Soup Dumplings

I overheard one of the nurses at my peds clinic talking about a place on Buford that was known for soup dumplings. I couldn't help but ask where it was because I was immediately like "oh damn I like those." We talked about how she was a fan of Joe's Shanghai and I told her about a place my sister took me in SF one time. The next week she told me she went and that it was just completely wrong. Nothing like Joe's...completely lacking in soup inside.

I then heard about a place that happened to be right across the street from my apartment complex which was supposed to have xiaolongbao. I went with some friends:


We also ordered the fish in hot oil and the pork belly with leeks. Both were good.


The dumplings are somewhat un-appetizingly labeled as "Shanghai Juice Dumplings." They looked right. That kinda collapsed bottom look from something that used to be solid now being a liquid. They tasted fine, but weren't quite right either. The skin was a bit too doughy and there was a bit too much meat filling, not a lot of broth.

Guess I'll have to take matters into my own hands and make my own soup dumplings. Out of laziness I decided not to make the skins and just use pre-made wrappers. I knew this'd be risky if they were too thin, but apparently it'd been done with some success according to posts online.

First up was making the soup.


Then turning it into an aspic with some help from gelatin. You can also boil pork skin with the soup but the gelatin was cheaper.


Filling was next...pork, ginger, garlic, scallions, some other junk:


With a little help from the freezer, the aspic was already set a couple hours later:


Then i cut it up and mixed it in with the other filling stuff:



Let's fast forward the horrible inefficiency with which I assembled the dumplings, and straight to the steamer:


Okay they look sorta similar...but awfully collapsed. Hopefully I didn't lose all of my soup...



Good not great. If I ever make these again I'm gonna have to actually make the skin dough, which is a pain. Also I would keep the meat and aspic separate. Use a much smaller amount of meat and individually put a big scoop of the aspic in each one to ensure maximum soup.

Hype Eating

I've been eating some of the most hyped stuff you can find in Atlanta...the kinds of places that are bulletproof among the Yelp crowd. All the reviews are OMG 5 STARS! There's the occasional I'M SO SOPHISTICATED THAT I'M GOING TO GIVE THIS PLACE ONE STAR BECAUSE I'M ABOVE THE HYPE! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! MY OPINION COUNTS MORE BECAUSE IT'S DIFFERENT!

This is why I hate Yelp. I use it on my iPhone because it's the most elegant way to find nearby restaurants, but I don't use it on a real computer at all because that would mean I'd be looking at reviews. The average Yelp reviewer has absolutely no clue what they're talking about, will turn into crazy cat-owning hermits, and live in a fantasy world where the feedback on their reviews and their number of yelp friends convince them that they're a respected food writer. They review fast food places in a non-ironic manner because ironically reviewing fast food places is no longer amusing.

I recently used the Yelp app extensively in my quest to eat a choux cream pastry from every Korean bakery in the Atlanta area (Mission accomplished by the way). The reviews for each and every one of these places were ridiculous and just plain wrong. The app is now getting a bit annoying thanks to the check-in feature. Anytime you're in close proximity to a business you can "check in" there, and there's "regulars" and a leaderboard. There's one dude in Atlanta who's consistently at the top of the board, because he "checks in" at places like apartment complexes and his job. Lame.


That's him. Ladies of Atlanta, if you see this man be sure to ridicule him.

Everyone should try a place if they're interested regardless of the reviews or the hype/anti-hype. I did, took some pictures, and am throwing them up here for the two of you who will see this. This mainly serves as photo-hosting online so that they don't take up any of my endangered hard drive space. This blog has basically become a time-consuming Flickr gallery.

First up is Antico Pizza Napoletana. Hype factor high in the Atlanta area. The website has the occasional Italian word and they write prices in Euros as well as dollars. All this marketing stuff is cute and all, but can they back it up?


Amanda ate this whole pizza.


Audra and I ate this. Pizza came out fast and the crust was excellent.


This thing was good.


So was this.

Next up is Farm Burger. HYPE FACTOR OFF THE CHARTS. They opened up pretty recently and advertise 100% grass-fed beef and natural everything blah blah blah. They also have many varieties of beer in cans, from fancy to not so fancy. Trendy.

Grass-fed beef is good and all, but honestly if someone took roadkill and made it into a freaking amazing burger I wouldn't mind.


