trip, I met up with Daisy at Golden Diner. It's located in Chinatown, and the location reflects on the otherwise typical diner-style dishes. I ordered the chicken katsu club, featuring tender chicken cutlets, red cabbage slaw, blt, and bulldog sauce on the typical myriad slices of toast. Daisy had the Chinatown egg & cheese sando, the NY standby, but with exceptionally fluffy eggs on a sesame scallion milk bun. Now that I peruse the menu again, I kinda wish I had ordered the Thai Cobb, partly because of the clever name but also because it sounds delicious. 

Let me backtrack a minute. The Golden Diner meal was at about 3:30pm on a Sunday. I had arrived in NY noon-ish, and after tucking my bags safely away with the hotel porter, I headed to a Thai restaurant near Penn Station called Random Access. I'd wanted to eat there for a while and had even made a reservation the last time I was in town, but plans changed.  This time, I was able to satisfy my curiosity about the place with an order of sriracha lime dumplings and an egg pancake. The former comprised steamed chicken dumplings with a spicy mayo, plus cilantro, red pepper, shallots, and coconut. The latter was a roti flatbread merged with an omelet, topped with squid, mussels, bean sprouts, kale, coconut, and a sweet sriracha sauce. Both dishes hit all the right spots, and were a flavorful contrast to the rather wan Thai food I had back home in Baltimore earlier in the week.

Now back to the Daisy-led Food-O-Rama.

We wandered around a bit before visiting Michaeli Bakery. We were there for donuts, but it was too late in the day and they didn't have much of a selection. Instead, we split a rugelach. The rugelach I'm familiar with are made with a sturdy cream cheese pastry and filled with nuts, jam, chocolate, or all of the above. This one was a tiny croissant-like pastry with a chocolate filling rolled into it. It was very good, if very different.

Our next stop was King Dumplings. It used to be a "dollar dumpling" joint when it opened a couple years ago, but now the price has gone up a few bucks. Ten really good pork dumplings for less than $5 is pretty amazing though. 

If you're counting calories, we're probably at 3500 so far.

Our next stop was Kopitiam, specializing in Nonya (Chinese Malay) cuisine. I wanted to try everything on the menu, but we settled on three dishes + dessert. We tried the Nyonya Bak Zhang, a dumpling of blue and white sticky rice with minced pork, mushrooms, winter melon, and salted egg, all wrapped in a mile of some sort of leaf (banana, I'm guessing). I was expecting something yummy like one of my favorite dim sum dishes, sticky rice in lotus. Sadly, the dumpling was cold and overcooked, the salted egg yolk was dried out, and the whole of it pretty flavorless. The tok tok mee made up for it, reminding me of chow fun with its wide noodles in a dark sauce studded with pork, shrimp, and other goodies. 

The pandan chicken was also tasty. The three triangular chicken meatballs were wrapped in pandan leaves and served with a sweet chili sauce.

Asian desserts are not French pastries, so I shouldn't have been surprised when one of the items we ordered was on the gelatinous side. The kuih talam was described as salted coconut milk over a pandan cake base. Yes, those were the flavors, but the "cake" was not the western-style flour-based cake that I expected. The kuih lapis was a "1000-layer" cinnamon butter cake, rather like a crepe cake or maybe a Smith Island cake, only without any frosting. Both desserts, I think, would make a great afternoon snack with some tea.

I opposed the idea of eating a burger next, so we parked ourselves at an outdoor cafe and enjoyed an adult beverage instead. There was plenty more to eat the next day.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Oomame Chile Crisp Ice Cream

Moroccan Oomame on Oatmeal with feta

One of my favorite products discovered at the 2021 Fancy Food Show was Oomame's line of globally-influenced chile crisps. Originally from China, chile crisp has become a popular condiment among chile-heads and others who enjoy a flavorful bit of spice plus crunchy texture. It's great on dumplings, but also pizza, pasta, and just about everything else. What I like about Oomame's product is that it comes in four varieties - a classic Sichuan style, plus others borrowing flavor profiles from Mexico, Morocco, and India. While I still like to use the Sichuan version on typically savory dishes, I have found that the dried fruits in the other varieties (fig in Moroccan, papaya in Indian, mango in Mexican) add a subtle sweetness that makes them also work well with foods that are traditionally sweeter. Try a drizzle of Moroccan Oomame with a sprinkle of feta cheese on your next bowl of oatmeal--rather than the usual brown sugar or maple syrup and fruit--for something totally unexpected and totally delicious. But let's push that proverbial envelope a bit, shall we?

