Let's eat burgers in a little booth 🍔

Tales of cheeseburgers, jiggly egg pudding, and more.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we make a fancy cappuccino, have dumplings made of eggs, and steam a little pudding. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate. 

Orange-maple cappuccino at home

Here’s the Nespresso machine.

Let’s start off the first newsletter of the New Year the same way I start every morning: With my favorite non-water beverage, coffee. Long time followers of the ‘letter will know that my standard cup is a fancy pour over cafe au lait but for Christmas my sister very kindly gave me a Nespresso machine(!!).* So expect more lattes and cappuccinos in both my life and Five Things I Ate! I am a big fan of combining citrus with coffee, and this latest simple cappuccino I’ve been making has really hit the spot. To make it, simply use a paring knife to pare off a strip of orange peel from a well-scrubbed orange, and place it in the bottom of your cappuccino cup. Then, pull a doubleshot of espresso (or run two Nespresso pods) into the cup. Meanwhile, heat and froth ⅓ cup of whole milk. If you are a perfectionist who wants a perfect at-home microfoam,  I recommend a small French press, which far outperforms both wand and automatic forthers in my experience.To aerate the foam, first plunge all the way up and down 10 times, then pulse your plunging about five rounds total, plunging 10 times each and swirling in between. Stir in a teaspoon of good maple syrup into your espresso shots, and slowly pour in the foamed milk, starting from afar for greater force and then coming up close to the surface if you want to be fancy. Enjoy.

*Before you go off, I am aware of both the wasteful aspects of pod machines and also the fact that some True Coffee People (including my favorite YouTuber James Hoffman) would not consider Nespresso really espresso. However, it’s good enough for me ;) and since the espresso drinks are an occasional weekend treat, I am less concerned about my overall trash generation.

Rosemary sugared shortbread fingers

Recipe adapted from Amy Casey via Melissa Clark. Original un-paywalled recipe here.

At the risk of sounding like one of those commenters who did not follow the recipe yet left a novel-length review, I will start off by saying that I did not have one of the four ingredients in this simple shortbread recipe, so I will have to make it again another time. Casey calls for a bit of rice flour, along with melted, cooled butter, in her shortbread recipe, which is supposed to give it a unique texture. I, however, used the cornstarch substitution that Melissa Clark suggested, which resulted in a still delicious, but slightly crumbly, very rich shortbread. The recipe is not very sweet on its own so make sure to heavily sugar the top. I added a tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary leftover from my Trader Joe’s rosemary Christmas tree, and accidentally doubled up on the salt (the recipe calls for unsalted on the NYT Cooking website, and salted on her blog), so it tasted almost like a savory snack, and a very buttery one indeed. 

Egg Dumpling Stew at Hao Noodle West Village

401 6th Ave, New York, NY 10014

I am always in the mood for noodle soup. If I tell you I am not in the mood for soup noodles, I am either lying, or I don’t know myself. I think I could eat some kind of meat + broth + veggie every night for the rest of my life and I would be more or less content. Hao Noodle (I think there’s another, more popular location on 14th street but I’ve only been to the one near West 4th) has plenty of soup noodles and a classy, not-too-crowded interior that makes it the perfect kind of place to catch up with a friend. Not everything on the menu is my favorite (my friend ordered the beef noodle soup, which I found un-sippably spicy – I am a fan of clear, simple broths), but I do love the egg dumpling stew. Egg dumpling stew is not, as you may think, dumplings filled with eggs but rather they are dumplings made of eggs, thin omelets wrapping a porky filling! They’re apparently popular for Chinese New Year (which is coming up early this year!) but I enjoy them mostly for their rustic, eggy charm. Longtime friends of mine may also know that I’m very anti anything carb-on-carb (potato perogies, burritos with rice) but shockingly I am very pro protein-on-protein, which these egg dumplings definitely are.

Japanese purin (pudding) at home

Recipe from I am a Food Blog.

Inspired by last week’s Izakaya pudding and Gudetama’s Eggcellent Adventure, I decided to give a shot at making my own purin at home. Japanese pudding (or purin) is really more like a flan or creme caramel than a Jell-o pudding. You can either bake it or steam it, or even make it heat-free using gelatin. I used the steam method in the linked recipe post. While the resulting purins were absolutely adorable, it tasted nothing like the rich and creamy Izakaya pudding. It was a bit more like sweet ji dan geng, and although I used both whole milk and an egg yolk it didn’t taste fatty enough to cut the sharp sweetness of the caramel. The texture also got a bit pocked from uneven steaming. This one’s a redo.

Cheeseburger (not to be confused with the Bistro Burger!) at Corner Bistro

331 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10014

The last time I stepped foot in Corner Bistro was 10 years ago, so I was really curious to see how things would be different. It’s kind of interesting to visit restaurants you haven’t been to in years. It can tell you a lot about both how the restaurant and your sensibilities have changed, although you’ll never quite know how much of each it is. Anyways, I’m happy to report that I still really enjoy the Corner Bistro. I love a burger place with little booths in it, and the Corner Bistro not only has wooden booths, the whole thing is very snug and cozy, especially the back room, where the tables are packed in like tetris. The menu is about 10 lines long but includes tater tots, a touch I enjoy. But the real question was if I would still think this was the best burger I’d ever eaten. The cheeseburger (the Bistro burger comes with bacon and extra sauce) was definitely a Big Boy burger, which I’d forgotten. But despite its size, it did *not* have the dreaded brioche buns, and the patty was extremely tender and melty, almost buttery. Unfortunately, it was stacked too thickly for me to bite (minus 2 points) but still a delightful experience, and perhaps my favorite place to eat a burger in New York.

Till next time,

Soph

P.S. Please consider supporting my writing in 2023 buying a paid subscription to Five Things I Ate. This newsletter is a labor of love, and my continued production of it is based off your subscriptions. Paid subscriptions are currently only $30 per year, and you gain access to all recipes in the archives, including my famous Pineapple Buns and Mama’s Scallion Pancakes.