Give me a Bahn Mi!

It's been a while since we last updated. Thanks to the overflowing love from parents, we haven't been cooking much at all since their return. We did attempted to do a few dishes on our own but this was the only one that's worth featuring.

Since I had a half-day off, which may I add that I highly deserved and needed, I went to Costco and picked up a pack of the bulgogi that everyone raved about. We cooked it as is for the first day on the skillet and ate it with rice and stir-fried broccoli and mushroom. Nothing too special. Since we had a 1/2 pack left, we decided to make Bahn Mi.

I picked up some sweet rolls from Boudin, a jalapeno, and used the left over cilantro from our mussel night. This was one easy meal and packed with flavors. And…it only cost us $3 altogether besides the meat.



My mom made some pickled carrots and radish since I was craving it and it was the best way to use them. As we were cooking the bulgogi on the skillet, we warmed up the bread, cut up the jalapeno, and fried an egg for each of us. The next step was just assembling. Spread the mayo first on the warmed bread, packed the bulgogi mean inside, added the pickled veggies, topped with jalapeno, cilantro and the fried egg.



(top - the man sandwich, bottom - the lady sandwich, which the man made a weird cut but he's still the best)


First bite…..OMG HEAVEN! Second bite….Heaven x 2! It was one of those really quiet meals because we couldn't chew fast enough to take the next bite. Easiest meal ever and I seriously can't emphasize how good it was…..(ok, I'm literally drooling as I'm typing this reminiscing how crazy good it was)

Flamin' Strawberries

It's been a while since we last updated….mainly because the last few weeks we barely cooked anything special. It was either dinners with friends or family or something else. Finally over the weekend, we had the chance to make a good meal as a celebration for Jer's bday. It was worth the entire afternoon in the kitchen….

Appetizer:
Cole Slaw with Homemade Dressing
Ok…I cheated on the slaw mix. I wasn't gonna spend like an hour chopping up different types of veggies when I could get a bag for $1.99. The dressing, however, was made from scratch. Miracle whip, oil, vinegar, sugar, salt…whisked together and mixed it into the slaw mix and refrigerated for at least 2 hours. A tad sweet for my taste, which was what most people said on the recipes (and I even cut back on the sugar already). Not my favorite recipes but it passed.

Main Course:
Oven Baked Baby Back Ribs
Recipe courtesy of Jia Jia Chan. She raved about it so much that I had to make it. Bought baby back ribs from Costco. I rinsed it and patted it dry on Saturday night and let it soaked in the Lee Kum Kee Char Siu Sauce. Sunday evening I took it out and baked it for 50 minutes in the oven at 350*. Brushed with honey and baked for another 10 minutes. Came out to perfection. The meat was tender and juicy. I think the boys expected it to be like Armadillo ribs but it tasted more like char siu ribs. It wasn't fall off the bones tender yet but it was still very good. Great recipe Jia Jia!

Side Dishes:
Corn on the Cob - nothing special, just corn

Mac and Cheese
I went a tad overboard with the cheese….This was rather a unique recipe. It called for cheddar, cottage cheese and sour cream as the sauce. The recipe had raving reviews so I had to try it. I kind of messed up on the porpotion of everything but oh well. =) It came out just ok….I was never a fan of cottage cheese but it did make the dish pretty cheesy and saucy. Second day was actually even better!



Dessert:
Chocolate Cupcakes with Flamin' Strawberries
It was definitely my favorite part of the night! I found this recipe through Jia Jia and I knew I had to do it for Jer's bday. I made the cupcakes (which were totally fluffy and light) ahead of time along w/ the frosting. I hollowed out the strawberries and filled it up with Absolut Vanilla Vodka. We lit it on fire using the lighter, and the alcohol lit up inside the strawberries with a blue flame! I actually tried it in the afternoon but the whole house was so bright that I couldn't see any flames. I almost burned my finger coz it was so crazy hot too. When we did it again at night and turned off the light, it was soooo cool to see the blue flames dancing on top of the cupcakes! Although the flames were short-lived (about 30 secs or so), it was soo cool to watch. Jer tried to take a Vodka shot from the strawberry and it wasn't such a good idea…. =p

It was supposed to look like this:



But since I don't have a fancy camera, it looked like this from my kitchen (hahahaha):




I was too busy with the prep work that I didn't get a chance to take many pictures but it was a wonderful night spent with the people I love and with good food.

