Hong Kong Phooey

So in case you haven't heard me say it enough already.. I love Asian food..
I don't think there is a better regional cuisine than Asian.. Really from Indian to Japanese to Korean to Chinese to Thai... and I've only just started. Phillipino (debatable if it's Asian as I've read in some places) is one that I've just started to explore and aside from lumpia (a type of egg roll), one that needs further investigation. Though just like my venture into Sri Lankan a few weeks back I don't know really where to start.

Check out the Food Frenzy blog.. good times..

mmmm..... Bacon & The Art of Gorging Oneself.

It'd been a while.. years in fact that i can think of eating oneself silly.. or to the point that I slept horribly and needed antacid's.

The past Friday we went to Incheonwon Korean BBQ in Garden Grove. Oh my gosh.. this place rocks...

I need to Yelp a review for this place but basically here is the low down. It's a bit spendy!! Especially on the hard liquor and wine.  We went with the cheaper AYCE (All You Can Eat) @ $17 per person. They have a large menu of options in case your not feeling BBQ as well, but I was single minded on this and this alone.

Damn they give you a lot of food.. and for only 3 of us.. well 4 but apparently there was a communication issue about the $$ of this place. So when at the last moment when yet again Scratchy decides he'll eat to which Spam starves..

Oh my gosh is the food good here... It was the first time in a long time that I got to take the twins to K-BBQ... I think at least 4 or 5 years.. 

Again to give you an idea on the price of drinks... beers are about $6.. Wine is about $12, mostly being rice or other Asian fruit wines (raspberry/plum). Whiskey, Hennessey and the like are about $10 a pop.

The amount of food we got we barely dented... at least 2 more people could have been there and i think we'd still have left overs...

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY

So haven't been to the Wiliams Sonoma classes since the end of March.. the healthy cooking classes don't seem to have the same appeal... Though I managed to make a few dishes this weekend... Chili con carne and Bacon Wrapped Scallops.

The chili was straight up... Meat, seasoning, garlic, onions  and tomatoes.. that's pretty much about it.. I found it pretty bland actually.. well maybe bland is not the right term.. I would said one dimensional... there was something missing on it.. aside from salt... I'd been wanting just plain meat chili for a while but perhaps that was it.. maybe it needed beans.. or some green chili or green pepper.. It's hard though I'm all about making it that way but i ask people more often than not about what they want in it...  People liked it.. I didn't..  I'd like to make a different one next time.. the way I want it.. maybe add some cornmeal to it.. it lacked depth..  green peppers.. small chunks of stew meat.. slow cook it longer..


Sunday involved two things I'd never done... Scallops and aioli...
Specifically bacon wrapped scallops with aioli...


Scallops... hhmm.. I'm finding that I'm having a indifferent attitude towards them... they are slowly slipping from my personal menu of enjoyable seafood items.. Don't get me wrong.. I personally think they are a excellent choice for those new to seafood.. tender, sweet and mild... just that I didn't really enjoy these ones... though again apparently I was cooking for everyone else but myself this weekend.. they all liked them..

Aioli... I'm confused on this crap... After a bit of research this morning I apparently made aioli as it should be.. it's a garlic mayo... yeah not so much of a fan of it.. which leads me to believe that I didn't make it correctly... I think it may have been too much lemon juice.. this is one of those things that irritates me about cooking at home... How do you know if it right or not??  Namely I have a list of sauces that I need to go through... but how do you now if it's the correct taste?

Oh well... The lotto is fast approaching 200 Mil... I still plan on going to cooking school... among learning how to fly plane/helicopter, pilot a boat and a master at least 2 languages..
Should I win!

Mac n Cheese for Adults

Mac n Cheese.. for adults!

