Pretzels

We made pretzels!
Here they are prior to cooking. We had a lot of trouble getting them not to fall apart when we stretched them out.

Here’s the recipe (makes 4 pretzels):

  • 240g (1 cup) milk
  • 3g (1 tsp) yeast
  • 32g (1/6 cup) sugar
  • 28g (2T) butter
  • 6g (1 tsp) salt
  • 370g flour

Heat the milk, butter, and sugar in the microwave until warm (~1.5 min), and mix until butter is melted and sugar is dissolved. Let it cool to 95F (important so that the yeast doesn’t die), then add the yeast. Mix the dry ingredients and then add the wet ingredients. Knead. Let the dough rise for an hour. Divide the dough into four. Roll each into a rope about ~36in long (this was really hard) and attempt to make it into a pretzel.

Boil 4.5 cups (1080g) of water and add 60g (1/4 cup) of baking soda. Boil each pretzel for 20 seconds. Sprinkle pretzels with coarse salt.

Bake for 8 min at 450F.

If you do this, hopefully your pretzels will turn out better than ours. We skipped the baking soda bath (and instead just brushed baking soda water on them) and it didn’t turn out quite right. I think it’s probably important. Good luck.

New York: A Dash of Dashi

Friend J, N, and I went to the Japan Society to learn the secrets of making dashi.

N asked the presenter where to buy high quality bonito for making dashi. Turns out that the secret supplier is Amazon.

They gave us sample of three types of dashi: kelp, bonito, and mushroom. Only the bonito one tasted like anything to me. Some salt would have been nice.

The Japan Society seemed pretty nice. They offer Japanese classes there too!

HiroNori Craft Ramen

Went to HiroNori Craft Ramen in Santa Clara. It had 4.5 stars on Yelp so I was obligated to go.

Yelp reservation only. Worked out pretty well, and it was a better experience than waiting in line for 2 hours at Ramen Nagi. Although I do like waiting in lines…

The menu.

Tonkotsu ramen. It was pretty good! Would recommend. For first timers they give you the “garlic black oil” (you can see it in the picture below), a $1 value, for free. The garlic oil was quite good and I’ll probably order it next time, so I guess their advertising scheme worked.

Chicken karaage. Also quite good! It came with some sauce that was also very good. The aforementioned black garlic oil is in the upper left.

Overall I’d say it was solidly solid. I think I like the ramen and the customization options at Ramen Nagi a bit better, but HiroNori compares quite favorably (with no waiting in line). And the chicken karaage was really good, which Ramen Nagi doesn’t offer. I’ll be back.

Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao (Flushing)

Friend J (not pictured) took us to Kung Fu Xiao Long Bao in Flushing, it was pretty good!

The titular Xiao Long Bao.

Shanghai Pan Fried Noodles.

Mapo tofu.

Scallion pancake with sliced beef. This one was really amazing!

Sweet soy milk. I really liked it, although N and friend J didn’t seem to agree. I’d come back just for this.

Lotus leaf sticky rice. Unfortunately it seems like the restaurant forgot we ordered this one, and when we asked about it they rushed it out while it was still frozen. But we took it back and had it for breakfast later. Still pretty good.

NYC+Boston Trip

N and I had an exciting trip to New York and Boston just recently. I flew in from the Bay Area and N took the train from Pittsburgh. Friend J very generously let us stay at his place in New York (thanks Friend J!).

I’ll try to post pictures about the places we visited over the next few {insert unit of time here}.

To start, here’s some photos from SFO.

I flew JetBlue this time around and got to see the international terminal at SFO. Turns out there a newly opened (in 2019) food court area with a sampling of hot SF restaurant destinations.

Kamin is a spin off of Kin Khao, a popular Thai place in SF (1802 reviews, 4 stars, wow). I was going to eat here, but unfortunately they closed while I was being indecisive about ordering.

Instead I got a pork bowl from Tacos Cala (a spin-off of Cala), which was pretty good!

There’s also a Tartine here (I’m sure you spotted it in the first picture). And the line is a lot shorter than in the Mission District.

Wow, look at those affordable prices. Only $8.29 for a matcha latte! (but don’t forget the oat milk)

Superhot

Went to Superhot this weekend with Friend A (pictured) and Friend B (not pictured).

It’s a new hotpot+kbbq+dimsum restaurant that just opened in Downtown Mountain View. The restaurant concept was carefully crafted for maximum popularity. The first time I tried to go, there was a really long (2+ hour) wait. This time we arrived at 11:30am to avoid the wait.

$30 all you can eat in 90 minutes. Max 10 items ordered at a time. The waiter only comes once every 30 minutes unless you flail around excessively. Strategize accordingly.

100 items to choose from. Friend A really liked the unlimited dumplings.

Chinese fried donut.

Xiao long bao. Unlimited xiao long bao.

Friend A got tripe and pork blood. I’m not such a fan but he liked it.

Premium steak. Looks pretty premium.