New Kang Fong Restaurant (Wheaton, MD)

We were looking for a new Chinese restaurant to try, and decided to give this place a chance. We ate there for dinner last night, and were very impressed! This restaurant is very open, bright and clean. I particularly like that the roast ducks and chickens were hanging in the front of the restaurant. Anyway, greedy Melvin ordered a whole roast duck ($20.95), and it was nice to see it taken down from the display and chopped up to our order. The duck was very juicy, tender

and flavorful. It was sweet, and the runoff was more gravy like than the average roast duck. We really liked this version a ton!

He also ordered the salt and pepper frog legs ($14.95). This came with some fried noodles, scallions, jalapeno peppers and fried garlic as garnishes- all good, especially to mix in with your rice! The fried frog legs were AMAZING- by far our favorite dish. There were several pieces that were all meat, and the legs themselves had quite a bit of meat on them. The salt and pepper crust was very crispy and well flavored- so good that we wished they gave us double the amount. We also ordered kong xin cai ($11.95), which was stir fried with garlic.

The serving size for this was huge- much more than the standard serving size we usually get at other restaurants. They gave us a complimentary dessert of a mildly sweetened red bean soup, which I had never had before,but really liked. There were also some salted (fried?) peanuts given to us when we ordered while we waited for our meal, which were very very addictive.

All in all, we got a ton of great food for $58 (including tip). The service was good, and we really liked the feel of the restaurant. There were several other large families eating there, and everything they ordered also looked good (especially the rice pots). We will

definitely eat here again!!

New Kang Fong

2400 University Blvd W

Wheaton, MD 20902

(301) 933-6388

The Thanksgiving Duck

Duck is our favorite 'fancy' meal, and Melvin is hopelessly obsessed with its juicy, tender deliciousness. Actually, this is our 4th Thanksgiving duck (can't even begin to estimate our total duck creation/consumption total- there are a lot!!). The Thanksgiving duck becomes a day long event, which we look forward to with much enthusiasm. Some of us have even been known to conduct countdowns to duck day, bringing the topic of duck into any and all conversations for days on end. A duck day consists of many steps: the prep of the duck followed by the slow roasting of the duck, the rotating of the duck and the butchering of duck, all of which culminates in the eating of the duck! A fun day for all involved! Plus, the apartment smells great all day long :-)

Duck Day!! Duck Day!! Duck Day!! Quack!!

You can see the duck we chose on the left: at just over 7 lbs and the largest duck I could get my greedy little hands on, it is a beauty! It comes with an orange sauce packet which we shall stick up our nose to and toss out without further thought or discussion, because this duck deserves only the best trimmings! We bought the duck frozen

on Sunday (we actually had to go to 3 stores to find a duck, because the first two were completely sold out!! Almost a crisis of epic proportions!!), and it has been thawing in our fridge ever since. We took it out around 10AM and unwrapped it, washed it out and removed the neck and giblets, trimmed some of the excess skin and fat, cut snips in the skin and applied the seasonings (we used a Chinese roast duck spice packet from the grocery store). The duck then sat in the fridge to marinate until 3pm. You can tell by looking at it that it will be good eating in our house tonight!

So we put the duck in the oven at 3pm. The cooking progression is: 350 degrees for 30 minutes on each side (start breast side up), followed by 375 degrees for 30 minutes with breast side up, then 400 degrees for 30 minutes with breast side down and the last segment is 350 degrees for 15 minutes with breast side up. It is a long roasting process, but it produces a very tender, juicy duck with a crisp, crackly skin. With the high heat and long cooking time, most of the fat melts and runs off into the roasting pan (snipping the skin before cooking also helps this process). The best part is that the giblets can be placed on top of the duck to get a nice dark color and good crunch to them- and they are ready before the rest of the duck, so you can sample some of the duck to whet your appetite for dinner. Our duck seemed to have extra- double heart and gizzard, we think. Oh well, more for us to eat! It's always exciting every time we flip the duck, to see it get more and more golden in color and to get a whiff of it cooking away.

Finally, the duck was ready! Huzzah!! We took it out of the roasting pan and chopped it up. This part is always really messy, but we've become more skilled at duck butchering with time. The duck was very meaty- the breast pieces were huge, as were the drumsticks- JACKPOT!! I was calling 'dibs' on pieces as they were being cut up- hehe.

We cooked some stir fried yu choy and rice to go with the duck.

I also had a can of cranberry sauce, in keeping with the traditional Thanksgiving palette. I think it goes pretty well with duck, actually. We also had a bottle of the Martinelli's sparkling apple cider- yum!

It turned out that the duck really was a ton of meat- we had enough to pack away for two extra dinners. Yay for future deliciousness!! Happy Thanksgiving!!

Oh! Christmas Tree Oh! Christmas Tree. . .

It's Thanksgiving/Turkey/Duck Day!!!!

Melvin was just a tad too eager for the advent of the Christmas season and so he set up his 7.5 ft Christmas tree last night- at 11pm, no less. Luckily, we were able to stop him from decorating it in the wee hours of Thanksgiving morning. Despite it being three years

old, the tree is still quite full and bountiful, as you can see! Isn't it beautiful??!?!? Yes, it is! Magnificent and majestic! Doesn't it make you jealous?!?!? Hmmm?

