I had a bad restaurant experience today so I thought I’d write about all the food I miss in San Francisco. I’m a creature of habit with food — it’s so easy to get bad food and it breaks my heart to eat awful food so I tend to eat from “safe” places I know I love.

• Pho from Thanh Tam II at Valencia and 17th (577 Valencia St, 94110). The other food I’ve had here has been mediocre, but they have the best pho. I sometimes have it delivered to my house, but it’s better to have it at the restaurant because it arrives hot and fresh to your table. They have the most delicious broth and their meatballs are so flavorful. I usually get the special combination beef noodle soup (pho) with the flank steak, rare steak, tripe, and meatballs and I wish I could have it here in Irvine (it’s been so cold lately!).
• Chicken liver crostini from Beretta at Valencia and 23rd. I also like their argula and fennel salad. I find most of their food to be just ok, but I love these 2 dishes with a glass of red wine especially after a hard, early afternoon workout on a weekend day before the crowds start forming for dinner and the place is mostly quiet and I’m mad for a protein fix.
• Carpaccio from Kuleto’s on Powell in Union Square. I have tried carpaccio in a lot of places in southern California and I can’t find anything that comes remotely close to the one at Kuleto’s. It comes with a lovely little Cannellini bean salad, citrus vinaigrette, and two perfectly spiced shrimp. For $13.50 you cannot find carpaccio this good anywhere else. I’ve paid much more for much crappier carpaccio in a lot of different restaurants.
• Chilled tripe at Pizzeria Delfina at 18th and Guerrero. I usually have this with one of their salads (usually the tricolore insalata) but it’s really the tripe I’m there for.
• Kiji shooters from Kiji on Guerrero at 22nd. The oyster shooters with uni and quail egg….mmmm. I love everything at this place. I don’t have a Japanese place in socal yet that I love as much as I love Kiji. Their fish is wonderful, their service is great, the atmosphere is lovely, and Eddie (the owner) is awesome. I miss you, Kiji!
• The white chocolate raspberry bread pudding from Nordstrom Cafe & Bistro on Powell. I’m picky about bread pudding and don’t like most of them, but this one is rich and heavenly, and much too decadent to finish, but luckily makes good leftovers :). I also miss that Nordie’s cafe because they have a full bar and most of them don’t.

I baked a chicken last week and there’s only so much chicken one person can eat on her own and I’ve been craving enchiladas. I couldn’t find a recipe I liked online so I mixed it up a little. I love veggies so I added them though I don’t think enchiladas usually have veggies in them. But each one of these has protein, veggies, carbs, and fat!

Ingredients

• shredded chicken (I used the equivalent of one whole leg – thigh and drumstick)
• 1/4 sliced onion
• 1/4 sliced large orange pepper
• 3/4 fresh corn (boiled it for a few minutes and cut off the kernels)
• 4 yellow corn tortillas
• 1 Tb butter (or oil)
• oil for the tortillas
• salt and Spanish Blend chili powder (or regular chili powder) to taste
• 1 can Las Palmas enchilada sauce (I had a 19oz can, but only needed about 3/4th of it)
• 1 c shredded cheddar
• 1/2 c shredded monterey jack

You’ll also need:

• 7 inch by 11 inch baking pan
• 2 saucepans: 1 small (big enough to fit one tortilla); 1 medium

Makes

4 little enchiladas

Prep

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.

Chicken and vegetable filling

In a medium saucepan, heat butter (or oil) over med-high heat and sauté onions until they’re translucent. Add the peppers and sauté until they’re soft. Then add chicken and corn and season with salt and chili powder (I put a light dusting of salt on top, and plenty of chili powder), and about 4 Tb of enchilada sauce. Stir until seasoning is evenly distributed and the filling is warm (about 5 minutes). Turn off heat.

Warm and fill the tortillas

Warm the tortillas so they’re easy to fold (you can also use hot water to make the tortillas soft if you want to use less oil). In the small saucepan, add 3 Tb oil and warm over medium heat. Add one tortilla. You just want to warm each tortilla on both sides so they are pliable and don’t rip but don’t want to fry it– about a minute on each side (depending on how hot your pan is). It’ll soak up oil so you can use more or less oil to taste. Do one tortilla at a time and add more oil if you need to. You can fill the first tortilla while warming the second. Fill the center with about a 1/4th of the mix (don’t overfill it). I filled it almost edge to edge and about 1-2 inches wide in the middle so the ends overlap easily when you close them. Put them seam down in a baking dish. I left about 1/2 inch between each enchilada so sauce would get in between them.

Pour sauce and bake

Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas. I filled the pan so that some of the sauce reached over the top of the enchiladas, but didn’t drown them. Evenly distribute the cheddar cheese, and then the monterey jack across the middles (so it melts all pretty)

Bake for about 20-25 until the cheese melts. I love it — I got the hot enchilada sauce so it’s got a little kick, and I like the texture mix — the crunchy corn and the thick tortillas, and the mix of peppers and chicken…mmmm.