Some ice cream shops in Sichuan province have taken to drizzling chile oil on vanilla soft serve. And while a chile crisp sundae seems like a fine idea, I took it even further by putting chile crisp in ice cream. Yes, I did! The Mexican-inspired version of Oomame Global Chile Crisp, in particular, seemed ripe for taking a savory condiment fully into dessert territory. But rather than using vanilla in my frozen confection, I borrowed some elements from the chile crisp itself to flavor the creamy base. I started with Jeni's ice cream recipe, which uses corn starch and cream cheese in place of eggs as a thickener, and infused it with mango and orange peel, adding peanuts as a substitute for the pepitas in the Mexican Oomame. (While they're great for crunch, I didn't think they'd add all that much flavor.) 

The result exceeded my wildest expectations. Mr Minx wasn't all that thrilled with the flavor of dried onion in his ice cream but it didn't bother me. Nor did the occasional hit of cumin. The predominant flavor was orange peel, even more so than chile, which I thought was enough to keep my creation well within the realm of dessert. If you're an adventurous eater, give it a try. 

I have no regrets.

Oomame Chile Crisp Ice Cream

1 clementine or half a small orange

2 cups milk

1 1⁄4 cups heavy cream

1 ounce dried mango strips

Small handful of roasted unsalted peanuts

4 t cornstarch

2⁄3 cup sugar

2 T light corn syrup

1⁄4 t kosher salt

3 T cream cheese, softened

2 T Oomame Mexican Chile Crisp

Additional roasted unsalted peanuts

Chocolate chips (optional - I used a Seattle Chocolates Mexican Chocolate bar, cut into slivers)

Peel the clementine or orange in large strips, saving the fruit segments for another use. Carefully scrape the white pith from the inside of the peel with a small knife. 

Reserve 1/4 cup of milk and put the remaining 1 3/4 cups plus the cream into a 4-quart saucepan. Add the mango, peanuts, and clementine or orange peel. Over medium-high heat, bring the milk to almost a boil. Turn off the heat, cover the pan, and allow the flavorings to steep for about 20 minutes. 

Stir the cornstarch into the reserved 1/4 cup of milk and set aside. 

Strain the steeped milk into another 4-quart saucepan, reserving the fruit and nuts. Add the sugar, corn syrup, and salt to the pan and bring the milk to a boil over medium-high heat. Cook for 4 minutes, then stir in the slurry. Bring back to a boil and cook until thickened, 2 minutes.

Put the cream cheese in a large bowl and pour in 1/4 of the hot milk, whisking until smooth. Carefully whisk in the rest of the hot milk. Stir in the chile crisp. Pour the milk into a storage container. Add a layer of ice cubes to the bottom of a baking pan large enough to fit the storage container and put the container on top of the ice in order to cool the milk mixture down quickly. After about 15 minutes, put the container in the fridge to chill completely, 4 hours or overnight.

Cut the steeped mango and orange peel into small pieces and reserve along with the peanuts.

Put the chilled ice cream base into the bowl of an ice cream maker and process according to manufacturer's directions. After the ice cream has started to thicken and is almost done, add the mango, orange, peanuts, and chocolate, if using. Scoop ice cream into a freezer-safe storage container (I just used the same one I used for the hot milk) and smooth with the back of a spoon. Cover and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.

Serve with additional chile crisp, or over your favorite brownies. Or eat straight out of the container.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Flashback Friday - Thai Red Curry Chicken Burgers

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on May 2, 2014.

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We have a ton of stuff on our freezer. Other than ice cream, I mean. There are several quarts of gumbo from Cajun Kate's, leftover pork shoulder from that 8-lb behemoth I cooked last month, half a roast duck from the Great Wall grocery store in Catonsville, a leg of lamb, pasta sauce, various types of sausages (chorizo, andouille, lap cheong, hot dogs), ground beef, a skirt steak, bags of nuts, yeast, coffee, and bread, and more. And this is one of those standard above-the-fridge freezer jobbies, not a big ol' chest freezer. (So don't believe me when I say we have nothing in the house to eat. What I really mean is that there's nothing that I feel like defrosting and cooking.)

