Trip Report: EWR-AMS

Now that Continental is part of Star Alliance, I've started considering Continental flights. And since I was already in New York, the convenience of the nonstop Newark (EWR) - Amsterdam (AMS) flight made it a no-brainer to book.

Continental flies the Boeing 757-200 on this route. At 7 hours, t's definitely the longest flight I've been on in a narrow-body airplane. For reference, this is the type of aircraft United flies from Chicago or San Francisco to San Diego. But Continental has outfitted these planes with winglets (you can see the upward curving thing on the end of the wing in the pic below), and is now flying them from the US to Europe.

Continental doesn't have Economy Plus, but it does have Video On Demand in Economy class. That's a nice feature, but unfortunately out of 40 movies I couldn't find a single one I wanted to watch!

Dinner service was very similar to United's. Salad, hot main course, brownie, roll. The salad was okay - iceberg lettuce with cucumber slices, shredded cheese, and red cabbage. My main course - Chicken Parmesan - was lukewarm, and really needed a lot more of that red sauce for flavor. The cookies and cream brownie was tasty, and the roll was decent.

Breakfast was also just about the same as United's on eastbound Europe flights, only Continental bothers to heat up the croissant. It was nice to have fresh fruit - for some reason I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been fruit cocktail.

NY Eats: bakery roundup

On this trip to New York, I had the good fortune to try a few well-known bakeries. Now, I did order significantly different things in each bakery, but my favorite of the bunch was Bouchon Bakery, one of the Shops at Columbus Circle.

Here, I ordered the demi-baguette, bear claw, madeleines, sticky bun, nutter butter cookie, and pistachio macarons. I liked everything, especially the macarons which were delicately flavored and the first time I'd had macarons that weren't overly sweet (including the ones I made).

My other favorite was the sticky bun. Also not too sweet, the multiple folds and layers inside made for a super luscious and decadent experience. I just loved chewing on this!

The bakery I was most eager about going to was Momofuku Milk Bar. I had read so much about two menu items in particular: the cereal milk soft serve and Crack Pie. Cereal milk soft serve is flavored like the milk at the bottom of the bowl after you've finished your cornflakes. It's a soft, comforting flavor, and I thought it was great as soft serve. On the other hand, people have raved about Crack Pie, and it's named based on popular reaction, but I thought it was overrated. It's basically a chewy chess pie.

If Crack Pie is so popular, why don't people line up for chess pie in pie shops elsewhere? (The line at Milk Bar was at about 15 minutes long, and eating was a crowded experience since the space is also used as a waiting room for Ssam Bar.) I'm thinking in particular about a slice I had from "Homemade Ice Cream and Pie Parlor" - it's in the back of this picture; in the front is a slice of Shaker Sugar Pie. I went to this pie shop once when I went to do some research in Louisville, Kentucky (had caramel apple and rhubarb that time), so when I went back to Louisville I made sure our focus group facility ordered some for us to eat behind the one-way mirror!

The final bakery I tried was Financier. I went to Grand Central Station to catch the subway after a visit to the New York Public Library on 42nd and 5th, and I jumped in to try one of the financiers since I had also heard of this place from all of my blog reading. The financier was good, but not something I felt like I couldn't make. As a note, the staff here pronounce it "financi-err," but they do understand you if you pronounce it "financi-eigh."

NY Eats: Fried Chicken mini-roundup

I went to an Asian buffet restaurant with my family in San Diego. It was one of those that you can find across the US - a variety of stir-fried standards, sushi, crab claws, etc. I was looking forward to some fried chicken wings, since it's something I'd never make for myself. Unfortunately, these turned out to be overly doughy and not crispy.

So when I went to New York, I felt an urge to have more fried chicken to "erase" the earlier taste. By coincidence, one evening my sister suggested Umi Nom in Brooklyn. I had read about their fried chicken before in this New York Times article, so I was excited to try it. The chicken was well fried - crispy but not too greasy. I wish the tangy sauce (the yellow puddle on the bottom, in the picture) and the spicy chili taste could have infused the breading and meat a bit more.