This burger also had beef tongue, beet relish and some sort of slaw which was really tasty. The beef was excellent. Fries were okay. The decor is farm-y...but the pictures of cows and pigs on the walls are maybe a bit cruel. I'll probably go back to try their bacon, oxtail relish, and roasted marrow, all of which are available condiments on their burgers. There are some interesting-looking non-fried sides too.

At one point while Bryan and I were sitting at the very end of a large communal table, some girl came up and said "I don't want to be rude," (too late) "but we have a group of six...can you move?"
1. They only had five people.
2. We were already there.
3. Her voice was incredibly annoying.
If it weren't for her voice I might've thought about it for a split second. Also one of the dudes in their party had his collar up. No way we're moving bitch.

And now an item of national hype/intrigue/disgust.
I'm no stranger to weird and possibly disgusting novelty chicken items. Who could forget Chicken Kiev juice box?


Actually that might not have gone down so well.



If you look at the nutrition facts of the double down, in terms of calories, eliminating the bun might have actually brought the count down somewhat.


It seems promising. Chicken, pepper jack cheese, bacon...kinda like a ghetto Cordon Bleu. Unfortunately, all this promise doesn't taste like anything except salt. This was probably the saltiest thing I've ever eaten besides the time a salt shaker spilled open into my soup and I kept eating it anyway.

Okay...that ends the post of food that I have not made myself. All that saved me about 8 megs of space on my computer. Totally worth it.

Should I be more specific?

Perhaps the title of my blog should be:

I Like Fried Food, I Don't Like You...no not YOU dear loyal blog reader. I'm talking about YOU, idiot who has arrived here via a google search for "food I don't like"

That one might be a bit wordy.

I've been eating an awful lot of fried food lately though. Most days I've been managing a Fiber One Bar (or a banh mi if I'm lucky) in the car between clinics for lunch. Haven't been able to do much cooking at night either. Pasta and rice/kimchi have been my dinner staples lately. Somehow I've managed to drop five pounds since rotations started. Though I should view this as the dropping off some unnecessary poundage accumulated during boards study time, I've actually more seen this as license to eat terribly on the weekends. WHOO! Let's round it up:

I had an afternoon at Grady Eye Clinic. I went down the street to the Sweet Auburn Curb Market for a quick lunch. After I ordered the porkchop sandwich, I was wondering why it was taking so long. I was thinking "Hurry up guys...I need to be at clinic by 1, so that they can tell me they don't actually get started until 1:45 and to just hang out and be lazy until then." Turns out it took a long time because...


It was fried! Whooooo! Not much more to say. It was a deep fried porkchop on some bread with lettuce and tomato. I think there was mayo involved too.

I needed a snack on the weekend. Might as well make one:


And if I'm going to make one, it might as well be fried. Fried meatballs. Yup. This one's also self-explanatory.

Okay so not everything I've been making lately has been fried, just in case you were worried about my health.


Take this Nutella ice cream I made. Polish Nutella is better for you than American Nutella, which is why it's totally okay for me to mix it with heavy cream and egg yolks to make ice cream, then top it with more Nutella. It's good for you!

The weather has gotten beautiful in Atlanta. It's no longer raining and cold every day. It's sunny and pollen-y now. Fantastic day to head over to Hampton House and cook up fried chicken.


Made two kinds...Southern style and Korean style. Also sauteed some collard greens. Geoff made potato salad, Dan made guac that you can't see because it's already gone.


Korean style on left...brined the chicken, coated in coconut milk and a special spice/flour blend, and fried TWICE (bonus!) before being coated in a spicy sweet sauce of my own design. Southern style on the right was brined a la Thomas Keller, with some added pickling spice a la Chick-Fil-A. Buttermilk and flour/matzo meal a la Blue Ribbon. It's the bastard child recipe of a bunch of non-Southerners (with the exception of Chick-Fil-A), but I made it here in the South so it counts. I think the Korean style went over better though. Koreans and Southerners are crazy about their fried chicken for good reason.

Erin made dessert:


Perfect strawberry shortcake and vanilla ice cream. Perfect way to end the meal.

Tomorrow I start peds in the afternoons out in Suwanee. It's about an hour away from my apartment without traffic...which means it'll be about three hours realistically. This all means I might be having dinner in the car as well. At this rate I might lose even more weight, which means MORE FRIED FOOD ON THE WEEKENDS! WHOO! Stay tuned.

