all i need is a yurt and some koumiss*

currently enjoying a nomadic existence! just a quick food update until i get settled someplace permanent. it's hard to keep food in the car... now behold the non-aesthetic proof!

i did, however, make some comfort food tonight to curry favor with my benefactors. i remembered my roomate making some Cheeseburger Helper several months ago, and decided to recreate it without having to actually buy that cheesy stuff. bought some generic DELUX shells and cheese (i'm pretty sure it was delux b/c the cheese wasn't in powder form), cooked that up. cooked (that means "All Brown") up 3/4 lb of ground beef so it was still kind of chunky, as opposed to crumbly. Drained the pasta well, threw it into the pan with the beef, then mixed in the cheese sauce packet. Depending on the audience, i'm either being too vague, or too redundant. Please follow cooking directions on the package. It helps, it really does. The stuff tastes like death. We can't stop eating it. gross picture, but that's what i have saved for lunch tomorrow.
a variation on a simple tofu dish my mom makes at home sometimes. steamed tofu, covered in a lil soy sauce, sesame, and freshly sliced shallots that've been quickly tossed in hot oil. shallots are expensive, and i still had that jar of friend shallots sitting around, so guess what my substitution was. it looks 10x more appealing when you don't eat in tupperware on the carpet.


this is what happens when i'm up all night studying and feel productive. not plain oatmeal. but still lazy.


and this is what happens when i wake up late and need to take food on the go b/c i know i'll be starving for hours otherwise. semi-plain oatmeal. and in one of those tins that TheABC ate from in Class 302. i saw a flimsy version of this selling in the school bookstore. i guess it's "cool" and "vintage" now. my parents used this one 30 years ago. still works and not rusty.


here's some garlic + spinach with sesame for the heck of it. doesn't match flavors though. spinach is a pain to clean. too many bugs and mud. there's some of that leftover tofu block i've been hacking away at for a while now.


and no pics of the german sausages i simmered with onions or the garlic smashed potatoes i had them with. it looked pretty gross. the former was all pale and goopy (onions), but it tasted alright.

in an ironic turn of events, i found a job at one of the dining halls again. luckily, it's not the fat camp.

*koumiss = fermented mare's milk

Yan..ni Can Cook!

i love puns, especially bad ones. in lieu of grotesque food, i give you grotesque photoshop! Yanni rocks.

...instant cup ramen...

that means that it's nigh on finals time and i don't feel particularly energized to cook after coming home from the library at 12am. i caught myself calling Dieckmann condensations "graceful" in there. bad sign. even better, managed to hit up both Chipotle (barbacoa burrito) and Roberto's (some funky tasting jamaica and and nibble of carne asada fries) in one day. those are just two of the college eat-out staples nearby. a little bit gross. i did start out this morning with a big cup of iced "lemon drop" (lemon myrtle and black) tea from Infusions of Tea. that place is a kind of frou frou and new-agey, but the tea is soooo good. it's small and has a really chill atmosphere that just makes me want to sip tea and space out in some odd zen-like way. so refreshing... the starbucks 2 shops down is all hustle and bustle and loud caffiene-filled madness. there's 3 starbucks within a 2 block radius from me =/ gimme Muir Woods any day of the week. they might not make a mocha frappachino, but you can get caffiene, "The Paul Park", and a "Hot Josh". i think i'm just biased b/c i hang out in that area a lot and it's cheap. oh yeah... if you swing by just before closing on fridays, and a certain someone is around... free pastries! bring your own mug and it's even cheaper (and uh, not create so much waste).

Infusions of Tea
8750 Genesee Ave., Suite 258
San Diego, CA 92122
(858) 450-6500
http://www.infusionsoftea.com/

Muir Woods Coffee Shop
in Muir, underneath the Summit dining hall
UCSD

liver and onions

so i was at the market today, when this little old lady asks the butcher if he's got any beef liver b/c there's only chicken livers all packaged up... turns out he hadn't cut them up yet so i asked for an order too. and that's how i ended up with this delicious fresh bloody beef liver.

yum. (the plate is watery b/c i'm rinsing the livers off)

looking for recipes online revealed two main schools of cooking:
1. liver is sauteed or pan fried
2. it's browned, then baked in an oven
i'm lazy, so i picked the first method. Second, there were recipes that used bacon fat and had onions that were baked, then there were ones that didn't use bacon but had onions carmelized in butter. i, wanting to maximize artery-clogging tastiness, decided to use both butter and bacon fat in my recipe. i call it the Fatkins diet.
here's one and a half sliced onions carmelizing on med heat in about half a tbsp of real butter. it took forever!

removed, and set aside, then added 4 strips of thick-cut smoked bacon to the pan to crisp up and release their fatty goodness in order to cook my liver in. removed bacon. then i dried the liver off with paper towels and dredged them through some flour mixed with salt and pepper. threw those into the pan at med-medhigh heat and cooked each side about 2-3 mins... i think. didn't want anything raw so got it to just the edge of crispness on the outside. which turned out fine b/c it was just done on the inside--cooked, but tender and not tough. dumped int he onions and bacon with the liver to warm back up and let them get friendly with eachother. the liver sucked up the bacon flavor nicely and the onions were soft and buttery.
doesn't that just look like a big mess of heart-attack?

that was accompanied by pasta in a pre-made made putanesca sauce. that's a sauce that contains garlic, olives, capers, anchovies, etc. smelly stuff. the stuff i bought didn't have that much kick to it.. it wasn't bad though.

