There's a Sichuan dish called "Triple Pepper Chicken", at least at some restaurants, which consists of little nuggets of somewhat crispy chicken, hot dried chilis, hot fresh chilis, and Sichuan peppercorn (3 peppers*, see?).  I've been eating the hell out of this dish for some years, first at Grand Sichuan in NYC and more recently at New Jersey's unrelated yet similarly named Chengdu 1 (Cedar Grove) and Chengdu 23 (Wayne).  

If you've ever had this dish, you know it's spicy and addictive.  If you've never had it, you're a damned fool, and need to do yourself a favor and go to one of these restaurants and order it. Order it in double, so you have leftovers for the next day.

Although I eat Sichuan at least once a month, I have no experience in Sichuan cooking and know nothing about it, although I do have a wonderful Sichuan cookbook called Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking.  I should probably thumb through it some day.  What I do know is that oil often plays a part in the sauces (cleverly disguising itself as the sauce), and Sichuan peppercorns are used.  For some reason I figured I could duplicate this dish at home.  At the very least, the main components are pretty clear (chicken, 3 peppers, oil), and maybe just throwing them together would produce a close approximation, I thought.  As it turns out, I was somewhat right.

So with ignorance as my navigator, off I went...

Also check out my new, less expensive approach to dry-aged burgers here (click me).

The inspiration...

One of our recent semi-regular meals at Blue Smoke led to meeting a friend at Landmarc in the Time Warner building, where yet another burger was ordered, and critiqued.  Having just had the Blue Smoke burger a few hours prior, I wasn't all that hungry, but forced down half a burger.  I do this, for you.  While I didn't think the burger was off-the-charts fantastic, I did detect some minerally flavors, flavors that I'd associate with dry-aged beef.  This is not to say that I think Landmarc is using dry-aged beef for their burgers, but, it did plant the idea in my head that I should seek out someone who does...

I (and pretty much everyone) know that Peter Luger serves an awesome burger a lunch, made from scraps of their dry-aged beef.  It was a burger without peers for a very long time.  Eventually came Minetta Tavern (well, it was around for a very long time too, but only recently reborn, and now known for its burgers) with their burgers  made the LaFrieda "Black Label" beef, which has that dry-aged beef that I'm on about.  Wanting nothing to do with trying to get into Minetta Tavern (even the t:e organization doesn't have that kind of pull), I figured I'd give it a whirl at home.  For a second time (my first attempt some years ago didn't work out too good).

The meat...

Restaurant websites are pretty piss-poor around these parts in New Jersey. Trust me when I say that I don't even want to go down this road, because it this subject could end up dominating this blog, and giving me a full-time writing job that I'm not prepared to take on.

Unnecessary flash pages (which preclude the use of an iPhone and other mobile devices), ridiculous music, hard-to-find basic information (address, phone, and hours), typos, and just all-around amateurish design, are the norm, rather than the exception.  

I guess you just have to give a restaurant credit for making just a wee bit of effort.

I'm not sure why I haven't posted about this deliciousness yet.  In fact I'm not sure that I've posted about any deliciousness recently.  Today's (or technically tomorrow's, I suppose - 5/24/09) article in the NY Times Magazine reminded me that I should.

Morton's Steakhouse now has a "blog".  The blog is called "The Best Steak Anywhere", which is their (new?) registered trademark.

As soon as t:e reader "Ev" tipped me off that A Mano's original pizzaiolo, Roberto, was coming back to train the staff, I had visions of A Mano returning to its past glory.  Under Roberto's command, A Mano was producing wonderful Neapolitan style pizza.  The place was a treasure, and a great addition to the area's mostly cookie-cutter restaurant scene.  After Roberto's departure, however, the place slipped quite a bit.  This was evident in the service (which was never stellar to begin with), the management, and most importantly, the pizza.

Roberto is/was indeed back, if only for the short term.  From what I can tell (and I'm not a reporter, so I don't generally ask owners or managers many questions on this stuff), A Mano is now part of Associazione Pizzaiuoli Napoletani, which is one of the several professional organizations whose goal is to preserve and promote Naples' prized product.  Part of A Mano's association with the associazione involves training, and I'm guessing Roberto was sent back to sort them out.

And sort them out he did...

Clearly I like burgers.  Clearly.  It's a beautiful thing, the hamburger is.

We took a walk by the chain restaurant trifecta that recently opened at the Riverside Square mall. 

There's a Maggioni's or something like that, whose awning claims "PRIME STEAKS."  Plural, as far as I can tell.  I took a look at their menu, and only one steak is "prime", and it's not even suggesting that it's USDA Prime (it also claims "aged", which I assume means that it was sitting in a Cryovac wrapper for a while.  Yay).  I guess what they meant by "PRIME STEAKS" is that they have several of those steaks. 

There's also PF Chang's.  I couldn't get past those enormous concrete horses.  I'm sure I'm missing some sort of cultural significance, once again illustrating the depth and breadth of my ignorance. Seriously, they're kidding, right?...

...and then there's Rosa Mexicano.

I was exchanging emails with iamnotachef yesterday, as we sometimes do, discussing bourbon and absinthe and the state of New Jersey dining -- you know, things that two people who are complete strangers would talk about over email -- when it occurred to me that instead of telling him what I'm making for dinner, I should probably blog about it.  He concurred, but said that I should only blog about it if it's very good, or very bad.  I tend to agree, but the other reason I sometimes blog about the things I cook is so that I can remember what I did. I'm horrible at keeping notes for repeat performances, so this blog sometimes doubles as a dumping ground for those semi-successful meals that were thrown together.  Trust me, this blog thing and those dinner posts aren't about trying to impress people.  Of this you are assured.

The discussion started with a mention of the opening of Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack's Riverside Square mall.  What I said to the fella was this:

Over on the blog I Am Not A Chef, the blogger known only as 'I Am Not A Chef' was discussing great and simple combinations.  Specifically, shrimp and cannellini beans.

I figured I'd one up him with an even more simple shrimp/starchy stuff combo:  Ceci, shrimp, chiles, a la Mario Batali's Otto.