A soup noodle tour of San Francisco

Posted on February 19, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
San Francisco Noodle Soup

Guilin Rice Noodle Soup at Chồng Qing Xiao Mian.

The Bay Area Eats (dine-in / take-out) Facebook group came into existence on April 2, 2020, in the very darkest early days of the pandemic. As the world turned upside down it became a culinary lifeline, chronicling what restaurants and food resources had closed and which were still available for takeout and delivery (that’s where we found the remarkable takeout meal we experienced from Benu).

As the local dining scene slowly recovered, the group has evolved into a brighter role in reporting members’ local food recommendations as well as posts from food purveyors with their offerings. It was in this spirit that frequent contributor Albert Cheng recently posted “a partial list of my 12 favorite Asian soup noodle places in San Francisco”. Reading the list made us want to try them all—not just for the noodles, but as a do-it-yourself San Francisco soup noodle tour of ethnic cuisines and neighborhoods. We sampled three spots on a recent trip and will be back for more.

Our first stop was Chồng Qing Xiao Mian on the edge of Chinatown, for their Guilin Rice Noodle Soup. This is a classic hole in the wall with a few tables, no adornment and a single cook at work in a small kitchen, The soup was distinguished by a massive beef rib bone with lots of meat attached. There were two quail eggs, lots of tender bok choi and peanuts. The shelled peanuts seemed an odd addition (the server asked if I wanted my soup with or without) but worked very well. Though unpretentious, this place has become popular due to some recent reviews and there were several non-Asian diners in mid afternoon.

A soup noodle tour of San Francisco

Bahn Can at Tu Kim Coffee Shop

The next day (all visits were for lunch) we went to Tu Kim Coffee Shop for their Ban Cahn. Tu Kim is in the heart of the Tenderloin and some folks may be put off by the street life outside, though I did not feel unsafe. It’s a narrow space with small tables opposite a counter/kitchen, and nearly every seat was occupied by an older Vietnamese man having coffee. We were informed that the soup could only be ordered to go, but by the time it was ready the management had relented and we were allowed to take a seat. Lots of shrimp and cubes of pork blood in a fresh-tasting broth, with noodles that were like udon but fatter.

A soup noodle tour of San Francisco

#13 at Thai Nghiệp Kỹ Mi Giả .

Thai Nghiệp Kỹ Mi Giả was the least satisfying of the three places we tried, yet the one I most want to try again. Cheng’s writeup provided only Chinese characters but the server identified the recommendation as #13, Nghiep Ky Egg Noodle Soup. According to Albert it should contain kidney and tendon in a tomato broth. The server said they were out of kidney (something that happens frequently, according to Yelp reviews) and they would substitute fish balls. Our soup also had lots of shrimp including one that was presented on a crouton-like raft, roast pork bits and vermicelli noodles but no tendon. It was too mild until we dumped in a good amount of the provided jalapeños in vinegar. The place was packed and many of the other tables had an appealing cucumber/carrot side dish which the server said is only offered with brisket dishes, So we’ll return and try that next time.

Here is Albert Cheng’s complete post from Bay Area Eats (dine-in / take-out), shared with permission:

A partial list of my 12 favorite Asian soup noodle spots in San Francisco. Please share yours.

  1. Happy Family Gourmet (Shandong Deluxe) 泰和山東水餃手拉麵 1042 Taraval Street, San Francisco, CA

Combination Seafood Spicy Soup 炒馬麵 with hand-pulled noodles, shrimp, calamari, fish, pork, chicken, and mixed vegetables

  1. Thai Nghiệp Kỹ Mi Giả 蔡業記麵家 ＇1427 Noriega Street, San Francisco, CA

Tendon and kidney over flat egg noodles in a rich tomato-based soup.

3.,Beijing Restaurant 北京小館 1801 Alemany Boulevard, San Francisco, CA

Beijing Style Noodles With Brown Sauce. “Dalumian 打鹵面),” hand-pulled noodles in a thick rich brown savory saucy soup with wood-ear fungus 木耳, dried bean curd 腐竹, mushrooms, egg, and pork.

