Category Archives: Contemplations on New York Life

Reading to escape the dregs of the work world

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Pretty much everything about work has been annoying me. Sometimes, I am sitting there doing work, wondering why no one is responding to me when something has been declared “urgent.” I have some difficult customers who seem to think they are the perfect customers and that nothing should change (you’ve really gotta love the growth mindset there). I also have some colleagues that have been really making work unpleasant, from the suck-ups to the full-blown gaslighting assholes. So in general, once I can sign off for the day the last two weeks, I’ve been pretty happy. It’s in these moments of frustration that I am so, so grateful that I am 100 percent remote, that I don’t have to go to an office every day and see people I generally dislike.

In the evenings once Kaia has gone to bed, I’ve been escaping the current annoying work world to read a book. This week, I finally started my much awaited (and very long – over 700 pages!) book by Abraham Verghese called The Covenant of Water; the book was released in 2023, and I immediately knew I wanted to read it because Verghese’s first and only other novel, Cutting for Stone, is likely one of my all-time favorite books. There is something really satisfying about setting aside the annoying world around you, as in, one’s reality, and just living inside a really well written and researched book with complex characters and interesting challenges. I read a lot as a child because frankly, it’s not like my parents gave me much else to do. But now as an adult, I read for fun, for education, and for another-world adventure. And I’m so happy that Kaia has still been embracing reading as she’s gotten older.

Tea preparation: the good vs. the bad

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On Friday during lunch time, I took a break from my coworking space to head over to Matcha Cafe Maiko, a matcha spot close to Kaia’s school that I’ve been meaning to try. I ordered their cold matcha latte with cheese foam. It was carefully whisked with perfectly measured out matcha powder. It was sweetened to 50 percent as I requested. And when I had my first sip, I was obsessed. Was it expensive at $7.62 (that includes tax)? Yes. But I could see the entire process of the drink being made meticulously, and I knew the quality of the ingredients were high. So while it’s an indulgent treat to pay this much for tea, it’s an occasional indulgence I like to have because I think it’s worth it.

Let’s contrast that with Poppy’s Cafe on Henry Street in Brooklyn, where we did our Saturday food crawl this weekend. We popped in there after we had lunch, and Chris suggested we get a hojicha to go. He ordered it and asked for some whole milk in it. Then less than two minutes later, the guy at the cash register says, “Your tea is ready!”

That’s odd, I thought in my head as Chris took the tea. How could it already be done so quickly? Chris took one sip of it as we left the small cafe and told me it tasted weak. I sipped it and felt annoyed immediately. “This wasn’t steeped properly!” I said to him. I took a peek inside the cup under the lid to see that it was a hojicha tea bag that was just steeped in water. They probably dripped in a little whole milk before the bag had the time to steep properly and didn’t really care; they just wanted us to get our drink and get out.

Tea from a good tea bag can still be good if it’s steeped properly and for the adequate amount of time. I almost exclusively only drink loose leaf tea now. The only exceptions to that are when I’m not at home, or if I’m having Dilmah tea bags or powdered tea (matcha or hojicha). But here, they clearly did not care and just added water to a to-go cup, dropped the tea bag in, added some hot water, clamped on the lid, and handed it over. I wasn’t necessarily expecting a hojicha latte made with hojicha powder (which wasn’t an option, and wasn’t what Chris ordered, anyway), but this was just a disrespect to tea and tea preparation in general. Tea is oftentimes misunderstood and thus not prepared properly by a lot of people, but in this case, you’d expect more from a semi trendy cafe on Henry Street in Brooklyn. Just for this, I’d be highly unlikely to patronize this spot ever again.

Manhattan Chinatown in the morning: when everything comes alive, and you tiao (油条) can be discovered made fresh

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I dropped Kaia off at school this morning since I had a 5pm work call that I couldn’t get out of, so Chris picked her up today. Since it’s technically mid-winter recess in New York City this week, kids who are opted in (and paying for) after-school hours can still attend school this week, just that the hours are slightly shorter. Drop-off this week is at 9am (instead of 8:30), and pickup can be no later than 5pm (it’s usually 6pm, but I usually try to pick up between 5-5:10).