For lunch one day I chose Tebaya, a very informal Japanese eatery in Chelsea. There was a constant stream of big to-go orders while we waited and ate, which is a good sign. I tried two kinds of fried chicken: chicken karaage (in the front of this picture) and the Nagoya-style sesame wings (in the back). The wings were quite good - sweet but not too sweet and just the right amount of sauce. The karaage was nicely fried, but the single lemon slice was not sufficient acidity to cut the grease and add flavor. Adding both my and my sister's leftover salad dressing improved things greatly.

Tebaya's food was good, but I wouldn't make a special trip out to have it again. I think partly it's because the interior is seriously dingy, with the floor matted in black dirt, the tables unwiped, and the trash can crusted with previous refuse. It's one of the few times interior cleanliness has so detracted from the experience.

Makeover?

I went to the Shops at Columbus Circle and bumped into Regus and crew. His assistants were actively asking lookers-on asking if they wanted a free makeover. I wonder how those people felt...

Breakfast at Chipotle

Prior to my trip back to the US, I had already planned on going to Chipotle to eat breakfast. This is the ONLY Chipotle location in the world to serve breakfast. I had read on some food blogs that it's because Dulles airport required them to serve breakfast. I've seen that happen at other fast food restaurants that don't usually serve breakfast, but they tend to serve really generic "scrambled eggs" (from a carton) and bacon, that sort of thing.

But Chipotle being Chipotle, they decided to make it a real breakfast menu. You can choose taco, burrito, or breakfast bowl which includes "crispy potatoes" on the bottom. For meat choices you have the regular chicken, carnitas, and a new chorizo option. There's also a spicy pepper and onion relish/salsa on offer.

This Chipotle is a lot more upscale-looking than every other Chipotle I've been to in the past. Perhaps this is the design for new Chipotles.

I went with the breakfast bowl with chorizo, and the spicy pepper and onion salsa, to try all of the new stuff (but also because I love breakfast potatoes and chorizo). I have to say I'm disappointed. First of all the serving vehicle is this paper soup bowl which is relatively small. Definitely not as filling as Chipotle usually is. Secondly, either the potatoes were not crispy to begin with, or they got wet after all of the salsas and the beans were put on top, but they were plain soggy. A redeeming element was the eggs, which were not scrambled from a carton (and very hard and rubbery), but they were soft and flavorful, scrambled from fresh-cracked eggs.

Trip Report: SAN-IAD-LGA

I took the redeye to New York, knowing I'd already be jet-lagged so I wouldn't have an issue falling asleep on the airplane. Indeed, I got a good 3.5 hrs of sleep on this 4.5 hour flight. We did get served a snack, which is a standard fruit and cheese plate with a fresh-baked cookie. Interestingly, I think my airplane was an ex-Ted aircraft, Ted being the former low-cost arm of United. So it didn't have a full galley, and I think the flight attendant pulled the unbaked cookies from a cooler bag in the overhead bin. At first I thought she was heating up a dinner in a tin tray she brought from home, but then I saw her sliding the cookies from the tin tray onto our meal trays.

I had actually pre-ordered a Low-Fat Meal, but it didn't make it onto the plane. I knew the service was going to be a fruit and cheese plate which I'd had several times before (although this was more bountiful than I remembered). And I had read on flyertalk.com that the Low-Fat Meal (airline code: LFML) would be a chilled, grilled chicken breast and some kind of grain. Oh well, I used one of the quart-sized ziploc bags I took from San Diego security checkpoint to store the cheese, crackers, and grapes for a snack later. I really like how user-friendly San Diego airport is.

In Dulles, I was excited to try the new AeroTrain, which is replacing most of the moon buggy transports. It is very nice to take a fast, frequent train. But because the planners (smartly) built the C terminal train station where the future terminal will be (the current terminal being a "temporary" one despite being in use for many years and indefinitely into the future), it meant a LOOOOONG walk to the train station, in the opposite direction of where the train would be taking me.

IAD-LGA was a standard regional jet flight, operated by ASA which is a new operator for United Express since Mesa Airlines is being phased out. The seats looked brand new, so not sure if they refurbished their planes before being put to use for United.

Springtime in San Diego

Mid-February, and the temperature was in the mid-70s Fahrenheit, i.e. mid-20s Celsius. Ahhh....

