Hand Drawn Noodles in Chinatown, Philly

Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House is located on
927 Race Street in the heart of Chinatown in Philly.

 It is a very small place with pretty much no flair.... BUT the noodles are hand drawn
on the spot and the food is very tasty. These noodles have just a simple peanut sauce
topped with scallions for a garnish but the fact that the noodles were hand pulled
gives the noodles that slightly chewy and elasticity that you can't get with
machine made noodles.  It's a very simple dish but  pretty good and you can't beat $3.00

This dish was the Sliced Beef Noodle dish. The broth was exceptional.
The sliced beef was quite tender and it only had a little bit of fat .
The greens were cilantro and baby spinach. It also had a handful of picked cabbage
which really brought out the acid to the dish and was yummy.
I would totally recommend Nan Zhou for the tasty food and very cheap prices
but it can be a little weird not because the dining area is so small but it's hit
or miss who you will be sitting with. They will literally seat you at the same table with
complete strangers due to limited seating as you slurp your tasty, noodles that
were just pulled from scratch. It's totally worth sitting next to complete strangers
for fresh hand pulled noodles.

CLASSICO Creamy Alfredo Sauce

I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate in the Foodbuzz  Tastemaker program
and to cook with Classico Creamy Alfredo Pasta Sauce.
It all started off by receiving a jar in the mail.

I decided to make some garlic butter sauteed shrimp with linguine in the Alfredo Sauce.
After I cleaned my fresh shrimp, I added a little butter into the pan and sauteed my shrimp
and sprinkled on some garlic salt. As the shrimp was cooking, I took some chives
and chopped them.

 

I added a sprinkle of salt and boiled my linguine in water. Once the linguine
was cooked, I strained the water (I didn't rinse the pasta with any water)
By not rinsing the pasta- it helps my sauce stick and cling on better to the pasta.
They pretty much become BFF. (best friends forever)
Lastly, I added the linguine, the creamy alfredo sauce and added the chives last.
I tossed everything together in the pan so the sauce would heat up and cook
and give the pasta pretty much no personal space anymore.

    

I added some garlic croutons as a garnish and to have instead of bread to cut back on carbs
that night. Although the sauce is "Light" it is sooo creamy and tasty.  It is obviously already
made for you to simply use- so I would highly recommend this Classico Sauce!

For more detailed info on the sauce please check out Classico Creamy Alfredo Sauce.

OO as in Oatmeal Overload

Who's selling oatmeal and what's the price?

McDonald's Oatmeal for $1.99.  Fries are good, but the oatmeal- hmmmm

Chick-Fil-A's Oatmeal for $2.49  Chick-Fil-A... good all around.

Jamba Juice's oatmeal for $3.25   smoothies are good too!

Starbucks' Oatmeal for $2.45  Pretty good with a Tall, Grande or Venti!

Cosi's Oatmeal for $2.99   oatmeal for breakfast, smores for dessert

Au Bon Pain's Oatmeal for $3.00  stop in before you catch your next flight

Breakfast Progression

Have you noticed breakfast is starting be served everywhere... almost everywhere.
The usual places that many of us are familiar with such as McDonalds,
Burger King (I like to refer to it as The BK Lounge) & Dunkin Donuts along with Wawa
and 7-11 are still serving our favorite breakfast sandwiches.

Did you know that Sonic, Chick-fil-A, Wendy's,  Arby's, Subway, Quiznos
and KFC all sell breakfast items now also?  Not only are most fast food chains selling
breakfast but many restaurants are serving breakfast all day. Eggs and hash browns
are making their way into more and more lunch menus as well. Hispanic type of foods are also
making their way into our breakfasts with burritos and even breakfast tacos.

There is even a 24 hour Dominos in Ohio that serves breakfast pizza. WHAT!
They don't deliver that early though. Could you imagine, the pizza delivery guy
delivering a breakfast pizza as the kids are grabbing their homework and stuffing
it into their back-packs. Kellogg's is even launching Fruit Pizza soon.

As far as drinks, in an effort to save some money, more and more adults are brewing
their own coffee at home but, more and more kids are drinking energy drinks during
breakfast time. I guess it's hard to win with everything.

Literally... Dinner & A Movie

Among many of the words or phrases that go hand in hand-

dinner & a movie is one of them.  

You know when you're planning to catch a flick and your food at the restaurant is taking

FOR-EVERR to come out and you keep looking at the time  to make sure you will

make the movie at least by the time the previews are running.

WELL...  if you don't know about it yet...  you can actually do dinner and a movie.

All at the same place.   You can do it at the MOVIE TAVERN. 

There are about 15 theaters so far but the closest one to me was the one in Collegeville.

