K-Town, Etc.

Anyone who knows me would gladly attest to the following: I am not a nice/forgiving/happy/generous/enjoyable-to-be-around human being when I am hungry. This is just fact. I get grumpy. I get hypoglycemic. I swear to whomever I'm with that I'm just going to die. I could substantiate this with a thousand vignettes from childhood and beyond, but I'll leave it up to the imagination of my readers.

Now, on Friday afternoon, I ended up in Manhattan, walking up 6th Avenue, where you ain't bound to find anything worth buying, unless you're really into plastic beads or fresh flowers. This includes anything remotely ingestible. It's a culinary wasteland. I was starting to get my familiar hypoglycemic hand shake, and became immediately convinced that if I did not stop for food RIGHT NOW, I would... well, you get the picture.

My companion did not much care for my theatrics and kept telling me to pick a place, but what was there to pick? A corner bodega? A McDonald's? None of this jived with my "local foods" or "homemade" mantra that I've been espousing since August.

Inevitably, we ended up on 32nd Street, home to Korea Town, commonly referred to by drunks and foodies as K-Town. We were reminded of a place recommended to us by a friend of mine a few months ago, but before we made it I saw signs for Pho32 & Shabu and decided that we need walk no farther: Pho it was.

Pho32 & Shabu specializes in two things: pho (duh), and shabu shabu. Pho is a delicious Vietnamese soup, and Shabu Shabu is this method of cooking wherein a pot of steaming broth is lit on fire before you and you dip assorted things (a.k.a. meat, vegetables, tofu) into this broth until they cook. I opted for pho, since I've never been able to get shabu shabu down.

First, a salad of cabbage and ginger dressing arrived. It was slightly bitter, crisp, salty, perfect. Next, a plate of lime, bean sprouts, shaved green peppers, basil. Finally the soup, a large bowl of beef broth, thin-sliced flank steak cooked rare, beef brisket, rice noodles. I was instructed to spill my plate of stuff into the broth "to taste" (that meant spilling the whole thing in). A condiment caddy displayed sriracha, hoisin, and chili paste. I dumped that in, too. What resulted was a rich, meaty, basil-y, crunchy, chewy, satisfying bowl of stuff. True pho eaters will tell you that tripe is a very important part of the pho experience. But I will tell you that I think tripe is disgusting and I don't like the way it looks like cotton or spun sugar, sitting out on the butcher display in my neighborhood, so I will never order my pho with tripe.

My dining companion ordered great fried chicken potstickers, but I wouldn't go back just for those. I would, however, go back for that soup, which may have been the most transcendent bowl of Asian noodles ever, aside, of course, from those pork-perfect ramen bowls at Ippudo. Slurp, slurp.

*
Pho32 & Shabu
2 W. 32nd Street
New York, NY 10001
212.695.0888

Quick Fix

I was running around like a crazy person yesterday, trying to do all the things I hadn't done while out in Arizona.  I didn't have time to do a whole elaborate dinner for myself, so I improvised with things I found at the market.  I had about ten minutes to spare at the vegetable stand, where I bought things that inspired me: a carton of persimmons, a Texas scallion (looks like a cross between an onion and a scallion, with a large white bulb at the end), a few kirby cucumbers, a jalapeno, a red pepper, Boston lettuce, and some cilantro.  Large shrimp at the fish market actually lived up to their name, so I took home a quarter pound, plenty of shrimp for one person to stretch over the course of two days.  

I assembled the framework for my dinner in the afternoon.  It took less than 20 minutes, proof that even the most time-pressed career person can get a home-cooked meal on the table.  I poached the shrimp in boiling water until they turned pink (roughly five minutes).  In the meantime, I chopped my purchased veggies, with the exception of the lettuce and with the addition of some celery I found hanging out in my vegetable compartment. 

Cooked shrimp was drained and cut into thirds.  I added it to the container housing my chopped vegetables.  Next, some canned pineapple--minus the juice--two heaping tablespoons of light sour cream (more than enough, trust me), one tablespoon of sriracha, some kosher salt and, of course, fresh ground pepper.  When I came home from the gym later at night, I picked some lettuce leaves and rolled the creamy mixture up into it, using the lettuce like a wrap.  Actually, iceberg would have worked a little better, but I really hate the watery taste of iceberg lettuce, with one notable exception: as lining for a good old traditional BLT. 

Really, the greatest thing about doing something like this for dinner (apart from the convenience factor) is that it's the easiest possible way to integrate a wide variety of vegetables into one's dinner.  And really, you could sub in or out any fruit or veg.  Grapefruit could have easily replaced the persimmon.  Red cabbage could have provided color instead of red pepper (I grew up surrounded by pepper-haters).  Shredded carrot would have offered a beta-carotene kick.  

So there you have it: dinner for one very busy individual, done quickly and healthily.  And did I mention that the final product was creamy, spicy, crunchy, and completely delicious?  Or maybe that goes without saying.