*update*

a splash of fish sauce and half a packet of crushed dried chili peppers from someone's pizza takeout fixed the sauce. kind of.

Gwendolyn's Eggman

"I am the Eggman.."

"..I am the Walrus. coo coo cachoo.."

Beatles - I Am The Walrus

salty, bitter, sour... and tastes like burning

*from over a month ago*

this is, without a doubt, the most dispicable thing i will eat or drink this week. it looks like someone ralphed an orange into my cup. which really isn't that far off from
what it really is. still in that strange food mood and wanting to cure a lack of appetite, i decided to try a tested and true remedy--chanh muoi in the form of a salty lemon drink. i haven't really done any research, but it seems that for chinese food, picking any two out of salty, sour, sweet in combination is supposed to whet the appetite. i can't really prove it, but i point to the various preserved salty orange or lemon peels, plums, and olive snacks out there that claim on the back of their packages to relieve drunkeness, motion sickness, lack of appetite, etc. the phrase for it is 開胃 (hoi1 wai6). (lit. to open the stomach)

i was rummaging around my small stock of odd preserved foods when i rediscovered a dusty jar of vietnamese style pickled lemons. go to any vietnamese place and you'll be able to find a beverage called salty lemonade or salty lemon soda. usually it's a preserved lemon mashed up with sugar and with carbonated water and ice poured over it. tonight.. i decided to make my own version. it was a big mistake. especially with the series of mutations it underwent out of desperation. first off, it wasn't sour enough. and it was kind of bitter. so i added some sour tamarind powder. which made it taste slighty revolting. it now tasted like pulpy sinigang gone wrong. in an effort to make it taste less revolting, i added some cayeanne pepper. it failed to drown out the bitter, acrid, spicy taste. after a few sips (it burned) this nasty concoction went down the drain.

fried rice, "stircook", and egg burrito

fried rice. sliced chinese sausage and broccoli stems with soy sauce and garlic. i like broccoli stems more than the flower/leaf parts. the taste and texture is similar to chinese broccoli, gai lan.

veggie uh.. stircook. ~15-20 mins

assorted fresh vegetables: broccoli florets, green beans, soy beans(ok, frozen), italian squash
minced garlic
small amount of water to cover bottom of pan
~2 tbsp oyster sauce
~.5 tbsp cornstarch mixed with a small amount of water

for wimpy electric stoves without good heat, i sometimes have to drown things in water and kind of parboil a bit or else i could be standing around all day waiting for something to cook. that's b/c flat pan + odd shapes = bad heat contact. cut, chopped, prepared, etc. cooked veggies with garlic for a few mins until the green beans just start to change color, then drained most of the water, and put in the oyster sauce. then added cornstarch slowly, stirring, to thicken up the sauce.

breakfast omelet in a flour tortilla. i had the heat too hot and had to flip it prematurely, so it's all kind of folded up. looks overcooked, but it was actually quite fluffy and soft. ~5 mins.

2 eggs
a few tbsp water
a few tbsp cream (or a good splash of milk is what i use usually)
~1/3 diced italian squash
salt
seasoned with hotsauce.

whisked everything together in a bowl with a fork, pour into hot pan at medhigh heat and flipped it. try for when the bottom just starts to get brown (unlike above = too hot or waited too long). give it a few seconds.. topped with hotsauce. consumed.

bargh, such boring food.

just a sandwich

a sack lunch minus the sack, juice box, and fruit snack. aka, just a sandwich. pan broiled zucchini (with some chicken broth 'cause it was starting to dry out), store-bought smoked turkey, avocado, feta cheese on some fresh wheat bread. don't like eating regular supermarket bread like wonderbread or orowheat anymore. you know, the kind you can keep unrefrigerated for 2 weeks in the tropics and still be fine. it kind of tastes funky and has a sour aftertaste.. maybe it's the preservatives and extra sugar? anyhow, it's pretty hearty, and like ~20% day's fiber with the veggie?

oatmeal cookie.. maybe?

i have a hard enough time getting and being able to store ingredients for normal cooking, so i don't usually bake. you know, baking powder, brown sugar, etc. on a lark, i found a few recipes for oatmeal cookies online and adapted them to fit my deficient pantry and 25 dollar a week grocery goal. what a surprise the ingredients are.

