Dear Boston

It all feels too eerily familiar, in a really bad way.

Eleven and a half years ago, Bryan and I were in Italy enjoying our honeymoon. We had spent a fabulous 10 days traveling through Rome, Florence, and Venice. On September 11, 2001, our plane took off from Venice, making a stopover at Brussels before heading back home to Boston.

About an hour into our second leg, a voice came on the intercom.

"There have been terrorist attacks in the US. The US is not accepting anymore planes. We are turning around and going back to Brussels."

What followed was hours of confusion as people on the plane tried to figure out what was going on. I remember landing in Brussels, scared and confused. In the bus ride to our hotel, we strained to make out the news on the bus radio, which was (annoyingly) overdubbed in French. It wasn't until we arrived in our hotel room that we saw the horrific pictures of the fallen WTC towers.

I remember calling my family, telling them I was OK, though I didn't know when I would make it home.

I remember feeling fear, terrorized by the thought that another bomb or plane crash could occur.

I remember feeling terribly, terribly sad, aghast, and disgusted by all the events.

And I remember feeling so, so far away from home. Far away from all my friends and family.

Monday, April 15th, 2013.

I was flying, again, to Europe. This time to London.

Imagine my surprise when we got off the plane and Bryan read on his phone about some "explosions at Copley."

It didn't sink in quite at that moment the seriousness of it all. It wasn't until later, when we got off the train at Paddington Station, that I started to realize what had really happened.

I'm really, really mourning for my beloved Boston. My heart especially goes out to those who have suffered needlessly as a result of this heartless act. The Marathon is supposed to be a happy, hopeful day - a day where we celebrate the hard work of so many runners, the generous hearts of those running for charities, and the countless people running in honor of others. It seems especially cruel to target this bunch.

I continue to pray for this city, especially those that were injured or in any way affected by this horrible tragedy. I feel far away, watching this all from a distance. I am reminded that people in other less stable countries deal with this type of horror much more often.

I have been amazed at the outpouring of love this city has shown. Imagine, thousands of people offering their homes to stranded strangers. And what about all those emergency workers rushing in to help when there easily could have been more live bombs?

Inspiring.

Thank you all who reached out to me, asking me if I was OK. I was really touched by that. Thank you so much.

I know this city is resilient. It will be hard - and we surely will never forget this day - but we will bounce back.

Thanks Boston, for reminding me why I love this city.

Legal Harborside

It's Patriot's Day weekend! This is one of Boston's biggest holiday weekends (yes, we get Monday off!). The nation's most famous marathon occurs here on Monday. Sooo, we'll take a brief break from the Thailand! series to focus on Boston for a few posts before heading back to Thailand (where we'll begin exploring the recipes from my cooking classes there!) 

I still remember the first time I ever visited Boston.

I was seventeen years old and had just received my acceptance to MIT. My mom had a good friend (who also happens to be a renowned cookbook author!) who lived in Salem, so we visited Boston as a family and did all the touristy things - visited the Salem Witch Museum, toured both the Harvard and MIT campuses, and ate at Legal Sea Foods.

Legal Sea Foods has always been one of those places that tourists visit because 1) Boston is known for its excellent seafood and 2) Legal Sea Foods is one of the most historic, established, and well-known names in the industry.

There's much truth to it - the seafood at Legal is excellent.

However, the cuisine is also pretty simple.

You can get your fresh seafood wood-grilled, fried, or baked. They have familiar, New England dishes like clam chowder, crab cakes, and lobster rolls.  The sides are classic comfort foods, like mashed potatoes, steamed broccoli with cheese, and French fries. Sure, they've incorporated a few twists here and there, such as dishes with an Asian or Mediterranean bent. However, by and large, Legal Sea Foods is a place you visit to eat simply prepared, classic New England style seafood.

In 2011, Legal opened up a brand new, 20,000 feet flagship restaurant right at the waterfront.

