I Found My Happy Place At Flushing’s Food Courts

Oh, hello there. It’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog, I know. It’s been since August, you say? Seems like time has been going by very quickly. In truth I’ve been very busy at work, and I’ve been feeling a bit overwhelmed. Lucky for me I recently took a few trips to the Chinese food courts in Flushing, where I got some really amazing food. Here’s the best of what I had during my recent trips. At the Golden Shopping Mall, a warren of narrow stalls with almost no English menus, I got the bowl of food you see above from what I think is the Chengdu Heaven stall. I got two different dishes — cold strips of cooked potato, seasoned with vinegar and chilies, and a seaweed salad dressed with vinegar and sesame oil.

Park Slope Chicken

So Chinese New Year is finally upon us. The year of the horse begins Friday 1/31 and my friend and I decided to host a Chinese New Year dinner. I’ve been thinking about what to cook and stuff. Trying to plan a meal that will be reasonably priced yet feeds 12 adults is hard.

But while planning this dinner, I thought about Peking duck. Duck is expensive so I thought, why not chicken instead? So I came up with this great idea of using chicken skin instead of duck skin and called it PARK SLOPE CHICKEN (well cause I live in Park Slope)! And then I can use the meat for the three cup chicken dish. Done! This weekend I decided to try it first and it came out pretty good. I had wanted to use 5 spice on the skin but I totally forgot to buy it at the store. So this version is just plain old salt and pepper. And it was super simple to make the cracklings, stick it in the oven for 40mins and it came out perfect.

So check out this recipe…

Cold Salads At Spicy & Tasty

I know, I’ve written about how much I love Spicy & Tasty before. On a recent visit with my friends Jeff and Eva, that love was cemented with a variety of their cold salads. As my friend Jeff said, ordering salads at a Chinese restaurant might seem strange, but at Spicy & Tasty it’s the way to go. Above is the eggplant in garlic sauce; cold, silky eggplant in a sweet and spicy sauce. Cold eggplant? It works, trust me. The bamboo shoots were excellent as always, as was the dry bean curd with celery. Chewy strips of baked tofu with crunchy strips of Chinese celery, tossed with a sauce that contains the floral aroma and numbing power of Sichuan peppercorns.

Spicy & Tasty — 39-07 Prince St, Flushing

Lunch At Han Dynasty In NYC

So a lot of people have been writing about Han Dynasty, the beloved Philadelphia Chinese food empire that has made its way here to NYC. I stopped by for lunch on a recent weekday, to see if it was worth all the hype. I ordered two of my favorite dishes: spicy crispy cucumbers and ma po tofu (minus the pork). They were both excellent, and wonderfully spicy. The cucumbers were crisp as advertised, and drenched in a garlicky spicy oil. The spice of the cucumbers was different from, and complimentary to, the spiciness of the ma po tofu. In addition to chili oil was a ton of mouth-numbing Sichuan peppercorns. It was not quite as flavorful as my current favorite ma po tofu, but it was still quite good. I think Han Dynasty is a great addition to the East Village scene, and I’m looking forward to going back.

Han Dynasty — 90 3rd Ave