Anyway. . .the Christmas Tree-decorating nutty took over as soon as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was over! Argh!!!!

Three hours later. . .

The tree is finally decorated according to Melvin's exacting requirements and standards. And it looks pretty darn good, too! Multi-colored lights are the best :-) It was difficult getting the lights, garland and beads evenly placed, but Melvin finally gave the nod of approval. Phew!

The next thing on the hit parade was to set up the Christmas Village. There is a ski lift, Santa toy shop, Pharmacy and Shopping Center. Everything was set up in time for the Thanksgiving dinner, and looked very festive at night!!

Lovin' the Lobster

It is important to note that this weekend heralds the advent of a month long celebratory period that marks Thanksgiving, Christmas and most importantly: Monkey Lauren's birthday. This holy trinity of holidays is annually marked by a glorious amalgamation of delicious, delectable dinners, mega marathons of apartment and tree decorating, and of course, the baking and decorating of cookies and consumption of cake.

We chose to open the joyous season with a meal of Singapore Style Chili Lobsters. It is always a pleasant surprise to us that seafood (particularly lobsters and crabs) are plentiful, large and cheap around this time of year. This dish is traditionally done with Mud Crabs (or Dunganess Crabs), but live lobsters (New York wild caught)

were $4.99/lb at the Asian Supermarket this week, and that was a deal too good to pass up. Plus, Melvin is very partial to lobster, especially after his Maine vacation, where he consumed 7 whole lobsters in as many days.

Anyway, below is the recipe we used, complete with pictures of the cooking process, so those of you not blessed with the innate cooking skills and instincts of Melvin Bear can attempt to reproduce the magical dish that is Singapore Style Chili Lobster.

Chilli Lobsters Recipe

Recipe adapted from Shai Coggins

Ingredients:

• 2 Lobsters (approx. 350 grams each)
• 1 cups of water
• 5 tbsp ketchup
• 2.5 tbsp white sugar
• 1.5 tsp cornflour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1.5 tbsp vegetable oil
• 4 cloves of chopped fresh garlic
• 2 chopped fresh green chilli (we used our home-grown Thai chilli peppers)
• 2.5 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 2 eggs
• 2 spring onions, chopped in to small pieces
• 1 tsps fresh lime juice

How to Cook:

1. Mix the sauce ingredients together first in a big bowl. Just put together water, tomato sauce, cornflour, sugar, and salt and mix them using a whisk until they’re dissolved.

2. Heat the wok and add the vegetable oil.

3. Sauté the chopped garlic until light brown (takes just a few seconds to a minute in a hot pan).

4. Add the chopped green chilli and sauté quickly until you can smell the spice.

5 Mix in the fresh chopped lobsters and fry them together until they turn red (orange-y color). The length of this will vary on the number of lobsters being cooked at the same time – and their sizes.

6. Once the lobsters are red, slowly add the sauce mixture in. Mix in the oyster sauce and the garlic powder. Stir and let simmer for about 10 – 15 minutes. Again, this will depend on the size and number. You’ll know when the lobsters are cooked by the shell’s color (turning orange).

7. While still simmering, add the eggs in (scramble before adding, the eggs will serve as a thickening agent to make the sauce heavier and more flavorful) by stirring around wok.

8. Then, add the freshly squeezed lime juice and spring onions. Stir.

9. Once cooked, put the lobsters in a big serving dish and drizzle the sauce on top.

10. Serve with stir-fried vegetable (e.g. Yu Choy cooked with garlic, oyster sauce, salt, sugar, and chilli garlic).

Finally! Time to eat!

Singapore-style Chilli Lobsters + Yu Choy

With Jasmine Rice, of course!

Bon Appetit!

How YOU doin'?

Welcome! Thank you for viewing my inaugural posting- I am sure that reading this blog is the most rewarding thing you have done all day!

Let me begin to

acquaint you with the awesomeness that is Melvin Bear. To begin with, I am sexy (for proof, please see photo on left). Really sexy. Like, monkeys take off their

knitted bikinis and toss them at me when I show up on the scene. Moving on, I am also hungry. I have to keep up my sexy physique (again, see photo- left). This takes a lot of food. And it must be delicious food, or it is simply not worth devouring.

I am also an unusually well traveled bear. I have traveled abroad to France and Canada. Domestically, I have been to Hawaii, New York and most recently, Maine. I thought about answering the call of the wild, and joining a pack of bears in the wilderness, free to roam about and climb trees and whatnot, but then I realized that I would miss watching The Office every Thursday night.

Now, I would like to introduce you to some of my lady friends. Stage right, we have a lovely photo of me with my girl Chip. She's a brick house, and very feisty. She lives with my friend Rachel in Baltimore. I love her, but am glad that she has another home to live

in, so as to allow more time for me to devote to my other ladies. My main squeeze is this delicious female named Monkey Lauren. Bow chick a bow wow!! She is a belly dancer and extraordinarily limber!