The Food of April 2016

Yeah, my April 2016 overview post was long, but it would have been even longer if it had had food in it. Here's some of the food I cooked or bought last month:

COOKED

This is rotisserie chicken ramen after the recipe from 101 Easy Asian Recipes. From broth to bird, I made everything in that bowl! (No, I didn't raise the chicken, mushrooms or scallions or hand toss the noodles. I'm just saying this wasn't some from the packet ramen!)

I continued to workshop my chongqing chicken tacos.

A nearby Mexican grocery store sold me a giant bag of melty Mexican cheese that I had to figure out what to do with. So here's a cheeseburger I made topped with a pickled Thai pepper quesillo. I pickled those peppers myself, too!

Another 101 Easy Asian recipe, Spicy Beef and Celery. 

Another use of my Mexican cheese: "Chop Cheese" tacos. What's a Chop Cheese? Sheesh, you sound like someone who lives below 110th street!

And finally, a nice big plate of spaghettin (linguini) with a homemade bolognese. When is it a bolognese and when is it meat sauce? When you take a long time to make it, that's when!

BOUGHT

Out in Queens there's this odd little place called Jollibee that I always walk by on my way to get Thai. It's the only East Coast outlet of a popular chain in the Philippines. The menu seems "normal" at first, with burgers and fried chicken on it, but then it starts having things on it like spaghetti and...well, spaghetti, on it and you're like "What's the deal with this place?" So one day I rode out to Queens to find out what was up.

I got a cheeseburger and the spicy fried chicken. The cheeseburger was enough like a McDonalds cheeseburger to be familiar but also different enough to compel me to keep eating it...there was some kind of curious sauce or something was up with the cheese or somehting, whatever it was it was like the burger was talking to me "Yeah, I'm kind of different, right? Don't you want to eat more of me to try to figure out why?"

I ordered my fried chicken spicy and it came out dusted with a formidable spice powder. Probably the spiciest fast food chicken I've ever had, it definitely gave me the occasional unexpected spice cough. Chicken came with a side of mashed potatoes and gravy along with an extra gravy. Looking around at my fellow Jollibee eaters, people were going to town with that gravy,  dunking everything in it, pouring it on everything, that was like the open secret of Jollibee "Come here for gravy food."

In conclusion, Jollibee was unusual enough (to me) to make the trip worth it and I imagine going back some time in the next 12 months to try their spaghetti. Also, the workers could not have been friendlier. A++ service.

Other foods: I gave the tacos at Taqueria Diana in the East Village another shot. Either improved or better than I remember.

Then there was this weekend I went to a place in my neighborhood called "Delicias Mexicanas" three times, the first time I indulged in this unique creation, the "Bati-Taco" which was like an openface, multiple tortilla quesadilla topped with lots of cheese and big slices of carne enchilada. Would definitely, definitely get again.

Okay, truth be told, I plan to post about two more restaurants I ate at in their own post. It'll be fun, you'll see.