urbanfoodie

Pictured: Omelette made w/ homemade giardinara by Mr. Jickets and jalapeño cheese curds by the state of Wisconsin, roasted veggies, and bacon.

Happy new year!!! Guess who is kicking off 2012 with a new smartphone and ready to get her tumblr back on??? Expect more microblogging in the year to come. We here at urbanfoodie hope you are off to a great start to 2012!

Perhaps budgetary concerns are forcing you to be a little bit more resourceful over the holidays. Maybe you hate to throw away food magazines because one day you might make that paella recipe. Either way, you can take advantage of the lush photography in food mags by recycling the pages as wrapping paper for small gifts. Here, I’ve wrapped bars of chocolate in the colorful pages of Food and Wine.

It’s cheap! It’s green! It’s non-denominational! Use yarn, ribbon, twine, or whatever you have laying around to jazz it up.

Happy (er?) Black Day! Eat some jajangmyeon!

(Photo from Yu’s Mandarin in Schaumburg, IL)

In South Korea, April 14th has become known as Black Day - an informal tradition for single people to gather together to lament their solitary state. After all, the last two months have probably been tortuous watching couples go ga-ga over each other during Valentine’s Day on February 14th (when women buy men gifts) and White Day on March 14th (when the men return the favor). 

You’d think that this was a depressing affair - dressing in black, crying, sharing short stories written about unrequited love that end in ambiguous allusions to suicide, and listening to the Korean equivalent of Fiona Apple’s Tidal (no, I didn’t just describe Valentine’s Day 1996…).

Not so! Those Koreans really know how to make the most of their misery. Check out this quote from this Reuters article from 2008:

“I had a miserable time on Valentine’s Day, felt even lonelier on White Day and now I’m crying over a bowl of black noodles,” said a young women who asked only to be identified by her family name Na out of embarrassment.

“Things better be different next year.”

Okay, so they really do dress in black, and sometimes there is crying. But there is at least good food!  All the single ladies and gents commiserate over bowls of thick, chewy wheat noodles in a viscous sauce of black bean paste, onions, and meat - jajangmyeon, a Korean-Chinese dish originally from the Shandong province in China and later popularized by Chinese migrants to Korea.  The seemingly bland dish is often served with punchy accompaniments of rice vinegar, raw onions, and pickled radish - kind of appropriate symbolism for this whole sour wallow-in-my-singleness business.

Anyway, jajangmyeon is one of my favorites in Korean food, and I would gladly eat a bowl any day, no matter my Relationship Status. In the Chicagoland area, check it out at Yu’s Mandarin (while you’re there, order the jjampong too). In the Twin Cities, they have it at Hoban (warning: it’s blech there - noodles were all wrong, totally no taste), Dong Yang (my go-to for Korean, but I’ve never had the jajangmyeon there), and some Chinese restaurant in some random stripmallish area that my friend took me to, but I can’t remember at the moment (will update later).

(EDIT: Thanks to Heavy Table for the link and pointing out that the restaurant I could not recall is, in fact, Lucky China in West St. Paul. Check out their piece on Lucky China’s hidden Korean menu.)

Happy Pancake Tuesday!

This lapsed Catholic knows that today is Fat Tuesday, when we get one last chance to get our debauchery out of the system before 40 ascetic days of Lent. But, did you know that it’s also Pancake Tuesday (aka Shrove Tuesday)?!? Milk, fat, sugar, eggs…oh, what sinful indulgence! God bless the Internet for bringing this observance to my attention.

You could be recession-friendly (can I still say that?) by making pancakes with recycled soup. Perhaps you can do the ol’ breakfast-as-dinner thing.  I’m celebrating Pancake Tuesday with a lunch of instant pumpkin spice pancakes from Trader Joe’s (one of the many random things that my mom gave to me on my last visit home).

(via Serious Eats)

Happy Valentine’s Day! Gung hay fat choy! Happy Sunday!

Whether you’re brunching with all the single ladies; celebrating the Year of the Tiger with family, uncut noodles, and Chinese treats (check Keefer Court, MSP peeps); having a fancy pants French dinner with your sweetie; or tossing back a few beers/pints of ice cream with your best friend…I hope that you’re enjoying this lovely Sunday in the company of good people and good food.

*enter hearts, stars, rainbows, fairy dust, and unicorns*

The Gift of Local Flavor - Æbleskiver

If you’re a devotee of the Mill City Farmer’s Market, you may have come across Aunt Else’s Æbleskiver (I had my first delightful taste of a savory sausage aebleskiver with ginger simple syrup during the last weekend of the market). Did you know that these unique spherical donut-pancake-popover-ish pastries of Danish origin are traditionally popular around Advent and Christmas-time? Well, how appropriate for Aunt Else to offer a little package ($52.99) that would make a great holiday gift - one cast iron pan, a package of their organic batter mix, and a stainless steel chopstick for turning the little guys. You could also just get someone one of the unique pans ($39.99) specially forged for Aunt Else. Super cool: the local, family-owned Aunt Else got some press on New York Magazine’s website!

When I came across The Kitchn’s Holiday Gift Guide: 15 Small Luxuries for Home Cooks, I immediately thought of this gift of truffle salt I received on my recent trip to San Francisco. We were at the Far West Fungi shop in the Ferry Building, and I tasted my first sample of truffle salt. C later surprised me with the salt, saying that she had to buy it for me after seeing the look on my face. I would have never bought this for myself, which makes it my favorite kind of gift.

By the way, truffle salt is AWESOME. In scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, french fries, plain popcorn, pasta, and many more yet to be tried or discovered. If you have some suggestions, drop me a line.