Caprese to go

My take on the Caprese Salad as an appetizer. I took mozzarella balls and cherry tomatoes, halved them then took a Pretz stick (basically a Japanese, thin bread stick cracker) wrapped it in basil then skewered the cheese and tomato combined ball. The basil wrapped around the Pretz stick prevents it from getting soggy. The skewering took some engineering but overall it's simple, clean, easy eating. Going to put these out for a small gathering tomorrow along with some bacon wrapped enoki mushrooms, stuffed Cremini caps, and maybe stuffed pasta shells. I have a thing for portable foods.

Foodie Recap

Here's a quick recap of my food adventures of the past few months:My favorite curry where I cooked up the holy trinity of celery, carrots, and onions along with some shiitake mushrooms. Once soft, I blended the stew to make it thick then added potatoes and meat along with the curry rue.

Curry and a fried egg is a match made in heaven.

This is kurobuta (black pig) curry with zakoku gohan, a blend of grains and beans with rice. It adds a heartiness and varied texture over just eating curry with white rice.

Hayashi rice - very similar to curry rice but instead of curry the base is a rich beef stew. That richness is cut by mixing in a dry red wine into the sauce.

Onion soup from Frenchi's Bistro in Long Beach. A nice little pot that Miho took a liking too.

Frenchi's fois gras appetizer. My 1st taste of fois gras with a layer of truffles and strawberry glaze. Not bad - a cross between butter and a nice soft cheese. Truffles add a nice smokiness. The portion was larger than I thought it would be so by the time I finished the liver dish, I had more than enough to last me a long while. I know all the stories about the forced feeding they sometimes use on ducks to create fois gras, but I also know in France there are very human farmers of fois gras. I'm no die-hard animal rights advocate but the lesson is to be aware of what you eat (nutrition and origination) as opposed to just eating something just because it's food or it tastes good.

Ah a classic favorite - braised lamb shank. Frenchi's may be on par with Soliel's but I have nostalgic memories of my Soleil's lamb shank.

Miho had the free range chicken at Frenchi's. It almost looks like rib smackin BBQ chicken but the sauce is a much more pleasant taste to compliment the delicate flavors of the meat.

Tea time! A little yokan - Japanese desert made with red bean and green tea (hence the green color). The outer crust is crystallized sugar for a crisp bite into a soft center.

With Miho sick I whipped up some Chinese chicken noodle soup from the left over bones and meat of a Costco whole broiled chicken we ate the night before. A little ginger and Japanese shungiku give this soup a fragrance that does wonder for a sore throat.

With Miho's parents in town we feasted on a home cooked "Surf and Turf" grilled meal. Fresh veggies included baby bell peppers, asparagus, Maui sweet onions, sweet corn, portabella mushrooms, and eggplant. Just a little sea salt, olive oil, and ground pepper goes a long way. To wash it down, a nice Armenian pomegranate wine.


For the meat side there was rib-eye steak, tiger shrimps, fresh scallops, and (drum roll) spiny lobster tails.

For breakfast the next morning I took the left over grilled veggies and chopped them up for a vegetable omelet. Cooking with left-overs is an under appreciated art.

And the night after that, the left-over rib-eye steak was sliced thin and placed over a bed of baby greens along with corn and eda mame for a nice steak salad. This was complimented by a silken oyster cream soup.

Bento Flare

I always get a kick out of seeing "bento" art and I'm tempted to make one of my own. Ultimately I think I put more emphasis on how food tastes over it's presentation. When the presentation side of food preparation starts to over shadow the taste (and in restaurants it also becomes a cost issue) I think you have to question where your priorities are. But these bentos look very edible and that's why I would totally buy one and thoroughly enjoy tearing away at the characters limb by limb. More bentos can be seen HERE.

From Sue to Me

Some sides from Sue's Kitchen. Not quite as good as A&Js in Irvine but Sue's is in Torrance which makes closer for those sudden cravings for beef noodles. Service sucked though.

Fried Egg Goodness

Marc prime beef burger with a fried egg on top. Here's to your cholesterol exploding!

