Cod With Sumac Egg

These are the wild cod pieces from TJs, sauteed with onions. There was a lot of liquid so I ended up letting this simmer. Some added sumac (a tangy Middle-Eastern spice) contributed to the red tint of the dish. I topped this off with some scrambled egg sprinkled with even more sumac. Eggs really match sumac well. I loved the taste of the dish. My only complaint is that the pan I used to cook the eggs is really bad after only a few uses. I must have scratched off all the coating, which is disappointing since you'd think Calphalon stood for something. Maybe it's time to go for that cast iron pan. We'll see. Anyway that's why my eggs are in pieces...

Gordon Ramsay's Sublime Scrambled Eggs

I actually tried following his recipe, minus the chives since I didn't have any, and minus the whole bit about taking the pan off the heat and putting it back on, over and over again. I used Kerrygold butter and Bellwether Farms Crème Fraîche (pronounced krem fresh). Of course this was good, with all that fat and cream! I actually ended up making the eggs more well done rather than creamy and soft, since I typically like my eggs over hard. To me, the well done eggs have more flavor than the runny ones. You can watch Gordon himself make his sublime eggs here.

Honey Cashel Blue

I saw Cashel Blue cheese at Whole Foods and had to get it. Thankfully, it was a relatively small wedge, seeing as it was actually wayyy too strong for me. It was so much more pungent than gorgonzola! I had to tone down the strength of the Cashel Blue by essentially drenching it with my raw honey, which has an extremely strong and sweet taste, and mixing in those wine crackers for some crunch. I won't be getting Cashel Blue again, but it was worth trying at least once, seeing as it is the only blue cheese from Ireland, made, of course, in Cashel, County Tipperary.

Bronze Cut Penne with Buffalo Meat Sauce

Okay back to food. One of the things I learned about Kevin after getting married is that he actually loves penne, which I never really cared for previously. But I'll make an exception for this Delallo penne ziti, which was made in Italy and cut with bronze plates. That does not sound like a big deal, but the texture of each tube really does seem to allow the pasta sauce to adhere better to the penne. Also, these are good sized and I think they are prettier than their ridged cousins (penne rigate). Although the stats aren't as good as the whole grain types, there's still a decent amount of dietary fiber, iron, and other nutrients. This penne totally holds together during cooking, which is more than I can say about some of the other whole grain penne that I've tried. The meat sauce is made out of ground buffalo meat, which is pretty lean, sauteed onions, and marinara sauce. There's nothing out of the ordinary besides the buffalo meat, which piqued my interest. It pretty much tastes like lean beef.

Bear Griffin

Meet Bear Griffin, the cute bear that Kevin stuffed at Build-a-Bear last weekend. He is related in spirit to Blake Griffin of the Clippers. I think the Clipper uniform is what totally makes this bear-- that, and the fact that he's sooo stuffed that he can stand on his own! Can you believe this Build-a-Bear was only $1.50, including accessories? What a steal. He even has his own little Spalding basketball, which Kevin is being Chinese about and leaving the plastic on. Often, one will hear Bear Griffin saying, "Let's play ball!" Too bad Jack Hana isn't as stuffed as Bear Griffin. Oh well. They can still play with each other.

Jack and Russell Hana

Jack Hana was born on February 6, 2010. He is named after the cute and feisty Jack Russell terrier that ran after our slowly moving car in Hana on Maui, HI. Yay for Build-a-Bear. The little guy on the bottom was too adorable to pass up. His name is Russell Hana. Actually the reason I'm posting Jack and Russell now is because I want them next to Kevin's bear... But these guys bring back memories of the lovely and windy road to Hana. The backside of Haleakala was absolutely beautiful. That, along with watching the stars atop Haleakala and being above the clouds as the sun rose, were my favorite things from our Maui trip last December. If ever we go to Hawaii again, I'd like to visit Kauai...

Jme Biscuits and Other Indulgences

I've visited Williams-Sonoma way too many times within the past week. Basically I was drawn in by that fall baking pan with the wells shaped like acorns and mini pumpkins. That was the beginning of my streak, which included various pecan-related baking mixes, pecan pumpkin butter, spices, and these biscuits. These hail all the way from England-- the "Nutty pecan & pumpkin seed" ones are especially delicious!

For my spices, I first saw the gumbo filé and caved in and bought five other spices so I could get the wooden spice caddy for free... The spices of choice were sumac, vadouvan, French lavender, Herbes de Provence, and juniper berries. I then completed the spice buying binge by trekking over to and buying some (more affordable) spices from World Market, including real Tahitian and Madagascar vanilla beans, turmeric, dalmation sage, lemongrass, tarragon, marjoram, and ground cardamom seed. I'm excited to try these spices out!

