salty spicy sour

Reese was just lamenting that it’s too warm in San Jose for stone-bowl bibimbap…not the case outside of Boston I can tell you.

This post will serve two purposes. One, as always, to show some food porn. Two is to show off the new Nikon D80 I got approximately an hour before I took these shots.

You always get miso soup at Sushi Yazu, though the camera focused on the surface reflection more than the actual soup.

I also ordered some gyoza. Completely unnecessary but tasty nonetheless.

And lastly the bibimbap. I should have known she’d bring some panchan (hence the unnecessary gyoza comment)

Did you know that April was National Grilled Cheese month? I’m not really one that needs another excuse to eat more cheese or anything, but when duty calls, I’ll be there. I always get a little nostalgic over grilled cheese since it was one of the first meals I ever learned to “cook” for myself. The secret is to spread your softened butter right onto the bread to get that nice even golden crust on it. I made a sandwich rendition of spinach and artichoke dip with the addition of sourdough bread and spicy pepper jack cheese. Maybe next year I’ll even be brave enough to enter the Grilled Cheese Invitational.

Last week Pam and I headed to her parents place for lunch. We had a whole roasted prime rib and I got to do the carving, so I strategically sliced off all the rib bones and saved them with the thought of making stock with them. I finally got around to it this weekend.

I started off with all the bones and some leek leaves, carrots, celery, onions and three super-fragrant bay leaves and left them to slowly come to a simmer.

After a few hours things were reduced down to this:

which then got strained into another pot through a collander to get most of the solids out then reduced it by about half.  At that point I let it cool and put it in the refrigerator overnight so that fat would solidify at the top.  That got scraped off and I now have five containers of stock in the freezer and plans for some tasty risotto for later this week.

This is sort of an improv, but a very simple one. I’d cooked two tuna steaks (bought frozen at Trader Joe’s) and had one for dinner the night before so I wanted to use this one quickly. I noticed some spicy habanero Monterey Jack cheese in the fridge and this idea was born.

I stacked the tuna and cheese on a heel of bread and put the whole thing into a pan with some melted butter to grill then put a top over it to help melt the cheese. I ended up giving it a minute in the microwave to really get it melted nicely.

It’s summertime here in the bay area, and the weather is starting to get warmer and warmer (except for today, which was strangely cool). Anyway, as the weather gets warmer, I start to crave cold snackies, like jellies. Now, we usually make jellies with fruit here in the mighty western world, but I’ve always loved eating jellies flavoured with other ingredients, like coffee, tea, and milk. Yeah, you heard me. Have you had these before? They might be a little weird if you’ve never had it, but it’s really really good. Think of it as drinking tea that is in jelly form. Uh… ok, that sounds kinda gross.

It’s not gross. I promise! It’s actually a great treat (if you like jello or other gelatinous textures), easy to make, and a nice way to cool off on a hot day. How can I make my own tea jellies, Reese? Hahaha… Well, my friend, here’s where I answer it for you!

Ingredients:

1 packet Knox Gelatin (or any other brand)
1 mug of hot brewed tea (still hot)

Ok, are you ready for the super complicated directions? So you take the hot tea (about 10 oz worth if you don’t like your jelly too rock hard), mix in the packet of gelatin until it dissolves, and then put it in the fridge. Then you wait. Seriously, the hardest part of this recipe is the waiting bit. I’m always that loser who keeps opening the door and checking to see if it’s jelly yet. So… don’t check too much. I think it takes somewhere between 1-2 hours, depending on how awesome your fridge is, and how much you let it cool off before you put it in the fridge.

You can use any tea. The one I usually use is jasmine or some other aromatic tea. The jelly won’t really taste like much, but it’s nice to have a faint smell of tea coming from it. You can also use coffee or milk to make the jelly. I ate a LOT of almond flavoured milky jelly growing up.

If you’re feeling luxurious, you can serve this with a bit of sweet condensed milk poured on top. When you pour the condensed milk on top of coffee jelly, it kinda tastes like Vietnamese coffee, which is always a good thing in my book.

Friday.

My weekend starts on Friday (even though I usually have a work meeting every Friday morning). After I got out of the meeting, I ended up meeting a friend for a late lunch at Neto Cafe in downtown Mountain View. I had a kofte sandwich while had ate this berry mousse concoction. He said it wasn’t really so great (and I have to say that my sandwich was only okay), but it was really nice sitting outside and enjoying the light breeze.

Saturday.

Frank and I headed over to our friend’s house for pizza and board games night. We played a few funnier-than-thou rounds of Apples to Apples, made our own pizzas, and then played a gruelling match of Taboo to the death. No one died though, and we ended up all leaving her house alive (boo, we suck at death matches). The pizzas were SO fun to make! Frank went a little overboard with ours, and kept piling it on and on and on. We called it the super pizza and it took an extra amount of time to cook! It turned out to be really delicious though and we brought the leftovers home for breakfast the next day.

Sunday.

Ah Sunday, lazy Sunday. In the morning we watched Retribution, a Japanese horror flick directed by Kurosawa Kiyoshi. It was actually pretty decent, and pretty tense. Then we headed out for a bit of shopping at the mall (Valley Fair, yo!), where we failed to buy anything at all. I tried on about a thousand dresses that were either too short, not flouncy enough, too saggy looking, or too expensive. All I want is a dress that’s structured up top and flouncy in the skirt. Is that really so difficult to find? REALLY NOW??? Since Frank was headed to a hockey game, we stopped off at our favourite Mexican joint in San Jose for a bite before rushing home so he could grab his stuff. I had the sopes pollo, fried corn patties topped with chicken, refried beans, red sauce, and salad. Wow it was good. I think I’ll order it again next time!