Chris has said he prefers doing morning drop off and has gotten into a routine of it. When I have suggested in the past that he make use of that morning drop off time by buying some groceries and baked goods, he’s brushed it off, insisting he doesn’t have time and has a pseudo morning work schedule he has to adhere to. To be fair, he doesn’t really care to explore different shops in Chinatown the way I do, so it’s better that I do these things during the occasional times I do morning drop off. Like any decent sized Chinatown, the real life and energy of Manhattan Chinatown starts early in the morning, when all the produce and meats are getting delivered, when all the bakeries are churning out all their buns and breads and sweets fresh. The really good bakeries open as early as 8am; the shops tend to open around 9. This is the best time to come down here and buy all the freshly made staples for cooking Chinese food at home, such as freshly churned out and steaming hot rice noodles, fresh pressed tofu in endless forms, seitan, and soy milk. By the time I come between 4:30-5pm for school pickup, most of the best stuff has already sold out completely, or they’ve been sitting there, waiting to be purchased all day.

This morning, we arrived in Chinatown a bit early, so I decided to take Kaia into one of my favorite fresh food shops to pick up some things for cooking in the next week. This brought us to Kong Kee Food Corp, which is just a block over from her school. I discovered this spot maybe 10-ish years ago: they make fresh tofu and seitan in endless forms, as well as fresh rice noodles, herbal tea, and soy milk. They distribute to a lot of local supermarkets and restaurants. If you come early in the morning, they have stir fried noodles and rice noodle soup for breakfast that you can carry out. When we arrived, there were already some older ladies who were coming in to purchase breakfast noodles to go. A worker in the back was sitting at a table hand cutting noodles in bulk. Kaia curiously wandered around, looking at all the items in the glass cases and peering up at the female workers. She started giggling when one of them gave her attention; the woman behind the counter was so besotted by her that she took a package of fruit snacks and dangled them out as a gift for her. “So cute!” the woman kept exclaiming.

When I come in to Kong Kee, the items I get the most often are the pressed and five-spiced pressed tofu. I have also previously purchased and enjoyed their fresh rice noodles, which are cut thinly almost like pho noodles, thicker like ho fun/he fun (chow fun noodles), and also in huge sheets for large rice noodle rolls. I’ve also gotten their seitan and enjoyed it. This time, I purchased some seitan (kao fu), five spice pressed tofu as repeat buys. For new items to try, I finally got two sticks of you tiao (the Chinese donut crullers I wanted for jook at home), as morning is the best time to buy these sticks. I also chose a large container of their soy milk. They added some sugar at my request.

Well, according to the Shanghai saying, I already purchased two of the four warriors for Shanghainese breakfast – “四大金刚” Sìdà Jīngāng. The classic Shanghainese brekkie, heavy on the carbs of course, would be these four items: you tiao / Chinese donut stick, ci fan (pressed rice roll), shao bing (Shanghainese flat flaky sesame pancake), and fresh hot soy milk. I can’t wait to have my you tiao later! It’s the first time I’ve ever purchased these sticks whole anywhere in New York City!

When I look at whole long you tiao sticks in Chinese bakeries and food shops, I am reminded of the time shortly after my grandma passed when my mom made a big pot of jook. It was always a treat when we’d have jook at home and also have you tiao to dip into it. The textural contrast between the crisp chewiness of the you tiao against the soft creaminess of the jook was always so comforting and satisfying. My grandma would occasionally buy a bag of these freshly fried sticks from a local bakery, and when we’d have jook at the table, it would be a happy surprise when she’d lay out a plate of the you tiao, already neatly cut into bite sized pieces for us to dunk into our jook bowls. But it was always my grandma who bought them; we never knew what they were even called in Chinese then, and we didn’t know which bakeries to buy them from.

