Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week slurp noodle soup and bake more holiday cookies. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.Ā Ā
Oxtail Beef Noodle Soup | éŖØ걤ēå°¾é¢ at the Tang
920 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10025
A good noodle soup, deliciously clean and brothy without being too heavy, should warm you up on a cold winterās day like a jolt of hot coffee. The oxtail beef noodle soup at the Tang (which Iāve written about before for their medicinal chicken noodle soup) does a great job of that. Even when I ordered delivery and reheated it in the microwave, it tasted as close to my momās beef noodle soup as I have ever gotten from a restaurant. The noodles are chewy, fresh and sweet tasting, and they donāt skimp on the pea sprouts (which are cooked just til green), which is usually a pet peeve of mine as they are so expensive for some reason. The only downside is that the oxtail itself was cooked a bit chewy and full of bits of bone; I would have expected slow-cooked, melty and gelatinous pieces of cartilage, but I guess thatās the difference between delivery and homemade: You canāt have it all.
Vegetable curry rice at Sunrise Mart ę„ē³»ć¹ć¼ćć¼
12 E 41st St, New York, NY 10017
Not all Sunrise Marts are built the same ā it turns out that the one next to Bryant Park has a full-on cafeteria next door to the grocery store, with fresh udon, curry, and even hand rolls. Itās like a Super Sunrise Mart, and so much tastier than the other locations (the Mart side even has a second floor for housewares). After being overwhelmed by possibilities for lunch, I decided to go with a classic, veggie curry and rice. I felt that katsu was a little too heavy for 12pm, so I supplemented my meal with a single (but gigantic) slice of add-on pumpkin tempura. I was expecting it to taste like box mix, cravings-worthy but unremarkable, but to my surprise the veggie curry was excellent ā hot, brothy, with plenty of onion and potato. It tasted more homemade than the curry Iāve made at home. The rice was fresh and perfectly chewy, a huge step up from the premade bento boxes Iāve gotten at the other locations of Sunrise Mart.
Heart-shaped thumbprint cookies from Catherine Zhang
From Catherine Zhang
I have been completely enamored by the idea of making heart-shaped thumbprint cookies ever since I saw them somewhere online. Unfortunately, I have totally played myself this week by making several batches of butter-based cookies that all turned out oddly and unsatisfyingly bland. Then I realized that I had COVID-19 two weeks ago and still havenāt regained all my smell and taste abilities. Either that, or I got too used to Kerrygold and buying generic butter just wonāt do it for me anymore.Ā
Buttered hot rolls at the Mermaid Inn Uptown
570 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024
Why donāt menus serve garlic bread more often? Iām talking about the deliciously toasty and oozing-with-butter kind, with fresh chopped parsley and a lot of garlic. For some reason, the only times in my life that Iāve eaten garlic bread is at somebodyās house in New Jersey for family dinner. Anyways, this buttered roll, which is seasoned with Old Bay, is not garlic bread. Itās quite delicious, soft and buttery, and cute to boot, but itās not garlic bread. It just made me remember all about garlic bread, a food I have not eaten in several years.
Special K (the cereal) sugar cookies at home
Based on Eric Kimās recipe
Iāve been meaning to try to make Eric Kimās recipe for soft sugar cookies with raspberry icing aka Lofthouse cookies aka Grocery Store cookies since I saw them posted on the NYT Cooking Christmas cookie roundup last year, but I never got around to it. Then we hit a cream cheese shortage and I really didnāt get around to it, until I snagged two boxes at Zabarās this week. I have loved Eric Kimās recipes in the past but this one didnāt quite seal the deal for me; the recommended 2 tablespoon / 50 gram cookie dough size yielded enormous, scone-like muffin tops. I substituted freeze-dried strawberries for the raspberries because I heart strawberries and I hate sifting for seeds; but I also ran out powdered sugar and tried to pulverize my own, which resulted in a grainy frosting (I take full blame for that one). The strawberry frosting was delicious and tasted exactly like Special K cereal, my absolute favorite breakfast treat as a child of the 90s, but the combo of scone-like cookie and berry frosting, although tasty, really didnāt remind me of lofthouse cookies at all.
Stay safe out there,
Soph
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