Nachos and Sangria

Much like punk, and disco, and Elvis, this blog never died. It was hiding in a secret volcano island lair. Last year, when I was still working at Weaver Street, I realized that we pretty much always had the ingredients to make nachos readily available. After making awesome nachos at work a couple of times, I took it home, and we had several meals of awesome nachos. Tonight I made some more.
Nachos are one of those things that people get out a lot, but (at least in my experience) don't make at home that often. It's pretty dang easy, and super awesome. Tortilla chips, some grated cheddar, more chips, some tomatoes, onions, beans, meat (if you're so inclined), jalapeños, more cheese, (I also threw some queso fresco on) bake ten minutes at 350, BOOM. Garnish with cilantro, hot sauce, sour cream, etc. Tonight we skipped the meat and sour cream, partly because we didn't have either, partly because we're watching our figures. They were still wicked good. Also we had sangria. Cheap red wine, bit of brandy, oranges, lime, lemon, pineapple, apple. Delish. Check it out.

Today I had a bitchin' Mexi-Omelette.

I love it when a plan comes together. Today I was wondering what to have for breakfast, and then I remembered all the things we had in the fridge! Alas, there was only one delicious egg from Latta's left, but I'd have to make do. Scrambled it up with salt, pepper and a dash of half 'n' half, poured it into the hot buttered pan, threw in chicken, pickled jalapeño slices and cheddar. I was very pleased that I could be patient and relax enough to let it cook properly. Go, me! I even flipped it with the pan! WSM guacamole, sour cream, and Valentina. Heck yeah.

Wow!

"There was an EGG at the bottom"

This was the original post Benji couldn't stop himself from making despite not being part of the blog. That was the sheer excitement caused by secret New Orleans food YAKA MEIN.

Yaka mein is one of those foods that makes you excited that food is a thing. Not because its so good, but because when people talk about New Orleans food they say "oh a po boy, oh a muffaletta, hey lets get a beignet" and one day you realize that every po boy shop you go to has something called Yaka Mein, and it captures your boyfriend's imagination so much all you hear for several days is "oh, we gotta try that Yaka Mein."

So we made a plan. Benji finally signed the official papers to start his new job and we were going to celebrate by filling our bodies with Yaka Mein. We were going to Man Chu's, a place known for its fried chicken with psychotropic properties (I think its MSG), because we decided they probably also have the best yaka mein.

Before going, we asked our 14 year old neighbor-kid Keron about yaka mein. His mother makes it, it turns out. He described it as "kind of like spaghetti." Which makes sense if you think about it. By the way, this kid's brother thinks the only kind of lo mein is shrimp lo mein, which is charming.

So Man Chu's was closed and we went to Cajun Seafood on Broad St. This is a delicious seafood place run by several vietnamese folks. They have great food. I almost died from eating a catfish po boy there on my first day in town. Because it was so good, you see, because it was so good. Anyway. So we get there and benji says "get whatever you want. we're having a feast." So we ended up getting all the things in the following picture:















And a spicy crawfish pie. (apologies for accidentally making this look like the royal yakameinenbaums)

As you can see, Yaka Mein, it turns out, is a bland, greasy, salty noodle soup. It's fine. Nothing to write home about. But blog, sure, sure I'll blog about that.

There are two possible stories behind it: 1. it came over with chinese immigrants who settled here in the 19th century while working on the railroads or b. black soldiers brought it back from the korean war. In other pictures online it looks super korean, but ours didn't. UNTIL WE FOUND THE EGG AT THE BOTTOM. That's what that's about. It's also called "Ol' Sober" because it is seen as an excellent hangover food. I think that's probably a misguided move since it's so salty and not fried at all but ok.

The oyster po boy was good. I don't think i like oysters that much, but i like fried things and boy were these fried. The gumbo had a ridiculous amount of crab shell in it. The Bush was cold as a mountain stream and smooth as its name. The crawfish pie was AMAZING. I could eat crawfish pies till i died.

simple breakfast in bed, or battle blogging 2: the blogening

Well, I had to get back into the bed to eat, but at Erin's that's pretty much where we hang out all the time anyway.
This morning I made us a delicious little breakfast. I knew we had eggs, but I also knew there wasn't much else. After I did some rummaging, I managed to find a lot of things I had either forgotten about or didn't know were there in the first place. There were some cippolini onions we had gotten from work a while ago languishing in the crisper, as well as a can of new potatoes in the pantry, so there's your homefries right there. I would have loved to have a pepper, and there were a couple of baby bell peppers in the fridge, but they were just on the other side of me wanting to use them. Also tossed out what cheese we had left, as it was so little that trimming it would have taken it to nothing. So, hey, cleaned out the fridge a little while I was at it! Look at me, all productive at like 9:30 in the morning like a dang adult!
Then I found the remnants of a pack of raspberries I had scored, and some yogurts Erin had brought home. Fruit and yogurt! I put the berries in the bottom of the yogurt, like buried treasure! Also we had some AWESOME tomatoes from the neighbors' garden. Tomato slices. Booyah. Breakfast.
Sauteėd the onions (cippolinis are fun to peel, boy, let me tell you) and potatoes with some garlic, salt, pepper, dried parsley (desperately trying to get some of the added color peppers would have given me) and some Tony's (it really is good on just about everything). Then I fried two eggs for each of us. I think my relationship with frying eggs might be improving. For so long I have struggled with it. For whatever reason, I have found it stressful and difficult to simply fry eggs. Scrambled, I've got it covered. I just want them to be so perfect when I fry them that I usually end up either overcooking them or breaking the yolks. I think I might be finding my center on this one, finally. Just relaxing a little bit I think is the key.
Anyway, the eggs turned out just about right, only one broken yolk! Bada bing, bada boom, bada breakfast!