Buffalo vs Beef

Had a buffalo burger at Marc's Burgers in the South Coast Plaza Macy's. I think that was my 1st buffalo experience and I must say I was pleased even though it was somewhat pricey. Buffalo meat is very rich in that meaty or gamey taste. This burger was highly spiced but the flavor came through. Contrast this with Miho's Marc prime beef burger and I noticed that the prime beef had a much smoother texture in the meat, which was a plus for beef. But the beef lacked impact if not for the Star Enise that was used to the flavor the beef - something I had learned from watching chef Heston Blumenthal but never had tasted it yet. The jury is still out on my opinion on the effect but the experience was a welcome one. I think the prime beef had excellent texture but definitly lagged in flavor when compared to the buffalo burger.

Sumo Sized Feast

The other night I made Seafood Nabe. It's all about your ingredients. 1st you get your dashi going, usually based on agi kombu but I used a prepackaged soup - no soy sauce as I wanted this to be nice and white so as not to over power the flavors of the sea. Then I added the daikon because of all the ingredients daikon can be cooked for a long time. Then goes in the other veggies like mushrooms, nappa, onions, green onions. Then the fish cakes like chikuwa and kamaboko. Finally all the seafood: asari clams, hamachi (yellowtail) fish center cuts and kama (neck), shrimp (I used tiger shrimp because whole botan or ama ebi are a little pricey). The resulting simmer is rich and hearty but not fatty or oily. In hind sit I probably would go with a fish like red snapper over yellowtail. I prefer my hamachi either as sashimi or pan fried.

Juju Brew

Here's the resulting tea of the jujube fruit. With a pound you can supposedly make two batches of a gallon of tea. Very fragrant and with ginger it makes for a nice spiced heat that soothes the throat.

Mojo of the Jujube

Support your local farmer's market! Our local market is dwindling which I'm assuming is a result of the economic slow down. But local farming is what makes California the bombastic place to be, not Hollywood or the beaches. Anyhoo we bought a pound of jujube dried fruits from our farmer's market on 1st and Elm. The fruit itself is ok but you can brew some tasty tea with them. Just boil a pound with a gallon of water along with some cuts of ginger and let it set over night. I like to add a little honey into the mix for aroma and sweetness. The fruit is supposedly good for relieving stress and relaxing. It seems to work for me - my back was hurting the other day but now the demons have been cast out! Praise the jujube. You can't possible hate a fruit with name like jujube.

A Google Connected Lifestyle

Now I'm going to try and log my destinations via Google Maps - I've been using Google Maps for awhile but not in conjunction with my blog. Click here to check it out. I'm still building up the library so check back often.

Ahi Jerkey

After some disappointment with the beef jerkey and a so so performance from the pork jerky, the ahi jerkey was actually a nice jerk. Chewable texture, a ginger spiced teriyaki finish. I image other brands could be better but this would do for now.

More Lager Than Lag

Yebisu beer is an all malt brew that's nice and stout like a lager. Goes down smooth but definitely has a flavorful darkness to it if that makes sense. It's bottled by Sapporo which I like as well.

Cold Bibimba

I was never one for cold-savory dishes - cold soups just sound unsanitary to me. But after some thought, I do like me a cold cut sandwich now and then along with a number of other cold dishes. So why not a cold Bibimba loaded with meat, Asian veggies, lettuce, tofu, seaweed, all topped with a raw egg. You mix in a steaming bowl of rice (so I guess it's not all cold) and a nice helping of fermented chili paste. It's a refreshing but filling meal for lunch or dinner.

Chicken playing nice with the cow

Pasta in a mushroom and white sauce reduction topped with string beans wrapped in prime beef - now some would say the sauce based on white wine and chicken stock would not go well with the robust taste of beef but I think the beef, in concert with the crisp green taste of the beans, offers a nice contrast.

Yukke Okay

One of my favorite Korean eats, next to bibimba, is yukke. It's basically steak tartar with Asian pears. Mix in a little fermented chili paste and you got yourself a cool n spicy accompaniment to a nice steaming bowl of rice.

Holiday Char Sui Pork

Ingredients:

Meat: 8-15 lbs boneless pork butt or shoulder.
Some people say you can use pork loin but that's not what is traditionally used and the loin doesn't have enough fat marbled in the meat. If you're going to go theough all this trouble you'll want to use the right meat.