There was a pound of ground chicken in there too. I can't remember why we bought it exactly, maybe to make some laab, but there it was, looking slightly freezer-burned, buried under a pile of other foodstuffs. I determined that if it was not indeed funky with freezer burn, I'd make chicken burgers with it. And not just chicken burgers, but Thai red curry chicken burgers. We had two open jars of Thai Kitchen red curry paste in the fridge, and I've been looking for a way to use the stuff up. We also had a partial jar of  Maesri "chilli paste with basil leaves" and a jar of sliced Kaffir lime leaves. I love that chilli paste stuff and have used it in a number of things over the years. As for the lime leaves--have you noticed how difficult they are to find in the supermarket? And when you do find them, you have to use them right away or they'll go bad? Then I found sliced ones in a jar at H-Mart. They're not quite as powerfully-flavored as fresh, but they'll do in a pinch. And I think their flavor is an essential match to red curry paste.

So...back to the burgers. Ground chicken can often be unpalatably dry, so I always add some chia seeds soaked in water to add moisture. The omega-3 boost doesn't hurt, either. The curry paste also helps to make the meat moist. In fact, the raw mixture will be very moist, so don't be anal about trying to get perfectly round patties. Refrigerate them for a while before cooking so the flavors meld and the patties firm up a bit.

These were a big hit. The burgers were not only moist, but also super flavorful. We ate them both on bread and as-is with a salad, using the special sauce as dressing.

Thai Red Curry Chicken Burgers

2 teaspoons chia seeds soaked in 1 tablespoon water
1 lb ground chicken
1 tablespoon coconut milk powder
4 teaspoons Thai Kitchen Red Curry Paste
2 teaspoons finely minced Kaffir lime leaves
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons canola oil

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and mix well to incorporate the chia and curry paste. Form into patties, between 4-8, depending on the size of your rolls, number of guests, or appetite. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour so the flavors will meld.

Heat canola oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. When hot, add the chicken patties. Cook for 4 minutes on the first side, then flip and cook an additional 3 minutes.

Serve with Special Sauce.

Special Sauce

3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1 Tablespoon Maesri Thai chilli sauce with basil
1/2 roasted red bell pepper, diced
2 scallions, white and green part, chopped

Combine all ingredients. Serve with Thai Red Curry Chicken Burgers.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Eating Around New York

Mr Minx and I are serious eaters. We enjoy a wide variety of foods from all over the world. Asian food is my thing especially. Northern Baltimore County, where we live, isn't exactly a hotbed of good food, and really great Asian food is hard to find. So when we go to New York, we eat as much of it as we can get.

I like to stay in or near Koreatown, in Midtown Manhattan. 32nd Street between 5th Avenue and Broadway in particular is packed with Korean eateries, though there are some outliers on 31st and 33rd and across 5th. One can get bibimbap or barbecue 24/7, and fancy pastries and bubble tea most of the day. On our most recent trip to New York, we ate at two Koreatown restaurants, but also ventured elsewhere in the city for ice cream and pizza.

Our first stop of the trip was for a lunchtime feast of dumplings and noodles at Mandoo Bar. The soft and slippery udon with seafood was mild and soothing; the colorful steamed mandoo were variously filled with vegetables, pork, and seafood. All benefited from the mix-your-own-sauce collection of salty and spicy condiments found on every table. Personally, I prefer the fried mandoo, because I like a little crunch on the somewhat thick wrappers, but the steamed version was satisfying, too.

Later that evening, we visited Hao Noodle & Tea, which was written up here last week. Our lovely food tour guide, Daisy, remembered that Morgenstern's ice cream had recently opened a new flagship shop nearby, so we stopped in to sample a few of their 88 occasionally very unusual flavors.

When presented with that many choices, I have trouble making up my mind. I did manage to settle for cardamom lemon jam. The ice cream was strongly cardamom flavored with small pockets of a somewhat bitter lemon marmalade that contrasted nicely with the sweet spice and milky ice cream. Sadly, I didn't take note of what Mr Minx ordered, but he seemed to enjoy his flavors which likely involved chocolate. Daisy had a date-flavored concoction that was neither ice cream nor sorbet, with an odd grainy texture, that was saved by a dose of a very good hot fudge sauce.

