World to Table

Emily, Jeff and Youngsun

It’s almost been two years since I first moved to Queens, but I find that there is still so much to see and explore. Since most of my friends either live in Brooklyn or Manhattan, I’m usually biking across the Pulaski Bridge into Brooklyn or hopping on the subway to Manhattan; I really haven’t had much of a chance to explore my own borough. But this all changed when I began to prepare and plan for Asian Feastival. In the past few months, I’ve spent more time in Queens than ever before. As a result, I’ve gotten a chance to know more Queens people and Queens places, and I really love it.

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Gamelan rehearsal in action

The Javanese Gamelan group Kusuma Laras holds rehearsals at the Indonesian Consulate twice a week on Mondays and Wednesdays. Beginning at 5:30, members trickle into the basement of the Consulate, each taking their respective place in front of the majestic bronze instruments, sitting shoe-less and cross-legged while rhythmically beating to the numbered musical notations. An hour and a half later, a cooker of rice and tupperwares filled with aromatic Indonesian home cooking are placed on the table buffet-style, indicating that dinner has commenced.

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Braving the summer heat and crossing borough lines for the sake of some home cooked Indonesian food at the Masjid Al Hikmah bazaar, Talisa explores Queens cuisine and recaps our epic Indonesian eating adventure. - Veronica

Being a Greenpointer, I’m only a Pulaski bridge away from Queens: that mythical, magical place of delicious food that has somehow managed to evade my ever-growling stomach since I moved to New York almost five years go. Aside from a few bites here and there and some lovely home-cooked feasts courtesy of the Chan’s themselves in Long Island City, I’ve been without a proper introduction to Queens Cuisine—a source of distress for a grub-lover like myself.

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Shanghainese soup dumplings are a culinary phenomenon: a bite of pork and a spoonful of soup all within a neatly pleated wheat wrapper. You’re probably curious: how does the soup get in there? Over the years, I’ve come up with a fair share of outlandish theories – at one point I was convinced the dumplings were injected with a soup-filled syringe. But all my conspiracy theories were finally laid to rest two weeks ago when the high priestess of Nan Xiang Dumpling House, Chef Huang Jian Ping (黃建萍), came over to make soup dumplings from scratch. In anticipation for Asian Feastival, an epic culinary event in Queens on September 6th (check out asianfeastival.com for the complete rundown), we decided to test her off-site dumpling-making capabilities and invited some friends over to witness her pork and dough sorcery.

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Every morning you can find my mom upstairs, tending to our rooftop garden, fully equipped with garden gloves, a wide brimmed hat and a hose in hand. They say Mom knows best, so here she is, doling out gardening advice and talking about rooftop plant sex. -Veronica

Season One

To our delight, the rooftop garden last year was a meeting place for buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, vocal songbirds and, ahem, migrant workers – a colony of mail-order ladybugs that worked for food and board. Since we’re in a mid-rise building in Long Island City with plenty of sun, seasoned gardening experts assured us that bees and butterflies can still grace our plants. The bountiful abundance of vegetables — beans, tomatoes, peas, zucchinis, cucumbers, radish, lettuce, eggplants, pepper, green onion and a host of other experimental fruits and herbs — throughout May to October last year pretty much exceeded our expectations. We had enough not just to indulge in “flower pot to cooking pot” dining, but also to share with others. Our little baskets of fresh-cut garden produce became a great diplomatic gesture to reach out to our new neighbors in the community.

Peas, lettuce, tomatoes, bitter gourd

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Some people stuff turkeys. Others stuff peppers. Annie stuffs baby suckling pigs with 8 treasure rice. One of the most passionate people I know when it comes to cooking, Annie Leong is a cookbook author, avid home cook and a close friend to the Lin sisters (three sisters who are practically my aunts). What sets Annie apart is her dedication to create the PERFECT recipe — multiple baby pigs were sacrificed for the perfection of this dish, but trust me, they died for a worthy cause. Behold my encounter with the “Roast Suckling Pig Extraordinaire”!

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A few weeks ago, while I waited for Robyn and LeeAnne to arrive at the Underground Lobster Pound in Brooklyn (more informally known as Ben‘s apartment) Ben and I got to talking about food bloggers. More specifically, Ben asked me why an overwhelming majority of food bloggers are: A. Asian and B. Female. Before I could give him an adequate answer, I had to think about it long and hard. Fitting both those categories, I have often thought to myself, why do I love food so much?

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from Asia! I’ll be back in early January, jetlagged and 10 lbs heavier, with vivid details about my travels to Taipei, Hanoi, Hong Kong, Tokyo & Kyoto. See you in 2010!

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According to the Food Section, Italians are expected to eat 40 million panettone this holiday season. What is panettone? A holiday sweet bread originating from Milan dotted with dried fruit, usually rum raisins and bits of citron.

When the supermarket has red boxes of pre-packaged panettone stacked to the ceiling, it’s a strong indicator that the Holiday season is in full swing. Having heard tales of dry, stale and dense panettone, I’ve been hesitant to invest in some for myself. Luckily, my friend Gary, who works at Grandaisy Bakery, gifted me a loaf and I’ve been carving away at it like a turkey on Thanksgiving day.

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Wun•der•kam•mer (noun): 1. “wonder room” in German; 2. encyclopedic collections of types of objects whose categorical boundaries included natural history, geology, ethnography, archeology, religious or historical relics, works of art, and antiquities. Besides the most famous, best documented cabinets of rulers and aristocrats, members of the merchant class and early practitioners of science in Europe, formed collections that were precursors to museums.

Reinterpreting the original concept of the Wunderkammer, this new thread on World to Table is going to feature modern day (kitchen) cabinets of curiosities. It wasn’t until Talisa and I shared what we usually stock up in our respective kitchens, that I realized how different our pantries and cooking habits really were. Asparagus, couscous and ricotta are solid staples in her kitchen, while mine is almost never without an abundance of tomatoes, a loaf of Pullman bread, or a giant chunk of Parmesean. We’ll be exploring a wide range of cooking spaces — from the big to the small, from the sparse to the cluttered.

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