Flavor Boulevard

– Guest post by Mom, loosely translated by me –

There are mornings, even on weekends, when I wake up feeling like a stone (Mai: she means it figuratively, the supermodel BMI runs in our family 😉) and still have to get out of bed because of the mountain of work waiting. Not work at work, but work around the house. Laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, tidying the bedrooms, grocery, and especially cooking even when I have no appetite. When those mornings happen, I think of something easy to make and easy to eat. Naturally, porridge comes to mind. My daughter doesn’t like porridge, but when she’s not home I can prepare it for her dad and me for lunch and maybe dinner, too. I like porridge: mung bean porridge, fish porridge, chicken porridge, pork porridge… and beef porridge for today.

Beef Porridge (serving 3)
– 1 cup cooked rice
– 2 lb pork bone
– 1 lb ground beef
– 8 oz champignon mushroom
– 1/2 sweet onion, minced
– 1 tbs minced garlic
– salt and sugar to taste (e.g., 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp sugar)
– a pinch of ground black pepper
– green onion and coriander
– 3 eggs

Simmer the pork bones to make stock, remove all the white floating foam. Use cooked rice instead of uncooked rice so that the porridge is soft but the grains don’t disintegrate, and the bottom layer doesn’t get sticky and burnt.
Season the beef with garlic, onion, salt, sugar and black pepper. Scoop spoonfuls of meat into the boiling stock. When the stock boils again, add rice. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes. Do NOT stir. Once the porridge becomes really mushy, add mushroom. In a bowl, whisk up the eggs with chopsticks and dribble it into the boiling stock. Re-season if necessary before turning off the heat.
Garnish with green onion and coriander. Serve hot.

Beef porridge is easy to make (Mai: in my book anything with more than 3 ingredients ain’t no breezy game), not elaborate but healthy for the old and young, strong and sick. I feel lighter after I eat a bowl. How can our mind weigh down anymore when our body is elevated by something so hearty and warm?

Thank you, Kristen Sun, my dear friend who has shared many great meals with me in Berkeley and definitely many more in the future, for sharing a post here with us today 🙂

Halfway through our meal, Mai and I turned to each other and we agreed, “I’m not that full yet” and “I can still eat more.” This was after a small plate of charcuterie (which wasn’t that small) and two small plates, which again, were not that small. It solved, however, the main question that had been bugging us since we arrived at the restaurant: which entrees should we get? And if we get more than one entree, could we still do dessert? Turns out indecision works very well at this restaurant; sampling the diverse offerings of the menu is definitely the way to go! Eating with Mai is always a treat – for the mind and for the stomach! Thank you Mai for the great honor of being a guest blogger for Flavor Bouvelard!

Simply put, Revival Bar & Kitchen, located right in the middle of Downtown Berkeley, is gorgeous. The tall ceiling, the rustic decor, the feeling of open space, and best of all, a bookshelf tucked away in the corner, give Revival a unique feel. The tables were just the appropriate width apart when it comes to having good conversation with two women who bonded with Mai over their travels to Vietnam, and perhaps a tad bit too close when we overheard a man speaking unkindly about his (absent) girlfriend to another friend. But let’s speak of the food…

When we received our menus, right away our eyes landed on the charcuterie section, which consisted of fresh ham, duck liver mousse, coppa di testa (headcheese), and smoked duck breast ($8 for an individual plate, $18 for a small plate of all charcuterie, and $26 for a large plate of all charcuterie). The fresh ham and the smoked duck, while delicious, were not particularly unique in any way. The coppa di testa… now this is something interesting. It was my first taste of headcheese, so I went in without any expectations. It’s sour and leaves a slight fizzy aftertaste like a soda. It also is very fragile; it is not quite a cold cut but not quite a pate either… it had a very weird “saucy” consistency, which Mai found to be weird as well compared to the headcheese that she is accustomed to! The duck liver mousse was our favorite meat on the plate; the texture is rich and smooth and the taste just strong enough without being overpowering. This plate was definitely fun, as we could combine all the different meats with the sides (raspberry jelly, pickles, and mustard) in as many different combinations as we wished, each bite yielding a new combination of flavors. We both agreed that the real standout on the plate, however, was the raspberry marmalade. In fact, as we would soon discover, the one thing that Revival really excels
at are its fruit jellies.