My long overdue final Korea post

I've been back from Korea for a while, and though I've been pretty busy getting settled into becoming someone who can pretend to be doctory, not a day goes by when I don't absolutely miss the bustle of Seoul. It's not just the TV, which I've been able to keep up with thanks to the interweb, and it's not just hanging out with my sister. How could anyone not miss this?


Loaded chili cheese fries from New York Fries...a source of poutine in a subway station.

Or these:


Genuine churros in the fancy beautiful-people-filled apgujeong-dong.


I'm also nowhere near a doughnut plant anymore. So I can't eat a mascarpone-filled square doughnut, or a citron glazed cake doughnut.


I certainly wouldn't mind warming my hands over a cylinder of charcoal, followed by grilling delicious, cheap, pig skirt meat over the same charcoal (well not the exact same one... a new one).


I wanna duck back into the tent of a food stall and eat fishcake and spicy rice cakes until I explode.


I could even go for more Japanese food in Korea. This bowl of ramen with char-grilled pork was pretty fantastic.


The last meal I ate in Korea was simple and delicious. It was in a "restaurant" that all the employees ate at, right next to the more glamorous food court (everything about Incheon airport is glamorous...how many airports do you know that have 24/7 personal shoppers to help you navigate all the high-end shopping?)

Maybe one of my favorite meals in Korea was at a bo ssam chain. When I got back and told my mom that's where we'd gone, she-in the blunt Korean manner-said their food is terrible, but I liked it. I guess it's not really a fair contest for "favorite meal" because this meal was with my grandma. Hanging around Atlanta, I wanted bo ssam again, but decided that I'd maybe eaten a bit too much pork belly, and that I should use tenderloin instead.


So there it is...tenderloin bo ssam with a quick endive kimchee. Hopefully I'll be able to go back soon and make this for my grandma, but with pork belly because she says you gotta have some amount of fat for it to be tasty.

Second favorite meal? When my aunt basically went insane and cooked five different things that require a lot of time and effort, including braised kimchee and pork belly. It takes a while...


With the help of my semi-new le creuset, I went for it...and thus the pork belly embargo was officially lifted.

Yeah I miss Korea a lot. So much so that I felt like I needed to ease myself back into eating American food at restaurants. I enlisted the help of a high school friend who flew in to Atlanta (for work...and when I say he flew in that's exactly what he did...he flew the plane).


How to bridge the gap? Korean BBQ burger at Flip. Wagyu patty, braised short rib on top...pickled vegetables (which are eaten at every meal in Korea pretty much), and kimchee ketchup. The kimchee ketchup wasn't really noticeable...everything else was tasty though.


Tempura fried rutabaga and zucchini fries have appeared on the side menu. The breading on the zucchini was a bit mealy, but good.

*sigh* What am I to do? I've finished the dramas I was interested in watching, and variety shows only air on Saturdays and Sundays. I need more Korean-ness in my life right now. I googled "Paris Baguette Atlanta" and found three locations...but they had all since closed down.

The new H-Mart in Doraville is close by, and they have:


A Tous Les Jours? Dammit! So close, yet so far away. I guess I'll have to make a trip to LA, Philly, New Jersey, or New York sometime soon. I suppose I could (and definitely would), drive the hour from Lafayette to Santa Clara to hit up a PB.

More from Korea

I used to think that some of the Korean-adopted Western foods were gross simply because Koreans didn't understand what the hell was going on. Now I realize that Koreans are pretty much saying "okay...that's a good idea, but we'll take it from here and make something that will suit the tastes of Koreans." That doesn't change the fact that I think the pizza here is pretty gross, but at least now I know it's not on account of Koreans simply being insane...they're just looking out for Korea.


These macarons were pretty authentic though. They were truffle and foie gras. I guess my sister and I decided that we might as well splurge on the really weird ones. The truffle one was incredibly truffley. The foie gras was too sweet to really tell what it was like.


Here's some stone pot BibimBap (mixed rice) with a bunch of seafood. Definitely a Korean dish, but it was served at a pseudo Japanese place.