Legal Harborside is huge. It sits right on the water (gorgeous views of the harbor!) and has three floors, each with a slightly different theme. The third floor is a lounge and bar which opens up during the summer into some really nice outdoor space. The first floor is the more casual dining floor. You'll find raw oysters plus classic, simply grilled seafood dishes served at all Legal Sea Foods. They've also added pastas and pizzas.

The second floor is the "celebratory dining" floor. It's really the first time Legal Sea Foods has ever had a more upscale restaurant. Here, we finally get a chance to taste the excellent seafood of Legal prepared in a more creative way.

One day last summer, Bryan decided it would be fun for us to see just what kind of creative dishes Legal Harborside would offer.

The menu has a nice assortment of appetizers ($12-$20) and main dishes ($30-$54). There is also a chef's tasting menu, which changes seasonally. The current menu lists a four-course tasting for $55, which isn't bad considering the cost of a normal 2-course meal could be at least that much. When we went during the summer, the chef's tasting was a five course meal for $75. I guess it changes periodically depending on an number of factors.

The bread was a fun assortment of a thin, spiced (maybe za'atar?) flatbread, mini corn muffins, and a classic loaf served with extra virgin olive oil. This is definitely a bit more "fancy" than the sourdough rolls they serve at the normal Legal.
 For the amuse we had a tiny bite of Cantaloupe Gel topped with Cucumber and Prosciutto Dust. The gel was tart and sweet, with just a tad of a kick. We couldn't really taste the prosciutto.
 The soup was a cold Spicy Corn & Crab Soup, made with coconut, edamame, and mint. Though the presentation was elegant, I personally found the soup a little too thick and creamy. It was also on the  sweet side, and I longed for a bit more umami.

Bryan got a different soup because he can't have coconut milk (an ingredient in the previous soup).  His Lobster Soup was a hot soup, accented with hints of sherry. Thankfully, Bryan enjoyed it. I thought it was fine, but it did not blow me away.
 We started with a generous salad made with "Brulee" Peaches, Baby Arugula, Figs, Amarene Cherries and Ricotta Salata in a kalamata-sherry vinaigrette. I found the dressing to be just a tad sweet, but overall I though the ingredients were very high quality. The very peppery arugula offset the sweetness from perfectly ripe peach, the sweetened cherries, and the fresh figs. The cheese and the very dry wine (with which this salad was paired) also helped cut the overall sweetness of the dish. This was solid, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Our next course was an upscale Lobster Salad which was served with Avocado, Hearts of Palm, Yuzu Vinaigrette & Nori. There was a slight service faux pas here because the wine came out long after the food came out - oops!

One of my favorites dishes of the evening was the Seared Baby Octopus served with Merguez Sausage, Smoked Tomato Coulis, Caramelize Peppers and Onions. They cooked the octopus perfectly, and the flavorful sauce stood up to the octopus quite well. I loved the spicy, tomato cream sauce, and the sausage had a lovely kick.

Furthermore, the wine pairing was excellent. They do a really good job with the wine pairing!

I really enjoyed the ingredients in our final course, the Grilled Cobia, White Sweet Potato Puree, Smoked Hominy, and Apple Smoked Bacon. The bacon added a nice smoky and salty balance to the slightly sweet corn (hominy) and white sweet potato (which might have had parsnips inside as well?). The fish itself was solid and went well with the accompaniments.
For dessert, we had a Warm Plum Clafouti topped with some Crème Fraiche Ice Cream.
And finally, a few small bites of chocolate as a finishing bite.

Overall, it was a nice meal. The creativity of the food is most definitely several notches above what the classic Legal Sea Foods serves. There were certain dishes that we really thought were winners (like the octopus), and others that were only OK (like the soups).

One huge benefit of all Legal Sea Foods restaurants that I failed to mention earlier is that they have a very strong philosophy about wine pricing: they hardly mark up their wine prices. Their wines are priced only slightly above retail, and sometimes, if the wines are hard-to-get on the open market, the Legal price may actually be lower than the retail price (which we found with a recent Joseph Phelps Insignia bottle that we enjoyed there).

