Winner, winner fried chicken dinner 🐓

Several types of Asian fried chicken and a formula for super-silky strawberry cupcakes.

Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we have fried chicken for dinner and cupcakes for dessert. Check out past posts here, and please follow my Instagram @fivethingsiate.

Plush vegan cupcakes with silky strawberry frosting at home

Cake recipe adapted from Smitten Kitchen.

I couldn’t help but wonder: Have cupcakes ever been any good since 2000, when Carrie and Miranda ate outside Magnolia Bakery, and we could still watch a show about a freelance writer with a walk-in Louboutin closet without being filled with rage? The answer is yes!! Cupcakes are actually delicious. My tired, millennial journalist heart grew three sizes when I bit into this plush, luxurious little cake topped with the silkiest strawberry frosting. These cupcakes are vegan, but not because they need to be; they are vegan because this is the best cupcake recipe I know. I followed the recipe from Smitten Kitchen, pouring the batter into paper-lined cupcake tins and baking for 18 minutes at 350F (yields 16). Deb describes this cake as "plush," which I thought was a weird word, until I made them. There’s no other word to describe the soft richness. As-is, you will find yourself with lovely, golden-yellow plush cakes; because I love strawberries I pulverized 1/2 oz of freeze-dried strawberries (you can find them at Target or Trader Joe's) and mixed it into the batter. Top with this amazingly silky strawberry frosting and you will find yourself transported into a magic world where you, too, could have a walk-in shoe closet based on your talent for writing a weekly column of Bad Dating Takes.

Japanese fried chicken at Ivan Ramen

25 Clinton St, New York, NY 10002

This entry is based on a memory of a meal— it’s been way too cold lately to eat outside, even under heat lamps. But that’s the thing. I really want to make fun of Ivan Ramen, on the principle that it’s a ramen shop run by a white guy who went to Japan. But somehow, despite the fact that this very restaurant once served me a cold tomato and raw fish ramen that had to have been a sadistic prank, I have nothing but fond memories of my meals there. Case in point, this fried chicken is called “Japanese chicken,” for God’s sake, like a country was specific enough an adjective. It’s fried chicken covered in sweet sticky sauce and… Ranch dressing. And you know what? It makes me happy. Ivan Ramen is fun. Ivan Ramen is creative. Ivan Ramen occasionally slaps me in the face with a cold soggy slice of wet tomato (I did order it). Do I defend all of Ivan Ramen’s choices? No. But the heart likes what it likes.

Boneless chicken + salad + rice combo, with honey garlic sauce at Pelicana

Several locations, including 11 W 32nd St #3819, New York, NY 10001 

All fried chicken should absolutely be served with a side of fluffy, sticky white rice. (Chinese tip in general: Most things in life would probably be good over rice.) It’s even better when it’s Korean fried chicken, because the sticky sweet sauce goes perfectly with the plain white rice. The boneless fried chicken at Pelicana is so damn good. It has a shatteringly crispy and the tastiest selection of sauces to choose from (I stan honey garlic, always and forever). I actually like the chicken itself so much I get my sauce, controversially, on the side, and dip them like chicken nuggets before pouring the rest over rice and mixing it in to eat with chopsticks.

Vietnamese wings at Two Wheels

426 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10024 or online

I take back what I said earlier, when I made fun of the “Japanese fried chicken” -- it turns out, it is in fact a popular naming convention to state a country as an adjective for your dishes. These wings are so, so good. They’re covered in some caramel-y glaze and also kind of spicy, and they hit all the sweet and salty and spicy and fried notes you could ever want for your tired, depressed, pandemic brain. Honestly, now that I think about it, this is probably what Korean fried chicken should taste like if I wasn’t just a little bit OCD and got my sauce on the side, but we’ll never find out, will we 😸. I have taken to ordering fried chicken every Friday from either Pelicana or Two Wheels and I highly recommend doing that for yourself, as a treat.

Carrot-and-egg fluffy sheng jian bao at home

Detailed recipe coming at the end of the month!

This is a tease post for my crowning achievement as an Asian Daughter™️: I have finally succeeded in making, big, puffy, soft-on-the-outside, warm and steamy and dripping with juices on-the-inside Beijing-reminiscent baozi (albeit using the sheng jian/shui jian method). The reason I am not sharing the recipe with you this week is not because I believe in the baraccading of what the Public Has a Right to Know, but because I started typing the recipe up and it took over this week’s entire newsletter, and I wanted to talk about fried chicken, too. For my detailed commentary and extensive notes (and pics!), subscribe to this newsletter, for One Thing I Ate -- or, check out a similar recipe for pork-and-carrot baozi at the Woks of Life, a food blog I very much enjoy.

Till next time,

Soph

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