Chinatown

In the small city of San Francisco, Chinatown holds a valuable locations. Its next to downtown, North Beach, The Pier and its a skip and a hop away from the Mission and Castro.

There are actually two chinatowns in San Francisco, the one downtown is considered "Old Chinatown" and Clement St. is considered "New Chinatown" Generally "Old Chinatown" is an older generation, the first wave of chinese immigrants settling there. New Chinatown is a melting pot of Asian culture, not just Chinese but there's , Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Burmese. Settler were a later generation compared to the settler of Old Chinatown. They were attracted to the low rent in the Richmond district.

Dim sum is from the southern part of China, mainly the province of Canton and its neighbors. Old Chinatown is comprised of mostly Cantonese chinese which is why Dim Sum is so popular. Dim Sum means snack in chinese. According to Wikipedia it mean touch heart but that is a direct translation. Thats why the dishes are small and divided up into many pieces. Dim sum is traditionally a social event. Aunts, uncles and grandparents will all out out to eat with the whole family, have tea and talk about anything, thats why dim sum restaurants are always so loud. Tea is the main part of dim sum, the whole point is to drink tea while you ingest food. Tea help digestion and wash down the greasy food.

The way the food is priced is that all the dishes are separated into 3 categories, small, medium and large. So if you order pork dumplings thats a medium order, the woman pushing the cart will stamp your ticket with a medium stamp. When its time to pay they calculate all the stamps.

Now I know many people at my table tried new things on Saturday. I will try to explain some of the dishes.

First off the Chicken feet.

The dish is called Phoenix claw

Phoenix claw is cooked for a very long time, this is how the meat turns from skin tight to fall off the bone.

I here are the ingredients and how to make it.

Ingredients

• 1 lb chicken feet

• 2 quarts oil

• 2 quarts water

• 1 ounce fresh ginger

• 3 pieces star anise

• 2 ounces chinese parsley roots

• 2 ounces maltose sugar

MARINADE

• 2 tablespoons oyster sauce

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1 tablespoon sake

• 1 ounce chopped chili pepper

• 2 garlic cloves, minced

• 1/2 teaspoon white pepper

• 1 tablespoon black bean sauce

• 1/2 teaspoon sesame seed oil

Directions

1.
Wash feet, chop off toenails and cut into quarters.

2.
Heat oil to 350 degrees. Mix chicken feet with maltose and fry until golden brown, about 7 minutes. Remove and drain.

3.
Boil water and add ginger, star anise and parsley roots. Add feet. Bring to boil again, then reduce heat and simmer 90 minutes. Drain.

4.
Combine marinade ingredients. Marinate feet 24 hours. Before serving, steam feet, marinade 15 minutes. Serves 3.

Thanks to www.recipezaar.com

The cow stomach is translated as cow scraps in Chinese.

the dish consists of cow stomach, white turnip, and lung, not liver. Eating animal innards is not uncommon for Chinese cuisine.

The dish is starts with a pot of boiling water, then the stomach and the spices are added. I don't know the specific spices but i know MSG is one. Anyways It is usually served with pigs blood and a side of spicy oil.

The cow stomach is not most peoples cup of tea.

FYI there were pigs ears and jelly fish if you guys are interested in going back and trying something new

Dim sum dishes have been passed down for centuries making part that are cheap and usually throw out into tasty dishes.

I was definetly an experience going with a group that was not familiar with dim sum.

Cooking a delicious meal

Cooking a delicious meal 

Last weekend I documented a dinner I cooked for my Eating San Francisco class.

I made a Shrimp scampi type of pasta with steak and for dessert there were chocolate covered strawberries. 

The pasta consisted of garlic, butter, shrimp, and cilantro. 

 I cooked the steak first because my girlfriend was craving it. It was seasoned with salt and pepper, and cooked to medium rare.

For the pasta I first melted the butter and then put some garlic into the pan. After the flavor of the garlic comes out I add in the shrimp. Shrimp cooks really fast and very easy to tell when it is done. Once the shrimp is cooked I add the pasta. On top of the pasta I drizzle some olive oil. Before it is done, I add in the cilantro, I really like the smell/flavor of cilantro.

The chocolate covered strawberries were made the night before, and chilled in the fridge till dinnertime.

She didn't want to be in this photo because she is a girl... and other stuff.

Just look at the plate in front of her, most of the steak is already gone. 

Enjoying chocolate strawberries and watching Friends after dinner.

What I eat and drink is a day

March 17

What I eat and drink in a day project

So here’s the order of the food I consumed on Tuesday.

