Non Stop Eating

We are in Santa Barbara now and can't wait to do some good wine tasting! We have been eating non stop! More to come...

Crustacean

A Secret Kitchen...really?

Crustacean is a popular Vietnamese/French restaurant run by a family. They are in CA locations. They have a secret kitchen within the kitchen that only family members and their mom (head chef) can go into. I find this a bit asinine. Food is about sharing and enjoying. Didn't they see Ratatouille? Anyone can cook! This is part of passion with food. It's so accessible. Anyway...off my soapbox. In tired mood tonight...

For our first night in LA, we went to this place to check out the famous "garlic noodle" that Duff of Ace of Cakes said was his obsession. This was good but deserve a secret kitchen, I don't know about that. I called it garlic bread version of noodles. I have tried recreating it and it was not that hard, maybe not exact but good version.

Here are some other items we had. Sorry...didn't have camera with me on this first night.

Buddha Roll – Moist rice paper filled with black mushrooms, tender cabbage, baby carrots, water chestnuts and roasted bean curd

Vietnamese bouillabaisse, asparagus, Vietnamese celery, “doc mung”, pineapple, tomato, lemongrass and Vietnamese basil. V8 soup with warm veggies at it's best.

Colossal Royal Tiger Prawns, charbroiled with AN’s Famous Garlic Noodles. My cousin had this and said it was good.

Chocolate Lava Cake and Coconut Cake were the highlight.

It was a pricey dinner and a bit trendy and trying too hard. Even the wait staff was rolling their eyes with the secret kitchen...

Grilled Salmon and Ratatouille

Dinner with Hamed and Pascale

My new chef friend Hamed and his wife Pascale invited me to their lovely home for a nice dinner a few weeks ago. Their home is so lovely...just the old kind of house that I want some day. Their kitchen completely remodel kitchen was even more envious. I met Hamed working with St. Cloud catering. We have worked about 4 gigs together this summer. He is the first and only person that John and Cass has allowed me to work as a team without them. He graduated from FCI, the culinary school in NYC that I so desperately want to go. I also met his super nice wife at the dinner. Here is what they served:

Salmon Tartare on slices of baguette

Beet Salad

Roasted slices of golden and pink beets filled in between with some kind of seasoned herbed goat cheese

Grilled Salmon

Ratatuouille of yellow squash and peppers, it was very nice

Side of fluffy moist rice that was cooked with vegetables. Hamed said he first toasted the rice before adding vegetables and water. I brought dessert but it wasn't my normal up to par, especially to the dinner. I made my mini tarts but I used a different pastry recipe from the Pastry book by Michael Roux that I was reading. It was filled with fresh raspberry and chocolate ganache. I think it tasted okay but didn't look as good. I need to fill a pastry bag or bottle next time, rather than spooning in the ganauch. Not a way to impress a FCI graduate. I have to redeem myself.... I didn't have my camera at the dinner and I couldn't save the pic on my Blackberry, but Hamed gave me all the leftovers so I came home and recreated the dinner on a plate for this picture. :) They were so gracious to even give me 2 squashes that they got from their neighbor. I really hoped to return the nice gesture and have them over for a Korean dinner at my home when I get back.

Craft Los Angeles

Friday Night Dinner

Craft is the main restaurant of Tom Colicchio. The head judge on Top Chef. The hot bald chef!

I didn't have any real idea on what kind of food Craft was about. I don't know why but I thought it was going to be Italian. I learned actually he has more French cooking roots and Craft displayed that.

The most memoriable thing of the night was that it was the first time I had truffles. Not just a truffle oil infused dish, no I actual truffle slices on a dish. Wow!

They served all the dishes family style. I'm not used to seeing fancy places serve this way. The other nice thing they did was serve us complimentary little things inbetween the courses we ordered. It was a nice unexpected surprise. Here are what we ate....

Amuse Buoche

Prawns on Cracker

(Sorry...no pic )

I don't like prawns. The texture and fishy smell usually creeps me out. They brought out this small plate with 2 water crackers topped with 3 chunks prawn slices that was tossed in some oil, seasoning and chives. Soung is veggie too so she wasn't going to eat it. I wasn't going to eat it but we didn't want to be rude so I said I would take a bite. Wow...it didn't taste like any prawns I've had before. No fishiness at all. Light, savory, crisp. Yum.

First Course

Heirloom Tomato Salad

Sweet as honey yellow, red, and pink heirloom tomatoes. The plate was dressed in a small pool of green olive oil and aged balsamic, where the thinly sliced tomatoes were laid, it was topped with little bit of salt and microgreens. I would have to say this was my favorite dish of the night hands down. The simpliest ways are the best ways to prepare highest quality ingredients.

