We entered the grocery store for staples: bread, cheese, eggs. The plan was get in get out.
Then I spotted the shelled peas which unleashed a desire for Spring vegetables, and I stuffed the basket with the peas, pretty red endive, a bunch of ruby red radishes, a zucchini, a couple heavy glossy lemons, and a wedge of Parmesan.
Morgan has been on a mapo tofu kick since he went to Mission Chinese when he was in San Francisco. Even before he got back from that trip, the Lucky Peach newsletter landed in his inbox, including the mapo tofu recipe from Mission Chinese!
The very tasty recipe is here:
http://luckypeach.com/recipes/mission-chinese-foods-mapo-tofu/
After sourcing all the ingredients (except the beef fat), Morgan invited me over to prepare it. We made it using a technique best described as “pair cooking”, a reference to “pair programming”. In pair programming, often one person is at the keyboard doing all of the typing, and the second person formulates and talks over ideas with the person typing.
Kristin told me about a newish casual Korean place on Alte Schönhauser Straße called Yam Yam. After her rave review, we went there together and we both had the super yummy bulgogi rice bowl. The bulgogi was served with piles of fresh baby spinach on top (a hard to find item in Berlin). I find a lot of white rice too boring to even finish eating, but the rice they serve has personality and nice bite: plump, sticky grains. All mains come with three side dishes: kimchi plus two others. Kristin and I were served different ones so we got to try their whole selection. Some sides were better than others, but all were tasty.
This one is all Vann – I only reaped the benefits!
This started out as a recipe I got from nola.com that called for hot turkey sausage as the base meat. I had planned on using that basic recipe, replacing the sausage with stew meat. Once I got to the store and started reading recipes on the backs of cans of beans and such, I concocted a brand new recipe on the fly. Hence, ‘From The Hip’. I decided to keep the ground coriander that the original recipe called for. I’d never really used coriander and found that it added an interesting, ‘What am I tasting?’ sort of flavor to the chili.
Ingredients:
Continue reading “From The Hip, Light You Up, Angus Beef and Bean Chili”
VIVRE POUR MANGER 