Marinade: Garlic - 8 Chopped Cloves
Shallots - 4 Finely Chopped
Scallions (I couldn't find any so I skipped this) - 4
Chopped Honey - 0.25 cup
Dry Sherry - 2 tsp
Rice Wine - 2 tbsp
Red Dye #2 - 1 tsp
Soy Sauce - 0.5 cup
Sesame Oil - 1 tsp
Hoisin Sauce - 1 tsp
Brown Sugar - 0.5 cup
Powdered Ginger Root (or fresh ginger) - 1 tsp
Five Spice Powder - 1.5 tsp
Hot Pepper Flakes - 1 tsp Kosher Salt - 1 tsp

Condiments / Garnish:
Chinese Mustard - 1 bottle

Cookware:
Large Ziploc Bag to marinate the pork
S-hooks to hang pork
Shallow Drip Pan / Cooking Pan to catch drippings

Directions:
So you'll want to make the marinade 1st so it has time to cool down. Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pan, except the chopped garlic and shallots, and heat it up until it bubbles. With 15 pounds of pork the amount of marinade I made was a little short so if you like a stronger marinade penetration and you have 15 lbs of meat like I had, you might want to increase the amount of marinade you make. I ended up making another batch of marinade to brush onto the pork as it cooked. So once it's all bubbly and sticky sweet, leave it to cool. Take you pork shoulder (or butt) and cut it into strips along the grain as best you can - it took me a little examination of the meat to get the cuts right but it's not an exact science. The slabs should be about 1.5 - 2 inches thick and the reason you want to cut along the grain is that once cooked the slabs would be cut once again against the grain. This breaks up the length of the meat fibers for more tender pork bites

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Take your pork slabs and place them into a large Ziploc bag. Pour in your cooled sauce and then your chopped garlic and shallots. Massage the meat through the bag to make sure the sauce penetrates the meat (some people suggest scoring or poking the meat to allow for better absorption, but I didn't do this). Put the bag in the refrigerator to marinate for up to 3 days. I usually like to flip the bag over every 6 hours to make sure the marinade is evenly distributed.



During the marinating time you can go to your local hardware store and buy some curtain hooks. These are basically to replace the meat hooks they use in Chinese restaurants, but if you have access to the real deal you should certainly use them! I just took the curtain hooks and used pliers to bend the needle point back and into a hook so that it makes the shape of an "S." Be careful not to lance your fingers as I did (a couple of times). Once you have a handful of hooks throw them in a pot of boiling water to sterilize them.



On the morning of your special feast, take your upper oven rack and place it as high as it can go (in my oven I stuck it above the highest mount where technically it's not supposed to go). Then place your bottom rack as low as it can go and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Now take your marinated pork slabs and hook them with your custom s-hooks (be sure to hook them near the middle of the slab if you oven isn't tall, this ensures that the meat won't swim in the drip pan too much). Place the drip pan on the bottom oven rack and start hanging your meat on the top rack with the hooks. Again the idea is to minimize the meat touching the bottom drip pan so that they can cook evenly into this nice crackling gloss of red.

I think a small batch of meat would take between 20-30 minutes to cook but since I had a good 15 lbs I cooked the slabs for 20 minutes then pulled the meat out and basted them with more marinade I made. After another 20 minutes I basted the pork again (and even rotated their positions on the rack). You're better off over-cooking pork a little - between the fatty content of the meat and the marinating it should stay moist, but you don't want the outer surface to burn. So for that amount of meat I cooked it for a good 50 minutes to an hour. When all is said and done, take your Char Sui Pork out of the oven and remove the hooks. When you're read to eat, cut a slab against grain of the meat and serve (you'll want to avoid prematurely cutting the meat, especially when it's still warm or you risk drying the meat out).



The beauty of Char Sui Pork is that you can freeze the left over slabs and/or use them in fried rice, chow mein, ramen, steamed buns, oh my gosh good lord!

Memoirs of a Good Tasting Turkey

Since my annual Thanksgiving Turkey turned out tasty last year (I can only remember one year when it turned out a little dry) I thought I might finally try and record my recipe. Here is a short list of what you'll need:

20-25lb Turkey (the past 2 years was from Foster Farms from Costco but prior to that I used Butterball turkeys).

