Soup!

I LOVE SOUP! I am sad to report that I had have a persistent cough for the past few days. On a happy note, my cold gave me the incentive to experiment with making soups. I made a Chinese-inspired soup today for dinner, based on the soup I had for lunch yesterday in NY's Ctown. This soup was a great discovery for me, because I love soup, but I'm always afraid the soup in Ctowns across America have meat in it or meat broth. It's hard to tell, you know?

Recipe for Chinese-inspired soup:

1. Boil 6 cups water in a large wok. A big pot works too, but I was too lazy to clean one!

2. Add 1 tbsp minced garlic, 1 tbsp minced ginger root, and 2 finely diced green chili peppers to the boiling water.

3. Add 4 tsp low sodium soy sauce, 4 tsp seasoned rice vinegar, 2 tsp sesame oil to the wok. Let it continue simmering for a few minutes.

4. Add 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms.

5. Add 2 cups baby bok choy and 2 cups cooked rice noodles to the wok. The rice noodles should be cooked by boiling water in a pot, removing from heat, adding noodles, and covering the pot. Strain and then add to the soup. Also, the bok choy can be prepared by cutting off the ends, separating the leaves, and washing the veggies. Let simmer for 2 minutes. Remove from heat or the bok choy leaves will turn yellow. If you won't be serving the soup for awhile, wait until just before serving to add any leafy veggies or any veggies you want to keep the crunch in.

6. Right before serving the soup, add 1/8 cup chopped cilantro and 1 tsp fresh lime juice. Salt and pepper to taste.

This soup cleared my nose and throat AND tasted delicious at the same time! The best thing about this soup is that you can use many types of veggies. I think it would taste good with different types of mushrooms or fresh spinach (not the bagged kind with E. coli O157:H7!) or broccoli. Also, you can make this more or less spicy by changing the quantity of chili peppers!

Chocolate Bar at Cafe Fleuri

Frank and I went to the Chocolate Bar at Cafe Fleuri on its Opening Day last Saturday. I would recommend this Saturday chocolate buffet to anyone who loves chocolate, because it is so decadent and yummy! There were cookies, chocolate crepes, ice cream, chocolate fondue, chocolate bread pudding, and 2 tables covered with various chocolate desserts (primarily made with some form of chocolate mousse). The lavishness of the spread was just so unbelievably overwelming- I didn't even know where to start!

My favorite things to try are show below in pictures. I can't remember all the names, so I hope my descriptions and pictures are enough!

1. This dessert tastes like a grown-up Twix bar. It has a pear inside, which I didn't eat, but the rest of the dessert was just so good. I mean, a Twix bar made tastier- can you ask for anything more out of a dessert?



2. Chocolate Bread Pudding- I don't know what they call it at Cafe Fleuri, but this dessert is a chocolate bread pudding, simple as that. It is delicious. They serve it with the option of adding caramel sauce and/or chocolate sauce. We added caramel sauce only, because we tried it towards the end of our buffet experience, and we just couldn't deal with eating any more chocolate! This bread pudding reminded me of the English Sticky Toffee Pudding at Croma, the gourmet pizza place on Newbury Street in Boston.



3. Chocolate Fondue- They had milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and white chocolate fondue sauces, as well as a lovely 3-tiered chocolate fountain! We also had a bowl of caramel sauce, which we mix and matched with the chocolate sauces (we were serious about trying EVERYTHING!) We started "healthy" by dipping fruit and pretezels in the sauces. We ended up dipping these mini-churro-looking things into the chocolate sauces. They were little mini churros that were filled with liquidy chocolate. Amazing.




4. White chocolate citrus ice cream- surprisingly light and refreshing.


I wouldn't recommend the chocolate crepes. Nor would I recommend the various flavored creme brulees. Besides that, SO GOOD! Thanks for taking me there, Frank!

South Indian Cabbage

I have this great vegetarian cookbook by Madhur Jaffrey- I absolutely love it because I can make any recipe in the book! My sister and I decided that we are going to work our way through the book, cooking all the recipes that sound appetizing to us. We each picked a recipe to make for our parents this past weekend. We cook well together when we have our own projects! I, of course, picked a cabbage dish to make!

South Indian Cabbage
1. Chop cabbage into long, thin pieces (coleslaw-esque). Wash.
2. Heat 2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil in a pan, I prefer a wok.
3. Add 1 tbsp brown mustard seeds. Once they start popping, add 1 tbsp urad dal, 1/2 tsp fenugreek powder (or 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds), 1/2 tsp asafetida.
4. Add 10-12 curry leaves. Stir.
5. Add cabbage. Stir until cabbage is cooked through (around 5 minutes).
6. Add 1 tbsp coconut milk. Mix.

I love this dish because it's quick, easy, really tasty, AND according to my South Indian taste-testers, the cabbage actually tastes like real South Indian food! woohoo!

ps pictures to come soon!

Saravanaas Restaurant Review

My parents, sister, cousin and I went to Saravanaas, a South Indian restaurant, in Murray Hill (popularly known as Curry Hill) in NYC. I was hoping it would be really tasty since my sister loved it, but I have to say, it was not so great. To be fair, I feel like the quality of the food and the poor service was the product of a really busy Friday night. But no excuses! The food should have been better, regardless of how busy it was! Here's what we tried and my opinions on them:

Drinks:
1. Salty Lassi- somewhat flavorless, I've definitely had better
2. Sweet Lassi- pretty good, but heavy

Appetizers:
1. Plain Idli- The green coconut chutney was really great, and the idli was perfect. I've had a lot of versions of this steamed rice and lentil patty, and I really thought this one was good. The other three chutneys were pretty average.

2. Sambar Vada- This was AMAZING! Vada is a lentil "donut" that is made by soaking and grinding lentils (urad dal), adding spice, and then deep frying in oil. Usually it ends up being heavy and oily, but Saravanaas' vada was soft and light and flavorful. It was served in a plate of sambar, covered with red onions and green beans. I thought the green beans were a really nice touch, definitely not something I would think of. So, this was the first dish we tried, and I was really hopeful for the rest of our dishes. Unfortunately, they weren't so great.

3. Rasam- This dish had potential.

Dosa
1. Paper Dosa- This was served to us cold, which ruins the taste of dosa, as anyone who has eaten dosa knows.

2. Rava Masala Dosa- Ok, but again, cold.

3. Tomato Onion Utthappam- I love utthappam normally, but this one was in dire need of seasoning. My mom thought it was soggy on the inside and crispy on the outside, but only because they doused it with oil.

4. Adai Avail- I was so disappointed in this dish, because I was hoping for something interesting and new, but it ended up tasting like chilla, a North Indian "crepe" type dish.

Rice
1. Bagalabath- yogurt rice was made with this bizarre short grain rice that reminded me of couscous. I did not like it. Definitely not.

So, I apologize to any lovers of this restaurant, but this restaurant just didn't work for me tonight. My sister is protesting as a I write this post, so I suppose I might give it another try. After all, the sambhar vada was fantastic, so maybe there's still hope for Saravanaas!