Tripwolf Blog

Who doesn’t love dumplings?  They’re kind of like sex – even a bad dumpling is better than no dumpling at all.  But I’m used to equating dumplings with Chinese potstickers and Japanese gyoza, or maybe Polish pierogi when I’m feeling like a non-meat filling.  But it turns out things are a little more complicated than that.  After a day at the NYC Dumpling Festival that featured such unlikely contenders as Indian idli and Italian gnocchi, I was left wondering: what the hell is a dumpling?  Had my assumptions been mistaken this entire time?  After a few Google searches and a skim of Brian Yarvin’s book “A World of Dumplings,” I found out that dumplings are present in practically every world cuisine except for countries of Africa.  It makes sense – who wouldn’t want to stuff a piece of dough with some meat and see what happens?  But as it turns out, there’s not much of a set standard for what qualifies as a dumpling, and the forms these “dumplings” take can surprise and even shock.

As far as I can tell, there are the following families of dumplings:

The “Yeah, I know that’s a dumpling” Dumpling:

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We always have out-of-towners staying at our apt, and when they ask me the first thing they should do in NYC, I tell them to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and explore DUMBO afterward. But most out-of-towners have no idea what that means, so I usually end up drawing a little map with some highlights on it. It end up looking a lot like this one.

DUMBO is absolutely beautiful for just walking around, which is why I haven’t listed too many galleries or bars – meandering around, you’re inevitably going to find them all. You could also do this itinerary in reverse, starting out in DUMBO and then walking across the bridge at sunset for dinner in Chinatown. But to do DUMBO any justice, you really should go back for seconds and thirds.

See the featured trip and where to go!

Summer got off to a slow start this year, so I was hoping that it would linger all the way to Halloween.  Unfortunately, we were SOL even back in September – fall is definitely here, and I’ve actually had to dig out my scarf for several blustery evenings.  But on the bright side, cooler weather means that I can use my oven again, and apple pies always top the list of foods I’ve missed.  I was in the Berkshires this past weekend with friends, and apple pie was the perfect end to days spent relaxing in brisk autumnal air.

Though nothing may seem as American (as the saying goes), apple pies actually have a long, multicultural history.  Ancient Egyptians are credited with making the first flour-and-water pastry shells, but it was the Romans who went a step further and created the first pies – honey and goat cheese at first, with meat fillings prevailing over time.  As the Roman Empire proliferated throughout Europe, so did their pies, and it was in England that the apple pies we love today were first born.

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Hot dogs, hamburgers, sausages and beer are the standard for summer barbecues, and let’s just say that I went to quite a few barbecues this year and wasn’t shy around the grill or the keg.  Usually that is enough to make me check myself and start eating vegetables to balance things out, but between vacations and out-of-towners who wanted to try all of NYC’s best food (see “Bauernfruhstuck: Breakfast of Champions,” “Perfecting the Classic Crepe,” and “England: Good Food, Horrible Death”), this summer ended up being pretty relentless on the arteries.  Some people detox by doing a cleanse or an all-fruit diet, but I don’t have the willpower for that sort of thing.  So I turn to Vietnamese food.

Aside from being extraordinarily healthy, there seems to be three universal themes in Vietnamese cuisine: crunch, contrast and balance.  You’ll probably find yourself using uncooked lettuce leaves as a wrapper, or tossing julienned cucumbers and fragrant herbs with some noodles.  In fact, you’ll have fistfuls of herbs in every dish you’re eating, rather than the condiment-sized amounts that Western cuisines generally call for.  Salty fish sauce, the most widely-used ingredient, is reinvented again and again through unique flavor-combinations with sugar, chilies, oyster sauce, etc. — it’s this complexity that engages all of the taste buds.  But, more than anything, it’s the balancing act that pulls it together, the magician’s touch that ensures a mouthwatering combination of textures, flavors, and colors.  There’s no whining here – you’ll WANT to eat your vegetables.

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When the Great Plains were opened up in the mid-1800’s for settlement, millions of German immigrants pounced on the chance to stake their claim; nearly 150 years later, I was growing up in Chicago, surrounded by their German-American descendants and the potato salads, schnitzels, and beer that continued to be popular.  Over time, the hearty cuisine of Germany had become standard midwestern fare – you could find decent apple kuchens in any grocery store, and even as a little Asian girl, I knew an awful lot about wursts.  So German food induces quite a bit of nostalgia in me – when Ian and Nancy, two friends from Berlin who are visiting us for the week, offered to make hoppel poppel one morning, I immediately agreed.  I’d never heard of it, but it sounded cute.  Maybe it would be light as air, like popcorn.