Trip Report: AMS-IAD-SAN part IV

My final flight back to California also had nice flight attendants and a surprisingly bountiful dinner service. I guess living in the Midwest the last few years has meant that I only took the shorter "mid-con" (mid-continent) flights with less food.

Dinner was a choice of chicken or pasta, both with tomato sauce which is a great change from creamy sauces that often appear on airline food. My chicken was served with green beans and couscous (more couscous!), plus a salad with vinaigrette and a crudite plate with cucumber, celery, carrots, grapes, and ranch dressing (more crudite!). The flight attendant offered "white, or less white" rolls, which I thought was cute. Indeed, I spent a couple seconds looking at the bread basket because I wasn't sure if she was really offering me a choice.

Dessert was a black forest cake.

And prior to landing we had fresh baked chocolate chip cookies, with milk in the little wine glasses. I haven't had these in so long, it was really a treat! I especially like the milk in the elegant glass.

Trip Report: AMS-IAD-SAN part III

Passport control at IAD was really fast, but baggage claim was slow. Like the first bag took at least 45 minutes to get to the carousel. And no wonder, look how many flights are coming in at the same time and using the same baggage carousel.

I then went to the Red Carpet Club by gate C17. The agent checking people in wasn't very friendly (refused entry to a couple people in front of me and then made a snide remark about it while they were still there). They only had orange slices out (no crudite), and it was so crowded with no view of airplanes. To top it off, I was denied wireless internet access - the agent incorrectly said I only get it when I'm departing the US!

So I then left and went to the club by gate C9. There, the agent really tried to get me to go to C17 because she said this one was crowded and that one was closer to my gate. Well, I insisted on this lounge, and it turns out that this was less crowded than the other lounge. Plus, it had crudite, I got my wireless pass, and had nice views of airplanes.

Trip Report: AMS-IAD-SAN part II

The flight from AMS to IAD was on a Boeing 767, which meant the new horizontal lie-flat seats in business class. Like I've written before, I really like these seats. They're equally comfortable sitting up and lying down. And compared to other airlines, United seats have always been very generous with the padding, making for a cushy ride.

Lunch was served after takeoff. Salad with red wine vinaigrette, and smoked salmon and couscous. The smoked salmon and couscous were tasty, but overall the appetizer course on United has shrunk dramatically over the years.

Here's an example from 2007.

What hasn't changed are the main courses! Which can be a good thing. After a really fatty beef dish (designed by Charlie Trotter) on the flight last year to AMS (pic here), I was glad to return to the tried and true filet mignon with potatoes and vegetables which I'd had many times over the years.

Dessert was a raspberry cheesecake with passion fruit sauce. Don't forget to save the Ferrero Rocher from the tray in the beginning to have at the end.

Pre-arrival snack was a "Tuscan-style" wrap with herb chicken, sundried tomatoes, cheese, salami, and olives inside. It was tasty, but lonely. Like I felt there should have been some sort of accompaniment with it. Overall though, it was a really nice flight with very friendly and professional service.

Trip Report: AMS-IAD-SAN part I

I was so happy to book a nonstop flight from Amsterdam to the US, compared to last time when I had to connect in Frankfurt. I like flying Lufthansa, but connecting in FRA means leaving AMS at like 6am, and when buses don't start running until 8am or later, it meant I had to go to the airport at midnight and wait it out.

So United has a 12:20pm flight to Washington Dulles (IAD), and Continental has a flight to Newark after 1pm, which is also a nice option now that Continental is part of Star Alliance. I took the United flight to IAD.

United uses the Menzies lounge at AMS, and learning that made my heart sink because I was so underwhelmed by both Menzies and Servisair lounges in AMS when I flew Lufthansa and Swiss. But thankfully, this Menzies lounge in the non-Schengen zone of AMS is much nicer. The furniture is still a bit dated, but they had real food. Triangle sandwiches (tuna, bacon, chicken, cheese), and some mini pastries (labeled Halal, for the benefit of passengers on a Kuala Lumpur-bound flight).