Mozart Kugeln

You know the holidays are almost upon us when stores start putting out their holiday merchandise. I saw these at World Market the other day and was intrigued. Named after one of my favorite composers, these are, according to the packaging, a "deluxe confection exquisitely filled with pistachio-marzipan made from fresh green pistachios, almonds and rich hazelnut nougat, enrobed with delicious milk and bitter chocolates." They were truly delicious. I think the flavors worked together very well and the pistachio nougat center was absolutely heavenly. This is as opposed to the chocolate covered marzipan from Niederegger, where the chocolate overwhelmed the marzipan in taste, and the marzipan itself was too sugary. Anyway I wonder if there is such a thing as Chopin chocolates...

Turkey With Cranberry White Stilton Miniwiches

I finally caved in and bought the cranberry white stilton from TJs. They also have an apricot variety but the cranberry looked more interesting to me. The white stilton is very tasty on its own, and a far cry from its pungent, blue veined cousins. When eaten alone, this was almost like a dense cheesecake, both in texture and taste. It worked very well with the turkey. I was very satisfied with these mini sandwiches but I guess it wouldn't have hurt to add some cranberry spread.

Roast Beef Cheddar Miniwiches

They don't look too mini, but these actually use the small parm-iago rosemary rolls from TJs which looked cute and artisan. I really liked the strong flavor of these rolls and they probably would have been very tasty if toasted and dipped in olive oil, but as sandwich bread, they were too hard. Thankfully, the red leicester cheese complemented the rosemary well, somehow, and added some interest to the otherwise boring roast beef and mixed greens. In college, I would often ask for roast beef sandwiches with cheddar, baba ganoush (an eggplant spread), sprouts and other veggies. They were great and a relatively healthy change of pace from another regular of mine, which was a simple quesadilla made from burrito sized flour tortillas and filled only with cheddar cheese, but lots of it. These led to food comas...

Filet Mignon

So filet went on sale at $7 per pound, providing an opportune time to try my hand at stovetop steak again (we don't have a grill). I actually cooked these on medium/low heat, in butter, but I'm still not doing these correctly... First, the lack of grill marks was rather unsatisfying (although that could be rectified if I just bust out the grill pan from our stash of unopened registry gifts at the in-laws'), but second, I ran into the situation again where the steaks looked done, but a sanity check on the inside yielded totally raw and bloody centers. So I basically had to score all the steaks on both sides to try to let the centers cook some more. I took them out when I thought they were medium. I think they were still too red, but Kevin raved about them. At least one of us liked these.

Sliders

Got this weird desire to make sliders... The only noteworthy thing here is that I used Kerrygold's Red Leicester cheese, which is essentially a mild and tangy cheddar. The only thing I don't like about making sliders is that the patties seem to shrink, making it slightly harder and annoying when trying to stack up each slider. Perhaps they won't shrink if I grilled the patties rather than attempting to cook them in a stovetop pan. The best sliders I've had are from Claim Jumper, and they are actually not beef patties but are tri-tip slices, with grilled onions and buttery-looking buns. They're called tri-tip dips on their menu but we haven't gone in awhile since they got rid of their Fri/Sat late night happy hour.

Multicolored Sweet Potato Fries

There are so many types of sweet potatoes. Actually I'm not sure which of these are sweet potatos and which are yams. The terms are used interchangeably these days but they are actually different (I guess I will perpetuate the practice and use them interchangeably...). I could be wrong (since the market only labels these as sweet potatoes or yams rather than the actual variety) but I believe I have the garnet (red skin, moist deep orange flesh), the O'Henry (cream skin, moist cream flesh), the Okinawan (white skin, dry purple flesh), and the Japanese (red skin, dry white flesh).

Cutting these was a pain. I decided not to season these at all but simply spread them out on baking sheets lined with parchment paper and bake them. I wasn't too thrilled with the results, but yeah surprise surprise, since I didn't use oil or salt or sugar. I might as well just bake them whole next time if I'm unwilling to add anything else.

Cheddar Cheese With Oat Granola, Apples, and Raisins

This is an interesting cheese from Trader Joe's. I love the taste... sweet and complex. The texture could be less crumbly though. The fact that the cheese just falls apart makes it difficult to use. But perhaps that's just as well, since this seems like a dessert cheese anyway. Here I have these alongside wine crackers, also from TJ. I like how these crackers are so cute and also how they are slightly sweet with a hint of vanilla. I'm not one of those hardcore cheese connoisseurs who swear by water crackers. In fact I think water crackers are boring and prefer crackers such as Lesley Stowe's Rainforest Crisps.