So this past weekend I made some adult variety mac n cheese. I must say that for me MnC is usually the blue box. Highly processed crap... I don't know.. maybe there is crack in it. Well this past weekend I made some potentially high "adult" mac n cheese. I think that is why i went down this route, it was not the typical MnC,it was different. Though I don't like the recipe as I got it. The roux base is way off, initially calling for 7 tbs of butter and 3/4 cp of flour... yeah needless to say this was the worst thing about it. Also I swapped the cheese out, Trader Joe's carries a 4 cheese Italian blend that I went with instead of the parmesean it asked for. Overall I liked it a lot, there is a huge amount of potential in this dish.

So the basically it called for the following..

1 lb of macaroni
2 1/2 cups heavy cream
3/4 milk
4 oz cheese (Parmesean is on the recipe I swapped this with the Quattro Formaggi from Trader Joes)
3/4 cp flour (I'd change this to 7 tbs of flour as it should be 1:1 ratio on flour & butter)
7 tbs of butter
1/2 tsp each of the following:
Salt
Pepper
Old Bay Seasoning (or eyeball the following - 1/4 tsp celery salt, 1/8 paprika & red pepper (not 1 each but 1/8 tsp total) I found Old Bay to be a bit of a luxury item considering it contains celery salt, black pepper, red pepper and paprika - in that order on the container.)
3/4 cp MINCED onion - Minced I said!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees

Boil up the macaroni to al dente, should be about 8 minutes. Follow the directions and go with the first number if you have a range i.e. 8-10 minutes, go with 8 minutes. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the pasta from cooking any further and set aside.

So you make the roux by melting the butter on med heat in a medium sized pot, then slowly whisk in the flour which should be a bit on the pastey side. We are looking for a light golden color, just before caramel. Then add the dry ingredients and then the milk & cream, then combine these in a casserole dish and cook for about 20 - 30 minutes until you get a slight golden crust.

Now this is a slightly modified version of what I had, notations made where I changed it.

Review - Georges - Huntington Beach

I eat bad Mexican food so you don't have to...

I grew up down the street (Edwards & McFadden) of Georges (Edwards & Edinger) which I think was there when I moved to HB as a kid in the late 70's. I've been here 3 times I think, once when I didn't know any better, once because I was with people who didn't know any better, and once because I forgot I didn't know better.

Check out my review on Yelp.

Review - Wadiya - Anaheim

Check out my Yelp review for this Sri Lankan place in Anaheim, Wadiya.

DO NOT GO TO THE WEBSITE FOR WADIYA - GOOGLE SAYS IT HAS MALWARE ON IT.

It's a second chance kind of place, the food has me interested but not like OMFG this is amazing. Order off the menu and not the buffet. I think the menu food is better, buffet is ok.

Slacker and my punishment is bad food!

It has been a while since I've written anything here. My focus has been towards other various writing endeavors. Plus I haven't cooked or gone anywhere of worth recently that I can think of... no new recipes... though this morning I realized that I love and loath home cooking...

The best part of cooking at home is that your well cooking at home... I guess. There are a number of reasons as to why you enjoy it, costs, watching the ingredients, you just like to cook or whatever. For me it's the satisfaction of creating something, however there is usually something missing vs say going out to eat, namely the full range of options.  Sure I can make a dish or two of Indian food though I don't always have the other items. Usually it's Naan and rice, but it's not like these are difficult items to procure. Trader Joes offers 2 frozen varieties of Naan, plain & garlic. Though in my pursuit of all things authentic I've traveled to Little Indian on occasion and found that you can get the same items here, plus more! What if you wanted a paratha or a kulcha or a roti? If you happen to know of a near by Indian market you can find these items, which by the way are a bread item in case you didn't know. For me it is single handedly the most dangerous cuisine in the world! Here you have a delicious Lamb Vindaloo what do you do with all of this leftover sauce sitting here... that's where these flatbread items come into play. Paratha's... yummy flakey croissant like flat bread. Naan, nothing compares to fresh warm piece of garlic naan. Roti, butter whole wheeat goodness. Kulcha, stuffed with paneer (cheese), how could you go wrong!