Wild Arugula & Parmesan

Nice slight bitter greens with aged parm cheese.

Main Course

Roasted Halibut

This fish was the most decadent white steak of fish I had seen, it had this nice seared golden crust. The sauce was roasted red pepper sauce with golden raisins in this buttery sauce. It was amazing subtle flavors, but the fish was slightly over cooked and not as moist as I had hope.

Ricotta Cavatelli & Black Truffle Pasta

Homemade pasta filled with ricotta, light buttery sauce, and topped with shaved black truffles. Prior to this I think the only truffle item I've had was the truffle fries at Baguette box.

Sides

Potato Gratin

Wow...best gratin I've had. Perfectly thinly sliced potatos, cooked just right to a velvethy texture in a rich cream sauce that was so good. It had a nice baked golden crust at the top. This was my 2nd favorite dish of the night. I've tried to make this dish but yet to make this right. Maybe I'll have to get his cookbook for this.

Assorted Wild Mushrooms

This was okay...different mushrooms sauteed in some herbs and some kind of fat. I like my mushrooms carmalized and moist, this was again a little dry.

Roasted Asparagus

I didn't have any of this, Soung said it was good but not the best.

Palate Cleanser

Stawberry something rose water something "gelayeee". In another word..fancy jello. :) It was good, beautiful.

Dessert

Peach Crisp with Peach Ice Cream

Good seasonal peach with lot of crunchy oat buttery topping. We ordered a side of peach ice

cream which I'm sure was freshly made had nice chunks of peaches. The only thing is it had more topping than peaches and I like lot of fruit in my crips or cobblers.

Beignets

Light as air dough fried and covered in sugar/cinnamon, served with a salty chocolate sauce and citrusy honey.

After we ate our dessert, they gave us a small plate of lavendar shortbread, chocolate bark or toffee, and dice size brownies. I hate it when anyone puts lavendar in food. It tastes like soap in my mouth. I was relunctant to try this one but I have to say, it was the first time the lavendar didn't over powered the food. It was very subtle.

After the check, they gave us a take home gift of pecan biscotti. They just had really nice touches, services was superb, and beautiful ambience at the restaurnt. We had some leftover dessert that they boxed up. They don't just bring the leftovers boxed to your table, no they give you a number like a coat check. When you are ready to leave, you take the number to the front and they give you the leftover in a bag. How classy is that. I know I can't eat like this all the time but boy it was memorable. We need one in Seattle. I'm going to write him a letter.

The one thing I felt good about is that I think I could make all the dessert and sweets we had. They were simple things but refined. I'm more about rustic than refine thus prob want to do it my way. I read that the pastry chef Shannon Swindle actually has type I diabetes. Interesting...I can't wait to become a pastry chef!

LA Food Tour

Today was the first day of my vacation. Yesterday was travel day so I don't count it. It was a great day! I am in Los Angeles, a city I don't really love, but my cousin is here so we come out here to see her. We is my sister. My partner on the "food tour". We will try all the great restaurants and nice spots that LA has to offer and I will talk about it here.

Half the time will be spent in LA and another half will be in Santa Barbra. I haven't been here in over 4 years. The last time I was here, I had the best vegetarian entree of some time. It was from a restaurant called Los Olivos in Santa Barbra. All I remember was that it was a puff pastry wrapped mushroom with local vegetables in some kind of ruby port sauce. Everytime I think about my favorite vegetarian meal, it is that. Well...I am back and ready to taste again.

I often wonder if it was truely that great or a day of wine tasting made me tipsy and the food better than it really was. Has my palate grown since then and I won't have the same experience? We will see....

August Homeless Cooking

We had a fun cookout last weekend!

John Phillips brought lots of fresh veggies that were donated so Hammed made a nice ratatoulie.

Darren made a nice pork that was like a pulled pork without the bun.

There was a nice roast chicken.

Fresh fruit. Eckhart made a fruit sauce that no one thought should be used for such fresh fruit but I got slammed for because I was the only one who vocalized it but everyone gave me the look behind Eckhart's back. :)

Anya joined us for the first time and made a nice tuna casserole.

We had a small bag of fresh figs (Oh! I got a fig tree today! I'm going to keep on my balcony) so I made this onion, thyme, and fig marmalade and served it on a crostini with crumbles of Gorgonzola. This is a treat I usually make during the holidays to serve with a cheese plate. We paired it with fresh tomato bruschetta. When we serve this on site, we usually keep the names simple and say "onion" or "tomato"? If we make it too fancy or the homeless don't know what it is, they will say no they don't want it. I remember once we cooked and served breakfast and I made fresh scones and they didn't know what a scone was so they wouldn't take it.