So one day, my mom was determined to resolve this issue. She said we would go out together searching and would find those donut sticks! My mom and I wandered around Clement Street (like San Francisco Richmond District’s mini Chinatown) and went bakery to bakery, peering in to see if anyone sold them. We used our broken Toisan to ask around, but we kept getting negative responses; none of these places made this donut stick. Finally, we got to a bakery off of 6th avenue that had them way in the back, in a big metal bin, all standing upright and tall, waiting to be purchased. We pointed passed the cashier guy and motioned towards the you tiao, and they got excited to have helped us solve our mystery of what it was that we were looking for. In Mandarin, you tiao are literally called “oil sticks/strips,” while in Cantonese, they are known as “oil fried ghosts” or yàuhjagwái. Since then, I’ve never forgotten the name of them. And since then, I’ve also learned that these delicious fried Chinese donut sticks are eaten not just with jook/congee, but also wrapped in fresh rice noodle rolls (a dim sum delight), tucked into Shanghainese shao bing pancakes, and simply ducked into hot soy milk and eaten.

Memories with food are usually the happiest memories from my childhood, but I don’t think that’s unique to me based on all the childhood stories I’ve heard over the years.

The fridge breaks down and gets hot!

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This morning as I was getting Kaia ready for school, I reached into the fridge to grab her some milk when I realized that it felt weirdly warm. The top shelf of the fridge was hot. The temperature reading on the fridge said it was 53 F. WHAT?

We called the handyman to come see what was wrong and ended up having to completely empty out the fridge and the freezer. They had to be completely replaced, so they gave us a spare fridge sitting in the basement of the building. Some collateral damage happened along the way, too: the handyman and porter lost grip of the (extremely heavy) fridge facade glass door, and the corner of the door fell onto the bamboo floor boards. This resulted in a huge hole in the middle of our kitchen floor, which they said they’d replace and fix tomorrow.

So I ended up having to spend time cleaning all the bottoms of jars and containers in the fridge and then spraying and wiping down the new parts of the replacement fridge we were given. It was annoying, but luckily, all our perishable goods still have a place to go into and won’t go bad.

It’s in these moments when I realize that the premium we pay to live in our building actually does have a lot of value to us. In these times, we immediately get help and replacements, and it’s just included in the high rent we pay. And that’s a pretty darn good thing to have.

The worst cooking class I’ve ever been to

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For Christmas, Chris gifted me a South African cooking class at a cooking school in the Lower East Side. I attended the class on Saturday night, and unexpectedly didn’t arrive home until midnight. When he asked me how the class was the next morning, I told him that while I love him, to please never, ever get me another cooking class at this school ever again.

The class was over capacity, lacked a proper kitchen setup, was cramped and borderline claustrophobic (22 students, two teachers, a bartender, two photographers, and an assistant in a tiny basement room), completely lacked instruction or teaching of any technique or background of any recipe, was disorganized in that the ingredients were not laid out well or explained; the class started over 35 min late. 

For some details on what happened in this class: 

1. The class was over capacity in a cramped, tight space that is certainly not meant for a cooking class: The class was in a small room in Abigail’s Kitchen’s (a restaurant) basement. It had a bar setting, so I’d imagine the room is usually used for small private parties. The class was basically in this small room with several long tables set up where class participants were meant to gather, eight at each table. They somehow managed to cram 22 people (there were 24 people who originally signed up, and 2 didn’t show) into this tiny space. Abby and Lorna (the guest chef/teacher who is from South Africa) kept emphasizing over and over that the class would be “cozy.” “Cozy” is simply real-estate code-speak for a crammed and extremely tight space. 

2. No instruction or technique was taught. We were told the names of dishes, but not their cultural significance or any special techniques on how to make them. We were simply told to follow the recipe, and the chefs would walk around, observe, and give feedback. Copies of recipes were not distributed. Instead, each table got the equivalent of 2-3 parts of the different recipes. We all had to look over each other’s shoulders just to see how much of a single ingredient to measure out. In my pair (I randomly paired up with someone standing next to me), we worked on the yeasted dough for the South African donuts. Lorna kept telling us that the dough was too dry, while Abby told us it was just right. We had no direction on the recipe card and conflicting messages from both of them about what the dough should be like. 

