Gravy's Cooking Thread

Zapatta said:

I look for dirty shitholes with no white people for soups, they are usually making something very specific to their home village. I went to some chinese dump a couple days ago and ordered 'chicken noodle soup' it was rich, salty, fatty oil slick broth with half a fried chicken and unstuffed won ton floating in it. it was so good and I was farting chicken fat bubbles for hours.

Any place I can read the sign usually means its gonna be tame and suck.

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well it doesn't have to be dirty, but in coastal states i'd peace out when i see white ppl in an asian restaurant. But here in ks, pretty much a begger can't be no chooser.

Zapatta said:

the truest umami comes from the earthy flavors of dirty grease falling off of filthy ceiling tiles.

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dude a pound of msg is like 5bucks, you can have umami for days, sprinkle that on some mac n cheese.

Alex said:

I'm not a big pho fan (much prefer ramen) but there is this one spot in the Tenderloin that is fucking money. Nice and spicy.

Also, I used to think I knew good dim sum but then my Chinese-born friend told me all the places I liked were white people places. We went to her favorite spot and she rattled off the whole order in Cantonese. Fucking unreal. One of my favorite restaurants in SF now. But I'm intimidated to go by myself because I can't read the menu very well since the English menu is translated pretty poorly . I've only ever gone with her.

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Dude, when i went to sanfran the best food i had was in this crummy hole in the wall dim sum place
Dol Ho - Chinatown - San Francisco, CA

this place is for old ppl so it's cheap as fuck, fucking 1980's prices, but the dim sum is on point!

obviously with SO MANY dim sum places in san fran, you're gonna get wow'd by the prettier places or the more "touristy" places w/ all the annoying white ppl. This place ONLY HAS ASIAN GRANDPA AND ASIAN GRANDMA's

if you go here wait for the pork on rice


and just point n shit, they know what to do, just don't ask stupid white ppl questions like "what is that"???

Also today, i'm trying to broth up some pho! gonna do a 12hour broth (now, in time for lunch tomorrow)

TJT said:

Like if there were any white people or were just a few token white people who got drug there with their asian friends?

Hunan Bistro in Austin is my favorite actual Chinese place around. It is impossible to go to without a Chinese with you though. Menu isn't even in English and not a soul in there other than the 16 year old daughter cash register girl speaks English. Obviously they exclusively make a variety of very spicy Hunan dishes. I want to get a line on their roasted chili mix. But I think they make it themselves. I've since learned that the various roasted chili mixes are kept pretty close to the chest and the right chilis you can't buy in the USA easily a lot. Which is a bummer.

But that place is fucking delicious. Small location and always packed to the gills. Pretty much the best operation for an immigrant family to run.

I went to the American Chinese/Actual Chinese restaurant and tried the Cantonese Duck and Char Siu pork belly the other day btw. Good shit. Just have to get there at the right time. I think it had been sitting out for a number of hours when I got there.

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if white ppl are sitting and eating w/o chinese chaperones then it's shit. Of course this is a sliding scale, that would only be a good measure if it was a chinatown or hell a block w/ two asian stores. But as you move more "inland", as long as there is ONE asian eating at a table, it's gotta be ok.

Did you know, when my wife and i go to eat at an asian place, they ALWAYS try to seat us at the window. (they want white ppl walking and seeing real asians eating at the window)

I ain't your sideshow bitch!!!

Also its the internet age, when i yelp for asian restaurants (only use yelp, here's why). I only take into account the reviews that have a ching chong name w/ a squity eye'd selfie.

susan b. whitebread can go fuck herself giving me an asian restaurant review.

Yea, did you have lots of asians in line getting lunch? or was it dead? was the duck/char siu cut to order (as in still hanging on a hook) or was it just laid out, buffet style?

yea that's pretty legit, and clean as fuck for the white folk to view too, holy shit.

if you're into seafood, looks like they serve authentic walnut shrimp, their salt n pepper squid looks good too(if you order that eat it fresh, it's basically better asian calamari, yea i know coming from ny, it's sacrilege to say asian calimari is better, but in order to get banging goodfellas level calimari, you have to be awesome at frying, the reason why asian calamari will always be better is cuz it's fried super fast and hot in a wok).

It sounds like they make their own wontons, ppl said the dough is nice and thin, this is how you know it's pretty fresh. If you have doughy wontons (what you get in chinese takeout) that's frozen.

i know you have a ramen kick, you ever try shandon noodle soup? it's basically the sichan pho

if you wanna go w/ some good greens, Stir Fried Water Spinach with Fermented Tofu, looks good

that should be a good spattering of food to try out, i caution the walnut shrimp, it shouldn't be a main dish cuz it can be really creamy and really sweet.

I love these yelp reviews, if you read em, take my advice, the 4/5 stars are from ching chong names w/ slanty eyes. and the 1stars are from white ppl who complain about the poor service.

I'm basically illiterate, it was tough trying to goto chinese school from brooklyn to manhattan, and it was at night, so we just dropped it. Would i bother w/ reading and writing in chinese? naw you can get by asian american life without.

pho was a success using oxtail, i don't know if this is also cuz i started using the dutch oven to make my bone broths/chicken stock (i have notice the bone broths have tasted meatier). A lot of different ways to go about it, i went the easiest route. In the one dutch oven, I almost carmelized 1 onion, ginger root, then dumped in my seeds aromaticss(cinnamon stick/star anise/ fennel seeds) to activate the flavor, then dumped all the oxtails and started browning the meat(along w/ whatever "bone-in" chuck/steak bones i had raw i just froze). then 4 quarts of water 1/2 fish sauce to boil then simmer for 14+ hours.

i did not bother with any scum surfing or put the aromatics in a cloth bag, that was too much work and i wanted to make it almost set and forget after putting on low for 14hours.

after the 14hours i strained everything out w/ a metal colander, separated the broth into quart containers cooled off, then froze till "slushy" consistency, skimmed off all the fat that rose to the top (now that its solid) and done.

i had dried pho noodles, sliced up some ribeye etc and tested this bowl vs NongShim Pho Vietnamese Rice Noodle Soup(the pho place by me is on vacation till aug, and it's not even as good as this packaged bowl, which isn't bad)

Homemade pho handily won.

My takeaway so far doing more of these asian "stock" soups (viet tum yum/korean jap daishi stock) is that i've been doing everything in that lodge dutch oven, maybe it does retain a lot of heat and just helps w/ the "simmer" process idk, but i'm not gonna go back to my huge stainless steel stockpot now tho.