After Morgenstern's, we trudged through the rain to Joe's Pizza, a slice joint on Carmine near Bleecker. Mr Minx, a proponent of NY-style pizza, really enjoyed the perfection of Joe's thin crust that audibly cracked when being folded. It's truly one of the best slices in town, relatively cheap and satisfying, too.

The next morning, after lattes at Starbucks (I know, but it was Sunday, they were open, and they are if nothing else, consistent), we walked the ten or so blocks to Bryant Park to check out the Bank of America Winter Village. The rain had stopped, but the clouds lingered. Still, it was a lovely winter day. We window shopped up and down the maze of tiny boutiques until we made a decision about food. Mr Bing was our first choice.

A few years ago, I saw Mr Bing at Urbanspace Vanderbilt. The food court was crowded and most stalls had lines; I found myself overwhelmed by foodie anxiety. Rather than choose something new to me, like bing, I quickly grabbed two tacos at one of the less-busy stalls, scarfed them and escaped the crowds. I resented my decision.

Jianbing is a traditional street food that originated in the north of China. Generally eaten for breakfast, this crepe-like pancake is coated with egg on both sides, smeared with various pastes and sauces, and folded. It can be filled with meat and veg, like our General Tso's bing. It's big enough to share, and fucking delicious. I won't pass up this treat next time.

Mian Kitchen was nearby, and we grabbed a couple of bao (fried chicken and pork belly) with a side of spring rolls. I enjoyed the spring rolls, which were piping hot and crispy, but was a little disappointed in the bao. The chicken was on the dry side, and neither were as flavorful as others I've eaten in town.

We also tried one of the famed liege waffles from the Waffles & Dinges outpost at Bryant Park. It was good, but I've had better.

Our plans for the evening involved visiting the tree at Rockefeller Center and checking out department store holiday windows. Barney's was a real bust; they didn't bother decorating at all. Bergdorf's windows were real winners, especially those dressed up with fake confectionery like cakes and gingerbread houses. From BGs we segued to the Parker New York Hotel (formerly the Parker Meridien) to hit up the fabled Burger Joint, a faux "dive" restaurant tucked away behind a curtain next to the hotel's front desk. The ambiance (posters, tons of graffiti on the walls and gouged into wooden tabletops) is very CBGB, but the food is classic Americana--burgers, fries, milkshakes, plus beer and wine.

The burgers were simple and very good, earning every "best burger in NY" accolade received in those glory days before the advent of the now-ubiquitous Shake Shack.

Much later in the evening, we enjoyed our second dinner at Samwon Garden, in Koreatown. Though it was nearly 10pm on a Sunday, most Korean restaurants in the neighborhood were packed, some with lines. Samwon Garden has multiple levels, so we were able to snag a table and order a few of the more interesting non-bbq items on the menu. The Honguh Kangjung, or deep fried skate wings with housemade Buffalo sauce were crunchy and overcooked and doused in a sauce more sweet than spicy (though it was spicy). Osam Bulgogi was another spicy sweet dish, this time with chewy chunks of squid and morsels of pork belly. The show stopper was a dish listed as a "side" - an enormous plate of fries with kimchi, bulgogi, and cheese curds, rather like a Korean poutine. I'm not crazy about fries in general, but I probably ate more than my fair share of this dish.

The next morning, we wandered around Chinatown in the chill wind, stopping for a porky plate of steamed dumplings at Chi Dumplings before ice cream at Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. I am endlessly amused that the "regular flavors" at this tiny shop include durian and taro, but the "exotic" flavors include chocolate and vanilla.

After ice cream came....pizza! I haven't been to that many pizza joints in NYC, but I did realize that one of my favorites, Pomodoro, was not too far away from where we had wandered. We had a quick vodka slice before heading to the Strand to browse through books.

After the Strand, we found ourselves wanting three things: 1) a place to sit; 2) to pee; 3) something warm. We spotted Max Brenner and found everything we ever wanted. 

And churros with milk chocolate, caramel, and raspberry dips. Lattes on the side. So good and so welcome.

We left the city later that afternoon, full of happy food memories and already planning our next visit.