David Lebovitz has a great post today about the gear he uses to do his food photography. Hey Reese….notice the tripod….

At the bottom of the post he also links to several other food bloggers who have made similar posts. Excuse me, I have some reading to do.

Since this is quintessentially a foodie blog, I figured it would be fun to share the food blogs that I follow.

Not all of these blogs are constantly being updated.  Some haven’t been updated recently at all, but I still have them in my Bloglines because they have a wealth of recipes that I turn to quite often and haven’t bothered to print out.

Lao Cook:  This really isn’t about Laotian cooking, it’s about a Laotian cook in Spain using his Laotian influences to enhance his cooking.

She Who Eats:  Chika is the food pornographer I dream of being.  If you speak Japanese, she updates her Japanese blog more often than this one (link is on the front page)

My Korean Kitchen:  Great resource for Korean recipes, and very well tagged and indexed.

Viet World Kitchen:  Great resource for authentic Vietnamese cooking.

101 Cookbooks:  Great vegetarian recipes.

David Lebovitz:  If you like sweets, you’ll love this blog.  He used to be the pastry chef at Chez Panisse (see Reesie’s last post about the world’s best restaurants for another mention of Chez Panisse.)

The Elements of Cooking: Michael Ruhlman’s food blog.  He can be boring at times, but he has enough useful information to prevent me from deleting him.

Chow and Again: Bizarre Food’s Andrew Zimmern blogs here.  No recipes, but just general foodie news.

Chez Pim:  General Foodie Goodness

Anthony Bourdain’s Blog:  If you like Bourdain, you’ll like this blog.  If not, skip it.

EatingAsia: Generally about Asian food, specifically about Indonesian/Balian food.

Growing Better Veggies:  Great article just posted about growing tomatoes in pots.  I will be following it to the letter this year.

I would love to find good, active blogs about Mexican, Chinese, Japanese and Thai food.  If you know of any, post them in the comments!

I cook a lot of soups at home: chicken noodle soup, pea soup, minestrone, etc. I’ve gotten to the point where I know the basic recipes for my soups, and I simply throw whatever we have into a pot and cook it up for dinner. This doesn’t really make for very interesting meals, as a lot of them have similar flavours.

We had cleaned up our apartment last week when we friends came to stay with us, and Frank ended up finding a book on soups and stews that my aunt had given to us when we got married. It’s All About Soups & Stews by Rombauer and Becker, authors of the Joy of Cooking. Sure enough, it’s filled with recipes for soups and stews, so of course I had to poke through and see if there any useful new recipes that I could try. A lot of the recipes seemed a bit plain, so I wasn’t interested in them, but one did catch my eye.

The Barley Soup with Sausages (Minstra d’Orzo) looked appealing, so I tested it out today. I used spicy linguica sausage and left out the potatoes. I also increased the amount of vegetables to almost double.

Combine into a pot:

2-3 oz smoked sausage, sliced thinly
4 cups water
1/3 cup pearl barley
1 bay leaf

Bring the pot to a boil, then partially cover and simmer for about 30 minutes. While this is cooking, pan fry the following:

2 Tbsp extra-virgin olive oi
1-1.5 cup green cabbage, chopped
1 onion, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
3 Tbsp fresh parsley, minced or 1 Tbsp dried
2 3-inch sprigs fresh rosemary or 2 tsp dried

The vegetables should wilt slightly, and the colours should brighten slightly. Then add to the other soup pot, along with:

3 Tbsp fresh marjoram leaves, minced or 1 Tbsp dried
1 large clove garlic, minced or 1 tsp pre-prepared chopped garlic

Boil everything up together and simmer for another half hour or so. Oh yeah, if want to add potatoes, add 1 diced potato at this point too. You can add more water if it’s too thick after simmering. Then season with 1 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp ground pepper. Taste the soup and add more of either if you like. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with shredded Montasio or provolone cheese. I was lazy and used parmesan instead and cut back on the added salt.

I have never really been a fan of pea soup. I’ve found it to be too thick, too sludge-like for my taste. It would cling to the insides of my throat as it went down, leaving me feeling like I’m choking while I’m eating it.

As an adult, I’ve found that perhaps I can enjoy pea soup, but only if I make it my own way, with plenty of other vegetables in them, and the special addition of fresh or frozen peas. Personally, I like the fresh/frozen peas simply because it gives the soup an additional fresh flavour to it, to counteract the sludge feeling I don’t like. I also add in plenty of other fresh vegetables like carrots and potatoes to break up the thickness of the cooked peas.

If you want to try it, here’s my recipe:

Cut up a small ham hock into chunks and place into a large soup pot. Add 4-5 cups of water or stock, along with 1 cup of dried split peas. Bring to boil and let simmer for an hour. Add 2 chopped celery stalks, 5 carrots cut in large chunks and 3 potatoes cut into quarters. Let it simmer for another hour or so, or until the potatoes and carrots are softened, but still retain their shape. Turn off the heat and add in a few handfuls of frozen peas, mixing to let the residual heat warm the peas.

You can use any vegetables you feel like adding… I usually slip in a parsnip or two, but I forgot to add them this time.