1.5 sticks butter
1.5 cup oatmeal
1 cup flour
.5 tsp salt
1 egg
.66 cup sugar
1-1.5 tsp vanilla extract
two handfuls of dried cranberries
juice from half an orange

melted the butter and mixed with the egg, then added that in portions to a big bowl with the dry ingredients and mixed. poured in the almost forgotten vanilla. had half an orange--so why not add that in too? formed into semi-flat lumps with spoons and baked 2 batches at 375 for 10-12 mins until they were golden brown.

the result? a bit moist, buttery and kind of nutty flavored, and more like a mini scone than a cookie. comments received:

"these are really good!" <- she was really hungry
"it's not sweet enough" <- my roommate who bakes. in my defense, i only added half the sugar recommended b/c i don't like really sweet stuff like cake and danishes
"are these Tollhouse?"<- my flatmate who is the queen of all foods frozen and instant.. especially easy mac
"...is this peanut butter?" <- dubious sense of taste suspected

goma ae

goma ae some sort of japanese spinach dish using sesame (i think goma = sesame). i found a bunch of recipes online, and they all contained soy sauce, and some sort of sweetener or sake. boiled up a bunch of spinach.. ~2 mins to cook it. stuck them in some cold running water to cool. squeezed out the water (and probably a good deal of vitamins, oh well) then chopped into 3-4 cm lengths. dressed them with about a tablespoon of soy sauce, 2 of some weak mirin (a sweet sake), and some sesame seeds i toasted in my frying pan.

garlic mashed potatoes

i took 3 large russet potatoes, boiled them for an indeterminate amount of time until they were cooked. took an entire bulb of garlic, peeled the cloves, then tossed that in the boiling water to cook for 5-10 mins before the potatoes were done. drained them. then smashed em as well as i could with a wooden spoon. i mixed in maybe 1 cup of Trader Joe's chicken broth, 1/4 cup of heavy whipping cream, a tsp of margerine and a scattering of finely chopped green onions. added a lot of liquids to keep it from being dry. didn't really keep track of how much stuff i used. but it came out really rich and garlicky (the whole apt, in fact) and the roomies approved. except for the extreme lumpiness. hey--the lumpy gives it character. it's um.. vintage.

fresh blackberries and homemade whipped cream

step 1: pour heavy whipping cream into small container and shake shake shake! (much easier than whipping it... with chopsticks)

step 2: note the thick, but not stiff, consistancy of fresh whipped cream on top of some really really really ripe and sweet blackberries. in season, and really cheap right now. for berries, that is.

step 3: take another messier picture and eat the yummy mess

soup + crunk

what i ate when i got sick last week.


this stuff is gross. stay away. only potable for the truly crunk.

Lunch at the Estate

lunch was soooo good. i wish i had a camera with me, but even so, i probably wouldn't have used it. it'd feel more than a little weird to me to whip out a camera when eating in the company of other people who aren't used to that particular eccentricity. after all, i'm no food critic or photographer.

went over to katie's and they'd prepared a very french feeling lunch of baguettes and smoked salmon. spreads like butter and little bowls of toppings like lemon, capers, and minced red onions made it feel very rich despite being very simple, yet flavorful, fare. i also tried some homemade mayonaise with a hardboiled egg. i usually hate mayo with a passion, but this stuff wasn't bad fresh, made with mustard, oil, egg, and whatever else was put in. the light yellow mayo was more like a very thick creamy sauce than the fluffy oily stiff white stuff in kraft. for dessert were fresh strawberries sliced up with a little sugar and a dollop of creme fraiche. btw, i do not eat slow! i'm er, savoring!

salad and.. more gruel please?

salad tonight. bought a bag of spinach, arugula, red leaf, etc. mix. diced in some avocado, sliced a couple mushrooms, half an ear of fresh corn, some canned tuna, feta cheese, plus some crunchy shallots. dressing was lemon juice and zest, olive oil, salt, pepper. the other half of corn on the cob. the last of the onion bread. behold my lack of aesthetics!


here's some 粥 i made with dried flounder. used brown and calrose rice mixed together. messed up b/c i didn't stir frequently enough so the bottom burned a little, but salvaged it so it doesn't taste like an ashtray. topped with chinese pickled cucumbers and some green onions. seasoned with salt.

