the world is your acorn

The picture is kinda crappy, but I had the duck breast at Sunset Grill the other night and it was delicious.

I made these today. I used Pillsbury’s Cinnabon Flaky Supreme cinnamon rolls, and baked in the oven for 25 minutes at 350. Next time I might use the regular rolls to get a better bacon-to-cinnamon-roll-ratio. Still, freaking delicious.

The night before the wedding The Little Red Haired Girl and I decided we wanted to have a rehearsal dinner, we wanted it to be a Chinese banquet, and we wanted invite everyone. Never people to disappoint ourselves, we did what we wanted. Back in June, The Little Red Haired Girl, Lady Ebony, and I went on a tour of Chinese banquet facilities in the Boston area, trying one menu item at each restaurant. Even though we thought something in Chinatown would be fun, the obvious choice ended up being Royal East in Cambridge, right between Central and Kendall. The manager, Otto, was really nice, and the soft shell crab app that we tried was amazing.

So, after some deliberation about the menu, here’s what we ended up with:

1. Cold Platter

2. Seafood with yellow chive soup

3. Double lobsters (in the picture there’s also a tofu dish that was for non-seafood eating folks)

4. Crispy double squabs (note the look on our faces)

5. Steamed whole fish

6. Hong Kong steak

7. Sauteed pea tendrils w/ crabmeat sauce
8. Longevity noodles
Plus fresh fruit for dessert.

Somehow no one (that I know of) managed to get pictures of the last 3. Too full and lazy by then, I guess. All the food was fantastic, and exactly what I had imagined and been telling The Little Red Haired Girl about for years. Otto and his crew at Royal East also did a great job. We didn’t have to ask for much, they handled vegetarians and fish allergies easily, and service was efficient and professional. We were so impressed and grateful, if we lived there we’d be regulars at that restaurant. So freaking good.

The other day I tried something new: a calamari steak. I’ve cooked calamari before, but not just a steak. In my head I knew I wanted to do a grilled calamari salad of some sort, but when I got home I discovered that, in fact, I was way too lazy to light the grill. I then discovered Sam the Cooking Guy’s Calamari Steak with Garlic & Capers recipe. It’s super easy, and just involves searing for a couple of quick minutes, then adding butter, garlic, capers, lemon, and some fresh herbs. I also seared some squash and eggplant slices with some garlic to make a pseudo-grilled veggie salad and put it all on some lettuce. It turned out to be a delicious lunch that I’d do again. Maybe next time I’ll get a picture before we eat it all.

The Little Red Haired Girl and I went back to Ouyang House yesterday with another friend of ours to give the dim sum another go. There seemed to be more people there this time, and twice as many carts. We had some new things this time, including pan fried dumplings, stuffed chive pancake things, sesame balls, and crystal shrimp dumplings. We also ordered salt and pepper shrimp, which were perfect and delicious.

We also talked to the hostess, who remembered us from last time. She is, apparently, off to New York soon to pick up some ingredients for the chef so he can expand his menu. They are also waiting on a noodle machine so they can make the rice noodle roll things. I was happy to hear that this dim sum venture is looking successful so far, and I’ll definitely keep going back to see the new things going on and to support what they’re trying to do. You should go too.

Yes, there is dim sum in Nashville! After I read about Ouyang House on the Scene’s Bites Blog last week, I immediately made plans to go. We got there at around 11:30 this morning, and saw right away the rows and rows of buffet. When they were ready to seat us I asked if there was dim sum, and the led us off to a room to the left where just two tables were occupied. Our server came over and immediately addressed me in Mandarin (the other two I was with are white), asking what kind of tea we wanted and saying that she’d bring a menu. It was kind of hilarious, since I haven’t been mistaken for a Chinese-speaker for a long time. I can actually sort of hold my own in basic conversation, but my vocabulary recall gets worse and worse and my accent has become embarrassing. For the rest of the meal I sort of bumbled along, trying to stick to Chinese when I could and switching to English when I had to.