I also made chocolate toffee bars for dessert. This was a buttery, pecan on one, cashews one another, shortbread topped with melted milk chocolate. It was so good, the servers were grabbing all the scraps and putting in their mouths.

Sorry forgot my camera and no pictures. Next month! I promise!

Rocky Road Ice Cream

I was ordering Romio's pizza the other day and they offered a free pint of Haagen Daz ice cream. Now, you all that know me...I am not no saying no to free ice cream, especially decadent Haagen Daz. I asked what flavor were available the person on the other line mentioned a bunch of flavors but when they said one of the choices was Rocky Road, the world stop and I was taken back to the 80's, the last time I had Rocky Road ice cream.

All of a sudden...I had memories of smooth chocolate, pillowy marshmallows, nutty "walnuts". I'm pretty sure the Rocky Road I had came from a rectangle box carton, the kind you undo the paper enclosure tab. The kind that probably cost .99 cents from Safeway. I said I'll take Rocky Road before he could tell me other flavors.

The Haagen Daz Rocky Road was good but it wasn't the Rocky Road I remembered. It was almost too "fancy" from the one that I remembered. There was no pillowy marshmallows, but marshmallow cream and it was a bit too sweet and too gelatinous. The chocolate ice cream was great though, it had that nice rich chocolate and high butter fat creamy ice cream. However, no walnuts, it was toasted almonds. I couldn't recall almonds from the past, it was walnut, that not too dense, kinda soft nut. It didn't hit the spot like I remembered...

Well, I was at the grocery store today and checked out a bunch of Rocky Road flavor ice cream. :) I started at one end with the fancy ice creams from Ben and Jerry's who didn't have it, to Breyers, Dreyers, Tillmooks, to all the rectangle box brands and you know what? They all have almonds. No walnuts! Where did I imagine the walnuts? I swear I had walnuts! I started to think...could almonds been an expensive ingredient in the 80's that they replaced with walnuts? I don't know???

I did buy the Safeway premium cup size Rocky Road ice cream and topped it with walnuts. It was so much better the than Haagen Daz. The real miniature marshmallows give it that chewy texture compared to the gelatinous cream stuff. The almond was there, but my addition of the walnut, that light nutty flavor balanced well with the chocolate ice cream. So good!

Why am I talking about Rocky Road? I don't know...it was on my mind and I literally looked at all the Rocky Road ice creams at Safeway and was baffled that all of them had almonds instead of walnuts. I'll have to make my mine own.

Julie and Julia

Can't wait! Movie comes out this Friday, August 7th!

My inspiration to start a food blog was because my friends would ask me what did you make at homeless cooking or what did you make lately. I was also reading this cook book I bought last winter called, "The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater". He chronicled a year of food he made.

I need to cook more. My day job has taken so much of my time that I find myself eating out or microwaving. Hopefully I will gain more inspirations from this movie to cook more. I'm going to experiment more and write out recipes. More to come!

Portland Trip

Coldplay, Books, and Food

I had a short visit to Portland for a Coldplay concert. Show was amazing! Highlight was Powell's book store, and I didn't get to go to a lot of food places but here are a few highlights.

Went to a place called The Original Dinerant http://www.originaldinerant.com/. It's a place with glorified and modern comfort food. We stop by for brunch. There some hits but also some misses...

I am a big fan of biscuit and gravy. As a vegetarian, this is hard to come by, but I always ask when it's on the menu. It's usually made with sausage in the gravy. Here they made it with mushroom. It was yum!

They had some good omelets that came with salad option.

Soung is always on the quest for the best egg's benedict. This one was a miss for her because they made the hollandaise sauce with sour cream.

They also had this mac and cheese pancake. Yes..pancake. It was suppose to be a good combo of sweet and salty. Major miss. It was a bit rubbery and not much flavor...

One nice hit was homemade pop tarts. Who doesn't remember pop tart which is basically a fruit pie folded. This one was apricot. Yum!

Lastly, who can forget Voodoo Doughnut. I was a bit disappointed because it's such a tourist destination now...who have been wowed by all the food show...me included. The doughnuts were really good but the line I could do without. They did have the maple bacon that Jason ate and seem to enjoy. I had a banana fritter with peanut sauce and chocolate. The most memorable was cock and balls. Our most famous phrase of the trip...which will now be put to rest. :)