Hot Mango Relish

some onion and poppy seed covered round bread i got from the co-op toasted and accented by some mango relish. I have not one, but two jars of Patak's Mango Relish (one is mild and the other hot). Patak's jars o' stuff can usually be found in any american market with an ethnic food section, though pickled garlic and chutney are probably the only types you'll find. it took me several months to find a place that sold hot mango relish after the nearest albertson's stopped carrying it. behold my genius.. all i had to do was head on over to the DB Indian video rental and sundries market at the intersection of Prospector and Golden Springs. it's in the same plaza as the ACI institute (the SAT place) and Al Jibani Halaal middle eastern market, by the middle school. shelves and shelves of pickles, spices, and a whole bunch of other funky things.

here's what the mango relish looks like inside the jars. er.. delicious? almost to the bottom! the hot one is the drowned in red oil. oooh.. the oil.. is very tasty indeed because the salt, mustard, chile powder, fenugreek, acetic acid, and "spices" (how descriptive of the label) flavor has imbued the oil.

old and moldy posts

so i got bored and didn't feel like studying, so i finally posted some rather old things here that have been rattling around in one place or another that fit this food theme.

for clarification, i lived in dorms without stoves during 2004. had to eat in the dining halls. but i had a rice cooker, microwave, toaster oven, and an electric cooker. in 2005, i lived in campus apts, so i still had to go to dining hall, but the apt had a kitchenette as big as a closet. now i live in an off campus apt with a very big kitchen. alas, no more meal points to spend in the dining halls.

shortribs and green beans

i got really hungry. 15 mins. since i don't usually have them, here's some ACTION SHOTS!



finished product




my standard rice wine, garlic, sugar, soy and chili sauce for the green beans (got 'em at the "farmer's market" at school on tuesdays). leftover pasta. beef shortribs quick marinaded and cooked with soy, vinegar, rice wine; used 1:8:1 ratio, respectively. the green beans got some meaty flavor 'cause i cooked 'em in the same pan right after the meat. short ribs were a bit fatty, but it was a tasty fatty. and like all shortribs, lots of connective tissue = tearing apart with teeth and hands. grr, me animal. me eat more animal! just enough left over for another meal...

breakfast was eggo waffles and coffee with choco syrup. btw, those are corelle dishes. unfortunately, the "butterflies" are in LA.

the daily edition

my friend decided to go on an oatmeal diet. that lasted for 5 days, tops. and broke it with a quarter pounder and apple pie, or something like that. so for your benefit, what i ate in the last 24 hours:

stovetop oatmeal with dried cranberries
some cinnamon toast crunch cereal
little bit of liverwurst
big bowl of pasta in a hon tsuyu (soy and bonito fish flavored) broth
a powdered donut
a honey tangerine
a mc donalds ranch blt combo with fries and a coke (gasp! i ate something other than dessert at mcdonalds for the first time in months, and the third soda in the past month. it was damned tasty)

and the day before yesterday:
oatmeal with dried cranberries
coffee with a shot of peppermint syrup (soooo good!)
ONE banana chip
pasta with olive oil, garlic, cayeanne pepper
3 frozen bbq wings
pita and pesto hummus
stirfried celery
orange juice
a couple strawberry flavored egg roll biscuit things
two fried eggs
some more pasta
some lentil soup

hmm.. in hindsight.. not as much veggies and fruit as i would like.. i haven't made a trip to the market in two weeks. tomorrow would be good.

so here's the funny thing about mcD's. i was over at a friend's house playing cards and watching shows.. typical chillout, until i got really really hungry. thus the walk to the mcdonalds. it was 12:50 when we got there, and they didn't let us in because they close inside service at 1am so we had to walk through and order through the uh, drive thru. kind of funny, as there was a car in front of us, and a car behind. so i got up to the pickup window when i notice this spectacular machine inside. man.. i wish i had a camera. apparently drinks are not dispenced by hand any more. there's this cup holder carousel underneath the soda machine that looks like it fills the cups automatically with ice and the appropriate soda after pushing a button or two to queue up the next few drinks. after one's filled, it rotates and auto fills the next cup. frees up the guy to do other stuff.

dunno how i feel about that though. it's efficient and all but.. makes me think about the balance between humans and technology again. not for this specifically as for other more important interactions and tasks. i think some technology is gratuitous when there are humans to do it. and yes, even when it seems demeaning... somehow replacing a person with a thing is even more so.

something's fishy...

fish sauce. my aptmate has a mini Cock brand bottle of fish sauce (24 fl OZ flying lion brand bottle is mine. richer and less salty--cock brand sucks). The label has a seal of a rooster on it and there are squid, pompano, shrimp, and crab pictured. None present in the sauce itself, which is an extract of salt, fermented anchovies, and water. Traditionally, fish sauce is made in barrels in which layers of fish and salt are alternated, and allowed to sit around and ferment until you get this glorious salty savory brown juice. It's actually not fishy tasting and complements pork. I've seen it used watered down and mixed with other liquids as a dip, a marinade, in stews, and with braised vegetables. There's probably plenty more uses for it that I don't know about. It's more of a south asian (esp. viet and thai) sauce. on an interesting historical note, the ancient Romans also used a fermented fish sauce called "garum" which was even mixed with wine. the vietnamese name is nuoc mam. i call it yu low in cantonese. but chinese are more likely to eat and cook salted dried fish 鹹魚 than use fish sauce 魚露 jyu4 lou6 , i think. "salty fish and diced chicken fried rice" is a popular and very tasty fried rice typically found in cantonese restauraunts. it's one of my favorites. this menu for the canteen at The Chinese University of Hong Kong has a couple of dishes that use the flavorful stuff. i think dried fish is seen as a slightly lower class type of food, but some salty dried fish (whole or fillets) can be quite expensive--i've seen some selling for 30 dollars a fish!