3. There’s no kitchen setup here, and ingredients/materials were disorganized. The space had some makeshift stove setups and random kitchen items laid out. You aren’t able to see the items go into the oven and be taken out as a result. You aren’t able to do a part of every recipe, either. Because I worked on the yeasted donut dough, I had a LOT of time where I was simply observing other students try to figure out their recipes and how to execute on them. When I needed something basic like black pepper, I had to hunt for it. When I asked Abby, she simply responded that it was where “all the other spices” were laid out, but this actually wasn’t the case. 

4. The class does not start on time AT ALL, and it ends LATE. The official start time is 7pm. Most cooking schools are prompt and start on the dot. This cooking class started at 7:35pm. We didn’t get served dinner until 10:15, and dessert did not come out until past 11. We were all starving. 

The one highlight of this class: unlike every other cooking class I’ve ever done, alcohol (beer and wine) were included and unlimited. This is pretty unheard of. So, it was no wonder that people were getting sloshed in this class. My donut yeast dough partner was already on his fourth beer before we started mixing our dough. People were visibly tipsy. I’m pretty certain repeat students of Abigail’s Kitchen come simply for the wine overflowing. 

There are a number of great cooking schools with proper cooking school setups throughout Manhattan, along with real instruction and background on recipe given. This is not one of them. Here, you won’t learn technique or any new skills. But, you will leave with lots of alcohol in your belly. That may be a fun night out with some food and lots of booze, but that doesn’t really make for a proper “cooking class” where you actually leave and can say you really learned something.

Cooking with chayote, aka choko aka su su

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For the longest time, I’d walk into Asian and Latin supermarkets and notice this slightly wrinkly, green pear-shaped vegetable that I had no idea what to do with. It kind of looks like a gourd, maybe a squash, and potentially like a not so pretty fruit. In markets, they’d be labeled as “chayote,” so it sounded like it came from Mexico or another part of Latin America. Based on what I’ve read, chayote, also known as choko or “su su” in Vietnamese, origins in southern Mexico and Honduras, and is technically a vegetable in the gourd family. It’s used the same way summer squash is used; it’s lightly cooked to retain a slightly crisp but soft consistency. The gourd is high in fiber and also contains folate, magnesium, and vitamin C. It’s also supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties and be good for gut health.

I got inspired to buy and cook with it after Chris got me a copy of Thanh Truong’s (aka the Fruit Nerd!) book called Don’t Buy Fruit and Veg Without Me! The Fruit Nerd is Vietnamese Australian, and his book has a number of family recipes that have a Vietnamese twist. One of them is stir-fried choko, which is simply chayote sliced up and stir-fried with some garlic, shallots, and a bit of fish sauce. I bought these from Hong Kong Supermarket on Friday and stir-fried them today with Kaia. And I actually enjoyed them! It’s sort of like a cross between a cucumber and a summer squash, with a hint of sweetness similar to an apple. It’s a nice, versatile vegetable to add into our rotation and increase the diversity of plants being added to our diet. I just wish I had discovered this vegetable sooner!

Baby shower at Monday at 8am?

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I went down to the gym at around 8am today for my usual weekday morning workout after Chris took Kaia to school. Our gym is on the third floor, which is also where the resident lounge is where parties can be hosted, as well as the children’s play room and laundry room. I was surprised to see a “Private Party” sign on the lounge doors so early in the morning. Inside through the glass, I could see a crowd of at least 15 people, a mix of men and women. There was a table full of what was clearly baby gifts. Several large bundles of balloons filled with helium decorated the middle of the lounge. Everyone was dressed up and chatting away.

I understand when people throw parties or or events at non-peak times. I get it when people host birthday parties or weddings or bridal showers on Fridays or Sundays versus Saturdays, as Saturday always has peak pricing since it’s the highest in demand. To be clear, we had our wedding welcome dinner on a Thursday night, and then we had our wedding on a Friday; we definitely got some discounts for having a Friday wedding vs. a Saturday wedding. But Monday… at 8am, really? Who wants to be anywhere at 8am on a Monday morning, the first day of the work week? And is it really this many people who are taking time off of work for this one person’s baby shower?