In the past, Bryan always lamented the fact that, even though Legal sold all this amazing, highly regarded wine at such good prices, it was hard to justify spending the money if you were just pairing it with a lighter seafood (not the perfect pairing), or if just eating a plain seafood dinner.

He likes the fact that Legal Harborside gives you the opportunity to enjoy a nicer meal to match the super nice bottles of wine that they sell.

The space is gorgeous, and this is a fun place to visit as a tourist if you want a combination of the high quality seafood, gorgeous views, and slightly more creative cooking. The cooking is pretty good, though probably not the best that Boston has to offer.

Personally as a local, if I were just coming here alone or with Bryan, I would opt to stick with the more "casual" Legal, enjoying a plate of their excellent raw oysters while sipping on a glass of very reasonably priced champagnes (or whatever suits my fancy).

Legal Harborside
270 Northern Ave
 Boston, MA 02210

Fun Fruits in Thailand!

Domo digging into some rose apples and baby bananas.

This is the seventh post in the Thailand! travel series of my eats in Bangkok. Other posts include Thip Samai, Best Pad Thai in Bangkok? and Raan Jay Fai, Best Drunken Noodle in Bangkok, Maeklong Railway Market, Floating Markets (Damnoen Saduak). Street Foods of Bangkok, Part I, and Street Foods of Bangkok, Part II.

One thing I love most about visiting any tropical destination near the equator (and I've really only ever been to Taiwan and Hawaii before this), are the fruits.

In New England, fruits aren't my favorite things to eat. I'm just not a huge fan of apples, oranges, and bananas. They're OK, but once you've had fruits from tropical locations, it's really hard to go back. The diversity of choices is dizzying, and the flavors will blow you away.

One really fun perk that our hotel room in Thailand provided was a rotating plate of fresh fruit. Everyday, they would put a couple pieces of local fruit on a plate in our room. They even had this fun guide called "Fruits of Thailand" where they described each fruit. They tried to introduce us to fruits that were not only local to Thailand, but also unique to the tropical climate.

Most of us have seen bananas before, but what about mangosteens and dragonfruit? Mangosteen is the little dark purple fruit in the photo above.

When cut open, the inside consists of 6 perfectly formed segments. It's gorgeously sweet with hints of tartness, reminding me of a cross between a lychee and an orange?

I still think dragon fruits are one of the most gorgeous fruits. Just look at that vivid pink color! The inside is soft, sweet, and light, sort of like watermelon. You can eat the seeds as well.

Here's a vendor selling grilled baby bananas on the street.

Fresh orange juice is available everywhere and only costs $1 USD. Isn't it interesting how their oranges have a green outer skin and is orange on the inside?

I've had rose or wax apples in Taiwan (we call them "lembu"), but I'd never seen them anywhere else in the world until I came to Thailand. This fruit is really crispy, juicy, and light. It's perfect for hot weather days. It's one of my favorite fruits to enjoy in the tropics, and I happily munched on some everyday while I was in Thailand.

Our hotel included breakfast, which was awesome because they always had a huge assortment of fresh fruit. Here I've cracked open passion fruit on top. On the plate there's also guava, green mango, papaya, pineapple, jack fruit, and tiny little oranges.

Crazy huh?

Speaking of jackfruit, have you ever seen an entire jackfruit? They are HUGE! Here's half of one at a street cart in Thailand. I swear that fruit is the size of my upper body! Usually, the little segments are removed, deseeded, and sold in smaller "packets".

Jackfruit physically resembles the durian on the outside, though inside they are very different. Durians are stinky and banned from public places. Jackfruit has a slight funk, but is predominantly fragrant, slightly crunchy, and sweet. Bryan liked eating it with blue cheese, which I'm sure is not a traditional Thai pairing! (Our hotel breakfast buffet was international and therefore had European things like cheese as well).
Speaking of durian, I did try my first durian this trip as part of a dessert (Durian over Sticky Rice). It was surprisingly OK. Yes, it does stink, but it sort of grows on you too. Oddly enough, by the end of the dessert, I was starting to think the fruit was richly complex.