Security for my IAD flight was conducted at the gate, and because of the Christmas underwear-bomb incident, I went early because I anticipated a long wait. Turns out that there was barely any wait at all (helped in part by having a frequent flyer / first / business line, but also having a TON of security agents). There was a pat down and search of my luggage, but actually on my last trip back before the Christmas incident, I was patted down both in AMS and in FRA, and my hand luggage was searched at both airports as well (and in greater detail too).

You Must Slap Them!

It's time for another vacation from school, so I've come back to the US for a week. At passport control in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, I had the funniest exchange with the border agent.

I was tentative in stepping forward because the last passenger had already left, but the agent hadn't motioned me to come forward, so I was unsure if I could proceed or not.

[Give the agent my passport and boarding pass]

Agent: What are you doing, a dance?

Me: Oh, I just wasn't sure if it was my turn. In America, I've been yelled at when I moved out of turn.

Agent: Well when they say that, you must slap them.

Me: What?!

Agent: You must slap them!

Me: Then I'll go to jail [mumbled - I was thinking, in America, you can't joke about things like jail when you're with the Dept. of Homeland Security]

Agent: What?

Me: I'll get into trouble! [Give the agent my residence permit]

Agent: Then tell them 'don't mess with me, I live in the Netherlands now'!

Me: [laugh]

Agent: No more dancing here in the future.

Me: Okay!

After not a lot of sleep, and missing the train in the morning, and problems at check-in, this put me in a good mood!

Tortillas (and fajitas)

One of the tastes I crave in the Netherlands is Mexican. You can actually find tortillas and taco shells and taco seasoning mix in the supermarkets, but unfortunately the tortillas are shelf-stable and not fresh.

So I decided to make my own tortillas both to get whole-wheat flour in them as well as to avoid the preservatives that the supermarket ones have.

Well, I have to say that this experience will probably drive me back to supermarket tortillas, at least for most of my tortilla needs. Mixing the dough wasn't hard (thanks to the food processor). It was just time consuming to roll out each tortilla and then cook them on the cast iron pan, one by one, side after side.

I did discover a nice recipe for a cilantro lime marinade that you can use for both vegetables and meat.

From Bon Appétit, July 2005

Simply puree the following ingredients in a food processor.

1 1/4 cups coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

3/4 cup olive oil

5 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin

1 1/4 teaspoons ancho chile powder

I would also add salt to taste, as well as ~3 chiles for spice.

Savory Bread Pudding

As a result of my macaron-making, I had 18 egg yolks stored in the fridge. Unlike in the US, you can't find egg whites packaged in a carton, so I had to take whole eggs and separate them.

With the first 8 egg yolks, I made a lemon curd recipe from Everyday Food (link here). Turned out great like most Everday Food recipes do.

With the next 10 egg yolks, I improvised and made a savory bread pudding since I didn't want more sweet stuff than I already had. You can improvise too - just know that you need stale bread, and enough liquid and fat to coat the bread and soften it in the oven.

1 pound of bread (about 1 and a half loaves of the no-knead bread)

1/4 cup olive oil

4 tsp thyme (dry or fresh)

1 minced garlic clove

6 tbsp butter

200g wild mushroom mix

6 dried shiitake, soaked in water

1 onion

2 leeks

1/3 cup parsley (fresh or frozen)

salt

pepper

1 cup stock

10 egg yolks

1 tbsp heavy cream

1/4 grated cheese

2 cups soy milk

(you can see I was using leftover cream and soy milk and cheese and stock, in addition to the leftover egg yolks!)

Instructions adapted from Bon Appétit, November 2006

Preheat oven to 375°F. Butter 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish. Cut bottom crust and short ends off bread and discard. Cut remaining bread with crust into 1-inch cubes (about 10 cups loosely packed). Place cubes in very large bowl. Add oil, thyme, and garlic; toss to coat. Spread cubes out on large rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake until golden and slightly crunchy, stirring occasionally, about 20 minutes. Return toasted bread cubes to same very large bowl.

Melt butter in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add vegetables. Sauté until soft and juices have evaporated, about 15 minutes. Add sautéed vegetables and parsley to bread cubes.

Whisk heavy cream, egg yolks, stock, milk, cheese, salt, and ground pepper in large bowl. Mix custard into bread and vegetables. Transfer stuffing to prepared dish.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake stuffing uncovered until set and top is golden, about 1 hour. Let stand 15 minutes.