140 Market Street  Collegeville, PA- in the Providence Town Shopping Center.

So you walk in, purchase your tickets and you can order a drink while you wait...
or you can  eat at a table.  We wanted the full experience so we decided to get
a drink and get in line. The movie Real Steal was to start at 9:30pm so at 9:00
they started to seat us.  You walk into a small and intimate theater and there
are really big and comfy seats with swinging table tops.

A server comes to you and takes your food and drink order from a pretty simple
but decent menu. American food mixed with a little flair.
We ordered fried pickles and the Game Day Platter.

The food overall was pretty good. The buffalo wings were quite tasty and the fries were good 

(could of used a little more bacon though) and the Mini Me burgers come from 1 regular
sized burger cut into 4 pieces...all were ok.  

The best of the night was the hot (temperature) deep fried pickles with chilled
ranch dressing. The overall experience was great.  The theater wasn't too busy
but being able to eat before and during the movie was pretty sweet.
You might think it would be distracting because the server comes in here and there but
after the first 5 minutes or so... it's no big deal! (there is also a button

that you can press that allows the servers you need them for something)

I would recommend The Movie Tavern!  I would also recommend watching Real Steel.

Chipotle Lime Guacamole Tacos

So, as I was saying the other week, I like to try to re-create food I've had in restaurants.
It's almost like a weird challenge.  So after seeing a Louie C.K. show a few weeks ago,
we hit up Chelsea Tavern in Wilmington, DE.  It was basically a midnight snack
of Pork Belly Tacos.  Here is a picture of the tacos from Chelsea Tavern.

Granted the picture is not the clearest picture and it was kind of late for a school night....
these pork belly tacos from Chelsea Tavern were really flavorful and yummy.
(It's amazing what the difference in a photo can be with and without turning the flash on!)
Below is my cultivated replica of pork  tacos I made inspired by these late night tacos!

I started with cutting my pork belly into smaller cube-like pieces. (Pork belly is a thick cut
of the famous.... BACON) I added a little spoonful of grated garlic, chipotle powder and cumin.
Cumin is the really odor-heavy spice but, makes food very earthy and gives good flavor.
I also added a heavy drizzle of Kraft BBQ sauce. I tend to spread out my spice or seasonings
next to each other so I can remind myself of what was already added.

To get the guacamole ready, I chopped a handful of cilantro, split an avocado in half and
diced a quarter of a medium sized red onion. I also added some chipotle powder and squeezed
the juice of half a lime.  (Guacamole is an avocado based dip that originated in Mexico.)

I took a spoon and smushed the avocado while squeezing the lime.
I decided to zest some lime to garnish my finished chipotle lime guacamole.

The pork belly sat in the bowl as I browned up a little bit of diced onion to give extra flavor
to the pork. I sizzled the pork in a pan turned on high to get a slight char on the meat.

I used a mandoline to slice some radishes. I added a splash of vinegar on the radishes
to make them less spicy. I guess at this point, I just wanted to take all the hand held
kitchen tools out. I took the scallion shredder out and shredded some scallions.

Oh, I started the night with roasting some garlic in the micro-oven on 350 for about
20 minutes with a drizzle of olive oil and sea-salt.  Everything turned out quite flavorful
and tasty, the only thing I will change next time is to cut the pork belly into even smaller pieces.

And that was Wednesday night.

Braised Short Ribs aka Kalbi Jjim

Making Kalbi Jjim which is also known as Korean Braised Short Ribs
was inspired by eating some that the famous Julia Lee made.

I bought short ribs from Trader Joe's that I first, put into a big bowl and filled it with water.

After letting them soak for about a half hour, I rinsed the water , cut little strips in the ribs
and boiled the short ribs in a pot for about an hour.  (I made cuts so the ribs would get
more tender as a large piece with cuts rather than one larger chunk.

As the beef boils, there will be lots of foamy stuff that you want to scoop out and toss out.
(You can save the rest of the liquid to use as a beef stock if you'd like)

As far as the sauce,  I started by grating an apple for the sweetener and the apple actually

tenderizes the meat as well...double duty- sweet!  I added about 1 cup of soy sauce, 

slightly less than  a cup of water (to lessen the saltiness of the soy sauce), 

about a 1/4 cup sesame oil, 

3 TBS of Splenda, 

1 large Yam cut up,

2 carrots cut into bite size pieces or baby carrots,

1 large onion cut into large chunks,

1/4 teas of black pepper

and lastly, 4-5 garlic (I grated them but you can add them whole as well)

These are the ribs after about 15 minutes or so....

After the first hour, you can see how the grated apples have caramelized.
This might be a good time to cook a pot of rice to eat with your Kalbi!

At about hour 2 is when I added the veggies. By putting a lid on the pot allows the veggies to get
tender and you'll notice there is a slight steamy effect going on in the pot.
After about 3-3.5 total hours, your Kalbi will be tender and full of juices and flavor.
If you really want it to practically fall off the rib bone- you can cook it for another hour.