SF Food blog

My trip to San Francisco with Courtney, Derek and Chris was so cool. We also ate a lot. Here are two dishes from Tee Off Bar and Grill http://www.teeoffbarandgrill.com/ This restaurant was on an episode of diners, drive in-s and dives

The grilled double cut pork chop with achiote & apricot relish over garlic mash and deep fried sweet corn. It was a good dish but way too big. Double cut pork chop means it's twice as thick. It was juicy and flavorful. Too much for me.





Paul's Crafty Mac & Cheese
Mac and cheese with 4 cheeses, pancetta, ziti as pasta (I guess it isn't MAC & cheese) with salad. Quite possbily the best Mac and cheese I ever had. I would highly go back just for that dish.


One of the specials was the Crab empanadas. It was good (probably because it was deep fried). Nothing too special although the sauce has very sweet but not overly sweet.



Crabcake sandwich from Boudin's. Very good but not very crabcake like. Nice avocado pesto and very italian tasting. Very tasty in general.

New England Clam chowder in a sour dough bowl from Boudin's. San Fran makes amazing clam chowder. I think they add clam juice in it. At another place, I saw a guy pouring in a half gallon of half and half. I think that's why it tasted good too.

In & out burger ANIMAL STYLE. My goodness, I hope this would put McDonald's out of business. Very yummy. The animal style adds bacon and sauteed onions to the basic cheeseburger. You have to ask for it animal style, it's not a listed option on the menu

In & out french fries animal style. I had to request both animal style. Same topping as the burger. In all honesty, the fries stink, but the toppings make it taste so much better.

Happy Birthday to me

We went to Fette Sau in Williamsburg part of Brooklyn. It's located at 354 Metropolitan Avenue.



Here is today's menu. Apparently, the menu changes every day. Pork belly, beef rib, brisket.....OH YEA!!



This was our back wall. This goes to show that meat = education



This is my meal: .5lb pork belly, .25lb brisket, .5lb boneless pork rib, bottle of orange soda, 2 bread buns. (I asked the guy if the boneless rib was the same meat from the short rib. He says this is actually not as dry as the short rib. Jackpot!!! .5lb for me.)



This is Hei's meal: brisket, pork belly and sweet sausage with lemon lime soda and bread.



And this is the birthday party. I don't think we could have fit any more people. It was tight sitting in there.



Result: At first, I was disappointed the menu was so small. On the website, they have options of pork cheek and other stuff but only had a few items here today. I had high expectations of the pork belly. It seemed that we got a very lean piece of pork belly. The meat wasn't as pink as with other smoked pork meats you might have. It was very white. The boneless rib was the best dish. At some bbq places, they charge the same price WITH the bone. I probably could have eaten the boneless rib without a knife since it was so tender. The sausage was ok. The brisket was good in my opinion because it's hard to get good, soft, and juicy brisket. Most of the meats were somewhat under-seasoned. That's ok if you truly enjoy the pure meat flavor. But this was a problem in the pork belly as well. It was a good try. I prefer Hillcountry USA better. Next post will compare the two when David joins Hei and I in 2 weeks at Hillcountry (ok, maybe more than two weeks).

Side note: thanks to Libby for the yummy homemade dessert.

Babyback ribs!!

Every time I post, it seems like it's the return of the food blog. Hei and I (mostly Hei) found a great recipe for baby back ribs. It is fall off the bone goodness. It is so tender and so juicy. My mom doesn't however like this recipe because it doesn't retain the pork flavor well enough. You be the judge and the only way you can do that is to try cooking it yourself.

The great thing about this recipe is that it is incredibly easy. Here are the ingredients:
-1 or more racks of Baby Back ribs. (Hei and I share one rack. Also, don't get the spare ribs or the country ribs. You can if you want but it isn't as juicy and fatty as baby back ribs.)
-salt and pepper
-Bottled bbq sauce (If you are adventurous, go make your own sauce.)
-Foil (NO YOU DON'T EAT THIS!!!!)
-Oven with broiler (NO, YOU DON'T EAT THIS EITHER)

1) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
2) Generously salt and pepper the entire rack of ribs (If you have any type of cajun or hickory spice, that would work great too)
3) Completely wrap the ribs with 2 or more pieces of big aluminum foil.
4) Place foil wrapped ribs in on oven safe tray and place in 400 degree oven for 90 MINUTES!!! (yes it's a long time. Make sure you don't start cooking this too late in the evening) This is a great time to go for a jog, cook your other food, feed the dog, practice guitar, do your laundry, place "words with friends" on your phone, etc....)
5) Take ribs out of oven and remove foil from ribs. (I told you that "YOU DON'T EAT THIS!!!")
6) Turn off oven and turn on broiler on high
7) Turn ribs upside down where the meat is on the bottom. Brush bbq sauce on bottom of ribs.
8) Put ribs in broiler for about 4 minutes or until sauce starts to bubble nicely.
9) Take ribs out and flip over with meat side up. Brush on sauce on meat side and then put in broiler again with meat side up (until it bubbles and browns slightly)
10) Take ribs out. Brush on sauce on meat side AGAIN!!
11) Let ribs rest for 4-7 minutes (You should really wait for it to cool a little. You don't want the steam to release too quickly making the ribs dry)
12) Cut ribs and attempt to eat slowly and savor the flavor. (Notice I said "attempt" to eat slowly. This is where my patience is tested.)

And here is the end result:

Double-delight peanut butter cookie!!!!

Yes, peanut butter cookies twice. My reaction to an amazing peanut butter cookie is about my same reaction as a delicious steak. It is an unrehearsed and totally natural sound of amazement. Hei and I saw this being cooked on food network where the at the Food Network Challenge, they had to make something using a Betty Crocker product. This lady made a double peanut butter cookie. It looked so good, I think I drooled on my own couch (was it Hei? Sorry Hei)

So let's get to ingredients and steps. It's pretty simple but it's a little messy.

Step 1: Finely chop 1/4 cup of peanuts. Yup, pretty simple.


Step 2: measure 1/2 cup of sugar (easy easy)



Step 3: 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon with the peanuts



Step 4: 1/2 cup of peanut butter together with the sugar (even a noob can do that)



Step 5: take some Pillbury cookie dough






Step 6: cut cookie dough into 12 pieces



Step 7: cut each slice in half. With each half slice, take a small amount of the peanut butter/sugar mixture and wrap it inside the cookie dough creating a ball. Once that happens, you roll the ball into the cinnamon and chopped peanuts mixture. You have something that looks like these brown ping pong balls.




Step 8: You take a glass with some nonstick grease or cooking spray and you flatten everything evenly. It should be half an inch thick. How thick is that? Beats me, so I just started flattening things.



Step 9: take the remaining peanut cinnamon mixture and sprinkle on top and lightly press it into the cookie dough.



And that's it. I ate them all so fast there are no more pictures. Let's say that if you love peanut butter cookies, you are going to love this recipe. I devoured them in about 2 days almost all by myself.

Like I said, it should be triple delight peanut butter cookie. It's peanut butter cookie dough (#1), peanut butter (#2) and finely chopped peanuts (#3). Who cares, it's awesome!!

ko

another summer blog

So Hei said to me, let's cook but not anything fried. Apparently, earlier that Sunday afternoon we went to Green Tea Cafe on Mott Street and had deep fried chicken strips, deep fried squid, scallion pancake and Portuguese Chicken on rice. I had some pork loin I defrosted the night before and we went to a Chinese supermarket and got a salmon fillet (boneless) and did something with it. I did make a simple asparagus dish with onions and chicken broth but it didn't make the cut (no pun intended).

So I put on some soy sauce and salt and pepper with some cajun seasoning to this pork loin. One of the things I learned when cooking is.....DON'T trim the FAT. Now I don't say this because I like fatty stuff (partially true) but the fat keeps the meat tender and moist. You can trim it later if you want. Since this is a fried free dinner (partially broken in the next entree), I broiled the pork loin. I really wanted that browning on the pork. Unless you put something sweet on it, it will not burn the outside. It tasted delicious.