fried egg, rice. to the right is something i was playing around with that actually turned out decent. it's canned squid sliced up and cooked up with yellow crookneck and italian squash, and bamboo shoots in a saltyish shrimp paste (it might be made with brine shrimp... which i once owned in the form of Sea Monkeys) and garlic sauce. i was thinking of those stewed seafood and vegetable dishes in flip cuisine.

realizing that the cholesterol from squid and eggs were going to do me in, i wanted to make something that wasn't so killer and discovered a burning craving for teriyaki. i'm so lame, i only wanted the sauce, but not that lame.. so there's a pitiful stirfried onion to make it a little less sad.

i was really hungry when i got home last week so i started making a fried egg... which wasn't enough, so then i fried up some rice with soy sauce, minced garlic, and chili garlic sauce... which seemed kind of ghetto, so i sliced up some chinese dried sausages and threw those in too.. but it seemed lacking so i mixed in an egg... but it needed finishing touches so i sliced in some green onions... and then remembered i had some leftover squid... then decided it needed a bit of crunchy shallots to top and.. well, i got this strange looking fried rice.

somehow, there weren't enough food groups present, so i stirfried a bunch of celery in a thai basil chili garlic sauce.

no need to stir things up: offals and otcs

i've had a bout with the flu, it's been exam time and life outside has been calling so i've been pretty busy. been on a bit of nasty food binge lately with liverwurst and cream cheese sandwiches. on toasted oat bread it's extremely rich and sufficiently liver tasting. and yes, i have bought fresh red bloody liver to make liver and onions before, and i'll do it again. and it will be here. liver, however is not my favorite offal. that belongs to ngau pong, the spongey lung-like organ one can find in the dimsum dish 牛什 ngau4 zaap6 (lit. cow miscallany) that comes sliced so that you can see the air cavities inside. but that's a story for another time.


oh, and doesn't this just sound wrong? how can you not need to stir natural peanut butter? unless it's chockfull of emulsifiers and preservatives.. it's going to settle. something is slightly off.

i get so hungry when i read any food blogs. my bland food only seems bland when there's something for me to daydream about. down gluttony!

btw, of the two roberto's taco shops on mira mesa, the one by the strip joint has better salsa and a kick ass condiments bar loaded with hot carrots and radishes. it, however, is not as good as the roberto's 2 blocks up the street which is in a less seedy plaza. the end.

bento bloggers

i am fascinated with bento lunches. i used to make lunches similar to that in HS except they were almost always ugly, and usually only had 1 or 2 "sides" to accompany rice or pasta. the bento people have waaay too much time on their hands. variety is also not an option when 4 people share one medium sized fridge. they're so pretty though... for now, i'll just look and drool. here are some american bento blogs i found, they ahve links to other bento stuff on flickr and whatnot too. not quite pokemon shaped onigiri caliber, but the devotion is evident. although i find that some probably look prettier than they taste (raw broccoli, ick). the phenomenon of online bento blogs is really amazing..

http://mito.typepad.com/photos/bento/index.html

http://mrbentorodeo.blogspot.com/

http://www.getinmybelly.org/gimbarchives/cat_bento_boxes.php

Pomona Fish Market

imagine hushpuppies, popcorn shrimp, homemade coleslaw, and fried catfish with hotsauce. now imagine the little korean lady who runs the store rushing around taking orders at lunch at the outskirts of the funky revitalized artists' district in Pomona where it starts to blend back into the general shabbiness of the surrounding city. down the street is a dilapidated electronics repair shop and some vacant storefronts.

you've never lived until you've had a fried oyster sandwich. imagine an MSG coated crunchy outside and soft oyster resting on a bed of that slightly sweet relish coleslaw in a crunchy grilled hamburger bun. it was soo tasty until i started to get a bit sick of that coleslaw(i normally hate the stuff or anything containing mayo or cream) and felt like retching from the mayo-ness of it. about half the people that went in while i was waiting ordered the catfish combo. it's obviously the favorite, so i think i'll try that next time... with the fried zuchini. i swear i liked it!

wo meiyou mayo.