This is skewered and grilled chicken gizzard. One of my favorite parts of the chicken. Also known as the "sand house (chickens eat pebbles/sand to help with digestion)" or in street food terms it can be referred to as the "crap house." On No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain, there was that super annoying girl who weaseled her way into a free trip to Korea, THEN DEMONSTRATED THAT SHE KNEW ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT KOREA! Good lord that was frustrating. She was like "oh yeah this is the chicken anus or whatever. It's a Korean delicacy." She knew less about Korea than I did, and she didn't know jack about food. Chicken anus is a korean delicacy? Are you kidding? It's street food...and it's eaten because you don't waste anything! It's a bonus that it's delicious. Also the gizzard certainly isn't the anus. How big do you think a chicken anus could possibly be? Koreans all over the world share a common feeling of unity and pride, because for a small country that has been dicked over by pretty much every other country on earth at some point, we've made it pretty far. We're all Koreans and we're all in it together! Not that chick from No Reserations though. She's out.


Red bean porridge. Incredibly traditional stuff from the "second best place in Seoul." It's not just old people who come here though. One of the most fascinating aspects of the Korean people is their respect and adherence to tradition in the midst of incredible modernization. This is a place where you can watch TV on your cell phone...on the subway. Whereas this kind of tech might really only be seen used by the super savvy back in the states, EVERYONE does it here...teens, grandmas, you name it. A large part of Korean tradition and behavior is an intense respect for elders. I'm always amazed when I watched "reality TV" shows here. These shows mostly feature Idols...superstars of the moment doing hilarious stuff for charity. These shows work so well because they're self contained, don't contain any D-list celebrities or non-celebrities vying for attention, and Idols here generally have gone to good high schools/collleges (if they're old enough) and are quite intelligent and funny. I was struck by one episode I saw when one of the most popular women in Korea was farming or something, and she made sure that the older farmer man was fed first before she was. You wouldn't see that shit in the states. Celebs get in trouble here if they do outrageous and idiotic things, deviating from civility is a career killer. In the states, deviating from civility and being a general jackass seems like a requirement to make your career.
I'm not really sure what that elders thing had to with food, so I'll just end it by saying that young Koreans love burgers:


Like this one from Kraze burger.


Or this one with maybe just a tad too much BBQ ranch.

But they also go back to the traditional. Eating in a communal setting is a big deal here. Why? Because we're all in it together! Whoo Korea! It's this spirit that has graced humans with perhaps the world's greatest food:


Koreans may not have invented grilling meat over charcoal, but they certainly make it the most fun. This is samgyeopsal (three layer fat). It's pork belly grilled on charcoal, and you can wrap it in perilla leaves, lettuce, with rice, grilled onions or garlic...however you want. I basically just want to eat this forever. Like...all the time...until my blood turns into mayonnaise and I keel over and die. I'd be pretty happy with that.

More communal eating can be had with a dish simply translated as "One whole chicken."


A massive pot full of broth and a stewed, cut up chicken come to your table and are put over a jet engine. We added some ground chili paste to make it spicy:


And when the chicken was gone we ordered some noodles to throw in. Freaking delicious.
However, I can't help but feel that if one were to eat a whole chicken in Korea, it should be of the deep fried variety:


Korean fried chicken is blowing up in the states too. It's seasoned with something delicious then fried, drained, fried again so the skin is super crisp and delicious. It's not heavily battered so you just get a really crispy skin. You can also get it sauced with some sort of spicy sweet garlicy sauce. Delicious. I only wish I could have tried all of the many locations and unique recipes.

Koreans are also clever, industrious, and ingenious. This is most likely due to the aforementioned fact that the country has been shat on continuously by other countries. Imagine your home state is its own country. Then imagine that all the states around you have constantly tried to invade your state, economically blackmail your state, and wipe all record of your state's history and culture from memory. Despite this, your state has managed to provide the fastest internet on the planet to the highest percentage of it's citizens. Your state is so technologically advanced that the same cell phone that you can use to watch TV on the subway also grants you access to ride that subway (buses too, it tracks your fares, transfers, you can even pay for cabs as well as vending machine items with it). Imagine that your state is so advanced that an iPhone that sets you back $30 with a contract is still a bad deal because it lacks basic features present on any other phone. Imagine your state is so advanced, it has produced this:


The corn dog with the fries attached to it. There's shit going down in Korea that even Neal Stephenson couldn't imagine in Snow Crash.