  1. Bạc Liêu Restaurant 3216 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA

Bun Mam. The signature famous broth of Bac Lieu in the southern tip of Vietnam. Fermented fish and noodle soup with shrimp, fish, calamari, and fresh vegetables.

  1. Chồng Qing Xiao Mian 重慶小面 915 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA

Guilin Rice Noodle Soup 桂林米粉 continues to be my favorite. It’s loaded with rib meat, pickled veggies, daikon radish, quail eggs, peanuts, etc. in a thick rich savory broth.

  1. Zazang Korean Noodle 2340 Geary Boulevard, San Francisco, CA

Zazang Korean Noodles for “jjamppong 짬뽕,” a Korean Chinese noodle soup with red, spicy broth with a variety of seafood and vegetables over house made fresh noodles.

  1. Ming Tai Wun-Tun Noodle 海皇粥麵 2455 Noriega Street, San Francisco CA

Hong Kong style wontun 雲吞 and suigow 水餃 dumpling noodles soup

  1. Yuanbao Jiaozi 元寶餃子 2110 Irving Street, San Francisco, CA

House Special Spicy Beef Noodles 秘制牛肉辣麵

  1. Pho Recipe (formerly Quận Ngon) 2511 Noriega Street, San Francisco, CA

Chicken Noodle Soup “Pho Ga.” Rich tasty broth. Perfectly cooked moist tender smooth chicken and innards over rice noodles.

  1. Tu Kim Coffee Shop 609 Ellis Street,San Francisco CA

“Banh Cảnh.” Vietnamese thick round udon-like rice noodles in a savory clear broth with pork trotters, lean pork, shrimps, congealed pork blood, and condiments. CAVEAT: This spot has NO menu. You have to ask for it.

  1. My Cảnh 626 Broadway, San Francisco, CA

“Bánh Canh Cua.” Rich thick crab noodle soup

  1. Chili House 川流不息 726 Clement Street, San Francisco, CA

“Fish Fillet Pickled Vegetables Pig Intestine Noodle Soup 魚片酸菜肥腸.” A popular fish of Chengdu 成都 in Sichuan Province 四川省, China.

King Thai Noodle Soup

King Thai #3 beef stew with flat noodles and special chili sauce.

P.S. You are perhaps wondering how these places stacked up against the #3 Beef Stew Noodles at King’s Thai #1, which we’ve previously reported as the best food we’ve ever eaten. We made a return visit for comparison purposes and it still reigns supreme. But you can’t eat the same thing every day. Variety is the spice of life!

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Buying crab off the boat in San Francisco

Posted on February 15, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Cooked Dungeness Crab

Fresh off the boat Dungeness crab from Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.

On my February trip to San Francisco I was able to buy a live Dungeness crab directly off the fishing boat at Fisherman’s Wharf. This is news: first because the crab season is frequently curtailed by insufficient breeding stock (this winter it didn’t begin till the end of December) and second because direct sales from boat to consumer weren’t allowed before last year.

Crab Delivery Fisherman's Wharf

Delivery of my crab off the boat at Pier 45.

I purchased my crab from Shawn Chen Flading, who docks right next to The Grotto at Pier 45. I could have found two other crab boats by proceeding further down the pier, or the previous day I could have purchased from Fv Plumeria Matt Juanes, who docks next to Scoma’s Restaurant on Pier 47. The quality of crabs is identical as is the price, currently a reasonable $8 per pound. I brought my crab back to my kitchen-equipped hotel room at Ghirardelli Square and popped it into the refrigerator till I was able to cook it a few hours later by steaming for 7 ½ minutes per pound.