It turns out that the cutesy hoppel poppel is pretty much the opposite of light as air – hoppel poppel is another name for bauernfrühstück, a gargley, mouthful of a beast that sounds about as daunting as the dish really is.  Translating into “farmer’s breakfast,” it was popularized by peasants in Bavaria who needed a big, solid breakfast to get them through a morning of hard labor.  Nancy emphasized that I could use whatever I wanted as ingredients – aging vegetables in the fridge that needed cooking, bacon, cheese, it was all fair game.  But in every bauernfrühstück, the vegetables, meat and even eggs are mere accessories; the potato is the real star.

Recipe follows:

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French food is pretty hot right now due to all the buzz surrounding “Julie and Julia,” and though I don’t know the first thing about boeuf bourgignon or duck en croute, I am a fanatical devourer of crepes.  Spinach, mushrooms, asparagus, artichokes – stuff I usually shy away from becomes as addictive as crack once they’re lovingly sandwiched in those little pancakes of happiness with some cream and butter.  A savory crepe followed by a sweet crepe of nutella or jam was truly one of the highlights of my travels through Paris and Montreal - but efforts to recreate them at home were mediocre at best.  They seemed so easy, yet the care-bear-fluffiness of authentic crepes kept eluding me and I was left with shamefully thick imposters that were fine, but nothing special.  So when Elodie, a French friend I’d met traveling who happens to be visiting me in NYC for the week, mentioned that she was an all-star crepe maker, I was ecstatic.  Crepes originated in Brittany, the region where she is from, and her stepmother’s recipe is the best ever.  Would we like her to make crepes for us one night?  Once I wiped the drool off my face, I managed to nod, uh, yes please.

Though there’s no question that the crepe is the most identifiable French dish outside of France, I had just assumed that crepes were French, through and through.  It turns out that I was wrong – though most can agree that crepes didn’t originate in France, no one can settle on much beyond that.  Some say that it is a traditional Celtic recipe, brought to Brittany when the Celts settled there to escape Anglo and Saxon persecution.  Others think that crepes are of Italian origin, introduced to France in the 5th century A.D. when Pope Gelasio had his cooks prepare the crepselle (an Italian cousin of the crepe) for visiting French pilgrims.  Still others believe that when the Crusaders introduced buckwheat from Asia Minor to Brittany in the 12th century, locals added water, cider and salt to the buckwheat flour to give rise to the first crepes.  Indeed, flour-and-water cakes such as the Ethiopian injera or the Indian dosa are staples the world over, and crepes were originally unfilled and instead used as a bread accompaniment to a meal.  But the famously rich butter and dairy of Brittany eventually found its way into the recipe, and combined with the best fruit, cheese and vegetables France had to offer, crepes as we know it today were born.

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I got back from the UK last week, and it was my most delicious trip there to date (see “England: Good Food, Horrible Death“).  When I first traveled around the UK in 2000, I actually lost weight because I couldn’t find much I wanted to eat, but this time around, I stuffed my face happily and had a list of food destinations that was too long to get through in one trip.  And we’re not just talking London – I gorged myself in Yorkshire and Wales, too.  I was curious to see what had caused such a dramatic turnaround in a relatively short time period, so I did a bit of research.  It turns out that British cuisine has been on a steady rise for a while now (admittedly, in 2000 I was a broke backpacker so that’s probably the last demographic to benefit from this food revolution), and canned meat and heavy sauces are slowly being edged out by Michelin-starred restaurants and an emphasis on fresh, local ingredients.

Food in Britain tends to be the butt of jokes the world over, with everyone maligning the boiled meat and drab vegetables they presume to still be the standard.  When a recent survey announced that chicken tikka masala was now Britain’s most popular dish, many foreigners sniggered – even British people don’t like their own food!  But once upon a time, Britain actually enjoyed a reputation for fantastic food.  Feasts were notorious for delicious pheasant and game, and the British weakness for cakes and puddings ensured that there was always something sweet to enjoy at the end of a meal.  Things changed with the age of the Industrial Revolution and its ensuing population boom.  Most growth centered in cities, but the infrastructure needed to sustain an urban food supply was practically nonexistent; at a time when London’s population had swelled to over a million, food was still being transported by horse-drawn barge.  Thus, the move away from the land rushed in the advent of canned and preserved foods that didn’t require refrigeration, not to mention a growing disconnect between people and the origins of their meals.

