Taste of Chicago

I love Chicago (or at least, the touristy areas I visited)! My fellow students and I went to Chicago for the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Conference (which was
fantastic!!!!!!!!!!!!
NOTE!! MY
!!!!!EXCITEMENT!!!!!
BY THE SUNDRY EXCLAMATION MARKS!!!!)
and we had a couple of free days to lounge around and explore Chicago. So of course, I drank it all in and spent more time wandering around the city than in my comfortable half of the hotel bed.


Our trip coincided with the Taste of Chicago Festival near Millenium Park. This reminded me of the BBQ Festival in NYC I stumbled upon many years ago (I didn't try anything there that time, though), except that it was more diverse. Apart from the plain-cheese deep dish pizza, there was also lots of cliche Asian fare, African goat + plantain stew things, and frozen bananas on sticks (wrapped in opaque plastic packaging, so they probably didn't hand dip them an hour prior...).

For $8, one could obtain 12 tickets. Food samples/servings were about 4 to 12 tickets. Bottled water was 6 (or was it 8?) tickets, and there were no water fountains. There were free samples of juice and tea that certain companies were distributing, and I did have my reusable water bottle, so I was not entirely dehydrated. The hand-washing stations outside the portable toilets stated "Water is not potable".

Coincidentally, everything I got had chicken in it.

I did not get anything from here, but the slogan is pretty Good (see what I did there?). 

Classic Chicago-style hot dog, lacking ketchup.

I got a tamale here but I didn't get to eat it until I returned to the hotel. It was just ok. The chicken was kind of stringy, dry, and tough. Is that how it's supposed to be in tamales? In 粽子(zong4 zi3), the meat is usually pretty overcooked and stringy, and I don't find that texture very enjoyable. The corn part was good though! 4 tickets.

I found schnitzel! I've wanted to try schnitzel ever since Chowder (the TV show)! I was pretty disappointed. It just tasted like a crunchy-coated chicken chunk that was kind of tough and bland. What happened to thin slices? Pummelled with a hammer? Tender? So maybe this was mediocre schnitzel, or maybe I find schnitzel banal. 4 tickets.

Finally...chicken etouffee with rice! I've never had etouffee before. The broth was extremely flavourful! It was simultaneously mellow, smooth, and a crazy explosion. The chicken was just ok though; slightly tough. I will try crawfish etouffee at the next opportunity!

Mint Premium Foods - Tarrytown NY

Sometimes, I feel that in my entire life, I've been eating well. This day was not one of those times. The Culinary Institute of America and Mint had, in a mere 8 hours, made me think that I've just been a plebeian in the world of cuisine, or even just American restaurant culture. Maybe I get delighted too easily by simple food eaten while sitting on the stairs, and maybe I just don't go to enough swanky places where there is live jazz music playing and a guy sauntering around offering at least 20 types of cheese on a giant platter. So I think, "Hmh, maybe I'm not actually cultured."

But then I remember that I can cook and if I tried, I could remake whatever I'm eating here, minus the classy atmopshere.

Giant cutlery and rooster sculptures are themes of this trip. Assorted rooster sculptures were displayed at Bocuse, while Pepsi - wait, I signed a confidentiality agreement with them, so I guess I can't say. :(

The green chunk is pesto cheese. Now I must buy pesto cheese! It was perfect. While we waited for our food to arrive (our group had personalized menus!), we snacked on bread, cheese, and square-rimmed bowls of olives. I tried an olive and immediately rekindled my dislike for them (it was way too salty).

I got the chipotle chicken and avocado wrap with salad and fries. I had no appetite, but I ate everything anyway because I don't like wasting food (especially good food that took a lot of energy and time to produce). The wrap was not spicy at all, though there was this orange sauce. The chicken was in some sort of casing, making it sort of like sliced chicken sausage, except that the chicken was not mushy or a slurry; it had actual chicken texture (although it was a bit more elastic than usual). There was a lot of stuff in the whole wheat wrap too, which kept falling out. The salad with vinaigrette(?) was a bit too salty. The fries smelled like fries I had when I was a kid, and they were tasty (but aren't all fries?).

Our table was made out of a slab of wood that had been sliced vertically from a tree and varnished. Hence, the table was not actually rectangular. I thought it was neat.

Lightlife Smart Cutlets

To use up more dining $s, I decided to buy some Smart Cutlets and stick them on a pan and have one for dinner with veggies. I grilled one plain, and it was completely bland, so I decided to grill the second one with garlic, pepper, and pesto seasoning.

The texture was supposed to resemble chicken, I suppose, but it definitely tasted a bit gluteny and too uniform. I like the fact that there was no super-salty flavour, but there was basically no inherent "flavour", unless I added seasonings. Although the 17 g of protein is a perk, this doesn't taste as delicious as tofu, or tempeh, which have their own textures and flavours. This grilled cutlet is homogeneous to the point that I really don't know what I'm eating, even though I know it's soy and gluten.

My mum also decided to stir fry peppers and celery with apple. And goji berries. This was a sweet change. Yes. Sweet. (Oh my eardrums are tearing!!)

Psychology Dinner Weeks Ago...