Lunar New Year’s lunch party – lots of food, and lots of people at our place today

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Chris used to have this arbitrary “six person maximum” policy when we would host friends over for meals in the past. I decided to do away with this and basically invited all my friends I could think of to our Lunar New Year party today. I invited 14 people to our place today; two were out of town, one had a baby shower, and one had to work, so in the end, we had 10 guests plus the three of us. This is the most number of people we’ve ever had in our place at a single time.

“It’s going to be a zoo!” Chris grumbled the night before.

This was what I made and served:

Starters:

Luo bo gao – Pan-fried Chinese turnip cake slices

Goi cuon – Garlic shrimp summer rolls with Vietnamese herbs, dipped in nuoc cham

Nem nuong cuon – Nha Trang-style pork paste sausage summer rolls with Vietnamese herbs, dipped in peanut-hoisin sauce

Mains:

Burmese tea leaf salad

Thit kho – Vietnamese braised pork ribs and eggs in coconut water, with a side of pickled carrot and daikon

Chinese whole steamed black sea bass with fermented black beans and garlic

Nuo mi fan – Chinese sticky rice

Yi mian – Longevity noodles with carrot, bell peppers, chives, and king oyster/shiitake mushrooms

Stir-fried garlicky gai lan

Desserts:

Hei zhi ma tang yuan – Glutinous rice balls filled with sweet black sesame served in a brown sugar-ginger soup

Black sesame-swirled ube nian gao / Chinese New Year sticky rice cake

Chinese almond cookies

Other than the cha siu in the sticky rice, I made everything myself, from scratch. It was an endeavor, but I loved every minute of it!

It was boisterous, chaotic, loud, and lots of fun with lots of food, people, and laughter. Kaia had her little friend over to play and run around with. Everyone had plenty of savory and sweet food. I was shocked repeatedly when I found out how much people enjoyed dishes like my black sesame tang yuan; even people like my friend’s husband, who usually scoffs at Asian sweets for being “not too sweet” (“Desserts are supposed to be ‘too sweet’; it’s DESSERT!” he exclaimed). I had people who either don’t eat dessert or don’t eat Asian desserts ask for seconds and even thirds. In the end, I had to boil a second batch of tang yuan! I thought I’d have a ton of frozen tang yuan left over, but I actually only have about six or seven left.

I love preparing food for my people. I spent the last week cooking and preparing food for this. I devised my menu about a month ago with my list of ingredients and action plan. And I loved hearing the comments people made, which included:

“This shit is terrible (referring to my black sesame tang yuan), but if you have more of this shit, can I have some more, please?”

“I don’t normally like desserts, but these (black sesame tang yuan) are incredible. Can I have some more? (Then, when asked how many more): “How many more do you have ready?”

“This sticky rice is so good. It’s like being at dim sum, but even better because yours is packed with all the good stuff!”

“These almond cookies are so addictive! Could you share the recipe?”

“The sea bass was so good! It tasted like the steamed fish I had with black beans in Flushing when I went!”

“I just couldn’t stop eating! I can’t even decide what I liked best!”

“If I ate any more, I definitely would have regretted it. It was like being at a restaurant!”

It was a smart move to get disposable paper plates; it made cleanup so much easier. At the end of the night, the dishwasher was mostly filled with utensils, small serving bowls, and glasses. Now, I’m wondering when the next time will be when I can host another meal at home…

Using the Chinese butcher at my usual Asian supermarket

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I’m not sure why in previous years I never really considered using the butchers at Hong Kong Supermarket. I had previously purchased meat from Asian markets in Elmhurst Chinatown and Flushing, but I’ve probably only done it in Manhattan Chinatown once or twice ever. Every year around Lunar New Year the last number of years, I’ve gotten into experimenting more with Vietnamese Tet Lunar New Year dishes, as I never grew up with them and only had Chinese dishes for the New Year. One dish that I’ve really loved and that Chris, Kaia, and every friend I’ve introduced this to has loved has been thit kho, or Vietnamese braised pork ribs with eggs. It’s delicious for a number of reasons: it’s rich and comforting because of the pork. It’s traditionally made with pork belly, but because our family loves meat on the bone, and ribs are frankly leaner than belly (when we have pork belly, we prefer it crispy), in the last several years, I’ve made it with pork ribs. It has this really deep sweet-savoriness from the pairing of fish sauce with 1) caramelized sugar syrup and 2) coconut water and its pulp. And once you throw in the copious amounts of browned garlic and onions, plus some whole hard boiled eggs for braising, it’s like comfort in a bowl.