Next on our list are the two small plates: tempura fried squash blossoms ($13) and bone marrow ($11). The tempura fried squash blossoms, stuffed with ricotta and goat cheese, were delicious and light and the pieces of fried zucchini that garnish the plate were also good. Mai, however, found that the squash blossoms had a stronger goat cheese flavor than she would have liked. The sauce, a cilantro mint coulis, paired well with the fried vegetables, but was forgettable.

For me, the standout dish of the night is the bone marrow. Rich and fatty, this first taste of bone marrow was just perfect. Best of all, we were allowed to season the meat ourselves, as the dish comes with a side of sea salt. The crunchy baguette, the flavorful meat, the salt, and best of all, the kumquat marmalade worked perfectly together. This dish, for me, was one of the perfect bites of the night. And once again, we were blown away by the fruit – the kumquat marmalade, which really is a standout on its own, tied the flavors of the dish together perfectly.

Despite all of this food, it was at this point that Mai and I decided to go for it and ordered both of the larger plates that we were looking at, which our waitress recommended as the two best as well. The risotto cakes ($21), however, were just okay. The cakes themselves were a bit dry and bland. The porcini mushrooms, while not having the typical “musty” mushroom taste as Mai explains, really did not add any unique flavor to the dish. However, I loved the porcini jus and could not stop dipping into the sauce. I love thick almost puree-like textures and this was no exception. Mai and I both agreed that the vegetables that came on the side were delicious and outshone the risotto cakes.

The pork chop ($25) was good and very well-cooked – juicy, full of flavor, and not dry in the slightest. Both Mai and I found the bourbon butter to be a bit too strong and overpowering of the meat; we ended up scraping most of the butter off. The potatoes and artichokes were well-cooked and flavorful, but not particularly unique.

Overall, the smaller plates succeeded more than the larger plates and the size of the small plates comes at a overall better bargain, as there is not much difference in portion sizes.

Of course, our meal cannot end without dessert. And were we ever glad because the desserts here are amazing! We settled on an apricot mousse ($8), but after asking what the ice cream du jour ($7) was, we had to order that as well. The flavor is apricot pit, which we of course, had to try. Our waiter informed us that it has an almond-like taste, which we agreed on; the flavor is much lighter, however. The nuttiness and creaminess of the ice cream, along with the crunchiness of the pecans, were a perfect combination!

The apricot mousse, likewise, was also delicious. While we couldn’t make out the flavor of the green tea cake at the bottom, the light fluffiness of the apricot mixed with the sourness of the blood orange reduction and the crunch of the bruléed bottom was quite pleasing texturally. As for that blood orange reduction…it had a marmalade texture but it was chilled so it was almost like a sorbet. A clear stand-out!

Overall, Revival made for a great dinner and we had lovely neighbors to chat with as well near the end of our meal. The real standouts here – the raspberry jelly, the kumquat marmalade, and the blood orange reduction – were unexpected but elevated what could have been ordinary or boring dishes into something special. When I think of a perfect dining experience, eating at Revival definitely ranks high: great friends, new acquaintances, and delicious food at a relaxed and leisurely pace.

Address: Revival
2102 Shattuck Ave
Berkeley, CA 94704
(510) 549-9950

Sometimes things just refuse to go the way you plan.

I’ve been looking forward to the fried chicken at this place called Number 1 Chicken Rice & Seafood for half a year. It’s in Houston, so I have two time windows each year, each a couple of weeks long, to plan my voyage. Last winter we hit the place less than an hour after they closed (which was like 8 pm, I think), this June we were even more determined. According to Aaron’s sources, they open on Sunday between 6 and 7 pm. Strange, but okay. We camped out at the museum for over an hour because the museum is relatively near Number 1 Chicken, and we didn’t want to take any chances. At 6 we drove into its parking lot. The OPEN sign wasn’t lit up. Aaron checked the schedule posted on the door: they’re closed on Sunday. Fine. I’m not meant to eat Number 1 Chicken’s fried chicken. Surely there must be other fried chickens somewhere along Alameda. Following Varun’s advanced GPS system that didn’t allow us to type in anything unless the car is stopped (for safety reason, even though the one who punched the buttons wasn’t the driver), we drove to a few more possible-blogging-material spots, one of them no longer exists. And all of them were closed. We weren’t even meant to eat on Alameda?!

