Doug called Christian last night wondering if we wanted to get together for dinner tonight, which we figured sure, what the hey. Doug’s request was for Chinese because he wanted pork fried rice. In thinking about places to go, I read about a Szechuan place in Malden called FuLoon. It got a Best of Boston award from Boston Magazine in 2009 (i.e. last year). In the same way that I found out about Chau Chow City from Boston Magazine, so I have now learned of FuLoon! The menu sounded really interesting, and reading more reviews made it sound like something we all definitely wanted to try, so off to Malden we went in the midst of a horrible rainstorm. We were seated quickly and took off our stinky, wet overcoats. I’d made some notes beforehand of stuff that I wanted to try, specifically garlic chicken wings, JingDu pork pancake, and wok baked beef. I also wanted dumplings because hey, dumplings. Who doesn’t like dumplings? Christian got pepper steak, Doug got tea smoked duck and pork fried rice. The first thing to come out were the dumplings. They may have been Chinese Spaghetti Factory dumplings, they may not have been; I don’t care if they weren’t made fresh right there because they were very good, came with a nice dipping sauce. The next thing to come out was the chicken wings, and holy crap, let me tell you something, those garlic chicken wings were a very wise choice. An enormous platter of fried wings covered in fried minced garlic, sichuan peppercorns, black beans, and dried red peppers. It was suggested to us by the hostess that we put the garlic on our rice. Holy moly. I could eat that on anything. The pork pancake was wonderful and was more or less like the way I’d seen it described: a scallion pancake stuffed with pork dumpling filling. That was served with black vinegar, also fantastic. The wok baked beef was as good as claimed, but I really enjoyed the black pepper steak that Christian got, which was super-tender all nestled on a bed of sauteed onion, all covered in black pepper. I didn’t try the duck, so no comment; it came with four little steamed buns, and I ate one of the buns, which reminded me a little of a communion wafer. The pork fried rice was nice and light and contained no magenta pieces of pork, but instead tender little slivers of pork with egg, bean sprout, and onion. Iron Chef Chen Kenichi would be proud. It was all-around fantastic, and I look forward to going again and trying something else. I believe the hype!

My six degrees of separation story about Todd English is that my dad helped him get building permits to open up Olives (and later, Figs) in Charlestown, MA in the 1980s. I’d never actually eaten at his restaurant until I went there for my BFF Prairie’s 24th birthday in 2000. I don’t remember everything I had, but I do remember having something involving a lobster ragout over squid ink pasta. I’d seen squid ink pasta on Iron Chef and very much wanted to try it, delightful gothy black pasta. Mmm! Say what you will about what Todd English has become, as MC Slim JB does very well, but back when he was into cooking, the man knew how to make some dang pizza and he knew how to make some effin’ crab cakes. I received The Olives Table several years ago as a birthday or Christmas present, either from Prairie or from my mom, I’m no longer sure. I liked the sound of his crab cake recipe as it didn’t involve red bell pepper or mayonnaise, bold moves indeed!  I made the crab cakes and I made an aïoli also from the cookbook and whoa. Oh, Todd English, you’re the real Iron Chef USA.

Adapted for the home, his cookbooks are easy to follow and replicate in your kitchen. If nothing else, these crab cakes are worth trying. Rather than welcome a C&D, the link there is for “mini” crab cakes, but it’s the same as the recipe in his cookbook; the recipe omits the fact that you will get four crab cakes from that recipe.

Tonight, I made pad thai using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated. In my opinion, if you’re going to pay for a website membership as a person who enjoys cooking, pay for this one. It’s got all the recipes and articles you’d find in the magazine but in handy web format. Anyhow, here’s the result:

It came out very well, if I do say so myself. We got ingredients at the Kam Man Market in Quincy. I was really overwhelmed at we searched for ingredients, and the “Thai” pickled radish I got was not something I would feel to the man I married for love, so that got omitted. I also made a mistake in choosing thicker rice noodles than I should have. Ah well. Next time I’ll know. I thought the thicker ones would be better. They were fettucine-width instead of linguine-width. Live and learn.

I mostly stuck to the recipe except on a couple other points beyond skipping the radish after I opened the package and discovered nothing I wanted to eat: as we could not find tamarind paste in the store (well, not tamarind paste that wasn’t in an enormous tub that didn’t seem like a worthwhile investment of dollars and storage), I ended up getting jarred “pad thai sauce” that had the main components needed and no MSG or weird shit. Next time, I will try to track down tamarind paste. I also used more garlic than the recipe called for because that’s just how I roll.

Very tasty and not too hard to make, though Christian grumbled about how much work it looked like. It also made a pretty spectacular mess, but that’s because I was not entirely confident with my cooking tools.