Mandoo Bar
2 W 32nd St
New York, NY 10001

Mr Bing
Urbanspace Vanderbilt
230 Park Ave
New York, NY 10169

Mian Kitchen
1065 Ave Of The Americas
Ste 2400
New York, NY 10018

Waffles & Dinges
Bryant Park
6th Avenue & W 42nd St
New York, NY 10018

Burger Joint
Parker New York
119 W 56th St
New York, NY 10019

Morgenstern's
88 W Houston Street
New York, NY 10012

Samwon Garden
37 W 32nd St
New York, NY 10001

Chi Dumpling House
77 Chrystie St # A
New York, NY 10002

Chinatown Ice Cream Factory
5 Bayard St
New York, NY 10013

Pomodoro
51 Spring St
New York, NY 10012

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Cambodian...Tacos

I usually cook only two nights per week, Saturday and Sunday, with Mr Minx handling the grub the rest of the time. During the summer, I can be as creative as I want, doing homemade pasta or other more time-consuming things, but during football season, my Sunday dinner options must either be: 1) long-simmering; or 2) super-fast. We both grew up eating supper early, a habit that we've continued into adult-hood, so a game that starts at 1pm and ends around 4pm doesn't leave much time to put something interesting together. Even if I have a short amount of time I don't want to resort to a cop-out like grilled cheese sandwiches or frozen dinners. (For the record, we don't eat frozen dinners.)

Last year I was introduced to Keystone All-Natural canned meats. Originally I was like, "what?" But then when I considered that the idea of canned fish doesn't give me a problem, why should other canned proteins? And I have to admit, the stuff is actually quite good. We made two delicious dishes with their canned beef, a Thai salad and the obvious chili, so when I had the opportunity to work with Keystone again, I jumped at the chance. This time, we received canned pork and chicken, both of which will be featured here in upcoming posts.

This weekend the Ravens game started at 4:25pm. That put an even bigger time crunch on making dinner, considering we'd be eating while the game is on. I wanted something I could put together at halftime, for second-half consumption. Pork tacos were a natural. But I didn't want to merely heat up meat and slop it on a tortilla, because I'm a creative person. I decided to revisit the recipe for a Cambodian pork dish called nataing that I made a few years back. The original recipe, from the Elephant Walk restaurant in Boston, uses ground pork, but I thought the Keystone All-Natural Pork, which comes in large chunks that could be easily shredded, would be even better in a taco.

The pork and coconut milk mixture is pretty rich, so I wanted to add a tangy element to cut the unctuousness. Pickled red onion, a popular taco addition and something I already had in my fridge, seemed perfect. A healthy dose of cilantro was essential as well, for freshness. And a squeeze of lime. Chips and guac were a perfect side dish.

Already a pretty quick dish to make, the nataing was lightning fast with the canned pork. And it was quite delicious, if I do say so myself.

Nataing (Cambodian Pork) Tacos

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 14.5-ounce can Keystone All-Natural Pork, drained
1 dried New Mexico chile, seeded and deveined, ground to a powder or
2 teaspoons New Mexico chile powder (not chili powder!)
1 large shallot, thinly sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut milk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon fish sauce
Salt
1/4 cup unsalted dry roasted peanuts, coarsely ground
Taco-sized flour tortillas
Pickled red onion (recipe follows)
Fresh cilantro

In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat and add the pork and the chile powder, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon. Add the garlic and shallot and cook a minute or two, stirring regularly, so the garlic does not burn. Stir in the coconut milk, sugar, fish sauce, and peanuts. Turn heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes, until the shallots have softened. Taste for seasoning and add salt or more fish sauce or both.

Warm the tortillas in the microwave for a few seconds to make them more pliable. Add a few spoonsful of the pork mixture, top with pickled onion and cilantro and eat.

Pickled Red Onion

1 red onion
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon salt
A few peppercorns and a bayleaf (optional)

Slice the onion very thinly and place in a quart jar with a lid. Combine the vinegar, water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan and bring just to a boil, stirring occasionally so the sugar dissolves. Pour the hot liquid over the onions, making sure the onions are submerged. Add the peppercorns and bayleaf if you want (chiles wouldn't be a bad idea, either.) Allow to come to room temperature before sealing the jar and storing it in the fridge.

Tip: keep the liquid after the onions are eaten to make more pickled onions. I just add fresh ones to the jar and seal up again.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Baked Mushroom Spring Rolls

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on September 29, 2014.

