Lingbo Li
Trina’s Starlite in Somerville Serves a Wicked Hot Dog
dranky drank
I wasn’t sure what to expect from a four course hot dog dinner at Trina’s Starlite in Inman Square. Overwhelming hot dog? Haute hot dog? Hot dog on a stick, coated in corn meal, then deep fried to a caramel crisp? Answer: not quite any of the above.
The blogger’s event featured (and I’m not sure whether to your real names or your online handles… so here we go): Julia Rappaport, FoodieMommy, RitaRepulsa, ToastRusso, ManlyEats, EatBoston, Amy Traverso, The Boston Foodie, and CambridgeCarrie. Thanks for all the hilarious dating tales, guys, and thanks to Nicole for organizing it.
I was treated to dishes like ponzu-braised banh mi dog (a slivered hot dog, topped with a carrot and cucumber salad and pickled sweet onion) which struck me more for its inspired wine pairing. Riffing on the classic Vietnamese sandwich, it maintained the American bun but added a fluorescent slaw and flavor-soaked strips of dog.
Ponzu-braised banh mi dog, cucumber carrot salad, sweet soy aioli, pickled sweet onions
My first thought: too salty. But then I took a sip of the wine, a pinot blanc, and it all came into focus. In tandem, the wine pinned down the flavors of the banh mi, cleansing the palate and made the saltiness a pleasant counterpoint, rather than overwhelming. I’m pretty uneducated on matters of wine, but it’s moments like these where I wake up for a second and think, wow, this is really greater than the sum of its parts.
Cooking for a Cause, Boston Symphony Orchestra food drive – Boston events
Food can feed in many ways. Aside from sampling high end restaurants or making a muck in the kitchen, there’s plenty of routes to rising above merely filling one’s stomach.
Here’s two upcoming Boston events that you should consider attending and donating to:
Cooking for a Cause – Thursday, March 25, 2010, 6-10 p.m. at the Harborview Ballroom in the Seaport World Trade Center. Super hot chefs (like Jody Adams, Tony Maws, and Jamie Bissonnette!) and mixologists serve up their best to benefit worthy cause East End House, a community center and social service agency.
Boston Symphony Orchestra food drive for The Greater Boston Food Bank – Thursday, April 1, Friday April 2, and Saturday April 3 at Symphony Hall. Either drop off canned food (no glass or baby food/formula) before and during intermissions of 8pm performances of Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah. Or, if you can’t make the concert, just leave your donations in the collection boxes between 7 and 8pm. Even better: make a cash donation.
How to make and eat biscotti
Here is a template for an ideal morning:
Wake up early, exercise. Shower, put on a dress and heels. Apply lip gloss, even though it’ll come off on the coffee lid. Brush your hair by running your fingers through it. (You don’t own a comb.)
Stop at a coffee shop (it can be Starbucks, but better pastries are to be had elsewhere). Buy black drip coffee and biscotti – just one. Get your own table, and a magazine. Nothing too serious, a tabloid is best. Eat and drink very, very slowly. Write down the things you want to accomplish that day, but don’t feel bad if you only get around to half of them.
Linger, then leave.
When I confessed that I wanted to make biscotti, my friend Daniel admitted, “I don’t bake. Baking is not cooking. It’s science.”
He’s right. You can just substitute oil for butter and expect an equally delicious result. The issue is, I come from a culinary tradition of imprecision.
I remember watching my mother bake her cakes in the brown glass dish on Saturday mornings. She has two cakes my tummy knows well: apple and sticky rice. Whenever she comes to visit me at school, she’ll bring a slab of sticky rice cake, lined in red bean paste and presented in white Tupperware. It’s always presented along with a set of clean bed sheets, or admonitions to exercise (I do, every morning, I’ll protest).
Lemon risotto, shrimp, split pea soup, and strawberries – Lingbo cooks her first real dinner
I knew I was in deep shit when I got out of Crate and Barrel with a new set of measuring cups. The rain had intensified into a downpour, my grocery bags were breaking, and my feet were soaked. So I put away the umbrella and soldiered through Back Bay, 30 pounds of food hanging from my arms. By the time I got around to picking up the dry cleaning, my fingers had gone numb.
The rain compounded a circuitous shopping trip. Trader Joe’s did not stock white wine, arborio rice, or split peas – the latter two were main ingredients. Shaws, to add to my frustration, refused to take my ID because I was under 25 and out of state. So I found my cheap white wine elsewhere, only to be chased down in the rain when I forgot to take my purchase.
I soppily ran my last errand. A petite Asian girl in peg-legged jeans looked over as I came into the dry cleaner’s, then retreated back into her work. Blunt bangs framed her pale moon of a face, which was chattering away into her headset. I cleared my throat.
“I’m here to pick up dry cleaning,” I said.
She nodded, then went back to babbling. Another minute as I tried to get my bearings. At least it was dry inside. “I’m here to pick up the dry cleaning,” I repeated, a bit louder.
This finally registered.
So when I dragged my body up the stairs and began cooking, I was calmed. Chopping was easy; I was dry; I only had to fret over tossing in another carrot.
Strawberries awaiting slaughter - I especially like the rainy view outside the window.
My menu, thrown together from recipes from my friend Daniel, Ina Garten, Epicurious.com, and an idea of my own, included the following: split pea soup; lemon risotto; shrimp tossed with tomato, parsley, lemon juice, and olive oil; and macerated strawberries with sour cream and sugar.
Alligator, yak, and ostrich, oh my: Student Prince in Springfield, MA
You will never go to the Student Prince . First off, it’s a 90 minute drive away in western Massachusetts – so far off, you might as well be teetering on a fiery lip overlooking the nothingness of the end of the world.
Who knows what spiny, lantern-jawed fish are fit to survive so far from Bostonian civilization.
But I braved it anyway. I hoped to do the foodie equivalent of resume padding. It was the last night of February – and the last night that Student Prince would be serving exotic game meats. Lipoff had tipped me off on yak, bison, elk, alligator, and boar in hearty preparations.
The trip wouldn’t have been possible without Lipoff’s battered-but-spunky Peugeot, riddled with quirks. The seatbelt, for example, is backwards: you pull up from the bottom left to affix it above the right shoulder.
After a delayed start, we arrived, 90 minutes later, in Springfield, MA. Student Prince is unabashedly German, and there’s a pleasantly institutional feel to the place. (Meaning established, not infirmary-like.) You think about how many years it’s taken to accumulate the beer steins on the wall, the knick knacks and ski lodge-esque wood paneling, and the loyal clientele – primarily white and older on the night I went, a score of families bonding.
Travel is surreal: I remember the tired, cheesy desperation of the ferry that shuttled me across across the strait from Dover to Calais. This wasn’t hopping between England and France, but the past 90 miles in the Peugeot felt inadequate to match the impossibility of where I sat.
Lana Lingbo Li
I'm a world traveler / enthusiastic eater who's now blogging and producing videos over at HelloLana.com. Visit me there!
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