This video has great tips for humanely dispatching crabs, cooking them and harvesting the meat, from a chef who used to prep 80 of them a day in a fine dining restaurant. I didn’t watch it beforehand so missed out on her tip for dispatching the crab with a whack to its nerve center, but the time in the fridge put mine in a comatose state so it did not react when it hit the steamer (steaming not boiling to produce more flavorful meat). A few tips:

–use a blunt object (in my case a jar of pasta sauce) rather than a cracker to get at the claws, because the cracker is more likely to break shell off into the meat.

–use the tip of one of the pinchers to poke out the meat that lurks in knuckle joints.

–don’t worry about the very small amount of meat in the smaller leg pieces because you are going to make CRAB STOCK.

Dungeness Crab

My crab yielded maybe 12 oz of delicious meat (with a bit of shell mixed in).

That’s right, crab stock. After I finished the meat picking process I discarded the gnarly bits and used the shell fragments and little legs to make an intense stock that was employed to make a cioppino with much of the crab plus some other seafood. Cooked it down by 50% over an hour, strained through a towel, and the result was delicious.

When I was in college, I would come to San Francisco on school breaks and buy a cooked crab and a loaf of sourdough bread from one of several sidewalk vendors outside the restaurants on Fisherman’s Wharf. The crab came with a setup of cocktail sauce and lemon juice and I would sit on the seawall overlooking Aquatic Park and eat the crab along with the bread dipped in the sauce. It was a treat at the time but cocktail sauce is way too blunt an instrument for this sweet, delicate meat.

Dungeness crab meat is special because of the complex flavor it offers without any adornment, after feasting on various objects found on the ocean floor washed down with mineral sea water. This crab was alive on the boat at 10, in my refrigerator by 1045, in the steam pot around 6 pm and on my plate by 10 the next morning. Technically you could cut a few hours off but this was full of briny flavor without any dilution from longer storage.

I sampled it unadorned (fantastic), with drawn butter (maybe even better) and with Meyer lemon juice and a butter/lemon juice combo (too complicated and a distraction from the native flavor of the meat). My 2+ pound crab yielded maybe 12 oz of pure crab satisfaction (with a tiny bit of shell mixed in).

If you’d like to enjoy a similar crabbing experience, your first step should be joining the San Francisco off the boat sales Pier 45 and Pier 47 Group on Facebook. This is where the crabbers post their schedules for the week. (During season there’s nearly always somebody there Friday, Saturday and Sunday and possibly in the middle of the week.) The group also offers tips like this from Matt Juanes on cleaning your crab. It’s a fine experience on many levels and one of the marvels of San Francisco that real commercial fishing boats ply their trade within a few yards of the tourist shops of Fisherman’s Wharf.

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Recipe: Smoky Indian Eggplant (Baingan Ka Bharta)

Posted on February 9, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Smoky Indian Eggplant

Smoky Indian Eggplant (Baingan Ka Bharta).

Smoky Indian Eggplant Baingan Ka Bharta) figures prominently in Happy Endings, a new book by my friend Minita Sanghvi. The smokiness really does come through even if, like me, you roast the eggplant on a gas stove rather than over a wood fire. The eggplant reduces quite a bit when cooked, so a whole eggplant will make a dish for 2-4 when served with other foods. Recipe adapted from Hebbars Kitchen.

Ingredients:
1 large eggplant, a little less than a pound
3 cloves garlic, each sliced in half lengthwise
2 T neutral oil, plus a bit for cooking the eggplant
1 t cumin, ground
½ t red pepper flakes (or less if you don’t like it spicy)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 T ginger, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
½ t Kashmiri chili powder*
1 t coriander seed, ground
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 t Kosher salt (start with ½ t and taste before adding more)
½ t garam masala
2 T chopped cilantro leaves

Method: poke slits all over the eggplant and insert a garlic sliver into each. Rub the eggplant with oil and roast directly over a gas burner or wood fire, turning to expose all sides to the heat. The eggplant will soften and shrink as it cooks. When done, a knife inserted near the stem (the part that cooks slowest) should go in easily, Cool, then peel off skin, coarsely chop, and quickly blitz with a mini-chop so the flesh separates into chunks but is short of a puree.