At last year's (2013) Summer Fancy Food Show, I had a taste of The Ginger People's Sweet Chili Ginger Sauce and fell in love. It's a lot like the sweet chili sauce one finds accompanying fried things at Thai restaurants, only better. When I found it at the grocery store (I do believe it was MOM's Organic, but it may have been Whole Foods) I bought a bottle...which then languished in our pantry for at least six months.

Every time I opened the pantry, I spotted the bottle and made a mental note to make spring rolls at some point. Every time I closed the pantry, I forgot that thought. (Hey, I'm old. Memory's not what it used to be.) Except the very last time, when I remembered to write "spring roll wrappers" on the grocery list hanging on the fridge all of 18 inches away.

I decided that vegetarian or vegan spring rolls would be easier than the meaty sort, so mushrooms also went into the shopping cart that day, as did a head of cabbage.

I was making cole slaw for another meal, and after I chopped up the cabbage, I saved a cup of it for the spring rolls. In retrospect, I could have used more cabbage and fewer mushrooms, but I liked the idea of mushroom spring rolls. They would seem meatier, so we wouldn't miss the, er, meat. And a fear of frying (in addition to a fear of absorbing too much cooking oil/not needing those extra fat calories) led me to bake the spring rolls. Baking produces a crunchier eggroll than frying does, but it's also not greasy, so not a bad exchange.

You, of course, can make these the way you like. Heck, put some ground pork in the pan with the mushrooms if you want. I won't tell.

Baked Mushroom Spring Rolls

1 pound of mushrooms (your choice), chopped
2 teaspoons vegetable or olive oil
Big pinch of salt
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 cup shredded cabbage
1 garlic clove, minced
1 1-inch piece of ginger, grated
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
Soy sauce
1 package egg roll wrappers
3 scallions, chopped
Cooking spray

In a large pan set over medium-high heat, cook the mushrooms in the oil with a pinch of salt until they give up most of their moisture. Add the onion and cabbage and cook until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and ginger and cook an additional minute. Season with sesame oil and soy to taste. Remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature/refrigerate until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Prepare a baking sheet by topping it with a sheet of aluminum foil or parchment. Keep a small bowl of water at the ready.

Take one spring roll wrapper and arrange it so the corners are facing the compass points (the southernmost/bottom point should be pointing directly at you). Place two heaping tablespoons of the mushroom filling in the lower center of the wrapper; top with a sprinkling of the chopped scallions. Fold the bottom point up over the filling, then fold the east and west points in to form an envelope. Dip a finger in the water and apply it to the northernmost tip. Roll the whole thing up and place on prepared baking sheet.

Repeat with the remainder of the filling. I got 12 rolls; you'll get more or less depending on how generous your "heaping" tablespoons are.

Spray tops of rolls with cooking spray. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms have begun to brown. Using tongs, turn rolls over, spray with more cooking spray, and bake an addtional 10-12 minutes, until rolls are crispy.

Serve with your favorite spring roll dipping sauce.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Flashback Friday - Dumplings

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on April 10, 2013.

On one of the final episodes of that Food Network classic, "Worst Cooks in America," the worstcooktestants are tasked with making dumplings - Chinese siu mai and wontons and Japanese gyoza. As I was watching, I thought to myself, "if those mostly-incompetent people can make an edible dumpling, a mostly competent person like me can, too!" Honestly, they made it look very easy, right down to the little pleats on the gyoza.

Gyoza, or jaiozi, in Chinese, has been my family's favorite Chinese restaurant appetizer forever. No Chinese meal was complete without them. And they had to be fried. Potstickers, they're called. One can, of course, steam them, but my favorite part of the dumpling is the crisp bottom part of the wrapper. Mmm.

I recall making jaiozi with a friend some years ago, and it seemed like a huge production. She had made the filling in advance, so it was the dumpling-forming and cooking that were intimidating to me at the time. But now that I look back, vaguely remembering that she insisted on boiling them in a large pot of water before frying, I see that we made them incorrectly. Especially since many of them fell apart before they even made it to our mouths.

I think she was mostly paranoid about using raw ground pork in the filling, but she needn't have been.

