January 27, 2014

Cho Eun Korean Restaurant, Van Nuys

Cho Eun, also known as Evergreen is one of the hidden gems of the San Fernando Valley. This no frills restaurant is tucked away in a popular Korean shopping center at the corner of Sherman Way and White Oak in Van Nuys. The seafood pancake put this restaurant on the food map, but it's the tasty comfort food that keeps customers coming back. If you work in the area, this is also a great spot for a fair priced lunch. For about $7, you will be more than satisfied and probably wishing you could go home for a nap. The banchan changes often, but kimchi, potatoes and bean sprouts are the staples. The service is nothing to write home about and you might be lucky to get a smile, but the food always delivers. In addition to the items featured below, chicken stew and kimchi pork belly are also worth your consideration. 

Bossam
15.95


This dish is not for everyone. If you don't like to make your own food, you will probably want to skip it. Bossam is all about wrapping the ingredients on the platter into a package of deliciousness. Take a piece of napa cabbage and fill it with pork belly, garlic, pepper, and radish kimchi. Every restaurant serves it a little differently. Cho Eun does not serve it with fermented shrimp paste or picked radish. Here, every ingredient stands out on its own yet comes together harmoniously in each bite. Sure, restaurants that specialize in bossam do it better, but the simplicity of the version at Cho Eun makes it equally enjoyable.

Assorted Seafood Pancake
11.95
There is a reason why seafood pancake or pajeon put the restaurant on the map. It's light, crispy on the outside, loaded with an assortment of seafood and well seasoned. There's no oil puddle under this seafood pancake or undercooked flour mix. It's served with the usual dipping sauce made of vinegar, sugar, soy, sesame and green onion. The pancake is so good on its own, the sauce is almost unnecessary.

Seafood Tofu Stew
6.95
A visit to Cho Eun is not complete without an order of their seafood tofu stew or soon dubu. They don't ask you how spicy you want it here. It comes out how the chef prepares it with a bowl of purple rice. I'm sure you can request the heat level or lack their of, but it's perfect the way it is. A good balance of tofu, seafood, and broth. Every bowl comes with two pieces of shrimp, a mix of clams and mussels and small pieces of beef. This is the ultimate cold weather food or bad day pick me up.

So, if you live in "The Valley" and don't want to make the trek to Korean town, stop in to Cho Eun to get your Korean comfort food fix. 

Cho Eun Evergreen Korean Restaurant
17621 Sherman Way
Van Nuys, CA 91406

January 20, 2014

Chengdu Taste, Alhambra

Chengdu Taste has become a popular dining destination on Valley Blvd in Alhambra. The hour plus wait could give Boiling Crab, just down the street, a run for their money. At 11:30am on a Saturday, the wait was already one hour for this decent sized restaurant with a maximum occupancy of 55 people. Popular items one would expect to find at a restaurant like this are all there, on the 100+ item menu. Don't worry if you're dining with heat intolerant friends, the menu had several non spicy dishes including eggplant with garlic sauce and wonton soup. 

Although, if you're looking for intense levels of numbing spiciness, this is not the restaurant for you. Compared to the dishes I tasted in Chengdu, China, the heat level at Chengdu Taste is considerably milder and dishes are lightly sprinkled with chili peppers. Regardless of your heat tolerance, Chengdu Taste is wroth a visit. The dishes are well balance and brought us back to the flavors of this region in China. 

Being our first visit, we let our waiter guide us in our selection and he did not steer us in the wrong. 

Mung bean noodle with chili sauce
4.99
This simple yet complex dish was the perfect start to our meal. The mung bean noodles are slippery, thick and soak up all the flavors of the house made chili sauce. The sauce is a mixture of oil, Sichuan peppercorn, chili peppers, sugar, vinegar, soy sauce, soy beans, garlic and probably a handful of other ingredients. Sweet, tangy, spicy and salty all perfectly balanced made this sauce addicting. Unfortunately, the restaurant does not sell it by the jar, even though they should. This is a must order and don't make the mistake of sharing it with everyone at the table. 

Boiled fish with green peppers
12.99
Don't let the Serrano peppers and Sichuan peppercorns scare you off. The filets do not pick up as much of the spiciness as you might expect. The fish was light, tender and flaky. The broth was infused with the numbing flavor of the Sichuan peppercorns. And below all the fish were bean sprouts and bamboo shoots that added a clean flavor to the dish. 

Toothpick cumin lamb
13.99
The cumin lamb is probably the most popular dish at the restaurant. The reason they put toothpicks in each piece of lamb is to prevent it from sticking together during the cooking process. Each piece of lamb is generously coated in cumin with sprinkles of chili peppers. The lamb was tender, juicy and slightly fatty. It's easy to loose track of how many you've eaten until you see the pile of toothpicks in front of you.

Griddle cooked beef 
10.99
The idea of this dish is to cook your protein of choice with a variety of vegetables. This version was beef slices cooked with cucumbers, mushrooms, celery, onion, lotus root and potatoes. The dish had a little heat from the peppers and a lot of flavor from the beef. The vegetables were nice and crunchy, with the exception of the mushrooms, which soaked up the savory sauce in the dish. Don't be alarmed by the amount of oil in the dish. The flavored oil is what gives this dish its wonderful pepper taste. 

The food did not disappoint and my tongue appreciated the lower heat level. Jonathan Gold was spot on when he described the food at Chengdu Taste as "lighter, cleaner and less likely to wake you up in the middle of the night with chile-oil induced nightmares."

Chengdu Taste
828 West Valley Blvd
Alhambra, CA 91803

January 8, 2014

Homegrown Cayenne Pepper Hot Sauce | Plant Based

Cayenne pepper is one of the easiest peppers to grow and cayenne pepper hot sauce is even easier to make. We planted two seedlings in our garden last spring and these plants produced beautiful fire engine red peppers for nearly seven months. It probably would have kept going had I not cut it back before the first frost (32° F overnight temperature). With more peppers than I could rotate through the dehydrator and with no more room in the kitchen for hang dry, I had to find an alternative use for these peppers.