Trufflage and Pasta

While flying back from DC earlier this month on Airtran, I was flipping through their magazine and they had a section on the growth and redevelopment of West Atlanta (more or less just west of the GT campus). Anyway, there was an Italian market listed called Toscano and Sons, and so we decided to go check it out. It was a pretty small place; they didn't have a huge selection of goods, but pretty much everything there was imports. They even had the San Pellegrino Chinotto drink that my brother likes. Anyway, we picked up a couple of random items, including a small bottle of black truffle oil, some vacuum-packed gnocchi, some dry pasta, some imported salami and a couple cheeses.

Anyway, I haven't had much experience with truffle oil (but boy does Iron Chef Sakai like to use it!), but I decided to experiment around. So I decided to make some fresh pasta infused with the black truffle oil:

Oil and ball of pasta dough (just AP flour, eggs, and the truffle oil). The oil was incredibly fragrant, but I think my sauce was too strong or something.

The final product. I put a little oil in the sauce as well, but I think the cheese might have been too strong so I couldn't really taste much of the truffle oil. I think next time I might just try a simpler approach of tossing the pasta with the oil, a little garlic and maybe a bit of fresh herbage and black pepper. I think I also need to let the pasta rest a bit longer after rolling it out (I don't have a pasta maker so I just do it with a rolling pin on the counter) because it seems to contract back a bit which makes it thicker and a little chewier than it should be.

Salami and cheese from the Italian market; sauteed asparagus in the background and my OJ.

Bawang!

I bought these back in August when we went to Seattle... I finally cracked the bag open. I had no idea what would be inside here, except that I expected it to be garlicy in flavor. The full text reads "Boy Bawang/Cornick/Garlic Flavor." I couldn't say no to the punching cartoon head of garlic. It turned out to be like corn nuts, but smaller, and coated in some sort of salty garlic powder. Sue said it was pretty powerful based on how my breath smelled... so it must have been potent. (It was pretty good, though)

Chicken and Waffles

Chicken and Waffles are a classic, if not odd, combination when it comes to Southern Cooking and Comfort Food. We went to Gladys Knight and Ron Winan's Chicken and Waffles in Midtown/Downtown. We went at about 1:45, figuring that that was late enough to avoid most of the brunching crowds, but we still ended up with a 45 minute wait! In the future, we're either going early or going during the week.

Fried green tomatoes appetizer. These were actually really similar to the kind we've made at home. They use a thinner batter with coarser corn meal. They were good, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The "Midnight Express": a waffle and four jumbo chicken wings. I was not particularly excited by the waffle, as it was just pancake batter in the shape of a waffle. That's the same way Waffle House does it, so maybe that's just how waffles are made down south. The chicken, however, was excellent! At first, four wings didn't sound like that much food, but they were plump and meaty so it was more than enough. The batter was relatively light without any strong seasoning (perhaps just a little salt), but it was fried to perfection. Great crunchy texture and the meat was still moist and juicy. Something just tasted different (but really good) that I couldn't put my finger on. Sue's theory is that they fry the chicken in peanut oil, which I suppose would impart a slightly different flavor. In any case, this was the best fried chicken that I have had in a while!

Korean Eats, Pocari

We threw a little sushi party this evening, but before shopping we had to get some food for ourselves. So we hit 88 Tofu House, although I think we need to explore around a little more as it seems like 88TH keeps raising their prices.

Cold noodles with beef and fish. These noodles are great in the summer when it's hot out. Nice cool and refreshing taste, although it's spicy at the same time. The mustard sauce is great, too. The noodles are made from buckwheat, I think, and are *really* chewy.

Assorted banchan, and Sue's kimchi bibimbap in the background.

We later went to the Tomato Japanese market to pick up some stuff for dinner. While, there, we found:

This is Pocari Sweat in powder form. Both Sue and I like this Japanese sports drink (it's similar to the white powerade... but no one seems to carry that flavor anymore). Normally here in the US, the 1.5L bottle of Pocari costs about $5, which is way too much to justify buying (it cost me about $1.50 in Korea). The box of powder is good for five 1L servings, and at $9 per box, it's still a little more expensive than what it would cost in Asia, but much cheaper than buying it in the bottle.

Shank

My friend Simon was visiting Atlanta for work. He got into town early, so we hung out and then had dinner at Food 101. I ordered the lamb shank, which turned out to be huge.

This is the braised shank. For reference, notice the size of the standard 12 oz. can of beer in the background. The size of this hunk of meat was on the same order as a turkey leg. The meat seemed a little dry. The sauce was good; it had a nice olivey taste and the fingerling potatoes were a nice starch component. I took the leftovers home and had those for dinner the next night... it actually tasted better the second time around; I think the sauce penetrated the meat a little more overnight and it didn't seem as dry.

Random Stew

Taking some of our loot from the weekend trip to the Buford Hwy Farmer's Market, we decided to make a big pot of soup/stew.



Ingredients included korean miso, tofu, baby/young daikon, carrots, wintermelon, onion, korean rice cake (tteok) and beef short rib "skin" (trimmings from the short rib... cheap, but flavor and good for a big pot of soup where presentation/looks don't really matter). Overall, it came out pretty tasty for relatively little effort... also leaves plenty of leftovers for when we're feeling lazy during the week.

Sushi Practice

We're having a few folks over next week for a sushi party, but I haven't made sushi in so long so I wanted to get some practice in. We dropped by the Buford Highway Farmer's Market and picked up some tuna along with some other related and non-related supplies.

It was good that I practiced... not all of it came out looking so good.

You can see in the picture in the middle and pointing left at about the 9:00 direction, there's some rolls that just didn't quite make it. I over stuffed that one. My nigiri were also pretty pudgy looking... I cut the fish a little too small and then used a little too much rice. The pieces that look half-way decent were done later in the process as my fingers' muscle memory slowly came back.

Pho Shizzle

After dropping my family off at the airport, Sue and I wanted to get some Bahn Mi. We dropped by Pho Bac on Buford Highway, and ended up getting some pho as well.

Small pho with rare beef, tendon, tripe and other goodies.

The Bahn Mi with roasted pork. The pork was out of this world! So good!