Foody food food

On Chinese New Year's Eve, I had Belgian food this year. Oops. Didn't realize somehow that it was New Year's *Eve* you were supposed to do the big meal. What basically happened was, I made chicken quesadillas for dinner like 3 nights in a row (they weren't even that good - I just made that much filling by mistake in an attempt to finish off the 2 chicken breasts not used in the Chicken, Tomato & Prosciutto Risotto I made late last week (Costco packages them together in 2 or 3 chicken breasts, and I'd used up all my 2-breast packets)). My bf was itching to eat out on Wednesday, and I had been wanting to try La Trappe, a new Belgian restaurant in North Beach (800 Greenwich St)... the only Belgian restaurant in SF, in fact. When I was in Belgium a few years back, one of my favorite things was the food. Lots of cream-based stuff, so not good for me, but very yummy. So I'd been wanting to eat Belgian since returning but only now did I have an opportunity.

La Trappe is a little odd in that the street level has a few tables and an open-air kitcheny type area, but, when we were there, nobody at all except kitchen staff on that level. Made the restaurant look empty and unpopular. The main dining area and bar are downstairs, in a rather cute and cozy brick cave that was rather reminiscent of places I'd been in Brussels (and which is apparently fairly common in North Beach). It's got wooden tables and benches, and the whole thing does feel rather European, which is nice. Menu-wise, La Trappe was lacking some of my favorite Belgian dishes - Beef Carbonnade (beef stew made with beer), this Belgian endive dish with ham and a cheesy cream sauce, etc - but it did have Chicken Waterzooi, Ghent Style, which is a creamy chicken stew that I had enjoyed in Belgium. Seeing this, I happily ordered it, along with a $6 side of fries because, after all, Belgian fries are supposed to be the best ever. My bf didn't see as much on the menu to interest him but got the pork chop on a bed of yams (neither of us are mussel fans, otherwise I hear their Moules Frites are great). When my bf ordered Coke and I stuck to my water, the waiter expressed surprise - "that's unusual." I guess most people go to La Trappe for the Belgian beer, not the food. But neither of are beer drinkers.

Unfortunately, La Trappe proved to be a bit disappointing. The Waterzooi was decent - nice warm comfort food - but way overpriced at like $18-19 (and they didn't give me a spoon until I asked). The fries were nothing special at all (didn't help that I had had fries at lunch). They came with ketchup and a horseradishy dipping sauce, and we didn't even finish them, making the most expensive wasted side ever. My bf's pork chop was apparently fine, but nothing special, and also seemed a bit overpriced at like $22. I was utterly stuffed by the end of my waterzooi, so we didn't even look at the dessert menu. Overall I'd say the ambience was nice, it's probably a good place if you like Belgian beer and moules frites, but for us, it was overpriced and didn't feature enough Belgian favorites to merit a return visit. Oh well.

On the plus side, on Thursday, I tried to put something Chinese-like together for dinner that my bf would eat, and based on a shortage of time, went with beef lo mein. I couldn't find a single recipe online that quite fit what I was thinking, so I kind of blended a few and did my own thing. Turned out slightly over-salty but otherwise quite good, and my bf really liked it. So I'm going to try to remember what I did...

1 lb flank steak, sliced fairly thin
2 carrots, used the grater to make thin slices
Napa cabbage, not sure how much, sliced it up to be about the same amount as the carrots
1 red bell pepper, cut into thin slices
1 onion, cut into thin slices
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 6oz package of chow mein (only non-dry kind I could find in Lucky - and not nearly enough for the condiments above - wanted lo mein, couldn't find any)

Marinated the flank steak in soy sauce, oyster sauce, garlic powder, ground black pepper, some sugar, and cornstarch. Let sit while preparing the rest of the ingredients (and I'm a slow-ass chopper).

Followed the directions on the chow mein package - boiled ~2 quarts of water, put in noodles for 3 minutes, then drained, ran under cold water, drained thoroughly, set aside.

Used peanut oil - heated in wok over high heat.
Stir fried flank steak until brown (but probably still somewhat pink on the inside).
Added garlic, stirred in.
Added onions, stir fried for maybe 1-2 minutes.
Added red bell pepper, stir fried for about a minute
Dumped in carrots & cabbage, stir fried and mixed for a few minutes until everything started looking soft and cooked-ish.
Had way too much meat/veggie stuff, so pulled about half of it into a separate pan.
Mixed in noodles (not so easy to get it all distributed), and continued stirring and cooking and warming (though I turned down the heat to like medium-high). Poured in some soy sauce and oyster sauce and a big tablespoon of sugar, and then tried sprinking white pepper on top but most of it seemed to float up into the fan. Oops. Some portion of this did get in, though I'm pretty sure. Continued mixing until it all seemed warmed through and cooked. Served.

Obviously the actual sauce/seasoning I used was pretty approximated and me just dumping stuff in at will. I guess I put in too much soy sauce or something since it was kind of salty. But it turned out quite fragrant and yummy.

Going to try to make the second half tonight with "fresh egg noodles" from an Asian market. We'll see if those turn out ok.