A quick online search brought up myriad variations on that filling. Some used cabbage, some didn't. Some added shrimp. Bobby Flay's recipe (found in his Throwdown cookbook) called for hoisin, chile paste, 5-spice powder and allspice. No wonder he lost. I decided to go with a more simple combination of ingredients: ginger, garlic, cilantro, and green onions. I did borrow an ingredient from Chef Flay's dipping sauce: black vinegar. The result was interesting, but the slightly molasses-y flavor of the vinegar was a bit overpowering. Much better was a more traditional sauce made with soy, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and scallions. I've supplied the recipe for both; you may decide you like the vinegar sauce. Flay uses hoisin (and a thousand other ingredients) in his, in place of the sugar and soy, which may work better than my substitutions if you don't mind a thicker sauce.

In any case, dumpling making was much simpler than expected. The round wrappers are pre-made and sold in 12- or 16-oz packages at your neighborhood Asian grocer. If you can only find square won ton wrappers, you can cut them with a large round cookie cutter.

Potstickers

1.5 lb ground pork
1 T chopped scallions
1 t grated fresh ginger
1 t chopped garlic
1 t finely minced cilantro
salt
1 16-oz package round dumpling wrappers
oil for frying

In a medium bowl, combine pork, scallions, ginger, garlic, and cilantro, plus a generous pinch of salt. You can taste for seasoning by cooking a bit of the meat in a little hot oil. Remember that the dipping sauces contain soy and will be salty, so don't overdo it.

Prepare your area for dumpling assembly: have a clean cookie sheet or two covered with parchment, a Silpat, or a clean tea towel nearby, plus a small ramekin of water, the bowl of filling, and a teaspoon.

Take a dumpling wrapper and place it into your left palm (right, if you're left-handed). Dip a finger in the water and use it to moisten the edge all the way around. Use the spoon to place a blob of meat into the center of the wrapper, then fold the wrapper into a semi-circle. If there's too much meat, take some out at this point. Pinch the middle edges of the dumpling together and then make a pleat to one side of the middle using only the side of the wrapper facing you. (In other words, the dumpling is pleated only on one face.) Add another pleat or two (if they fit) to that end, then repeat the pleats on the opposite end of center. Gently squeeze the edge of the wrapper to make sure it's closed and that there are no air bubbles, and place it on the cookie sheet. Repeat until all wrappers and/or meat are gone.

(For a visual aid to pleating dumplings, check out this video of Chef Anita Lo doing just that. Dumpling making starts at about the 2 minute mark. Before that time, she demonstrates making the dumpling wrappers themselves. She's a bit fancy; I found it easier to pinch the wrapper closed in the middle and make 2 or 3 pleats on either side.)

To cook dumplings: Add a tablespoon or so of neutral cooking oil to a large skillet over high heat. When the oil is hot, add a layer of dumplings. You can fill the pan, but don't crowd it; the dumplings should not overlap. Cover the pan and cook for a few minutes, until the bottoms of the dumplings are a nice golden brown. If the pan seems to be getting too hot, turn the heat down a bit. Once the dumplings are brown - don't turn them! - add a quarter cup or so of water (more or less, depending on the size of your pan and number of dumplings). Cover the pan and cook until the water has evaporated. At this point, the dumplings should be shiny and somewhat translucent on the top (non-browned) side. If you're concerned about the pork being cooked, cut a dumpling in half and check. If they're not cooked, add a few tablespoons more water, cover the pan, and cook until additional water has evaporated.

Remove cooked dumplings to a plate and serve with dipping sauce.

Dipping Sauce 1

3 T black vinegar
1 T rice wine vinegar
2 T light soy
1 T light brown sugar
1 T chopped scallions

Combine ingredients in a small bowl, stirring to make sure sugar dissolves. Allow to sit for 15 minutes or so for flavors to combine.

Dipping Sauce 2

2 T light soy
1 T rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 T chopped scallions
1 t toasted sesame oil

Combine ingredients in a small bowl, stirring to make sure sugar dissolves. Allow to sit for 15 minutes or so for flavors to combine.

If you've made more dumplings than you can eat at one sitting, put the remaining dumplings, still on the cookie sheet, in the freezer for a few hours. When frozen solid, transfer to plastic bags and store in the freezer. When you cook them, you'll need to leave them on the heat for a bit longer.



Posted on Minxeats.com.