Daikon Calzone and Momofuku Lemongrass Pork Sausage

Living by myself, I find it most convenient to just cook up a big pot of stew or one-pot meal (like jambalaya) at the beginning of the week, and to eat the same thing throughout the week. After a while though, this gets to be really boring, and I was hankering for some non-liquid meals.

I just got the Momofuku cookbook as a present from my sister, and decided to try out the grilled lemongrass pork sausage to go with the bread I've been making in the Lodge Logic Dutch Oven. It turned out well - it's a lot of cutting and mixing but otherwise it just bakes for a while and then you grill/fry the sausages. They freeze really well, and one batch of these lasts a long time. The lemongrass gives a nice, sharp contrast to the porky taste.

I also for some reason had a hankering for daikon in flaky pastry, but without the super greasy flaky pastry. Daikon in flaky pastry is a common dim sum dish, but I decided that putting it into pizza dough would make for a much more refreshing snack. I was really happy with how these turned out, not just taste-wise, but this was also just about the first time that I improvised a new recipe. The daikon and carrots give a nice crunch (conveniently the ingredients were leftovers from the pickled carrot and daikon I made from the Momofuku cook book), and the pizza crust indeed made a savory but ungreasy container for the filling. These also freeze well, and need just a pop in the toaster oven to reheat. Or they're good cold, and sturdy enough to carry on a road trip or bike ride (I know, I did it myself).

Lemongrass Pork Sausage

adapted from Momofuku

The book says serves 4 to 6, but I think it made at least a dozen sandwiches like the one you see above. It's quite rich so I don't like to eat a lot at once.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup minced lemongrass

1/2 cup choppped shallots

1 tbsp kosher salt

2 tsp sugar

2 tbsp plus 2 tsp fish sauce

2 tbsp sriracha - I didn't have this on hand, so I soaked 2 tbsp chili flakes in vinegar, and then ground it up with some garlic in a food processor. Worked well, and I got to skip all of those preservatives in bottled sriracha.

3 lbs ground pork - this deserves its own post, but it's impossible to find 100% ground pork on the shelf in the Netherlands. 80% pork / 20% beef is the best you can do, and this worked fine.

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1. Heat oven to 300 degrees F (150 Celsius)

2. Combine first 6 ingredients in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Transfer to large mixing bowl, and toss in the last two ingredients with your hands.

3. Put meat into 8 by 11 inch baking pan in an even layer, and bake for 20 minutes. I actually baked for a lot longer, because it was still really pink inside after 20 minutes.

4. Cut into 1 inch by 3 inch strips.

5. The recipe calls for grilling, which you can do, but I don't have a grill so I used my cast iron pot's lid to put a nice crust on these sausages.

Daikon Mini Calzones

- filling based on the "Flaky Pastry Filled with White Turnips and Ham" recipe from Florence Lin's Complete Book of Chinese Noodles, Dumplings, and Breads

- dough recipe from King Arthur Flour

Makes 18

Dough

10 oz all purpose flour (~2 cups)

4 oz whole wheat flour (~1 cup)

1 teaspoon yeast (instant or active dry)

1 1/4 teaspoons salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup + 2 tablespoons lukewarm water

Sesame seeds

1 egg, beaten

Filling

10 oz daikon, shredded

4 oz carrots, shredded

1 pack chunky bacon, finely cut

1 scallion, minced

½ tsp sugar

1 ½ tsp sesame oil

1 tsp salt

Dough

1. Combine all dough ingredients in bowl of stand mixer. First use paddle to combine ingredients, then switch to dough hook and knead for 5 minutes.
2. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 45 minutes. Then place into refrigerator 4-36 hours.
3. Remove from refrigerator. Take golf ball – sized pieces of dough and stretch with fingers into 2-3 inch rounds.
4. Lightly dust bottoms of rounds with flour, then place on parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Let sit for 1 hour.

While dough is in its second rise, make filling and preheat oven to 500 degrees F with rack in lower third of oven.