Bryan strongly disagreed.

After one whiff of my dessert, Bryan scrunched up his nose, frowned, and refused to try any more. In fact, he kept pushing the dish closer and closer to me every time he got another whiff.

Desserts often revolve around fruits and coconut milk in Thailand. Mango Sticky Rice is quintessential and classic. It's a magical combination and still one of my favorite Thai desserts. Like all Thai dishes, the balance of sweet and salty makes the dish addictive. It doesn't hurt to have access to super sweet and ripe mangoes either!

It was hard to come back and face normal North American fruits after having access to such a bounty for a week. Hopefully the arrival of summer will lessen the blow.

Gosh, I miss Thailand already.

Street Foods of Bangkok (Part II)

This is the sixth post in the Thailand! travel series of my eats in Bangkok. Other posts include Thip Samai, Best Pad Thai in Bangkok? and Raan Jay Fai, Best Drunken Noodle in Bangkok, Maeklong Railway Market, Floating Markets (Damnoen Saduak). and Street Foods of Bangkok, Part I.

This is Part II of the Bangkok street food tour. If you're just joining us, definitely check out Part I of this post first before reading this.

It was raining, hard. This was supposed to be a walking tour, and the weather just was not cooperating at all.

Our tour guide Nushi told us to wait at the dock as she tried to hail a cab. As the wind whipped the water angrily around, we stood and marveled at the sheer force of the storm.

Ten minutes later, Nushi came with a cab. She looked wet, yet she was still smiling.

"Hop in."

As the rain pounded down onto the windshield, the cab inched along towards our final destination. Nushi chatted happily in Thai with the driver while we sat in the back.

Finally, about 10 minutes later, we arrived at our next destination.

We were in a cafe in Silom, the business district of Bangkok. It is actually owned by the great grandson of King Rama V.  He likes Indian food a lot, and you definitely see a strong representation of that cuisine here. Thankfully (for Bryan's sake), there is also much other food to try, such as ice cream, bakery goods, and a lot of great Thai food. Our first small plate: green curry with pork. Though this is usually served with rice, this restaurant serves it with deep fried roti, a bread influenced by Indian cuisine.
Because Bryan does not eat coconut milk (and thus skipped the green curry completely), we also ordered Isaan sour sausage, a fermented pork sausage from the northeastern part of Thailand. You commonly see this sold on the streets of Bangkok and it is usually served with sticky rice, which is the rice staple up north.

This place had tons of really interesting ice cream flavors. We tried passion fruit ice cream, coconut sorbet, and tamarind sorbet. All of them were fantastic, bursting with the authentic flavors of their individual ingredients. My favorite was the passion fruit ice cream, but I think that's partly because I just love ice cream more than sorbet in general, and I love the flavor of fresh passion fruit, which was so pronounced in this ice cream.

We stepped outside. There was just one more stop, and it was within walking distance.

Amazingly, the sky had completely cleared up. I guess it was one of those fast moving storms. The sun was back out already, and the air was even thicker with humidity than I thought could be possible.

As we walked towards our last stop, Nushi said, "hold on, look! Fried bananas."

There are often long lines at these popular street snack stands, where vendors sell freshly fried items such as sweet potatoes, mochi balls, and bananas. Luckily, perhaps because it was just after the storm, there was no line at this vendor's stand. We quickly stopped and picked up a bag of fried mini-bananas.

They were coated with some special sort of batter that reminded me of a funnel cake. Just imagine a sweet, crunchy funnel-cake-covered banana. It was seriously addictive (and I don't even like bananas!).

For even more sweets, we headed to our last stop, a local bakery. Here we tried a lovely soft bread with pandan custard inside. We tasted a bun filled with sweet BBQ meat, not unlike Chinese chashu except that the outside bread is baked according to western methods. Finally, we sampled a western style cake topped with a traditional Thai style filling (made of coconut, perhaps?) used commonly in wedding desserts.