midnight snack

small eats from the local korean market (DB MARKET WORLD, 21080 Golden Spring Dr, Diamond Bar, CA) and leftovers from a chinese feast with the Magic Guys (as in, the Magic the Gathering). clockwise from the upper left corner: sichuan style spicy stirfried green beans, korean sesame marinated bean sprouts, korean spicy squid, peppersalt fried cod pieces ;)

so the story about the chinese feast. in the food court of a plaza on colima and nogales (fullerton?) across from the HK supermarket... there's this not-quite restuarant not-quite fast food place that serves a lot of cantonese style food among other things. it's like a big mishmash of popular dishes. they have this great deal where you can get 3 dishes for 10.99 (at dinner!) and if you order 6 dishes, you get a tureen of complimentary soup of the day. all this stuff is family style and includes the bottomless bucket of rice that's present in a lot of southern chinese restuarants in america. note that this isn't necessarily the case everywhere as some restaurants have less wasteful carts filled with rice from which servers will dole out a bowl at a time. this style is prevalent in higher class places and was quite common in HK. anyway, the 5 us us ordered peppersalt fried rock cod, spicy stirfried geen beans, a braised vegetarian dish containing tofu beancurd and cabbage, snap peas and shrimp in a garlic sauce, and i can't quite remember the last two... i think one was a leafy green called "hollow heart vegetable" stirfried in a fermented beancurd sauce, and.. yeah, can't remember it. must not have been a tasty one. i'll fill in the chinese names for them soon when i figure out how to use the language input for windows.

i think we walked out of there completely stuffed and with leftovers for a little over $26. this meal was immensely more satisfying than lunch that day at the cheesecake factory which really isn't that good and a bit overpriced. 3 people ran a bill over $55 for two entrees and a few extras! my friend ordered a "pad thai linguine" which came out to be a pasta dish in a goopy peanut flavored sauce. no bean sprouts, fresh herbs, chillis, tomatoes, lime, any type of bite at all. just an insipid attempt at fusion food. the buffalo chicken blazers(?) tasted neither like chicken, nor spicy hot sauce and they had this weird mushy consistency b/c the meat was blended with the sauce before being formed into patties. it tasted like something from a tv dinner. some of the celery that came with that still had mud on it. i'd expect that from a hole in the wall or a cheap eats place, but not from there! the tiramisu cheese cake was pretty good. seeing as it's the cheesecake factory, they'd at least get that right. yeah, ok, you get a lot of food.. but for the quality, it's not worth it. bling is not better. too cruddy to be anything but a standard chain restaurant. yeah, that place has a big X from me.

lazy me

so i've been kind of uninspired to do anythin gover break. since The ABC does such a great job of writing about food that somehow seems very similar to what i ate (i wonder why) you can check that out. his blog is infinately more interesting. and not just food.

the ABC presents:

Chinatown Restaurant (唐人街飯店)

and some other stuff. like noodles. and stuff.

making teriyaki sauce w/o the teriyaki sauce

i've been itching to make this for a while.

~couple tablespoons of mirin (a sweetened sake), ~tablespoon or two of rice wine, ~tablespoon of soy sauce, a splash of asian chili sauce (NOT hot sauce), a small splash of rice vinegar, two cloves of garlic chopped, and a squirt of sesame oil. put raw chicken tenders in it to marinate. pan fried chicken and sauce separately. added a slurry of cornstarch and water to sauce to thicken. caution: the sugar in mirin burns, so keep adding water to the pan to deglaze/keep from burning. so far, i haven't found a way around having sweet things burn in the pan other than drowning it. it'd probably be ok with a ton of oil, but that's just ick. to thicken sauce.. add a slurry of about 1 tsp-1tbsp cornstarch with 2x times water to pan and stir stir stir until it gets thick enough. adjust concentration with water. don't use flour. cornstarch thickens things at a low heat, which is good for sugary liquids. flour doesn't start to thicken until it's "cooked", which usually means boiling temp and it's finicky and hard to judge just how much is enough b/c of that delay.
how's my non-recipe trial and error sauce taste? better than with storebought sauce like mr. yoshida brand teriyaki (by the third try). and with a kick. that stuff is no good for marinating and usually is too salty and even more full of sugar than homemade. that means it's only good for pouring over the top of food when done cooking, the flavor won't penetrate the meat, and it'll burn faster than you can say--well, fast.

dinner at that darn squirrel's house:

some very typical taiwanese foods present such as taiwanese style sausages over pineapples, congee, scrambled eggs, and some not so typical stuff like pan grilled miso marinated salmon on a bed of lettuce, spicy oil/sauce mixed noodles, congee, and pillsbury biscuits among other things. it's been years since i'd eaten anything at home cooked with pineapples, so i forgot completely about that canned commodity. will recreate. curiously enough, for cantonese ppl, congee is usually eaten for breakfast only, and usually not with a slew of side dishes like you would see in northern or taiwanese cuisine. for HKers, it's eaten like cereal at breakfast. but for them, it can be eaten like a bowl of rice at all meals. more on zuk in this post here on the ABC's site

unfortunately, no pictures of either of these as i was too lazy

someone suggested larger photos. ok.



more of the viet style noodle stuff, this time with the meatloaf. you can see the chewy pork skin bits embedded in the meat. i suppose this would be called banh-somethingortheother. i can't get enough of this stuff. plus it literally takes a minute to throw together.



also included in the meal... boiled watercress and some henry's canned split pea ham soup.



what to make for "breakfast"? it's 9am and i made super lame curry with celery and eggplant. instant curry bricks from House. hot isn't hot enough, added cayenne. also, too salty. but convenient.