Heat oil in a skillet. Add cumin and pepper flakes and heat till they become aromatic. Add chopped garlic and ginger and sauté  for a couple of minutes, then add onion and sauté until wilted. Stir in chili powder and coriander and cook till fragrant, then stir in tomato and cook until it reduces. Stir in eggplant and a little salt; taste and add more salt if necessary.

Serve hot or lukewarm with roti or over rice. Just before serving, stir in chopped cilantro and garam masala.

*Hopefully you have some left over from when we made Pav Bhaji. If not substitute smoked paprika, but the flavor is not quite the same.

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Food for Thought: Onolicious Hawai’i

Posted on February 3, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Onolicious Hawaii

Dining room at Helena’s, from Onolicious Hawai’i blog.

During my advertising career, I had a dream assignment for a rental car agency based in Hawaii. Each year they’d run a sweepstakes for travel agents and it was my job to scout locations and attractions that might appeal to a jaded visitor. I wish I had known about Onolicious Hawai’i but it probably didn’t exist back in those (late 90s) days.

Onolicious Hawai’i will give you recipes for classic Hawaiian dishes, but it will also show you what those dishes look like as they are found in various restaurants, retail shops or farmer’s markets. This will help if you’re planning a trip to the Islands, but even more so if you’re making a dish at home and want to know what it should look like when done.

Kalua Pig Cabbage

Kalua Pig and Cabbage at Helena’s. Recipe here.

There are also recommendations for places to eat and (food-oriented) places to visit. We were thrilled that their favorite restaurant for Hawaiian food (as opposed to “local” food like spam musubi) is Helena’s Hawaiian Food. We had a memorable meal there in which our (mainland) client almost refused to get out of the car when he saw a patron relieving himself against the back wall and watched me order ake (raw liver) poke once inside.

If you’re going to Hawaii, head to Onolicious Hawai’i right now and sign up for their newsletter. If you’re just dreaming, you’ll find plenty of ideas for dishes to make in your own kitchen as you plan for that future trip. Check it out.

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Recipe: Instant Pot Vietnamese Pork Stew (Thit Ko)

Posted on January 27, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Instant Pot Vietnamese Pork Stew

Instant Pot Vietnamese Pork Stew.

Our Instant Pot Vietnamese Pork Stew is pilfered from the excellent Nom Nom Paleo blog. We’ve made her substitution of pork shoulder for pork belly but added caramelized sugar, which is definitely a paleo no-no though essential to the traditional flavor of the dish. Makes around 8 servings.

Method:
¼ cup thinly sliced shallots or red onion
1 dozen dried shiitake mushrooms or ¼ pound fresh
2 T grated ginger
1 t black pepper
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
2 pounds pork shoulder, cut into 2-inch cubes
2 T white sugar
1 cup coconut water*
¼ c fish sauce (we use Red Boat)
3 large carrots, peeled and cut into ½-inch slices on the bias
½ cup fresh cilantro leaves (for garnish)
3 scallions, thinly sliced (for garnish)

Method: combine the pork with the shallots/red onion, garlic, ginger and black pepper and allow the ingredients to macerate for at least 1 hour. Heat the Instant Pot on Sauté setting and add the sugar. Once it starts to melt, stir constantly with a spatula. It will very quickly begin to color and will then start to smoke. Immediately pour in the coconut water to stop the caramelization process before the sugar burns. Add the marinated pork and fish sauce and cook 40 minutes under high pressure with natural release.

Transfer the now-very-tender pork pieces to a bowl and add carrots to the cooking liquid. Cook under high pressure for 2 minutes with manual release. (Use a long spoon or other utensil to release pressure so you don’t burn yourself.) Combine pork, carrots and cooking liquid and serve with garnish of cilantro, scallions and jalapeño for diners to add as they like.

Note: this dish traditionally includes hard boiled eggs. If that appeals to you, add 4 peeled hard boiled eggs at the same time as the carrots. Cut in half before serving.