Dingle and His Grandfather

We went to Color Me Mine as part of a bachelorette party, and I saw this stubby little guy and had to get him! He reminds me of this frog sculpture in South Redondo beach, where the frog sits there with a plaque that reads, "Dreaming of the kiss." This one is actually a froggy bank, but I haven't used him as such yet. He's basically just sitting there on my shelf near Dingle and Dingle's dad, which was kindly given to me by its former owner.

Again, this probably doesn't belong in a food blog, but any friend or family of Dingle's is likewise mine. Yay for memories of the emerald isle...

Vegetables With Random Spices

I didn't end up making a second batch of gumbo so these peppers and onions were just sitting around waiting to get used up. Unfortunately I didn't take the time to dice or cut these into strips, so they didn't cook very easily in my saute pan. The random spices didn't really work either. I'm guessing I just put too much such that the spices started clumping up. Oh well.

Chicken Fried Rice

I had this leftover chicken with onions in the freezer that I had to use up. Yay for versatility, as I just mixed this in with vegetable fried rice from Trader Joes. Fried rice is actually not that hard to make but sometimes it's just so much easier to take a package of TJ's fried rice, throw it in the rice cooker, and walk off. Anyway mixing the dishes here masked the onions pretty well. Otherwise, Kevin would have picked out the onions had I just reheated the chicken and onions alongside white rice.

Pork and Chicken Noodles

I had to do SOMETHING with all the leftover sauce from the slow-cooked ribs, so I used it as the sauce for some noodles. The chicken had to get used up, or else I think this dish would have been fine with just the leftover rib meat. I deliberately let the noodles sit to try to absorb as much sauce as possible, so those who insist on al dente will not be fans of this one.

Guava Rolls

These are my favorite pastry from Porto's Bakery & Cafe. They are the guava rolls, not to be confused with the guava cheese rolls that are also delicious. I prefer the dense pie-like crust rather than the flaky turnover-like crust. One of my other favorites is the rellenito, which is basically sweet plaintain stuffed with black beans and rolled in sugar.

I do like the very popular cheese rolls, guava cheese rolls, and potato balls, but they don't excite me as much as the guava rolls. The next time I go, I hope to try their mango empanada and the coconut glazed ball.

Spareribs Chicago Style!

I guess Chicago is famous for ribs, among many other foods. So we decided to include some ribs in this Chicago-themed party. I went to Ranch 99 to get two slabs of spareribs, with two cuts lengthwise across each slab. I then cut between each of the bones when I got home, threw them in the slow cooker with BBQ sauce and brown sugar, and left them overnight on the 10 hour setting. Relatively easy except for the handling of raw meat and the cleanup.

The name is actually a misnomer since there's really nothing in the making of these that makes them Chicago style, as opposed to the other regional variants. I am not sure how true this is, but according to one site I found, here are some primary differences... North Carolina BBQ focuses primarily on slow-cooked pulled pork. Memphis BBQ uses pork primarily and focuses on slow smoking and liberal use of dry rubs. Kansas City BBQ uses many different types of meat, but is characterized by liberal use of sweet, tangy sauces. Texas BBQ, like Memphis, makes heavy use of dry rubs, but relies on beef brisket primarily. St. Louis BBQ uses beef and pork and is characterized by sweet, thick, ketchup-based sauces. Chicago BBQ focuses mainly on ribs covered in sweet, tangy sauce and sometimes dry rubs.

Gumbo

Yes, I already have a previous entry about gumbo, but after slaving over this roux for 4.5 hours, I just had to make another entry on this! So yes I lied when I said I would never make my own roux again, but I got motivated after seeing red and yellow bell peppers for $0.49 each, and after Kevin decided to go to Chicago for Ribs rather than Lucille's for his birthday dinner (or else I would have just ordered the gumbo from Lucille's for $10 a plate).

Sigh so I started the roux at 10pm, which was a bad idea, and had to keep it going until I gave up at about 2:30am, disappointed that I didn't get it as dark as last time. I was falling asleep so tried to multi-task and disposition the other ingredients at the same time so that I can be done with it and start the slow cooker before going to bed. This multi-tasking proved challenging since the roux requires a lot of attention in order not to burn.

Anyway I got chicken tenders (I think gumbo tastes better with white meat) and also got some smoked apple chardonnay sausage from TJ's. For veggies I only used green/red/yellow bell peppers and onions, so I didn't have the holy trinity this time. Was too lazy to look up the recipe again so just winged it on the spices (bay leaves, cayenne pepper, paprika, thyme). I woke up to the wonderful smell of gumbo this morning and ate too much of it for lunch =P.