Vinh Hung Supermarket

10550 Camino Ruiz
San Diego, CA 92126

a week in the life

i moved to here b/c it's muuuch easier to use and better 'cause i can link to stuff among other things. while still being free! there's no way in heck i'd ever pay for something that only i read, haha.

last week, i made this delish veggie stew. it's got lentils(double handful), carrots(2), turnips (2), garlic, onions (1), and tomatoes(1 can). it's in a tomato sauce(1)/chicken broth stock with some random herbs like savory and ginger. i'm not very good with spices. i just don't understand their subtlety. plus for the kind of food i'm used to eating and cooking.. they just don't come up very often. the stew is pretty hearty and thick. i've been eating away at it for a week now. time to throw it out.. because i'm sick of eating it!!!

er.. i made some egg noodles with oyster sauce and sesame oil. it probably would've been better with green onions.. but they don't have a very long refrigerator life. i also ate them before i could take a pic of them. so this is what was in it. prep/cook time after the water has reached boiling? 4 mins. repeat for multiple meals.

my roomate loves to fry things. she cut up some homegrown bananas, wrapped them in springroll wrappers, then fried them up. she says it's some filipino thing. i am no fan of bananas, but i'm sure it tasted good. in the corner you can see some of my frozen jung/zhongzi made circa lunar new year. i love to take these to school to eat b/c they're easy to lug around and then dispose of. and no, it's not THAT weird.

calabaza squash. or at least that's what i think they're called. a little water, garlic, salt, and butter.

no idea what they are called. the bao is filled with ground pork and hardboiled egg and the bread resembles pan de sal, but it's denser and yellower. will ask next time the checkout lady isn't so busy. these were from a filipino bakery called Christy's Bakery. it's on Mira Mesa and Blackforest b/w the 805 and the 15.

in the same plaza is the best pho place in SD. unassuming outside belies goodies within. seeing that made me hungry, so i stopped by this market on the way home and bought these goodies.

i was really excited to find this viet market (and a filipino seafood city down the street) b/c there's just no good cheap groceries at american markets like ralph's and vons. the albertsons 3 mins away has closed up and and turning into a bristol farms... a very posh market with impeccable quality for the upper class. clockwise from the jar... a jar of salty shrimp paste, a can of squid, fried shallots, a bunch of watercress, chinese eggplant, viet basil, viet meatloaf infused with pork skin and fish sauce (gio bi), and rice rolled noodles (banh cuon). to the left is this chasiu. inside the market is a cantonese siu lap and dimsum place! it looks pretty shabby, but i wanna try it out. the chasiu was v. good. they sold roast pork and duck just like here. thinking about pho cali, i prepared those noodles with cut up chasiu, shredded basil, shallots, and drizzled with a sauce made of fish sauce, sugar, water, and vinegar. needs some crushed peanuts, bean sprouts, lettuce. i don't know about authenticity, but it's damned tasty!


i like oatmeal. it's probably my favorite grain after rice. i'm not a big fan of the instant packet stuff 'cause they always turn gummy or are too watery and come it those itsy bitsy portions that don't fill you up. i like getting just regular rolled oats in bulk. it only takes 5 mins.. if the 1 minute version is just too time consuming for you. what is time consuming to make are steel cut oats. these are the grains cut into smaller chunks. bought 'em at Henry's in bulk. it took about 20-30 minutes to cook on a simmer with stirring every few minutes. they came out really creamy and have a nice chewy texture that doesn't make you feel like you're eating mush. i stirred in a little butter and added some dried cranberries as a nice lil mix-in. oh yeah, and with fried low sodium spam sans cranberries the next day... which doesn't sound nearly as pleasant.

i eat creepy crawlies and slippy slimies

one day, several months ago, i went to some spanish tapas restaurant called Picasso.. or something like that in Hillcrest. as the review goes.. service was indeed poor and some things were.. eh. the octopus in red sauce was extremely good though if my memory serves me right. anyways.. the point.. right. anyways, we ordered the baby eels (angulas), not knowing what they were at the time, to be adventurous. what came though.. resembled what cantonese call "white rice fish", also known as whitebait. "white rice fish" is pretty ambiguous.. i've seen it refered to as baby sardines, baby smelt, etc. i guess as whitebait refers to anything similar.. anything goes. if you're not familiar with it, they're kind of a ghetto food commonly eaten boiled in congee, deep fried, or cooked in omelettes. it was pretty hilarious that what the spanish thought were delicacies were this ghetto stuff i was used to eating on top of rice. or that's what i thought. now, i could be wrong.. that they did in fact serve angulae, and i was just too uncultured to notice at the time. or, they tried to foist off a cheaper substitute in hopes that no one would notice. given the watery sangria and the fact that the dishes were either really good, or duds... i think someone needs to make a visit.