If you have leftovers

Don’t let them sit! Cover them immediately so they don’t dry out. I ate one and left the rest in the oven — bad, ugly move.

Every Tuesday they offer a Chinese Noodle Bar at work. You choose from a variety of fresh vegetables (enoki mushrooms, shitake mushrooms, spinach, been sprouts, broccoli, pickled cabbage), tofu, small pork dumplings, noodles (thick Shanghai noodles, Lai Fun rice noodles). They dip it in boiling water for a few seconds, put it in a bowl, then you pick your meats which can change week to week. Last week it was tripe, grilled beef steak, pork in Peking sauce, curry seafood. Then they pour your choice of broth on it: a veggie broth and a meat broth (last week, veal broth).

Chinese Tripe Recipe

I wanted to make the tripe at home and had a hard time finding a Chinese tripe recipe online, but I did manage to find a recipe someone had posted on Chowhound from an old Chinese cookbook. I followed the suggested changes and it was delicious — even friends who didn’t like tripe enjoyed it. It was tender and the sauce was very good — slightly sweet. It was almost exactly like the one they serve at work at the noodle bar.

I’ve copied the recipe here the way I made it:

• 2 Tbs peanut oil
• 4 slices fresh ginger
• 1 small onion, sliced
• 1 clove garlic, smashed and peeled
• 1 lb parboiled beef tripe, cut in pieces 3/4″ x 2″ (note: parboil just means to cook before the final cooking. boil it in water for 30 minutes — the final cooking happens in the oven below)
• 1 Tbs Shao Xing rice wine
• 1 Tbs light soy sauce
• 1/3 cup hoison sauce
• 1/4 tsp salt
• dash 5 spices powder
• 1 cup water

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Mix rice wine, soy sauce, hoison sauce, salt and 5 spices in a bowl
3. Heat oil in wok (or saucepan). Brown ginger, onion and garlic 30 sec.
4. Add tripe and stir-fry 1 minute.
5. Add the sauce mix
6. Add water, bring to a boil and let boil for about a minute.
7. Transfer to a small oven dish and cover with foil. Bake for 1.5 hours.

You can eat this over rice, or you can put it in soup like I did. It’s very tender and yummy!

Chinese cooking

I learned a lot about Chinese cooking trying to put together this noodle bar at home (which went well — my guests were happy). I searched online to find out more about noodle bars in general and what they normally offer, but didn’t come up with much other than reviews of restaurants. Either this topic is really obvious or not that interesting — I’m guessing by the number of restaurants that it’s just obvious :)

I looked in a couple of bookstores (one used; one new) for some helpful Chinese recipes. I found one new book called Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China. It’s beautiful — part travel stories and travel photos, and lots of recipes and food photos. I made the veggie soup (for the broth), and the Asian Broth (with goat for the meat broth). I also made the pork jerky which looks and sounds like it’s absolutely yummy, but I altered the recipe a little bit and didn’t cook it long enough to get completely dried out, but it was perfect for the soup — amazing how a little salt and pepper makes pork so delicious (see recipe below)!

Things I learned about Chinese cooking:

• Sichaun (Szechuan) peppercorns: aren’t called that in the store and Chinese people don’t refer to it that way. Sometimes they just call it pepper. Or sometimes it’s packaged as Prickly Ash. You don’t use the seeds, just roast the outer shell and stems unless fragrant, then crush or grind them (I’ve read in some places not to use the stems). They’re supposed to leave a slight tingling sensation in your mouth and are often an ingredient in Chinese five spice powder.
• Star Anise: I’d never heard of it until this weekend, but used often in soups and broths and other slow cooked dishes, as well as a variety of other uses. It’s shaped like a star and smells like anise (hence the name). Just throw one in per 6-8 cups of water/broth.
• Five spice powder: A mix of all sorts of flavors, this spicy, sweet, hot, mild, pugent, fragrant powder is used on virtually everything from meat to veggies, soups, and even breads.

Modified Pork Jerky (from Beyond the Great Wall: Recipes and Travels in the Other China)

The original recipe in the book (p. 294) is super simple and eaten on top of white rice with some veggies. I modified it to be slightly less dry, then sliced them into even thinner, smaller pieces and put them in the soup broth. It was perfect for soup.

• 2 lbs pork butt (or other pork roast)
• salt (I used coarse sea salt)
• freshly ground pepper (the recipe specified black, but I used a mix of peppercorns)

1. Cut the pork against the grain into 1/4 inch slices
2. Spread them thin on a broiling pan, sprinkle salt and pepper on them
3. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn the pieces over
4. Bake for another 15 minutes and remove
5. Once cooled, slice with the grain as thin as you like

I threw in some small, leftover pieces of pork into a frying pan with a little bit of oil and salt and pepper and oh my, that was yummy, too! Make sure to get fresh pork from your local butcher.