There was a psychology dinner a few weeks ago and I completely forgot to blog about it. The dinner was supposed to inspire us and make us want to major in psychology. The speaker, however, was extremely biased. She advocated against double majoring, stating that psychology is the most important subject in the world since it infiltrated every subject. Well, I would say that Biology is more important, because it studies LIVING THINGS whereas psychology only studies animal behavior [arguably, only human behavior, because psychologists always try to extrapolate animal data so that it can explain HUMAN behavior. However, then people may say that chemistry is what makes the world run since it explains THINGS, and the physicists will then claim that physics actually explains both THINGS AND NON-THINGS [a.k.a. tangible and untangible, including all those theoretical quantum stuffs] instead of just THINGS or merely LIVING THINGS. However, the mathematicians claim that maths runs everything, because physics relies on mathematics. This is an idea from XKCD.

Anyway. I got kind of irked because she had no right to tell me to singly major, so I think I lost some respect for her. She's a psychologist so she should have an inkling on how to manipulate us so that we'd leave falling in love with psychology.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about Indian food, not psychology, so I'm just gonna say that I couldn't eat half the stuff due to the chicken chunk infestations. I actually thought the spinach was with paneer cheese but it turns out it was chicken chunks...

However, the chickpeas were quite nice, as were the vegetables with paneer cheese. I don't really know why I'm so fond of curry yet not so inclined to eat spicy Chinese food. Perhaps the curry, due to the addition of tons of fat, is mellowed out, whereas Chinese spicy food is a full-out firecracker.

This is some doughnutty cake thing that was saturated in sugar syrup. It was extremely soggy and quite uniform in taste, so I'm not sure why I liked it. I believe it was deep fried before being drenched in sugar syrup, because it had that oily taste to it. Perhaps that's why I liked it.

The naan was extremely oily so I didn't really enjoy that part; generally I prefer savoury floury carbs to remain low in fat [breads, my mum's tortillas etc.]

Joe's American Bar & Grill

Such an iconic name. I wonder how filled-to-capacity this chain restaurant was, during the 2008 elections?

We went to the Braintree Mall on Wednesday the 21st, after visiting schools in Cambridge, and I honestly think that I shouldn't've ordered. In a family of 6 [for now], we should always order 4 items in an American restaurant. We have never finished 5 items, let alone six. Usually, I'm the one who doesn't order, simply because there is no main dish that I can eat due to the animal pieces. Also, though, I usually am the one who likes side dishes anyway [think salad, the bread, mashed potato... you know].

That day, my dad didn't order but I did, just to "change it up a little", though in all honesty, neither of us should've ordered. I got the spinach and artichoke dip, which is basically ubiquitous in any American grill style restaurant. In fact, if it wasn't for the seafoods section of the menu, one'd think that he/she had just walked into Applebees with different decor. Or Chili's with different decor. Or TGI with different decor. That's the problem I have with American restaurants. Sure, they offer a sense of "homeliness", but they also use the same cookie cutter. Except, Joe's American apparently makes all their food from scratch, whereas TGI reheats it.

My brother got chicken fajitas. I wish I could have a corn tortilla for once in my life instead of flour tortillas...

These are the best oyster crackers. Ever. Someone needs to send me a box of these. NO, NOT THE "Premium" brand oyster crackers [those have PHO]. It HAS to be this brand!!!!

My grandpa doesn't like coleslaw. This coleslaw wasn't as oily as the one from Clark's but I don't think I'm a huge fan of not-sour-enough-and-too-fatty coleslaw.

My brother's clam chowder. Okay, I tried some of the soup part. It was okay. Creamy. I like corn chowder more.

Spinach and artichoke dip with fatty cheese. Funny how we turn two vegetables into heart attacks, right? It was really creamy and definitely tasted more real than the kind from Applebee's. I'm serious. There were actual chunks of artichoke that LOOKED like chunks of artichoke! The pita chips were too salty, though. I liked how they gave us some celery with it, because at least that's a little different from the other stores out there, which probably don't even stock fresh celery.

My mum got this fish thingy with a corn and cucumber salad, which was quite amazing since I never imagined that the two could get moshed together so yummily.

My sister got a cheese pizza, with thin crust. It was amazing crust - look at the grill marks on the back! The topping wasn't that interesting though, and it was drenched in lipids.

Joe's American Bar & Grill, 250 Granite St. Braintree Mall, Braintree MA.

CANDY STORE OUTSIDE!

Hunan Manor

Hello Doctor State, a.k.a MD, Maryland!
After being in the car from 3:45pm to 8:15pm, we finally arrived at my parents' friends' house. They then drove us to dinner at Hunan Manor, which - surprise surprise - is a Chinese restaurant. I personally didn't have a great impression of it when I went in, because of this:
Dude, it's nearly mid 2010. And, "dungenese" isn't that great to advertise to people who speak English.
They actually, though, had a ton of vegetarian stuff that was, well, DELICIOUS.
The weird fried flour thing:
Napkin roses; the one on the right is mine, the one on the left is my brother's:
Fried tofu with mushrooms:
Sweet and Sour "Pig" [a.k.a gluten]. Actually, I was gonna get Sweet and Sour "Chicken" [a.k.a gluten], but the waitress literally said, "That one doesn't taste good." Then again, the "pig" dish cost more, so I guess that was their marketing ploy. Either way, it looks like the real thing, and the sauce was really good! The "pig/gluten" part itself though was really dense so I suppose it depends on people's preferences. I don't think I really like dense stuff, except fudge and brownies and toffee [you get the picture].