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

mun zet gua

something made a looong while ago:

mun zet gua. basically, some type of squash/melon that i don't know the name of braised in a sauce of those itty bitty dried shrimp and chicken stock. cut it up into strips, and cooked in a pot with very little liquid until it was tender. add lots of stock and it's an instant soup.

ghetto canned foods

my roomate and i both found ourselves eating some pretty ghetto food a while back. i had a can of fried dace with soy beans (typical chinese ick fare) with rice and she had vienna sausages (pride of low income americans) in fried rice, which she insisted was a not cheap-o nasty ghetto food. seeing as it's made by the same company that makes "potted meat food product" and you can't tell what type of animal it's made from just by looking at it, i found her point invalid. at 59 cents a can, that's suspect.

salty and delicious! the veggies obviously don't come with it.

yummy! Hormel website

hello there

i decided to make a standalone blog devoted to foodness. there's no rhyme or reason to the order, and i need to put old posts here too. first off, i don't think my stomach could forgive me if i didn't use my mad survival cooking skills. junk food more than once a week usually makes me feel ill and leaves my pockets empty, so i try to make my own as often as possible. that means more at the start of the quarter that gets progressively worse towards the end. i like stuff light and tend towards the reasonably healthy end. inhaling big macs or snacking on soy crisp omega-3 enhanced essential oil chips are equally gross. though once in a while it's really good..


a few nights ago, my roomate made her own tempura and it was the bomb diggity. it looked restaraunt style. instead of using a fluffy smooth batter you'd find at most places, she used a panko (japanese breadcrumb) based one so i guess it was more like zuchinni croquettes? quite crispy. she's gourmet!

this was the mango dessert i had when going out to dinner at a thai place with the aptmates. already ate dinner, so this was it... sweet sticky rice covered in a salted coconut milk sauce and fresh delicious ripe mangoes. simple, but delicious. gotta try this at home. the salt really turned what could have been a bit boring and one dimensional into a tasty treat. roomies ordered crab fried rice and pad thai. how boring. the pad thai was a bit greasy and heavy, but the crab rice was quite flavorful with actual crab meat. the larb sounded good.. but i was full... the place is Flavor Thai on convoy st. let's say i wouldn't have went there if they didn't take me. a bit americanized, but it's a nice date place, clean and good service with good prices.

my dinner from a few weeks ago. fresh shitake mushrooms in a soy based broth, 魚香茄子 (spicy sichuan style eggplant and with pork), and my very ghetto ketchup and garlic fried rice. yes... a condiment fried rice. twas tasty.

i went home for the long weekend and my bro conveniently has a gallon or two of oil left over in his turkey fryer from somewhen. since i've missed out on the fried turkey action two years running, we decided to have a frystravaganza of whatever we found lying around. battered onions, dried mangoes, a piece of chocolate candy, some raw marinated korean crab which tasted better fried, potato wedges, chicken breasts, fuji apples.. since there were also only two of us, instead of turkey we fried up cornish game hens. one was marinated in homemade teriyaki sauce, the other plain fried, and some random pieces in a paprika and chili spiced batter. teriyaki fried chicken is damned good. in this pic are the apples. they were tender and tasted like apple pie apples from marie calendars.

when i got sick last week, i found my appetite improved. i wanted meat. lots of it. so i panfried the perfect steak. note the toasty browned outside and the juicey med rare inside (looks pinker in the pick than it really was). med hi heat turning occasionally over about 14 mins for an inch thick steak is the way to go. better to have it rest to near room temp before cooking though if you don't want the outside to burn. a little garlic salt and cayanne pepper and if you cook it right there's no need for sauce.. juicey meat amino goodness. i also made this bomb veggie soup filled with carrots, celery, onion, garlic, and lil radishes in a chicken stock and crushed tomato base. canned tomato tastes and works better than fresh. oh, and i threw in a smoked ham hock for fun.

smoking

"Hydrogen cyanide forms a foul tasting compound when it combines with tobacco smoke. For this reason, some chemists choose to have a lit cigarette in their mouth while they are working with it, as they receive an early warning against possible cyanide poisoning." http://www.chemistrydaily.com

in search of sushi

san diego roads remind me of europa. there's a ton of pretty canyons around, but the problem is when the roads that crisscross them are discontinuous or blend together so you can't even tell which direction you're travelling in anymore.

japanese markets always sell their sushi half off an hour or two before closing b/c they can't sell it the next day (as opposed to ralph's nasty bastardized several day old stuff chilling out permanantly fetid unsold). earlier this night, my aptmate and i embarked on an epic journey to find half-off sushi. in typical guy fashion, i thought that i could remember my way to mitsuwa from tagging along with a friend over a month ago. from a different direction and local too. heaven forbid that my inner compass should fail. what ended up happening was that we found the nudie bar district, a harley davidson convention/gathering, several car dealerships, and a hemmorhoid laser care clinic before giving up. we ended up instead at a quiet japanese restaurant we've been to before and had dinner in high style. after all that trouble and the week's worth of problems, it felt really nice to sit down in a comfortable place away from the usual reminders of nagging assignments and just enjoy good food and be waited upon. then peaceful classical music on the way back. although we ended up spending about five times more than we were planning on and an excessive amount of time on such a short trip... it turned out oddly relaxing.

after a quick google back at home it turned out that all the time we circled around, we were ridiculously close to our destination. life is funny.