BRINE:
All spice corns - 3 tblsp
Pepper corns - 3 tblsp
Powdered ginger - 2 tblsp
Brown sugar - 1 cup
Bay leaf - 4 leaves
Salt - 3/4 cup
Chicken stock - 4 big cans (I can't remember the size, 32-35 oz?)

TURKEY CAVITY STUFFING:
Carrots - 3 medium sized
Celery - 3 stalks
Onion - 1 medium sized
Apples - 3 medium sized
Garlic - 8 cloves
Cinnamon sticks - 2 sticks

RUB:
Rosemary - 2 tblsp
Thyme - 2 tblsp
Sage - 2 tblspn
Savory - 2 tblsp
Paprika - 2 tblsp
Brown sugar - 1 1/2 cup
Powdered Ginger - 2 tblsp
Butter - 2 sticks

Red Wine - 2 cups

Cookware:
Baking Pan
Backing Rack that fits in your baking pan
X Large Ziplock Bag for brining - 2 bags to double bag in case of leakage
Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil

Making the Brine:

Place all the brine ingredients in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Do this ahead of time (perhaps a day ahead) because it's going to take awhile to cool down a whole pot full of liquid. While the brine is cooling you can unpack your turkey. Take out all the innards and wash the bird inside and out. Pat dry the turkey and set it aside. Gather your stuffing ingredients (except for the cinnamon sticks which you'll use after the brining) and chop them into chunks - they don't need to be pretty or small, you just want to extract all the nice juices and aromas from these ingredients. Placed the chopped ingredients into a bowl and toss them like a salad.




Now take your X Large sized Ziplock bag and spread it out on an aluminum pan for support when you move the full bag. I recommend double bagging the brine and turkey because there's always a chance of leakage. Now, place your turkey inside the bag and then jam as much of the chopped stuffing into the turkey's abdominal cavity. If it doesn't all fit, just toss the rest of the ingredients into the bag. Carefully pour the cooled brine into the bag. If you have the space you can make extra brine and completely submerge your turkey in a bucket or something but my place is limited in space so my turkey ends up only 2/3rds submerged, in which case I rotate the turkey in the brine every 3-4 hours or so. Seal the Ziplock bag, making sure to expel all the excess air - expelling the air also helps submerge your turkey in the brine. If you can, place that whole bagged set up in your refrigerator. You can place it in a cooler with plenty of ice and ice packs but I get paranoid about bacteria so now-a-days I make space in my fridge. So again, if the turkey is not fully submerged then rotate it every 4 hours or so. On the whole you'll want to brine your turkey for at least 12-16 hours.

Prepping the Herb Rub:

Cooking big is not always the most elegant of crafts, so again take all your herb rub ingredients (except for the butter) and dump them into a bowl. For the butter, you'll want to microwave it for a minute, just enough so that it's soft enough to whip with a fork. Now dump the butter on top of your herbal mix and fold it all into a nice gooey aromatic mush.

After your turkey has soaked for enough hours, pull it from the brine and remove the stuffing from the cavity and set it aside. Wash and pat dry the turkey then set it aside. Take your brine and drain it into a large pot and boil it (you can always do this after you've taken care of your turkey). Toss in the turkey guts and gizzard you pulled from the packaging for additional flavoring. You'll know your turkey got a good soak if you see plenty of brown foam form in the brine as you boil it - I believe this is the extracted turkey blood congealing. Once the brine has boiled, cool it then strain it through a collender lined with cheese cloth. Bottle this liquid and use it to flavor and salt everything from mash potatoes to stuffing to gravy. But use it sparingly as it is salty and the capitol crime in cooking is over salting food.

