Last nights trip to the Chinatown Grocery Store yielded some fun items.
We have some toasted seaweed packets for lunch, spicy peanuts and anchovies in one container, spicy sichuan peanuts in another container,Sichuan peppercorns, live shrimp,Chinese broccoli, pea shoots, kewpie mayo, various chile oils, ginger and off camera, a big bag of garlic peanuts. Total cost 36 dollars.
Peaches HotHouse
415 Tompkins Avenue (corner of Hancock)
ph. (718) 483-9111 fx. (866) 781-6228
Upstate this weekend in a lovely home in the woods, we were able to spend a lot of time hanging out and relaxing around the house.
Here we have a fritatta made from leftover chicken from the night before. There is also some guanciale and left over spinach and bacon that got tossed in to the mix. This was a 13 egg fritatta.
With the leftover rice, I made some arancini from two nights ago. it was a saffron Carolina rice. On certain days in the local grocery, if you buy 100 dollars worth of groceries, they sell you a 20 pound bag of rice for 2 bucks or something. We have so much damn rice.. i just added an egg and some mozzarella. served with this really bright tomato sauce
Last night stopped by the Chinese Supermarket. In addition to seafood, i purchased a jar of XO Sauce. They keep the XO Sauce locked up like it is the cornerstone ingredient in the manufacturing of meth. You ask the cashier, she screams out something in Chinese, moments later, two people are inserting a key simultaneously to unlock the sophisticated alarm system. It’s all quiet impressive. XO Sauce is one of my favorite Chinese Sauces. It’s a little sweet, it has some heat and most of the flavor comes from dried scallops and shrimp,
My favorite use of the XO Sauce is when it is served in a Cantonese Restaurant over those giant steamed oysters. No oysters yesterday, we went with scallops. The dried scallop fresh scallop combo made for a wonderfully intense scallopalooza..
Scallops:
Not so pretty:
The misses came home last night and I wanted to have dinner waiting for her. She was out of town for a half a week. She arrived at Newark airport at 9 o clock which gave me about a half hour window to start the final prep.
Alvarez Cafe
511 Elizabeth Ave
Elizabeth, NJ
(908)289-4011
Alvarez Cafe located at 511 Elizabeth Avenue is a famous place on the block.. It has been open for 30 years.. Its also one of the only places where they have an english menu too. So i find this helpful.. There website is alvarezcafe.com..
Most places in the area incorporate a lot of different spanish countries into their cuisine.. One restaurant could have Puerto Rican owners and be cooking a combo of Portugese, Cuban and Peruvian food. Alvarez i think keeps it pretty much too cuban food.. They serve oxtail to seafood. I especially like their sandwiches; steak, cuban, roast pork, spanish sausage, and the carne ripiada.. All really good..There steak sandwich in which they put french’s onion rings under the bread before the grill press it is excellent too!
Sandwiches ready to go for lunch:
Sorry, I have to start thinking more like a blogger. I take photos of the prep just fine, it’s just when the food comes out, well, then it is go time. So it’s hard for me to stop and add an extra step. I am sure this will take some minor readjusting.
Was out and about today. We covered close to 7 miles on our walk. We went to the Brooklyn Museum to check out the Keith Haring Exhibit. While I was impressed with the museum, the Haring collection was not all that exciting. Lots of black and whites and a few on canvas. It seemed to be all the same thing.