The last couple years when I’ve made this dish, I either used large pork ribs from Butcher Box or Whole Foods. The issue with Butcher Box is that they send you a full rack, but there’s no way to customize how you want the ribs cut. Clearly, I don’t have the tools for cutting through a rib bone at home, so that’s out. At Whole Foods, you can ask them to cut a rack of ribs through the bone once maximum, and then, you’re on your own. You want the ribs all separated? Well, you can do that yourself at home! Ideally, I want the pork ribs to be cut bite sized the way they are in Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants; that means they need to be cut through the bone several times. That’s a lot of labor and equipment on the butcher’s part, and most places won’t do this for you. So when I went to the meat counter at Hong Kong Supermarket, my regular spot in Manhattan Chinatown, they already had what they call “jin sha gu” (literally, in Chinese, this means “gold sand bone”), racks of ribs that were only about 2 inches thick. This was perfect. I asked the butcher if he could cut between the bones so that the pieces were 1-2 inches, and he immediately agreed, measured out the four pounds I requested, and went to work. No fuss, no objections. He already had a rack that was close to what I wanted, and then he further customized it so that it would be ready for me to literally just throw into my pot for cooking. When you go to an Asian butcher, there’s an understanding of what you want and why; there’s no reason to explain what you are trying to do.

I’m definitely going back to buy more meat in the future now. I’m just regretting it took me this long to “discover” them as an option even though I frequent this market at least 1-2 times per week.

Kaia’s first hong bao (red envelope) from a non-family/non-friend person

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At school pickup today, Kaia and I went down the stairs into the building lobby to exit. As usual, the friendly older Chinese male doorman was there. Since the beginning, he’s always been really friendly with Chris, Kaia, and me. At pickup, we always make sure to greet him and have Kaia give him a high-five (or “pai shou!” in Chinese). We call him “Ah Gong,” which is a friendly and polite way of greeting someone who is of grandpa-age in Chinese. Kaia is always excited to see him and say hi. We always give him a high-five, then say thank you and goodbye or “see you tomorrow” in Chinese. Ah Gong always says that Kaia is so cute, so smart, and so “guai guai” (well behaved, obedient).

Today, I lifted her up to give him a high-five, then I asked her to wish him “xin nian kuai le! gong xi fa cai!” given the Lunar New Year has already come. Kaia first said it very quietly. Then, when I told her to say it louder, she shouted it! And Ah Gong got SO excited! He started laughing and exclaiming how proud he was that she knew how to wish him a happy Chinese New Year in Chinese. Then out of nowhere, he puts his hand into his inside chest pocket, which had a wad of sealed hong bao, and immediately handed her one. He wished her a happy and prosperous Lunar New Year in Chinese and told her to study (haha) and continue being “guai guai.” Kaia thanked him in Chinese, gave him a hug, and we went on our way.

On the train, I let her open the hong bao. Inside the hong bao was a very crisp, brand new five-dollar note (in case you aren’t aware, notes placed in hong bao must be brand new and crisp. Banks in areas with large Asian populations know this, and so they always have lots of crisp bills ready during the Lunar New Year period). Wow, I thought. We have no real family or friend relation other than the fact that he works as a doorman at the building where Kaia happens goes to school, and he was so generous to give her $5?! When he handed it to her, I figured he would give her a crisp one-dollar note as a cute gesture. But I was surprised. As Blanche DuBois once said, ‘I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” This line can be applied to so many instances of our lives, and this is definitely one of them. For every total dud, intentionally rude and obtuse, ill-intentioned person out there, there are, in fact, at least eight or nine really well-intentioned, kind individuals to even it all out.