Like my other post about different usage of curry sauce, this time is all about the Pad Thai sauce. Yes Pad Thai sauce is mainly used for well making Pad Thai. But I thought heck if you have a giant bottle of this stuff maybe you can use it some other way. Pad Thai sauce is super easy to make, all you need is 3 maybe 4 ingredients. It’s 1 part tamarind juice, 1 part palm sugar and 1 part fish sauce. Pour all the ingredients into a pot and just cook it till the sugar dissolves. Thats it! Yes I did say maybe 4 ingredients and the 4th is chili paste or sriracha to give it a little heat but of course you don’t want to add 1 part sriracha maybe just enough to your liking. Also I added a stick of cinnamon and few star anise just for the heck of it. I have found that a 1/4 cup of each ingredient will yield enough for 4-5 servings of Pad Thai. All you really need is 2-3 tablespoons for each person.

So here are few dishes that I came up with that used Pad Thai sauce.
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The mayor of Red Hook Ball Fields is back! I’m the mayor! I just found out about this. Pretty handy in finding out the names of each vendors and their menus, with pictures.

My quest everytime I go to the Red Hook Ball Fields is to find something new to eat. This past Saturday I found myself chowing down happily a Guatemalan enchilada. As you can see from above a Guatemalan enchilada is waaaaaaaaaay different than the enchiladas we’re used to. This was a fried tortilla, lettuce, pickled beets, ground beef, red sauce, slices of hard boiled eggs, cheese, onions and cilantro. I got this from Carrillo and wasn’t sure what to expect. It smelled kinda funky but tasted REALLY good. And being that it was served chilled its great for summer weather. Then for some weird reason I was craving for rice but I was afraid if I get a rice dish it’ll be too much food. I walked up and down up and down but finally settled at Ceron. Last time I got fried pork with yuca from them and loved it. This time I got the fried chicken with yellow rice and beans. YUM YUM to my tummie for $6. The chicken was perfectly fried and juicy but was bit under seasoned. But hell yeah I’m going to get this again.

Meat cone. Yes MEAT. CONE. Yummie ground curry lamb stuffed into phyllo dough and deep fried. MEAT. CONE. Yes I guess I should find out the official name for this deep fried yumminess. So where can one find this meat cone? At Damascus on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn. They also sell pitas, falafels, hummus, cheese, other fried pastries but everytime I go into Damascus I only have 1 thing in mind, meat cone. There’s also a plain cheese version but no thanks! What’s more fun than walking down the street holding and chomping down on a meat cone? The only thing you need to worry about is that if you want these nice and hot and crispy you gotta go there earlier than say…..2pm. They’ll gladly reheat it for you in the microwave but it just becomes soft and not crispy.

- Damascus 195 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn

During the days of living in East Harlem, my friend and I would always walk from the east side, through Central Park and over to the west side for Flor De Mayo. I never had Peruvian food before and Flor De Mayo was Chinese and Peruvian cuisine, awesome! Seems like all the Peruvian restaurants I have been to serve chicken as their specialty. Why is that? Anyways, now that I have moved out of East Harlem and into Brooklyn, I’m glad I live right by Coco Roco.

Last night I really wanted some Peruvian food and I was meeting up with my friend, Anh, for dinner. Luckily I found La Cuarta in Sunset Park that was close to Park Slope. So what brought this crave for Peruvian food? Mr. Zach Brooks of Midtown Lunch! Yesterday I read his post on a new hidden gem he found in a freight elevator hallway and saw the link for another hidden gem, El Sabroso. There in that post I saw the picture of a plate of yummy looking spaghetti! Peruvian and spaghetti? Never thought of those 2 together before but damn those looked good! After that I was on a mission to find a Peruvian restaurant around 5th Ave and 20th St and spaghetti. And that was how Anh and I ended up at La Cuarta.
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What would you do with a 2.5lb slab of pork belly? I can always just do my usual “sake braised pork belly” or just plain roast the thing in the oven. Looking around the kitchen and in the fridge trying to see what I need to use up before they go bad. Also stashed in my to-do recipes book, I thought about doing a roasted pork belly with miso paste. Well as always I have miso paste in the fridge. Okay what else, mint from few weeks ago, rice wine?, yakitori salt that my friend got me in Japan, ginger and peppercorns. I thought about curing the belly with just the salt and peppercorn but there wasn’t enough salt to cure the whole slab. In my mind the ginger and mint should work good together right? A little spicy and a little refreshing.
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Hooray for Red Hook Sunday! I have been splitting my time between Red Hook and the Brooklyn Flea this summer. Which is great, one weekend I eat lobster roll and the next I eat tacos. As much as I love lobster rolls, it’s just hard spending $13 on 1 food item while I can get 6 tacos for $12. But it’s okay once in a while though last time I went to the Brooklyn Flea in DUMBO 2 Sundays in a roll.
I really wish that I have more stomach space so that i can eat more tacos at Red Hook or just more of everything at Red Hook. I usually stop after my 2nd run. I know I can do better and I will next time. Next time. The very first time I went to Red Hook, oh 2 summers ago, I had a huarache from the Martinez Taco Truck and pupusas from El Olomega, which I just found out has a website. After that first day I rarely go off to other food trucks to try other things. But one day last year I decided to stop eating those delicious pupusas and try other things. That was when I started my next phase of eating from the 2 same trucks routine. For the rest of the last summer and part of this summer I went to Perez Truck, the very last truck on Clinton St., for carne asada tacos sometimes topped with fried pork skin and Rojas Ecuadorian, the very last truck on Bay St., for beef and cheese empanadas.
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