Happy Birthday sweetie!!!

Beer Chic-Kans!

So I realized that I would have to write after meals...unless I get hit by food coma. In this case, I might be hit by a week long food coma.

The meal, or rather the meals, that I will cover at this moment will have to do with chicken. Yup, chicken again, but it's by choice because I'm confident in this type of cooking. This way is, of course, the beer. Specifically, a can of any beer. The first of the chickens done was a whole chicken seasoned with mesquite. I like mesquite because of the smoky flavor I can get without the smoke. And it just goes well with crispy chicken skin.

What I decided to try was to marinate the chicken and let the skin of the chicken sit in the seasoning. I heard that it's recommended to have the skin of the chicken dry to have the crispiest possible result. Soon I learned that marinating is best done when it involves wet marinate, not dry. So I recommend rubbing the seasoning on dry chicken skin until it changes color and if possible, unload fistful amounts of season for maximum flavor!

Ready some onions in quarter-inch squares and stuff them into the chicken. Don't stuff too much or you find an interesting surprise at the next step. I had the oven pre-heated to a 375 degrees, but I think if the chicken is heavier, the temperature should increase. I misjudged that part since the chicken was about a 5 pound chicken. One other chicken that I did before was much smaller, at about 4 pounds. I remember this because I had a hard time sticking an aluminum can into the cavity of the chicken's...rear end.

Here's the tricky part. Empty, or drink, a little more than half of the can of beer. Any beer works in general, but I like to think that different brews with different ingredients release different subtle flavors. At least I like to think so... Anyway, I had the can of beer on a baking pan lined with aluminum foil and carefully slip the whole 5 pound chicken over the can. If you had too much onions inside, you might find it challenging to do this, but it's okay. By having more than enough onions inside, a couple pieces of onions lost in the process is an acceptable loss. Use the chicken legs to balance itself into a make-shift tri-pod with the beer can and carefully balance the pan into the oven. For a chicken this big, I would leave it in the oven for about an hour at that heat. 45 minutes for a smaller chicken.

If everything goes according to plan, your chicken should look something like this.



After this, eat it whole or cut into quarters.



Here's another variation of beer chicken that I tried. Beer Chicken Wings! This works almost like the chicken breast from the first post. Drown the chicken wings in beer and seasoning for a even marinate. Leave it out for as long as you can. I had mine drowned for a couple hours. Lay these out on a foil wrapped pan and have some of the marinate in the pan. This seem to keep the meat juicy and moist and having the side facing up crispy. I eyeballed the cooking time and cut one of the wings open to check the rawness of the meat.



Beer is awesome. I love it and I love to mix it with my food. Alcohol has an amazing way to open up new flavors and with the many choices of liquor and booze out there, I'm sure that there are many different flavors you can achieve with alcohol. Remember! Cook responsibly and don't operate machinery under the influence. Keep that in the food!

Chocolate Chip Bread Pudding

The best bread pudding I have ever had was at Chaya on the Embarcadero. Ben and Jer could attest to that. I would never be able to achieve what they did so I did my own version.

Jer bought a ton of bread of Christmas and we have all these left overs that the two of us will never be able to finish. It was perfect for the bread pudding and it was the easiest baking ever!

Cut up all the bread and scatter them into the baking pan. Fill up with the egg mixture with milk, half and half, cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. Push the bread down so they all soak up the eggie goodness. Top with chocolate chips and into the oven!



45 minutes later…..



While it's still warm, eat it with vanilla ice cream….ahhh…perfect dessert for a cold winter night. =)

We should stop making so much sweets…

Pagan Meal?

For every special occasion in the Chen family, there's always a meal involved at home. When we say meal, we mean a feast. Chef daddy Chen cooks up a storm and usually the amount of food exceeds twice as the amount of people.

Case in point - Winter Solstice celebration....Like my boss said, it was a pagan holiday but my mom insisted that we have dinner at my parents' house. There's a saying that this holiday is more important than Chinese New Year. Really? What exactly are we celebrating? We complied because we were promised a full menu of deliciousness and our stomachs overcame our minds. Besides, it was a combined celebration for my dad's birthday.