*We were surprised to discover that almost all canned coconut water contains a small amount of sugar. Not a concern since we’re adding sugar anyway, but it might be worth the trouble to seek out pure coconut water from a fresh coconut, from the liquid that separates in a can of coconut cream, or the health food brands recommended in the Nom Nom Paleo recipe.

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Recipe: Lomi Lomi Salmon Bruschetta

Posted on January 25, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Lomi Lomi Salmon Bruschetta

Lomi Lomi Salmon Bruschetta.

Lomi lomi is a Hawaiian luau favorite combining salmon and tomato. We published a recipe previously; today we’ll cut the cubes a little finer to create Lomi Lomi Salmon Bruschetta. Makes 10 servings (2 bruschetti per diner).

Ingredients:
½ pound salmon fillet*
Kosher salt or Hawaiian sea salt
¾ lb Roma tomatoes, cored and seeded
¼ pound sweet onion, finely chopped
1 green onion including the green part, sliced into thin rings
Toasted sesame oil (optional)
Lime juice (optional)
Finely chopped jalapeño or red pepper flakes (optional)

Method: remove skin if any from salmon and lightly coat each side with salt. Refrigerate at least overnight or preferably 2 days, turning every few hours and rubbing in the salt (this is the “lomi lomi” or massage process). When the salmon is cured to your satisfaction (taste it), rinse off the salt, dry with a paper towel and cut into 3/8 inch cubes. (Slice along the sinews—thin white lines in the flesh—for a cleaner cut.)

Chop the tomato into cubes the same size as the salmon and combine with salmon and onion in a bowl. Refrigerate a couple hours then taste for seasoning. (We found it needs a little more salt.) Garnish with green onion and serve with toasts prepared as for our Best Way Bruschetta.

Lomi Lomi Smoked Salmon

You can use smoked salmon to save time, through you’ll have less control over the size of the cubes of fish.

Options: we like our lomi lomi salmon bruschetta as above so the salmon flavor shines through, but you can add a couple of drops of sesame oil for a richer product, a squirt of lime for a taste like ceviche, jalapeño or red pepper flakes for an extra kick, or all the above.

*You can buy salted salmon in Japanese markets, ,but it’s easy enough to make your own. You can also use smoked salmon to save the time required to cure it.

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Recipe: Best Way Bruschetta

Posted on January 20, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Best Way Bruschetta

Best Way Bruschetta.

A local inn whose name begins with “H” recently served a bowl of unseasoned chopped tomatoes accompanied by untoasted rounds of a generic baguette. That’s not best way bruschetta. The recipe is simple, but attention to the details will yield a much more satisfying result. Makes about 10 appetizer servings.

Ingredients:
½ pound or so (3 or 4) Roma tomatoes, seeded and cored and chopped into uniform 3/8 inch cubes
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
1 T olive oil, plus more for toasting the bread
½ t Kosher salt
10-inch baguette, cut on the bias into approximately 20 slices.

Bruschetta Toasts

Do this, not that: cut your baguette on the bias for a larger surface area and toast before serving.

Method: mix oil, salt, garlic and tomato and macerate for at least an hour. This process adds flavor to the tomatoes, and also helps keep them from falling off the bread. Lightly toast the baguette slices (the better the baguette, the better the bruschetta will be) with a little olive oil or butter. Serve the tomato mixture in a bowl surrounded by toasts so guests can make their own, or spoon a little of the tomato mix onto each toast and serve, 2 to a person, as part of a prepared appetizer assortment.

Options: if you want to get fancy, add a few capers or thin-sliced scallions or a sprinkling of Parmesan or Gran Padano cheese.

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Recipe: Bread Machine White Bread

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Bread Machine White Bread

Bread Machine White Bread.

Bread Machine White Bread came from needing a fresh loaf for leftover roast beef sandwiches, in a hurry. I started with the Pain de Mie recipe on page 104 of Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine but made substitutions for ingredients I didn’t have on hand. The result was a very nice sandwich loaf: flavorful in a quiet way with a very soft crumb. Makes one 1 ½ lb loaf.