See this is where I get myself into trouble.. now I'm hungry!

But this is the problem, I can make a handful of Indian dishes at home have some mediocre rice and a decent piece of bread but it never compares to the restaurant quality.

Speaking of WHICH!!! There is one new found item of interest from last week!

I stumbled upon a Indian/Sri Lankan place in Anaheim, I grabbed a to go menu and have yet to fully peruse the items... I may try and get the wifey to go next week?!?!?

So.. I did have a major soup fail this past weekend... I attempted a asian noodle soup.. MAJOR FAIL!!

Mami style (Philipine/Chow Mein) do not go well as a soup.. or the stock I had sucked!!

All the flavors where there.. but they just were not cohesive... it really sucked!! Oh well the dogs like it!

So on top of that fail... today I was cursed with crappy instant American microwave cheesey noodle bowl! Betty Crocker Bowl Appetit Rotini cheese noodle crap!

Really I've been off of this processed crap for so long that I now understand that it really is just crap!!!

Seriously...

I feel like a fat kid at fat camp who found the contraband locker and everyone is gone on a 4 hour hike... this brownie is amazing...

Weakness

Cake.. chocolate.. German...

Now imagine if there was a brownie version of this.. hot damn.. it is so fucking good. So my daughter picked one up for me from Sweet Jill's, which is a bakery in Seal Beach and Long Beach. She grabbed it at the SB location.

I haven't had anything this yummy in forever...

Speaking of sweet shops, LBC had one called Grandma Sugarplums.. I miss that place.

Comida Yonke

First I do not speak Spanish at all... so don't let the title fool you. I have a very limited Spanglish vocabulary and get ridiculed by my wife all the time for my poor grammar and even "poorer" pronunciation.

So has the title says Junk Food... the items in question for the menu for this weekend. I've been wanting to make Sloppy Jose's and hot wings since before the Super Bowl. To add to this culinary antacid extravaganza, a new Mac n Cheese recipe I got from the LA Times.

To highlight the menu choices...

Less than 6 months ago I made hot wings from scratch. They turned out freaking great and I'm looking to recreate that. I need to refrain from "experimentation" as these were adequate and filled the craving and hot wing void that had accumulated over the months. Hooters was not in the budget and all in all one of my favorite wing places to go to. (I'm wondering if I could make a corn meal crust..... must... re..frain from.. experimentation...)

Second on the list is my experiment... Sloppy Jose's, the "Mexican" twist to Sloppy Joe's. Apparently loose meat  sandwiches are a dime a dozen and this once could even well be nothing new, but for me it is.


As I love nachos.. l-o-v-e'em and love all things spicy. I was thinking about a attempted meal my wife made from a Pillsbury cookbook, basically it was a cheeseburger macaroni-esque loose meat sandwich. They were ok... something was missing. The meat was ehn and they just did not have enough cheese oomph to them. So I started thinking why not take the Sloppy Joe and make em a bit spicier and add nacho cheese sauce to it. Now that I think about it.. I'm torn... tortilla or a hamburger bun. I'll make 'em both ways. The nacho cheese aspect will be made from scratch, I just need to figure out what chilies to use. The meat will be more on the ground beef taco meat side, so this will be a total WT meal.

hhmm.. The mac n cheese recipe is yet again an attempt to confirm that the only MnC that I like, comes from a box. I may tweak the cheese a bit on this as it calls for Parmegiano and add some Romano and Asiago to it as well.  Though for me.. I always have and always will love the blue box..

Wed-nes-day

So my Pop is in town this week. Dinner is the agenda for Wednesday. I'm a bit torn on my options. While there are a number of restaurants near us that we could go to, I want to go somewhere new.

There is a Argentinian place near us, along with some Asian inspired Nawlins' style seafood. I found a review for a Chinese place as well. Decisions?!?!?!?