The menu was clearly the special Chinese-people-menu, and had some dishes listed only in Chinese on one side and the familiar dim sum items on the other. That side had English translations, but soon our server rolled a cart over with a bunch of different things on it and I just picked from there. I’m happy to report that they had just about everything that we generally expect from dim sum (although we didn’t see the head-on shrimp that The Little Red Haired Girl loves), and it was all quite delicious. I wasn’t responsible enough to take pictures of any food, but imagine steamed pork buns, shaomai, short ribs, bean curd skin roll, eggplant stuffed with shrimp, fried sweet rice and pork dumpling, taro dumplings, and a couple other things I can’t remember. Probably because of the small number of occupied tables there wasn’t that much variety in the cart, but we could have ordered what we wanted from the menu.

The service was really nice; our server brought over the taro dumplings as soon as they came out of the fryer to see if we wanted them. She kept recommending things on the menu to me too, but I could only partially follow the things she was pointing out. We did order one bigger dish that was a wide rice noodle and shrimp thing, which was fantastic. So, it’s not quite the cavernous banquet halls of restaurants in New York with a cart rolling by every few minutes with new piping hot items. But it’s a great start. We’ll go back, probably soon, just to support their endeavor. We think you should go too. I think you can always order the dim sum items, but it’s weekends when they have the cart(s).

Oh, and we spent just over $30 between the three of us, including tax and tip.

Ouyang House is at 4523 Nolensville Pike, just South of K & S International Market. They open at 11am. Let me know if you go, I’ll come with you. Especially if you read Chinese.

Chicken taco salad tonight. Mangoes, tomatoes, cilantro, scallions, and lime over shredded chicken over cukes and lettuce. I did my own spices on the chicken and it was a little too cuminy, but otherwise it was a winner.

Jaden over at Steamy Kitchen is writing a cookbook, and having readers test recipes. Last night, I tried the Steamed Clams in Garlic Black Bean Sauce. They were easy and delicious. Excited to do next one!

Well, The Little Red Haired Girl finally did it. She finished her master’s thesis, which means that we spent the last week up in Boston attending Commencement activities (and spending some time with wedding planning while we were up there).

Highlights of commencement:

• We watched the broadcast of morning exercises from a lecture hall, which was fantastic. We were out of the rain, we could see the stage, and Diana Eck and James Anderson did a great job commentating (wish I could find a picture of them)
• Sandwiches from Lee’s Sandwich Shop between Graduation and the commencement address
• J.K. Rowling’s commencement address was phenomenal. She was witty and intelligent and interesting, expounding on the benefits of failure, imagination as empathy, and the importance of acting as a result.
• Dinner at Carlo’s Cucina

There’s a character in some Ann Tyler book (maybe it’s Back When We Were Grownups?) who makes himself a big batch of something (stew, meatloaf, pot roast, something like that) once a week and just eats that until it’s gone, every day. It struck me as the most depressing thing ever at the time. Actually, it still seems really depressing, but this past week since The Little Red Haired Girl has been out of town I’ve been doing something similar. Not nearly as depressing, and actually quite enjoyable for me, but still reminiscent of that character (whom it turns out I don’t really remember that much about at all).

In general, when left to my own devices at home I just won’t eat, I’ll drink my dinner, or I’ll eat some previously canned or frozen crap. It’s partly that I’m lazy, and partly that cooking only appeals to me when I need a stress release, and/or there is someone to appreciate my cooking, and/or there is someone there to do the dishes later. Given that The Little Red Haired Girl was to be gone a full 6 days, and my stomach has been behaving badly as it is, I figured I needed some sort of new strategy. So at the beginning of the week I did two things. I cooked a package of bacon, and made some broth and chicken for Vietnamese chicken pho soup. The rest of the week I had two of my daily meals were cobb salad and chicken pho soup. It has worked out quite well, but I’m now out of bacon and broth, and am starting to feel lonely.