You know, for this batch, I used 6 bell peppers (2 of each color) totalling $3, about $3 worth of chicken tenders ($2/lb), one package of sausage ($4), one onion ($0.25), and oil and flour and spices (maybe $1?). So this batch only costed about $12 and could easily last four times. Lucille's must make a lot of profit on their gumbo, but I wonder if anybody else orders it besides me. Oh well, if one is pressed for time, it would still be worth it to pay $10 for rsetaurant gumbo and get a biscuit with apple butter on the side, rather than spending 4.5 hours making roux and another 8 hours or so slow cooking it, and extra time on top of that to clean up etc. I have enough roux to make probably 2 or 3 more batches of the same size though...

Mini Corn Dogs

I had not had Wienerschnitzel in years, probably a couple decades, but when this coupon came in the mail for $0.99 mini corn dogs, I had to get them. They looked too cute to pass up. Coupons do work in that they advertise what one may not have known existed, and provide an extra monetary incentive to go and purchase the items that one would otherwise not have known about / been motivated to purchase. Such was the case with these mini corn dogs, and also with these Noah's Bagels coupons for egg white breakfast bagel thin sandwiches, which go the extra mile to advertise the healthiness of choosing these sandwiches (relatively low calories). Anyway these corn dogs were a throwback to old times and I had a few slathered in ketchup and mustard, and a few on their own. The batter is very tasty and probably very unhealthy! The franks themselves were turkey, I believe, and probably not terribly bad, for a dog.

Chilean Sea Bass

After Kevin and I blew some money ordering sea bass at a restaurant and getting like 3oz each, I decided to redeem the experience by getting some Chilean sea bass from Ranch 99 and cooking it myself. It used to be $17 per pound but this time it was $13 per pound, which is pretty good for Chilean sea bass. I bought a pound and marinated it in mirin and miso, and steamed it, then served it on top of steamed rice alongside baby bok choy. Kevin said he savored every bite. What you see on the left is about 3/4 of the fish I bought, not including the skin/bones. So the fish in that photo probably came out to about $9. Craziness. I can definitely do sea bass and can probably resort to this if we ever have dinner parties in our future house. What I can't do right though is filet mignon, so gotta work on that before I can declare victory over that ridiculously priced bass/filet dish.

Durian Chips

Wow saw these at Whole Foods and I had to try them, given that I think real durian smells terrible. Granted, I have not actually tried fresh durian but only the frozen/defrosted kinds. Anyway these durian chips were pretty good. They didn't taste like durian at all, haha. They basically tasted like the yuca / cassava chips and breadfruit chips I had in Puerto Rico. It was worth trying once but is too pricey ($3 for an individual sized bag) and not enough of a nutritional powerhouse to get again.

"Oyakodon" Cod

I made "Oyakodon" except for the fact that I swapped out the chicken for cod! I got the wild caught cod pieces from TJ's freezer section. I probably can do a better job with how the eggs ended up. Somehow I have to get the dish so hot that a raw egg would cook automatically on top of it. Also, using real eggs would probably help with appearance and texture. Instead, I just stirred in the liquid eggs and as the dish simmered on medium heat. Oh well. Kevin liked it.

Pumpkin Gingerbread

So my cousin had given me some baking mixes... Among them was a gingerbread cake mix and a pumpkin bread mix. I decided to kill two birds with one stone and use up both, so I combined both mixes and simply added water until I deemed enough had been added. The instructions actually called for other ingredients such as oil and eggs, but I decided not to add them, partly out of laziness, but mostly out of a curiosity to see how this would turn out without those added ingredients (save on some calories!). I was very impressed at how fluffy the bread turned out, and how well it held together, and how moist it was. It was so "normal" that I would give this to people!

Broccoli Carrot Rice

This dish is noteworthy only because I found a nice way of using up broccoli stems! I just diced them along with some carrots, threw them in with white rice, and there you have it! Eventually I added meatballs and called it a meal for Kevin =P.

Whole Grain Walnut Carrot Raisin Bread

Trying to use up my whole grain flours (Kamut, oat, and quinoa).  I scooped some of each flour, and added carrot puree made from my brother's backyard carrots. I would say that I added no water but that would not be true, since we had to add some water to get the carrot to mash up in my mom's Vitamix. Anyway the flour mixed nicely with the carrot puree, and I threw in walnuts and raisins, and threw this in the slow cooker, and voila! This was great, tastewise, probably because of the walnuts and raisins. In terms of texture, I was surprised that it held together. Anyway I was impressed by the fact that there was no added oil or sugar! (Well I guess the walnuts and raisins serve as oil and sugar.. haha.)