The moment we walked in the house and it smelled like fried stuff. The first plate we saw was an appetizer that my dad never made before - fried pumpkin. They looked like french fries and they tasted like sweet potatoe fries. It was GOOD. Jer wouldn't stop eating them but we needed to save our stomachs for the main courses.




Shortly after the appetizer, dinner was ready. Like I said, it was a feast….Here is a picture of our dining table with description starting from top left corner:
- Pan-fried Green Beans with Garlic
- Pumpkin Gritz
- Steamed Brocolli with Abalone slices and fish stomach (my dad caught the abalone)
- Stuffing for Lettuce Wrap (chicken, carrot, fried fun si, and a whole other bunch of goodies)
- Soy sauce chicken from a Chinese deli
- Fried Man Tao (white bread) with Condensed Milk Dip
- Soy Sauce Shrimp
- Orange Chicken with orange rinds
- Abalone soup



And to wash it all down, beer and soda. =)


Now how can you say no to this awesome meal? I love Chef Daddy Chen…he's the best.

A Christmas Dessert

Foodie's Simple Kitchen presents...

A very simple and tangy dessert made by the sister of the original chefs.

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The Lee Family decided to celebrate our Christmas dinner by each creating a dish of our own. Having very limited cooking skills and wanting to avoid any problems that might make me pull my hair out, I decided to set my heart upon making a simple dessert that's tangy but sweet. I found the Triple Berry Cheesecake Tart recipe in Costco's very own cookbook, Home Cooking the Costco Way. And Costco isn't just convenient, it's also cost efficient. All ingredients came out to a whopping $12. Ah yes, we all love Costco.

I crushed 45 Vanilla wafers in a ziplock bag with the mighty silver weapon seen above. I say it's a good way to release any stress or anger, so smash on.

Melt half a stick of butter and mix it well with the result of your anger release. Then, create a crust around the nonstick pie pan. Hand mix 8oz of cream cheese, sugar and Cool Whip to make my favorite part of the tart: the cheesecake filling.

Use any kind of berries you wish! I preferred blueberries and raspberries only because the colors go well (hah). Take creative liberties with this part and make something artistic. I decided to stick to the classic set up of how a tart looks because I'm a sucker for tradition :)

After mixing lemon Jell-o with hot water and an enormous ice cube, spread the egg white consistency of the mushy yellow filling across the tart. Cool it for 3 hours and voila! Bon appetite!

Bake on people.

Bah-na-na!

The house is filled with the warm scent of baked banana with cinnamon and sugar…..

We made Banana Strudel Muffins last night. Another awesome recipe from allrecipes.com. I'm not much of a baker. I love eating sweets and looking at pretty dessert pictures. When it comes to actually making it, I don’t think I'm all that great. Since Jer's been reminding me over and over about how baking is a science, I have this idea stuck in my head that I need to be super anal in order to do it right.

I got 4 bananas from my parents last week but they were still pretty hard. I waited a whole week for it to ripen and they were finally ready for their big show. Jer was in charge of mashing the bananas. I didn't watch him so when he returned to the kitchen, it was like baby food mush. I thought he overdid it but it turned out just perfect consistency. At the mean time, I mixed all the dry and wet ingredients in separate bowl. I have never been so precise in my measurements before. I was leveling off the flour, baking soda, baking powder with a knife so it was exactly what the recipe called for. I made a mistake on the sugar. Many reviewers of the recipe said to change the white sugar from 3/4 cup to 1/2 cup white, 1/4 cup brown. I was so intense in measuring, I actually put in 1/2 cup brown sugar instead of 1/4 cup! I realized the mistake after I dumped the brown sugar in the bowl. I frantically tried to scoop up the extra 1/4 cup of the brown and of course the white got mix in it. BLAH! At the end, I actually wasn't sure how much brown sugar was in it….oh well.

Jer did the topping and I mixed it all in. Jer took a picture of me while I was spooning. (Not that kind of spooning…hahahah)



The smell of the banana mush and cinnamon was already intoxicating before the muffins went into the oven.



After 19 minutes, it was ready!


Verdict: Both Jer and I thought that it could be sweeter. I think it was my brown sugar mistake that contributed to the sweetness level. The muffins were super moist and the topping added some great crunch to it.

The smell of cinnamon, sugar, and banana is still lingering in the house this morning….yum. Who wouldn't want to wake up to that?