Homemade Pok Pok Dinner, Take 1

I remember my first and only experience eating at Pok Pok in Brooklyn. It was a pleasant departure from the modern, house music-playing Thai restaurants in NYC. Portland Chef Andy Ricker of Pok Pok cooks really flavorful and extremely spicy dishes not typically found on Thai menus, so when he published his Pok Pok cookbook last year, I couldn't wait to try some of the recipes at home.

I documented our Pok Pok NY dinner destruction on November 23, 2012

My friend Katie, who writes an awesome food blog, also bought the Pok Pok cookbook so we decided to cook our first recipes from the book together. We selected three of the simpler recipes that didn't require too much advance preparation:

• Isaan-Style Forest Mushroom Salad (Het Paa Naam Tok)
• Stir-fried Chicken with Hot Basil (Kai Kaphrao Khai Dao)
• Sticky Rice with Mango and Salty-Sweet Coconut Cream (Khao Niaw Mamuang)

The only ingredient I had to prepare the day before was the toasted sticky rice powder (Khao Khua) for the salad, which took four hours to toast. We were able to purchase majority of the ingredients from Bangkok Center Grocery in Chinatown and a regular supermarket; however, we had major issues finding hot or holy Thai basil, to the point, we ended up buying Thai basil off a Thai restaurant in Williamsburg.

Chopping the fresh vegetables and chilies was most of the work, as the cooking time was very quick.

Upon Katie's discretion, we cut the amount of fresh and dried thai chilies in the stir fry by half, and it was still really, really mouth numbingly spicy.

My roommate and resident bartender Ben made a Malaysian-inspired cocktail, Teh C Pang, which has layered palm sugar, tea and rum.

WE GOT BASIL! Sean and Peter skated to the only Thai restaurant (of the three in our neighborhood) that agreed to sell us basil.

With the exception of my undercooked sticky rice in the dessert, I think our first Pok Pok attempt was a success. Next time, I'm trying the Vietnamese Fish-Sauce Wings!

When My Brothers Come to Town

Last weekend, Zack and his girlfriend Mariah traveled from Boston and Zadrian from Hawaii to visit me. Being the eldest, it's tough for me to live so far from my siblings, so when they do visit, I go into crazy-older-sister-mode making sure it's a fun time. One of my brothers is vegetarian and the other is underage, so the combination always leads to some interesting adventures outside of my typical routine. If only Zoe was also here, the Huang clan would be complete. Nonetheless, spending time with Zack and Zadrian was a nice break from the usual grind. 

Just some of what we did:

1. Homemade dinner of Dumac & Cheese, Fried Okra, Avocado-massaged Kale Salad and Mussels

2. Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum

3. Frozen Yogurt from Culture in Park Slope

4. The hippest pizza at Roberta's in Bushwick

Weekend Walk Around Williamsburg

The Brooklyn Art Library, the Best Way to Spend a Day Off in Williamsburg

My 15 year-old brother Zadrian visited me all the way from Hawaii this weekend, so I took Monday off to spend time with him and celebrate my birthday. I struggled to think of things to do that would interest him in the neighborhood, so I suggested we taste chocolate at Mast Brothers on North 3rd mainly because I was craving chocolate. After Mast Brothers, we stumbled on The Brooklyn Art Library just a few stores down. I remember walking in here a few years back when they only had a small 3 ft high shelf and now the walls of the room are lined with sketchbooks.

The library is simple, you sign up for a library card (your name, email and phone number) and then you use their online catalog to browse for sketchbooks by interest, profession, location, color, mood, etc. The "librarian" (read: tight jeans, henley shirt, facial hair) will then bring you two sketchbooks at a time. Most of the fun is not knowing who's sketchbook you are going to get, and each sketchbook is inspiring in its own unique way.

My favorite sketchbook was by local Illustrator Greg Kletsel (see below). Anyone can participate by buying a sketchbook that cost $25--I assume part of the cost goes to maintaining the library--or $60 if you want them to digitize it, and submit it to the The Sketchbook Project, which to-date has close to 28,000 artists' sketchbooks.

I ended up buying myself a sketchbook to fill and a Pattern Box of postcards by 10 contemporary female pattern designers curated by the Textile Arts Center in New York. I've been super interested in pattern making and am currently taking Joshua Davis' Skillshare class on Generative Art, so hopefully I'll have some work to fill into my sketchbook!

The Most Epic Oscar Dinner Party, Two Months Later

I have been slacking on the blogging front and thought I'd make it up with overdue photos from probably the best themed dinner party my friends and I have thrown (and you know it's tough to beat the homemade pizza or meatball party)--the OSCAR BEST PICTURE THEMED DINNER POTLUCK!

The dinner brief: Come with a dish inspired by any of the following 2013 Oscar best picture nominees
Amour
Argo
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

But what this actually means is: bring something you want to eat and we'll figure out the correlation to one of the Best Picture nominees. We ended up with a diverse 10-course meal that would have made Wolfgang Puck jealous. Everything was delicious and surprisingly we made every dish work with a movie. Enough talking, here's the pics:

Silver Linings Playbook "Raisin Bran" 

Smitten Kitchen's Balsamic and Beer-braised Short Ribs with Parsnip Puree

Django Unchained 

Fried Chicken & (Eggo) Waffles

Argo

Tony Mendez's Secret Guac

Lincoln Logs

Homemade Hummus, Baba Ghanoush and Veggies

Zero Dark Thirty 

30 White Stuffed Mushrooms

 

Life of Pi

Vegetation Island Brussel Salad

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Hush Puppies

Django Unchained

Violently Delicious Mac and Cheese

Amour Red Velvet Cupcakes and, of course, Life of Pies

Result? Food coma lasting as long as the awards show itself.

My film expert friend Jason deserves all the credit for coming up with this theme two years ago and I'm glad we finally executed. Can't wait for next year!