Finally, I (and Domo?) got to try Thai iced tea in Thailand. It was delicious, similar to the Thai iced tea I've had in America.

And then, just as quickly as it began, our 3-hour tour was over. We were stuffed, both with food but also with a rich wealth of knowledge.

Nushi had taken supremely good care of us, especially considering that a huge rainstorm came down right in the middle of our tour. We were quite grateful at how hard she tried to make us comfortable - everything from getting us umbrellas (from the Tonburi restaurant!), to waiting outside in the rain for 10 minutes in order to hail us a cab. Her English is excellent, and we really had fun on this tour.

If you're a newcomer to Thailand who absolutely has no idea where to start, I would highly, highly recommend taking the Bangkok Food Tour. They do a fantastic job.

The Details
This tour lasts about 3 hours and costs 1050 Baht (around $35 USD per person), which includes all the food. Although usually run in the morning leading up to lunchtime, you can arrange to have a private tour at other times during the day. Because of Bryan's work schedule, we ended up booking a tour from 2-5PM. We got our own private tour guide and paid a little extra for the convenience of the time and the private guide (3000 Baht for the two of us, around $50 USD per person).

It's easy to get to the meeting point, which is right inside the BTS Skytrain station Saphan Taksin.

Next up: fun fruits of Thailand and an introduction to the two cooking schools I attended!

Street Foods of Bangkok (Part I)

This is the fifth post in the Thailand! travel series of my eats in Bangkok. Other posts include Thip Samai, Best Pad Thai in Bangkok? and Raan Jay Fai, Best Drunken Noodle in Bangkok, Maeklong Railway Market, Floating Markets (Damnoen Saduak).

Thanks everyone for your outpouring of support for my wrist. It is slowly healing every day. I plan on looking into a few long-term options, such as speech recognition software or alternatives to the traditional mouse. Now, back onto our regularly scheduled program! :)

Where's the best food in Thailand?

If you ask anyone who has been to Thailand a few times, you'll pretty much get the same answer: on the street. Thailand is one of those countries where it's not uncommon to find a street vendor who has been perfecting his recipe for one particular dish for decades. In fact, I've already written about some of these places.

The people in Bangkok are obsessed about food, and it's all over the place. No matter where you live, just walk down the street and you're bound to find a street vendor selling some sort of food. Fresh fruit, deep fried snacks, noodle soups, and on and on . . . the streets of Bangkok are seriously a paradise for the food lover.

The amount of available street food was so overwhelming, I had a hard time figuring out where to start. Because I had only a set number of meals in Bangkok, I wanted to make the most of each meal. So, instead of just randomly trying street stalls around the city (and potentially hitting some duds), I decided to sign up for a walking street food tour with a company called Bangkok Food Tours.

We actually visited quite a few places (over a span of three hours!), so I will be splitting up our tour into two separate posts.
This tour covered a neighborhood called Bangrak, one of the oldest parts of Bangkok. It sits just east of the Chao Praya river and was walking distance from our hotel. Meet our tour guide Nushi (young woman on the right side of the photo), who took us around for three hours sampling some fun foods.

Our first stop was a famous restaurant that served a simple roast duck over rice. Originally inspired by Chinese cuisine, this dish has incorporated certain Thai influences, such as the use of honey in the  sauce.

The duck is free-range and therefore does not have as much fat under its skin. According to Nushi, this dish is by far the most popular dish at this restaurant, and people will come specifically for this particular dish.

It was juicy, flavorful, and most definitely had hints of sweetness from the honey. We both thought it was quite tasty, though quite familiar because it was so similar to Chinese food.

It was during this first stop that Nushi pulled out the schedule showing us where we would be going for the day.

One thing stood out to Bryan.

2. Signature curry on egg

"I forgot to mention, I can't have coconut milk." Bryan told Nushi.

Even though not all curry in Thailand uses coconut milk, a large majority of curries do have some coconut milk inside, including the listed egg dish at the next stop. Nushi, thinking quickly, suddenly said, "I know. Let's skip the next stop. I'll take you to one of my favorite noodle joints instead."