BBQ baked chicken

this is so easy i almost forgot about it. filled a baking pan with raw drumsticks. covered in bbq sauce. preheated oven to 350F and then baked chicken on middle rack for an hour to hour and 15mins.

zuchini 3x!

this is the only thing i've cooked of note in the past week.

zuchini 3 ways. 3 zuchini. first one sliced round and sauteed with garlic and ginger. second one sliced lengthwise and simmered in pasta sauce. last one sliced and boiled in tamarind shrimp broth (sinigang?) right in the microwave.

the world around me is like garlic. it always smells better than it tastes. maybe that's why i love it. why do i find myself thinking in food metaphors? it's almost as if i find it more comforting than people at times. that's probably true when there's no one around. isn't that the truth though? i'm busy in my own life. no time for those that i don't set aside time for. and those with time for me, i somehow.. don't need it. strange. i can see names of people in giant overlapping random circles on paper like a venn diagram.

marinated cucumber salad, healthy food for lazy ppl

pan-grilled korean shortribs with marinated onions, marinated cucumber salad, rice. i've been too tired, sick, and lazy to cook the past week, so mostly i've been eating horribly healthy stuff like bagels with hummus, cottage cheese, pears, cereal, frozen spinach. i totally lucked out one day at work when i found an almost empty box of veggie pizza and some salad--the remains of some catered business meeting. i'm such a scavenger i bring shame to vultures. mmm... meat is good... hmm.. scabs are not. i think i just ate one that came from a wound on my lip... eck.

liver and onions, taro root

liver and onions. i used the simplest epicurious.com recipe. though i think using some sort of wine or beer in cooking the liver would cover up a bit of the taint if the liver isn't straight off the cow. my aptmates turned visibly green when they saw me playing around with bloody squishy livers.

boiled taros

boil salted water. boil those small horse pucky-like roots of taro for about 10-15 mins. peel. consume with soy sauce.

chicharonnes and lentils

chicharonnes and lentils

2 strips of fresh chicharonnes(fried pork rinds /w meat on) from my local carniceria, cut up into little chunks (discard gratuitous fat but keep that delicious skin...)
.5 bag lentils
3 cloves garlic
a stalk or two of geen onions cut up into .5 in
1 boullion cube
optional ingredients: paprika, chilli peppers, onions, etc. etc.

washed and soaked the lentils a bit before throwing them in a pot with.. uhm.. enough water to cover by... .5-1in water. throw everything else in. boil. turn down heat a bit, cover, and cooked for... 15 mins. or something like that. great with tortillas. great for music.

teriyaki chicken and onions

3-4 boneless skinless chicken tenderloins
1 onion, sliced
for the marinade/sauce: a splash of rice wine, soy sauce, rice vinegar, a dribble of sesame oil, and a good pinch of sugar for the sauce, to taste. it's better to use mirin in place of the sugar and wine though. it's a japanese sweet alcoholic cooking wine. oh, and a smush of garlic

marinated chicken in the sauce for half an hour in the fridge covered. marinated onions seperately too. on med heat in nonstick pan, threw the onions in and cooked, covered, until tender. don't have too much sauce in the pan, b/c it night boil rather than get that saute action. shoved onions to the side of pan, and put the chicken in with medhigh heat. don't overcook chicken. i am always afraid to order it in restuarants b/c it always comes out dry. if you want to make it saucier, pour some more marinade in the center, and stir it around with a pinch of corn starch. corn starch is great b/c it thickens right away at a lower temp. flour needs to be cooked slowly at a high temp.

chilled cucumber soup and wisdom teeth

light and refreshing chilled cucumber soup

yesterday, made a soup based on the recipe on epicurious.com's chilled cucumber dill and smoked salmon soup. i cut the recipe in half and uh.. i'm too ghetto for dill and smoked salmon, so i left that out. 1 tbls butter, 1 small onion diced, 2 large cucumbers seeded and sliced lengthwise then into .5 in slices, 1 small russet potato peeled diced, 1.5 cans low sodium chicken stock, .5 cup nonfat plain yogurt. in a big heavy soup pot melted butter med heat, added onions ~3 mins to soften, added potatoes and cucumbers. cooked ~2 mins more, stirring about, then added the chicken stock. simmered covered ~25 mins, cooled a bit, then put in two batches into a blender on puree well. put back into pot, when cool, mixed with the yogurt (the recipe called for sour cream or creme fraiche, but this is just as good, and good for ya). chill in the fridge until cold then put a dollop or little swirls of more yogurt on the top of the individual bowls when ready to serve. the yogurt and the potato and butter flavor made the soup taste really creamy and rich tasting, even though i used no more than a tbls butter for the whole thing. it's good for ya even though it doesn't taste that way. from one of the taste testers, "it looks and tastes restuarant quality". the cake i made today didn't fare so well.

i'm so happy. today, i ate my first solid food. the swelling went down, and i can talk again! today, i did not lie around in pain in front of the tv half asleep. it was someone's birthday, so made a cake for him. one of my first attempts at making a cake... it didn't come out TOO bad. i won't be hurt if you end up throwing it away =) so much fun though-- just chilling with a close friend or two. it's all in the quality, and not quantity. these people are the good ones. this is as close as i'll ever get to be to being a glutton. you know little kids who eat too much and have so much fun that they start to feel sick? yup, haha.. went a bit overboard. probably shouldn't lie down now or i might force up an unpleasant combo of oreo milkshake biscuit gravy antibiotic chocolate cake goodness. ah.. finally, full. goodbye jello and congee. determined to gain back all the weight i lost this summer. in muscle! forced vacation leave isn't so bad after all. funny how the idea of "summer!" never seems to show up until you're not looking for it. !good times.