The next dish is a salmon that I've made before but didn't get a chance to blog. I patted the salmon nice and dry and seasoned with salt and pepper and SUGAR(!?!) Yea, sugar cuts down a little bit of the acid of the salt and pepper but still retains the saltyness. It's a great thing to add to seafood. Anyways, I did fry the skin side first. Like I said, it's almost a fried free meal. But after attempting to crisp the skin a little, I turned it over and threw the salmon in a 400 degree oven. In the meantime, I had some soy sauce marinade garlic and onions with some sugar and sauteed it till the soy sauce was reduced and concentrated. There was an issue with this dish though. I used onions when I should have used shallots. Chunks of shallots tend to keep shape and texture better than the onion. Other than that, a delicious tasting salmon with a wonderful sauce.

New experiments in the summer!!

Here's another post of the food blog. I know it's been a while but I guess we haven't had or made much that was really worth posting.

The first dish I made was a sugar and red wine marinated pork chop. I hope to experiment with wine a lot more in the future. So I took some red wine, some sugar and some salt and marinated it with some thin center cut pork chops. The end product was really delicious. As you see in the picture below, some are darker than others. The first batch didn't have as much of the sugar and wine when it was cooked on the frying pan. I was also afraid of overcooking it and essentially drying it out. So it didn't get the same color. In the second batch, I dumped all the pork juice and wine and got the eye pleasing golden brown but a little bit over charred.




The second dish is the traditional shrimp and eggs. Hei knows I love eggs so this was a special treat for me. She took this recipe out of a cook book she got from Hong Kong. The book isn't bad though because the recipes are in English and Chinese but the title and the author's bio is in Chinese only (so yea, don't ask me what the name of the book is). So when you go to Chinatown and order this dish, it's usually a very dry scrambled egg with shrimp and oyster sauce. However, this dish is different. The eggs weren't cooked as a flat dry omelete and there's no ho-yau. So the recipe included some other spices to give life to the eggs and it did not disappoint. It was very well done.




This last dish, Hei wanted to try to cook meatloaf. We all know most homemade meatloafs are much better than restaurant meatloafs. Probably because the ones at the restaurants sit for a while and the ones at home are freshly made and very moist. So Hei consulted another one of our cookbooks written by none other than Tyler Florence. It's called Dad's meatloaf with tomato relish. We tried to follow it by the letter but we didn't have all the ingredients. Besides that, we didn't have the right size baking dish. We made due with what we had. There's one catch to this recipe though. It's not in the title. It's the secret ingredient to this dish. Unlike the movie Kung Fu Panda, there really is a secret ingredient. The secret ingredient is BACON. You've got to be kidding me. This is a bacon meatloaf? Indeed it is. It was moist (probably from all the grease) but most importantly, it tasted great. Till next time!!

ko

Return of food blog

Hey y'all,

This is Kevin, the husband, taking over the food blog responsibilities. After almost a year of inactivity on the site (plus Hei forgetting the login and passwd), we are back in action.

This one is entitled "Happy Birthday Karen!!"

In attendance are Karen, Becky, Andrew, Kevin and Hei.

Andrew's dish is a sandwich. Most of time, when we hear the word sandwich, one word comes to mind "dull". But when you add dinner to the word sandwich, this word comes to mind, "BORING". However, Andrew did surprise us by making the sandwich from the movie Spanglish. See recipe.



This was a GREAT sandwich. Andrew did an excellent job of cooking this dish and it wasn't easy. Bravo to Andrew!!

Next was Karen's veggie dish. We needed some veggies to add to menu. Karen simply stir fried some pea pods and red peppers with some sesame seeds as the base of the dish.



Yummy as always because Karen cooks so well.

Next was Hei's Mixed Mushroom Udon Mein. This is one of Hei's favorite noodles. And since Hei loves mushrooms and loves udon, this is a perfect combination!! It's a mix of inoki and shitake mushrooms stir fried after cooking the udon. Add some oyster sauce and I think some soy sauce, and we have a simple yet delicious dish.



(Note: Hei did not eat the pot.)

My dish was a simple bacon wrapped shrimp. I decided to do a honey barbeque sauce with it. And since it was something sweet, Becky likes it because Becky loves sweet food. Initially, I thought everything was going great. I did realize, I added too much honey and it was too sweet. Becky commented that there's no such thing as too sweet. At least one person won't be disappointed.



Sorry the picture was so dark. Who was this idiotic photographer that didn't know how to use a camera? (that would be me)

Happy Birthday Karen, can't wait to do this type of thing again with you!!!