Bryan loves noodles, so the trade-off was a no-brainer.

In retrospect, what a great idea. This next "detour" stop became one of our favorites of the entire tour.

Now, it's most certainly not much to look at. In fact, this tiny little eatery sits in an alleyway between two buildings. Yes, Bryan is standing at the front of the restaurant. It isn't too far from the Catholic college nearby, and attracts tons of people at lunchtime, both foreigners from the college and locals alike.

When I asked Nushi the name of the restaurant, she said, "I don't think it has a name. I guess people might sometimes call it Kuey Teow Kla, which means Hakkanese noodle, or Kuey Teow Silom."

It was like a Tom Yum Noodle soup, but made with chili jam.

"What's Chili Jam?" I asked Nushi.

"It's a sweet and spicy "jam" made out of shrimp paste, ground chili, palm sugar, and peanuts."

Yum. I started to wonder where I could get a hold of some.

Inside the soup, there were several different types of balls made out of fish, beef, and tofu. Fresh bean sprouts served to add texture as well a cooling contrast to the hot and spicy broth.

The complex flavors of the broth were astounding - I'm not even sure I can name all the ingredients. It was definitely a pork bone based broth enhanced with various chilies, lemongrass, fish sauce, and possibly lime? The fresh rice noodles were delicious as well. Even though we both got pretty big bowls (I would hardly call these tasting portions!), we both came close to finishing everything. This is in spite of knowing had several, several more stops to go.
 Next, we boarded a boat and crossed the river to the Tonburi neighborhood. The clouds were starting to look a bit ominous at this point.

I turned to Bryan, "maybe not such a good day for a walking tour!"

He shrugged. "We'll see" he said.

After getting off the boat, we walked straight down the narrow alleyway leading away from the dock. On the right we saw a simple, bright green counter.
We were eating at an odd hour (around 3PM) mostly because it was the only time we could fit in a tour due to Bryan's work schedule in Thailand. Typically the place is packed, but we were lucky to have the whole place to ourselves on an ominous, stormy Friday afternoon.

We were here to sample some specialties from Northeastern Thailand, also known as Isaan cuisine. The menu was written entirely in Thai here, so I was thankful for Nushi's guidance in helping us pick out some choice plates.
Som Tam is a classic papaya salad that consists of young, green papaya pounded together with carrots, dried shrimp, and peanuts. The dressing is sweet, savory, sour, and spicy with flavors coming from fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, tamarind juice, and lots of chilies! This particular one was very spicy and packed full of flavor. We were both sweating while eating it, but also enjoying it quite a bit.
Nam Tok Moo is a salad made by tossing together pork with roasted rice powder, mint leaves, chili, and shallots in a flavorful dressing made from lime juice, fish sauce, and sugar. Again, I love how Thai cuisine achieves that perfect balance of savory, sweet, sour, and spicy. This dish was fantastic and we ate as much as we could handle (yes, it was spicy!!).Finally, we tried Yam Pla Duk Foo, a fascinating dish that consists of catfish that is first grilled, deboned, and then deep fried to form this light, airy, almost weightless cake. You eat it with this vibrant sauce made with green mangoes, shallots, chili, palm sugar, and lemon juice.

This tiny hole in the wall was another one of our favorites, and definitely a place that would have been difficult for us to find without a guide. We loved the northern style dishes, which we found to be quite different from most of the Thai food we see in America.

Suddenly, KABOOM!

And it started to pour.

Nushi was kind enough to ask the restaurant whether we could borrow some umbrellas.

"I'll bring them back later."

We ran back down the narrow dock towards the boat. Even though lightening was flashing across the sky, the boats continued to run. We ran to safety onto the boat as it pulled away from the dock back towards the Bangrak side of the river.

Next Up: Part II of the "Street Foods of Bangkok" Tour, where we will explore fried street snacks, some more Isaan fare, unique local ice cream flavors, and some fantastic desserts.

Stay tuned!