Interesting mix of traditional and non-traditional food here. It just comes down to the fact that Koreans love good food. No matter where in the world it's from...if it's tasty Koreans will like it. They'll probably adapt it to Korean tastes, and therefore foreigners may brand them ripoff artists, but adaptation to local tastes happens all over the world. How does pizza, pasta, Indian, Mexican, Thai etc. etc. in the US compare to the authentic counterparts in the countries of origin? Shrimp, bacon, corn, and weird cheese sauce on pizza is just Koreans looking out for other Koreans. That's fine with me, though I wouldn't go so far as to eat it.

I'll probably post some more stuff I eat, though my time here is sadly growing short. One thing I've noticed is that I wasted some luggage space by bringing my digital camera. My iPhone camera is more than adequate for the snaps that I take day in and day out. But lately I've been thinking that I want to take better food pictures. I noticed that there are absolutely NO ADS for point and shoot cameras here. There's no Ashton Kutcher whoring himself for some girly touch screen camera. However, I've seen a million ads for SLRs/Micro Four Thirds/other interchangeable lens cameras. It's rare that SLRs are advertised back in the states.

My sister pointed out that there's no market for point and shoot cameras here. Everyone's cell phone has like a 7 megapixel camera with flash, face/smile recognition, and image stabilization (another iPhone shortcoming). People here use an SLR for the great stuff, and their phone for just about everything else. I've been tempted into buying an entry level hybrid interchangeable lens camera here that's not on sale in the US...could better photography of food for my three readers soon follow? We shall see.

Korea 2010

I've fled to Korea to relax after taking the boards. This is probably the longest stretch of time I've spent in Korea since I started really appreciating food...and the great thing about Korea is that there's plenty of food to appreciate. My sister is here learning Korean, so the timing was perfect.

There's the incredibly famous Myeongdong Gyoja which my parents frequented, and we usually eat here every time we come to Korea (last time I was here, there was a line about a mile long stretching out of the place so we passed).

It's known for dumplings and kal guksu (handcut noodles), and every foreign blogger's writeup will mention these two things.


I don't remember the soup always containing small dumplings, but there they were and they were good.

I think the REAL draw of Myeongdong Gyoja is their insanely strong Kimchi. It's on the earlier side of fermentation (which I like), and not only has insane levels of Korean ground chili powder, but also of garlic. The garlic level on this kimchi is unbelievable. It really is meant to be slightly washed in your soup. It's understandable why many Americans would shy away from this kimchi, because it's not only on the spicier end of the kimchi spectrum, but because they're worried about their breath smelling garlicky for days on end (garlic breath really cramps the Asian fetishist's game).


Also in Myeongdong is a branch of the famous Doughnut Plant NYC. The doughnut wars are still pretty fierce in Korea. Dunkin' Donuts (which is a much nicer cafe experience in Korea than in the US) now occupies the most expensive real estate in Korea (a three story location in the heart of Myeongdong...previously occupied by a Starbucks).


Doughnut plant donuts are ridiculously expensive, but they're tasty. The Tres Leches is really good, the creme brulee actually has a crispy creme brulee style crust (but the custard is so-so and the doughnut itself is a bit too chewy). The blackout is maybe a little too cocoa-powdery on the verge of being a bit bland. We'll be back for more though.

Today we're hanging out in Insadong, which has a lot of stores for traditional Korean items. There's also a lot of street food here...and a lot of tourists.
We passed by some people pounding rice for fresh ddeok (rice cake). I don't think I've ever had ddeok that was super freshly made and still warm. Good stuff.



This is a special type of hoddeok made with some corn flour as well as sweet rice flour. Hoddeok is a family favorite. It's a sweet rice dough filled with a cinnamon sugar mixture then fried in a shallow pool of oil on a very hot griddle. It ends up being a delicious chewy caramel-filled pancake. With the addition of the corn flour, it puffs up and gains a very crisp outer layer, while the inside remains super chewy.


Right now I'm sitting in a cafe that overlooks Ssamzie market plaza (which seems to be pretty new). It has a chic-ly low ceiling in the loft area (can't stand up all the ay low), and serves up a decent latte as well as a nice Belgian waffle.


Asians love Belgian waffles...probably because they're freaking delicious.

This square was featured in a variety show bit last week, in which one of the members of a comedy troupe was dressed up as a Navi from Avatar and was ordered around by the other members. There's a food stand here where he ordered something that now has a crazy line. They have pictures of the episode and everything. Best free advertising ever. Sorry it's not subtitled, but check out 7:38 for a moment of genius.