Accepting fate, we gave up on Alameda and headed back to the Rice Village, Aaron’s “hunting ground”. Between Picky Varun and Picky Mai, we settled into El Meson. Cuban.

Here we were in this pretty good-looking Latin American place with frescos of flamboyant girls in flamboyant flamenco dresses and a generous bowl of Andes Mint at the front desk, from which we took (quite) a few as we walked in. The guys were wondering if they have free chips and salsa here (you know, like at the usual Tex-Mex resto in your neighborhood strip mall). We were hungry. Well, they do. The chips and salsa came out after we ordered. I was a bit sad that I couldn’t get the paella (minimum order of 2 people, and yet another thing that didn’t go my way that day), so I got two tapas plates.

If you have a sweet tooth like me, and I don’t mean just a liking for dessert but a liking for sweetness in everything from meat to noodle soup(*), El Meson is for you. The plantains are one thing, but the cinnamon pineapple that goes with the crab cakes ($9.95) and the honey-glazed pork belly ($9.95) are sweet enough to be desserts. The crackling skin offered a nice textural contrast, but slices of poached apple didn’t help toning down the sugar.

I liked the plantains in Varun’s Pollo Salteado ($15.95, grilled chicken sauteed with onion and pepper in sherry sauce, served on rice and black beans with a side of grilled plantains), but Varun found them too sweet.

For dessert, we took “some” more Andes Mint. 😉

Address: El Meson
2425 University Blvd.
Houston, TX 77005
(713) 522-9306
Dinner for 3: $65 – For more pictures of our food, see Photon Flavors.

(*) There are many noodle soups with a sweet broth. Not sweet like your banana cream pie but when you taste the first spoon, you’d go “wow this broth is sweet!” Examples are Lao and Cambodian noodle soups (such as hu tiu). One of my favorite ingredients in the Korean mul naengmyun (cold buckwheat noodle soup) is the Asian pear, which is sweet. But it’s nothing new really, all broths need some kind of sweetness, either from bone marrow or from mushroom.

Rice comes as a side dish at Renee’s Place on Solano. I can’t imagine anyone eating orange scallop (it’s like orange chicken, but with scallop) and lion’s head meatball without rice, but whatever, it could just be because I’m Asian. But 3 dollars for what seems to be a cup of rice is just too far. The rice is dry and fluffy and nicely done alright, but *three* dollars?

Originally, Kristen and I planned on a Japanese dinner, but it was too crowded and we didn’t have reservation. Then we got on the bus for Korean, but the long line also shied us away… to the Chinese place next door. The bamboo-themed decoration is quite pleasing. They also have the most beautiful bamboo chopsticks I’ve ever seen:

Battered fried scallops in orange and garlic sauce with orange peel.

Lion's head pork meatballs with sauteed greens

The food? Meh. The orange peel in the orange scallop is really just dried orange peel with no flavor. The dishes sound and look better than they taste. The water was very good, though.

Address: Renee’s Place (organic Chinese)
1477 Solano Avenue
Albany, CA 94706

Great Khan is big, clean, American-looking, and in Houston. Little Mom took me here. It’s an ideal place to get glutton and gain some weight, that probably was her intention for me. The idea is splendid: ~$8 for the first bowl, which includes a small bowl of meat, a small bowl of vegetables, rice or noodle of choice (or both), and an extra $2 for unlimited extra food if you’re still hungry. The “wok” masters gather at the big grilling platform in the middle (no wok), waiting for you to hand over what you think would constitute the best bowl of Mongolian grill. Confronted by rows of shining vegetables and meats and a dozen kinds of sauces, you’re tempted to pile and press as many different things as possible into the little bowls. Over the years, I’ve had my share of stirfries (a Mongolian grill is really a stirfry). To put it more bluntly, I’m Vietnamese, I know stirfries. Truth is, a good stirfry is a simple stirfry.

0. The starch: choose thin rice vermicelli
That stuff soaks up the sauce the best and meshes well with other things texturally. Thick noodle would be too bland and oily. Rice would be too crumbly.

1. The meat: choose pork.
If you’re vegan, don’t choose tofu. In my last post I claimed tofu was the coolest of the cools, but in a stirfry, the tofu can never soak in enough sauce for the life of it.
Fish is a no-no.
Chicken is too dry. Beef is too tough.
Shrimp and squid: okay.
If you don’t eat pork, you might as well be vegan.