Ingredients:
3 ½ c all purpose flour
½ c rye flour (replacing semolina flour called for in the recipe; in both cases to add body)
2 T sugar
2 T unsalted butter at room temperature
¼ c sourdough starter (see note)
1 ¾ t whole milk (original recipe uses water and dry milk solids)
2 t instant yeast

White Bread Club

Moist and tender… bread machine white bread crumb.

Method: follow the directions for your bread machine to add ingredients; typically you start with wet ingredients, then add the flour, then yeast on the very top. If your machine gives you the option to pause after the initial mix of ingredients, do this BEFORE adding yeast and let the sourdough develop for anywhere from 1 to several hours, then add the yeast and proceed. (If your bread maker doesn’t offer that option, or you’re in a hurry, skip this step.)

Note on the sourdough: because I was in a hurry, I added unrefreshed starter straight out of the refrigerator, and didn’t follow the additional proofing step above. As a result the only contribution of the starter was a slight hint of tartness, but it certainly didn’t hurt.

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Is an electric stove in your future?

Posted on January 13, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Cooking Electric

Cooking with an electric stove, in this case a quotidian Hotpoint, turns out to be not so bad.

We have been cooking on a four-burner Hotpoint range, and it’s not bad. The coils heat up quickly and cool down almost as fast, and the dials to control temperature are accurate and consistent. As a result, we’re abandoning our belief that electric stoves are without exception an abomination.

This was a surprise. Almost all rental units come with electric stoves (I guess they’re easier to install, maintain and replace) and we gave up on the search for a place with a gas stove. Our experience so far (in a temporary rental while our main house is readied for sale) has been that control is pretty good as long as you allow a bit of time for the coils to come to temperature, much as you’d do when cooking with a cast iron skillet. On highest setting, the biggest burner will boil a pot of water almost as fast as the 25000 BTU burners on our Bluestar. It’s night and day compared to previous generation electric stoves that would take forever to heat then burn your food.

Boiling Water Electric

On the biggest burner, the Hotpoint boils water almost as fast’s on my BlueStar.

There are rumors, and not from the cooking community, that politicians are conspiring to take away our gas stoves. These fears appear to be unfounded; the chairman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission has gone out of his way to say the agency has no desire to ban gas stoves but just wants to make them safer. Still, electricity is a cleaner form of energy than natural gas. The California Air Resources Board is floating a ban on gas furnaces and heaters, and New York City has restricted the use of fossil fuels in new large buildings.

We love our BlueStar Platinum, and will sorely miss it when the day comes, but we no longer feel that an electric future will be all bad.

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Recipe: Chili Crisp Sweet Potatoes

Posted on January 10, 2023 by Burnt My Fingers
Chili Crisp Sweet Potatoes

Chili Crisp Sweet Potatoes.

Chili Crisp Sweet Potatoes are borrowed from our friends at Momofuku. Of course you can use their products if you have them, but this is a pretty good side dish with off-the-shelf ingredients. Serves 4.

Ingredients:
2 large sweet potatoes, approximately 1 1/2 lbs
¼ c maple syrup (Grade A dark preferred)
2 T soy sauce
2 T Chili Crisp or other crunchy mild chili sauce
1 T butter
½ t Kosher salt

Sweet Potatoes Garnish

If potatoes seem too monotone, garnish with toasted sesame seeds, green onion rings, or both.

Method: bake the potatoes in their jackets for 30 minutes at 350 degrees, or until they are tender to the touch and shrink inside the jackets. Cool, peel and cut into large chunks. Melt the butter in a microwave safe dish and mix with maple syrup, soy sauce, chili crisp and salt. Spread out on a parchment sheet (do not place directly in an oven pan because it will stick) and bake 25 minutes at 425 degrees until edges are crisp. Serve as a side dish with turkey, rib roast or other festive foods.

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