Anyhoo, back to the turkey. I would say most people prefer to dry roast there turkeys but I just can't stand the possibility of drying out my bird, so I like to steam my turkey. Steaming a turkey doesn't produce a picture friendly bird like dry roasting, but it ensures that the meat isn't dry. In fact I should warn you that brining and steaming can sometimes produce meat that looks a little pink but as long as you cook the turkey long enough you can rest assured that the meat is not raw, it's just very moist and succulent. I take heavy duty aluminum foil (don't use the regular stuff) and cut two very long strips (long enough to fold over the turkey without touching the turkey) and place them crossed inside the roasting pan. Then I place the roasting rack inside the pan (sometimes I will fold a thick padding of small aluminum squares to cushion the corners of the rack so that it doesn't pierce the outer foil. Now place the turkey on the roasting rack. The roasting rack elevates the whole bird and prevents the turkey from drowning in its own juices - if this happens you'll have boiled turkey instead of steamed turkey. From here, take 8-12 cloves of garlic and strategically insert them under the skin around the turkey. I don't recommend piercing the meat to insert them, just find openings in the skin and massage the little bulbs into various points.

Grab your bowl of herb rub and take a handful of the stuff and rub the inner cavity - like I said, it's not the most elegant of crafts. Now take the stuffing from the brining phase and shove them back into the cavity, really packing the stuff in. Take two cinnamon sticks and insert them into the cavity as well. Now for the really messy stuff. Take handfuls of the herb rub and start smearing it all over the turkey. Try and get gobs of the herbs under the skin where you can, along the breast and legs. This mix will melt and infuse into parts of the meat where as the portions outside the skin will not penetrate as well. The rub will inevitably fall off much of the slippery skin but this is OK. Now that the dirty work is done, take a swig of wine for yourself and then pour some into the turkey's cavity area. You don't want to pour over the turkey or else you'll just end up rinsing off all the herb rub.



Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Fold the flaps of foil up the sides of the turkey and crimp the edges. Crimp all the way up to the top and crimp the top so that you end up with a rectangular "tent" around the turkey. You don't want the foil to be hugging the turkey, you want space all around for the steam to rise and circulate all over the meat. Basically a 25lb turkey will cook in less than 5 hours (steaming cooks the turkey faster than roasting), but really the best way to check is to use a meat thermometer you stick in the thickest part of the breast. You'll want an internal tempurature of about 160 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the turkey has finished baking, pull the whole thing out and let it sit for a good 15-30 minutes so that it can cool. Cutting into the turkey while it's still steaming hot will dry out the meat prematurely. I recommend using an electric knife to cut nice even slices. Again, the meat can often have a pinkish tone to it, but as long as the internal temperature reaches 160, you can be assured it is cooked. You can always take your sliced turkey and stick it in the oven to brown the meat before serving. In fact a little oven time really brings out the meaty flavor but be sure not to over do it or you'll dry out the meat. Next time around I'll fill you in on how to take the drippings and cook up a killer gravy - my sister lives for the gravy. But for now, I have my own turkey to tend to. Happy eating.

What a jerk

So I wanted to give Alien Jerkey the benfit of the doubt. The pork jerkey didn't live up to my expectations but I figured that maybe pork is not fitting for jerkey and hence maybe that's why I haven't seen it around. But the Whiskey Jerkey is both not whiskey flavor and a little too much jerk being way too fiberous. It's more like BBQ jerkey with a hint of bourbon - the taste is not bad. But the toughness of the meat is just not my thing - I'm more of the succulent juicy jerkey type. So compared to other jerkeys I've had, this one is not up there. Of course my all time number 1 jerkey is the fresh (and expensive) salmon jerkey I bought at the Seattle fish market... oh my gosh good lord that stuff is good.

Alien Pork Jerkey

On the way to Vegas we stopped by this place called Alien Jerkey. I like me some good jerkey on a road trip - this harkens back my days with my grandpa drivin to Mojave to work on his trailer park. And pork jerkey is a 1st for me. Unfortunaterly it's a little fiberous for me. The flavor is a standard teriyaki fare. All said and done I think it could be better.

Hanks in Phillie... not the movie

This is one of the better Root Beers. Hank's is not over spiced with a nice sharp taste the cuts to a mellow vanilla after taste - not overly sweet. I know some people like the spice or the licoriche (sp?) but I like the deeper cola and vanilla tastes. Virgil's Root Beer (the guy on the label looks like Jesus) has a little more of a spice taste to it though I do like their drink as well. I may to get the Hank and Virgil side by side and compare.