2. The vegetables: get pineapple.
Pineapple isn’t a vegetable, but the point is it’s good. It’s the best thing in stirfries. I’d forsake the pork for the pineapple. Its tart sweetness enlivens the taste buds, its juice keeps the rice and the noodle moist, its acidity tenderizes the meat.
Don’t get: broccoli (takes up too much room of your specious little bowls), waterchesnut, snap pea, carrot (too crunchy, discordant texture), mushroom (too chewy), beansprout (too long and stringy), tomato (pretty, but good for nothing)
Do get: sweet onion, potato, garlic, bokchoy

3. The sauce: choose anything with soy and garlic.
A stirfry is no stirfry without garlic. Avoid the sweet and sour, it tastes artificial. If you got pineapple, you got the sweet-and-sour part covered.

When our hostess brought the bowl, all steamy and tossed and glistering with flavors, I smirked in my head: meh, I’ll definitely have to go for seconds. But the seconds never got to see the light of day, because after one such serving I only had room for one thing: more grill, or dessert, and dessert won.

4. Dessert: get the coconut sorbet with coconut shaving. It’s heaven in a coconut shell.

Address: Great Khan Mongolian Grill
2150 South Highway 6 #200
Houston, TX 77077
(281) 531-1122
Lunch for three: $32.39

I like those restaurants that specialize. You go there and you know exactly what you’re gonna get: the one thing that the chefs make and that everyone else gets.

Cơm Tấm Thiên Hương uses two full pages to write all different combinations of their one dish: cơm tấm (broken rice) with meats, egg, and tofu. If they just list the “toppings” and their corresponding price, like for a pizza, the menu would condense down to the size of a calculator. Common toppings for broken rice are grilled pork (or chicken, or beef), chả trứng (egg loaf), tàu hủ ki (flaky fried tofu), bì (shredded pork skin), and fancier, chạo tôm (shrimp sausage on sugarcane). If you can choose up to 4 toppings on your plate, combinatorics tells us that’s 98 possible combinations. If you read Thiên Hương’s two-page menu and don’t see your perfect fit, just tell the waiter what you’d like. Broken rice can be custom-made, so to speak.

What makes broken rice superior to normal rice is its broken nature. Through milling, the germs, which are about 1/10 of a rice grain, break away from the endosperms (the part we eat and call “white rice”) and get mixed with other broken bits of the grains to form “tấm“. Millers used to collect tấm from the whole grains as an accidental byproduct and sell it at a cheaper price, but many people came to recognize that cooked tấm gives a better fragrance and tastes sweeter than normal rice, since it’s the most nourished part of a grain. By and by its popularity rises, factories these days even purposefully choose good rice to fracture and produce good broken rice with different desired ratios of germ to broken endosperm. The more germ the better, of course, but also the harder it is to cook. The germs don’t expand as much as the endosperm while boiled, the best cơm tấm comes by steaming tấm that has been soaked for a few hours in cold water. The grain bits then don’t cling to each other like normal rice, its texture as a whole is fine and dainty (similar to couscous). Pour in a few spoonfuls of the all-time sweet and savory nước mắm and cơm tấm is complete.

The meat and all are just bonus prize. I grew up loving chargrilled pork chop, egg loaf, and pork skin with my broken rice. But the grilled chicken at Thiên Hương is much juicier than the chop, and that sweetness afterchew from the sugarcane stick makes chạo tôm a wise company. Try to mix the egg and vermicelli bits of the egg loaf with the rice… mmmm I shouldn’t write this post at midnight, there’s not even pizza delivery this late.

To shake things up from the veggie end, Thiên Hương also adds a few pickled củ kiệu, all sweet and crunchy, with some lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and pickled carrots. Rabbit food? Yum.

I bet my keyboard that no sane body who enters here orders the lone token noodle soups at the bottom of the menu. Among the Vietnamese diners in the States, I haven’t seen anyone going full force focused like Cơm Tấm Thiên Hương, and they make the best cơm tấm, and I love it!

Address: Cơm Tấm Thiên Hương 2 (inside Grand Century Mall)
1111 Story Road #1086
San Jose, CA 95122

Money matter: $21.41 for two lunch plates and a soursop smoothie