Cereal with soy milk 260 +110

Chicken breast with skin and bone in  365

Peas and onions 250

A fuji apple 110

A 32oz PowerAde 240

Salmon with garlic half a lemon, salt and some dill 362

more peas and onions  

Tuesday I usually eat better because I have time to cook. For example on Monday I ate a cream cheese muffin from Seven Eleven that made me sick, and for dinner I had a frozen pizza. The numbers next to the items are calories, I always wanted to figure it out but i always forget. I usually snack on more things during the day though. Oh i used the nutrional facts on the packing or I looked it up on this website, it was very helpful and fast. 

ESF mission trip

The mission district is known for its Latino culture, but before the 1940’s it was a predominantly Irish community, which was interesting because of such a drastic change. As more and more Hispanics moved in more and more whites moved out. During the 80’s and 90’s many Central and South American immigrants moved to the mission due to civil wars and domestic conflict in their home country. When the different Hispanic cultures immigrated here they brought with them their unique recipe’s that have been developed through generations. These recipes would change, some would get Americanized, its all about what is available. The Latino community are also known for their murals that depict their social struggles, the most famous of the artists being Diego Rivera, speaking of which I went to the MOMA this weekend and saw a couple of his paintings but no picture because the thought of bring a camera didn’t hit me until I entered the building. Anyways the murals often contain both aspects of struggle and food.


When we first stepped into the Taqueria I wanted some tacos the guy was selling in the corner of the restaurant, but I wanted to try something I normally wouldn’t get so that meant no to the chimichanga too but I do remember the story of the chimichanga. I was watching the food network and it was a special on Mexican food. The story goes Monica Flin accidently knocked over a burrito and it fell into the fryer, she was going to curse something in Spanish, and as she uttered the work chi…she saw a young girl and quickly changed it to chimichanga. It just goes to show everything is better fried. Ok, back to my dinner, I pondered for a while and saw flautas de pollo and with English underneath three chicken flute with salad and sour cream. It sounded interesting and that’s what I ordered. Upon waiting for the meal there was chips and 3 salsas to choose from, I got all three. First one was a regular generic tomato slasa, second was a green chili and third was a avocado based salsa, which was the first time seeing something like that.

I was so hungry by the time my food came, my first thought was oh these are just taquitos, but when I research it, I learned they are very similar and different at the same time. Though some people specify one uses corn and one uses flour there are equal amount of people that say the reverse. Ultimately its just the name, Flautas are the authentic name while taquito is a American created name. Flautas are traditionally severed as entrée thus they are bigger and taquitos are sides and therefore smaller. Flautas mean flute is Spanish, they are made traditionally with shredded meat rolled in flour tortia and fried until crispy. Flautas are made differently from each cook, it depends on the region they are from, some are like burritos and some are coned but I found two examples that match the one I ate that night. Below there a link on how to roll the flautas and a blog that made the whole entrée from scratch, if anyone is interesting in trying these instruments of deliciousness.

How to make flautas de pollo
How to roll the tortillas

North Beach Experience

I went to North Beach for the second time ever with my ESF(Eating San Francisco) class. Marco and I drove there thinking parking would be easy on a Wednesday night, we were WRONG. After about 20 minutes we ended up at a parking garage on the border of Chinatown and North Beach. We met up at the City Lights Bookstore which read so much about in class, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlighetti, William Burroughs to name a few. 

Once everyone arrived we proceeded to the restaurant, Bocce Cafe. There was lots of space considering our 17 people party was more than 75% of the people there. There was karaoke btw. Upon looking on the menu I knew I want to try the gnocchi because I had never had it before, but Marco and I decided to order two things and split them so we can try more dishes. We got the gnocchi and house pizza which was weird because it had NO CHEEE. I thought that was something The Beats would do in a food sense. To go against mainstream America with a cheese-less pizza. The gnocchi was so good I can see why a lot of people talk about it. It melts in your mouth and the soft texture, I don't think I have had anything like it before. House Pizza was interesting, garlic, spinach, and marinara. The best part of the pizza was the crust, it had a crunch to it but it wasn't rock hard.

After dinner we got to go behind the scenes of a European bakery called the Italian French Bakery. The bakery had two unreinforced brick oven, which means there's no rebar or anything other than the cement holding the bricks together. You know they're old because everything today need to be reinforced in due to earthquakes. It was like looking into history seeing the two ovens, how the heated bricks makes the bread. Possibly of on the beat writers went to the same bakery got a cup of coffee and brainstormed for their books. oh everyone got free baguettes, it was a perfect way to end a wonderful night with wonderful people.