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I’ve been in London for about a week now, visiting various friends and family – since I’ve been here enough times to have seen all the touristy bits, I usually just focus on eating all my favorite foods, as many times as I can. So I’ve had the salted beef beigel at Brick Lane Beigel Bake 3 times now, and am planning a 2nd stop to Borough Market for the cheese sandwich that Ruth Reichl once called “the platonic ideal of a cheese sandwich.” But for those times when I can’t fit a food destination into my schedule, I just go eat at the nearest pub. Everything is still tasty so it’s a win-win situation.  Well, except for that heart attack I’ll inevitably have from all the fat I’ve been eating.

Such as the innocuously-titled Welsh Rarebit. There’s not much in the name that implies the orgy of cheese, butter and bread that it actually is, like some sort of amorphous monster out of a cult B-movie.  I can just see some guy in the Welsh countryside, trying to think up a new dish for his customers:

Dude we need something like the grilled cheese sandwich Amos makes down in Llanfairpwllgyngyll. How about if we triple – no, quadruple – the amount of cheese we’re using but melt it outside the bread instead of inside?  Genius!  Then it’s technically a casserole and not a sandwich!  And hey, since everyone likes bacon, why not dump that on there for sh-ts and giggles?  And let’s not forget the token slice of tomato and a sprig of parsley for some color. Read More »

For most of my life, Israeli cuisine was a mystery – I’d never been to Israel and though I’ve gone to Passover seders with my Jewish friends, I was pretty sure that Israelis weren’t eating matzoh ball soup and gefilte fish every single day. And despite my constant crowing that NYC has some of the best food in the world, I had never even heard of a single Israeli restaurant. I had visions of falafel, hummus, etc. swirling around in my head, but I thought, that can’t be right. Sure, Israel is in the Middle East but it’s not like Italian food is much like Dutch food. I still haven’t been to Israel, but now that I have spent close to 4 months in India, I have a pretty good sense of what is going on, and let me tell you, Israelis eat some of the most awesome food I’ve ever had.

If India seems like an unlikely place to find good Israeli food, you’re not far off – even a decade ago, some Indian establishments had signs up banning Israeli travelers. But these days, many Indian towns are hotspots for Israelis, the majority of whom have just finished their mandatory stint in the military, but there are also those who are just taking a break from their jobs or are on holiday with friends. As an Israeli backpacker once told me, though Israel has a population of about 7 million people, 1 million of them are out of the country at any given time. Whether that’s an exaggeration or not, Israelis and their delicious food could be found all over India, but especially in Goa, Havelock Island, Pushkar, and Kasol. I like to think that my fond memories of these places were because of the gorgeous landscapes and great company, but I have to wonder if the Israeli food I was devouring in embarrassing amounts also played a part.

So what is Israeli cuisine? Read More »

I’ve spent all of my 4th of July’s since undergrad on the east coast,
searching for the highest rooftop decks and the most capable grills so
that my friends and I can char some poor cuts of meat, drink cheap
beer, and generally celebrate our nation’s independence in true style.
This seems to be par for the course for the average New Yorker and
though I love the decadence of it all, I often find myself wistful for
the celebrations of my youth in Chicago. 4th of July was synonymous
with the Taste of Chicago, a week-long eating extravaganza featuring
booths from pretty much every restaurant in the city. No one thinks
to build up to the 4th in New York – all of our eating and drinking
efforts are saved for the day-of. But in Chicago, you have cochinita
pibil tacos on Monday, an Italian beef on Tuesday, and so on, until it
is July 4th. It’s not enough to kick the Brits out of the country -
we have to out-eat them too, and really be assholes about how much
better the food became after they left.

My favorite booth growing up was Kasia’s Pierogies. Since Chicago has
the largest Polish population in the world outside of Warsaw,
pierogies are pretty standard fare and in retrospect, I probably
should have been more adventurous. But there was something so
comforting about stuffing your face with cheese and mashed potatoes,
all cozy inside their dough-y blanket. Nothing beat standing in a
god-awful line, crammed in with sweaty Chicagoans, waiting in 90%
humidity for 4 little pierogies. Read More »