World Cup of Soup

Last Saturday (was that last saturday?) Benji and I crossed the Mighty Mississippi into Gretna for some pho (FINALLYTHANKGOD).

We got to the restaurant just in time to see the last half and extra time of the final game of the World Cup. The restaurant was sort of half filled with people who were kind of excited about the game--exactly the kind of atmosphere I want to eat pho/watch the World Cup in because I REALLY care about pho and only care about the World Cup in the sense that it seems like I ought to have some marginal interest in it.

I ordered a large Pho Tai, a classic. It was so large that I decided that the challenge of eating it would be MY World Cup, an idea that was (understandably) met with little enthusiasm when I shared it with Benji. The soup was fantastic, and was served with a really well-stocked plate of garnishes which is extremely important. I didn't finish my bowl and Spain won. No one in the restaurant reacted with any sort of joy or anger about the result--they just got up and left. Which is about how I felt leaving some of my soup behind.
Anyway, greatest day of my life.

Side note:

"Why don't you take pictures, Kaitlin?"

Well, friend, it's because my camera is still packed.

"Don't you have a camera phone?"

I LEAVE IT AT HOME A LOT LEAVE ME ALONE.

"Sorry, you're really touchy, i didn't realize"

YES.

Food and Drink Update

I tried the gelato mentioned in the previous post. As it turns out, this place Angelo Brocato's is extremely famous in New Orleans. It also turns out that they are hiring. I haven't put in my application yet, but i might swing by today or tomorrow so that I can have a really reasonable excuse to eat an eclair or a scoop of stracciatella.
The gelato I tried was the Bacci. It was fine, but I was sort of disappointed with the texture, which was grainy in the way that ice cream will get if you freeze it too long without moving it. It had big chunks of hazelnut though, and, let's face it--I would have eaten a gallon of it in one sitting if given the chance.


As promised, I also ate at Sucre, the bakery near my other new house. Look at how cute that cake-made-of-macarons is. Yeah, it's real cute. Yeah, its a real cute store. Real expensive too. And guess what--you're paying for cute. I ate an eclair there and it was TERRIBLE! It also cost me $4. I got a better pastry at the latino grocery in my neighborhood. I couldn't believe it. The coffee was really good. The macarons were ok, although honestly I think they're just there to serve the purpose of having somewhere where people who spent a semester abroad in Paris can say "Oh I just really miss the macarons, I'm so glad I can go somewhere to talk endlessly about my adventures in Europe besides the French Quarter." People love branding and have terrible taste in pastries so I can see why everyone is so wild about this place.

last night I ate a delicious burger

So I had a hankerin' for a burger yesterday, and because Erin has a built-in gas grill at her house, making this happen was exceedingly simple. Boy, do I ever love the convenience of that thing. I have a classic Weber charcoal grill myself, and I absolutely adore it. However, being able to simply turn a knob (not to mention adjust heat at will) is ever-so-expedient. So I went to the market to gather supplies: 80/20 local ground beef, some buns, a tomato, some green leaf lettuce (sometimes I'm tempted to put something fancier like spinach or baby greens on a burger, but it's never as satisfying as some good ol' fashioned lettuce), a red onion and some NY sharp cheddar. Fortuitously, I had earlier that very day, already purchased a jar of Bubbie's pure kosher dills, which I had to explain to Erin absolutely was a necessary item and therefore belonged with the other things I was buying at the time: milk and toilet paper. So then I just had to wait until she got done with work. Oh, the agony! Oh, that anticipation!
It wasn't that bad, though, because I had a tasty cocktail to keep me company. New Amsterdam Gin and San Pellegrino Aranciata. So delicious and refreshing, perfect after the sweltering heat I had spent the afternoon hanging laundry in.
On to the burgers! I mixed the beef with some salt and pepper, garlic powder and some Worcestershire (old tricks are the best tricks, eh?), then spent some quality time... (here is where I try desperately to figure out a creative way to describe making burgers that doesn't sound like I'm a snickering 8th-grader, and fail miserably) um, making burger patties. I halved and sliced the onion and sauteed until well caramelized. I found some bell peppers in the fridge, so those got some olive oil, salt and pepper and went on the grill alongside the burgers. Buns were buttered and toasted.
These burgers were dang delicious, for real. Here is a crappy picture I took with my phone.

After inhaling my burger, I wanted to try a cocktail that I had been thinking about all day. Having now tried it, I could not more highly recommend it. Some of Jeremiah Weed, some Ceres passion fruit (about one and a half times as much as the vodka), and water (sparkling water is also fantastic). This was also delicious and refreshing.
Now I'm off to eat a noodle bowl and fight a day-long internal battle against the will to eat the single leftover burger in the fridge, which I was expressly instructed to save for later.