here's a rather interesting food blog that featured white rice fish.

chinese food pics and recipes

i could so go for that peppersalt spareribs right now... salty duck... congee with dried fish... oil/sauce rice... grass mushrooms... hollow heart vegetable... marinated seaweed... duck gizzards... *drool* why does chinese food in SD have to suck?

http://bwrc.eecs.berkeley.edu/People/Grad_Students/huifangq/food/mijue.htm

your marie calander's frozen pasta is limp and suxxorz

1lb frozen spinach
>1lb ground beef
2-3 tbls minced garlic
splash of wine to taste. red is best. me not being old enough to buy food grade wine settled for rice. weird, but still adds nice flavor to meat.
plain ol tomato/pasta sauce
pasta

cooked spinach with half of the garlic until not frozen. [don't add water like the package says.] removed and set aside. chucked the beef in the previously used pan and added the rest of the garlic along with wine or whatever else happened to float my boat [does not recommend peppermint schnapps]. broke it up with a breakerupper [comes in forms such as spatulae, sticks, fingers if you're immune to heat] while cooking. when it turned brown and was pretyt much cooked, added the spinach back in and mixed it up. spooned out meat and veg on top of pasta, covered with sauce. consumed. should last a day or two, unless you've made it too tasty, or you don't care about the food pyramid.

shiro iro to midori (white and green)

turnips and broccoli simmered in a miso based broth. this consists of me tossing random veggies and seasonings to the pot and boiling. aka or shiro miso (red or white) will work. it just depends on your taste. aka is more fermented than shiro and tends to be stronger and saltier in taste. aka's taste is more similar to those little butter-soft cubes of chinese fermented tofu (nam3 jyu2) that smell like sewage. good stuff.
veggies, preferably cut up into small pieces to cook faster
water just enough to cover veggies
a dollop of aka (red) miso to taste (i used 1~2 tbsp)
a splash of rice vinegar, a little garlic powder, a splash of bonito flavored soy..
i bet green onions would have been good.. er you know, whatever you happen to find... then uh, cook until it's done. probably boil less than 10 mins.. my aptmate asks me all the time when i know something is done or not. somehow she doesn't seem to believe it when i tell her that i take it out a piece and try it. trial and error. oh the errors..

oh, also visible is the korean seasoned laver and rice i ate it with. finally, something healthy again.

fish food

it's what.. 7th or 8th week already?! you know you're a quarter system college student when you have no idea what the date is, but measure the time in weeks numbered 1-10. busy and unmotivated i've been.. so that means more ghetto foods that perhaps aren't so good. various combinations of pasta, cabbage, radishes, eggs were the norm last week.

and tilapia. one of my favorite fishes.. it's got a mild taste, freshwater, farm raised so don't have to feel guilty about overfishing.. and basically tastes great any way you make it. my favorite incarnation is "qing jing lap yu"/"plain steamed tilapia" you can find in canto chinese restaurants that serve "hak fan" and the like (hey! nj star isn't free anymore!). anyway, didn't feel like going all the way to 99 to buy a fish that i would have to clean etc, so i settled for a fillet i found at Henry's. usually i'd be of the mind that fillets aren't fresh enough, especially at an american market.. but.. i really wanted fish that day. so i took it home and pan grilled it 'cause i was afraid it wouldn't be fresh enough to steam. slightly fried up some green onions in hot oil and poured that over the top with some soy sauce. so cooking fish.. i have no idea how to judge when it's done other than poking at it--unless i'm steaming. kind of lame, but it's done when you can smell the cooked fish scent then add 3 mins.

lunch is almost too pathetic and gross to mention. imagine a canned corned beef sandwich with raw broccoli and celery. exactly.

the science and engineering library at ucsd also has a food science display on now.

curiously enough, the school also houses part of the American Institute of Wine and Food collection from:

Bartolomeo Scappi’s Opera... dell’ arte del cucinare (1610), with its beautiful woodcuts of the Renaissance kitchen and culinary implements; Amelia Simmons’ American CookeryA House Servant’s DirectoryHow We Cook in Los Angeles (1894), with more than 600 recipes from more than 200 named Angelenos; and Acerca del chocolate (1730), a manuscript from Mexico that is an attempt to rebut the Church’s strictures against the consumption of chocolate. More contemporary works that help document the culinary history of today may also found in the collection, e.g., Piret’s: the George and Piret Munger Cookbook (1985), six cookbooks from Alice Waters’ famed Chez Panisse restaurant, and Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry Cookbook.

the only thing missing is a culinary school program here like at cal poly pomona