Filling

1. Place daikon and carrots in a bowl with salt. Mix together and press down. Let sit for 10 minutes.
2. Drain water from bowl, and put daikon and carrots in several sheets of paper towel or cloth towel and wring out excess water into sink.
3. Combine with bacon, scallion, sugar, and sesame oil

Assembling

1. Put 1-2 tbsp of filling in each round, and seal edges.
2. Brush beaten egg on top of each pastry.
3. Sprinkle with sesame seeds
4. Place baking sheet into oven, and bake until tops are brown, about 18-20 minutes.
5. Let pastries cool on baking sheet 5 minutes out of the oven. Transfer to rack to cool completely if necessary.

Braun Food Processor

My New Year's present to myself this year was a Braun immersion blender / food processor set. Actually New Year's presents for myself aren't a tradition, it's just my excuse for purchasing this product. I'd been keeping it in my Amazon.de cart, and when I saw the price drop to €85 I jumped on it. Now it's up to €116, so you might want to wait and see if it goes down again. Here's the link to the Amazon.de page.

It's funny when you start cooking in a kitchen with no appliances, you really learn which ones are most important. For example, I've learned that I can live without a microwave oven, which I previously thought would be the #1 most indispensable product. But really, a regular oven is so much more useful, and there's not much a microwave oven can do that other appliances can't do nearly as easily (exception would be melting chocolate or butter - see pic here as example).

Well, it turns out that I also really missed having a food processor. Specifically, it is just so much easier to cut butter into pastry recipes with a food processor. I researched this category a lot, since like with the mixer, a KitchenAid food processor was out of the question. The Braun was highly rated in German tests (Stiftung Warentest), and I'm partial to Braun anyway since it's a P&G brand. I also considered a food processor attachment for my Bosch stand mixer, but it looked way to small, was nearly the price of this whole set, and there's no "pulse" setting on the stand mixer.

Not surprisingly for me, I've only used the immersion blender once in the month I've had this, to make a celery root and apple soup. But I've found that I use the food processor at least once a week. Of course, it was great for making macarons with (tips here), but I've found that I use it for cutting vegetables a lot more as well. I think it's because it's got two julienne cutters which my KitchenAid didn't have. Plus, there's no annoying hole on the bottom of the work bowl as for the KitchenAid or Cuisinart, so you can actually use the bowl like a real bowl. It operates smoothly and not noisily, and because it's smaller, I find it a lot more handy to wash. My KitchenAid 12 cup workbowl was too big to fit in the top rack of my dishwasher, and on the bottom rack it was hard to position in a way that the water could reach it since it was so bulky. Given my small sink and lack of dishwasher, the compact size is even more welcome. Looking at the whole set, I now wonder why the KitchenAid and Cuisinart food processors are so bulky anyway.

I still like my KitchenAid food processor a lot (top rated by Cook's Illustrated), but I really, really like my Braun. Just like I really, really like my Bosch stand mixer. I never thought I would like these European, non-KitchenAid appliances so much!

Dutch Oven

Not surprisingly, Dutch people don't refer to Dutch Ovens as Dutch Ovens. They're just pots. Well, stoofpot is the sort of braised dish you can make in these pots, but I don't think they necessarily refer to the pots themselves.

Anyway, I really wanted a Dutch Oven for my new toaster oven (post about that here), and I decided to get it in the US. Bringing a Dutch Oven to the Netherlands isn't exactly bringing coal to Newcastle. That's because Lodge (I have one of their skillets) makes a perfect one. The lid has no handle on top, meaning that it can be used as a skillet, but importantly for me, it means that the whole unit fits inside of my toaster. And it has 5 quarts of capacity even! (Here's a link to their site if you want to find out more.)

That means I can comfortably make full-sized loaves of bread using the no-knead method. I've had a lot of success with Cook's Illustrated recipe which is basically the same as the Jim Leahy / Mark Bittman recipe you can find online, just with 7 ounces of water, 3 ounces of beer, and 1 tbsp of vinegar for the liquid. The beer and vinegar are there for flavor only, not to aid in the chemical reaction. I've only used Duvel so far as beer, since that's what I had in the kitchen.

An homage to the artist Marcel Broodthaers, with my Lodge Logic 2-in-1 and my bread.