COLD Saturday

This weekend has been really cold - in lower 10s in the morning and only upper 10s during the day (below freezing mark for THREE days straight).
We stayed home majority of the day, but I needed some shopping to do so we drove for 10-15 minutes to outdoor shopping center (not like a huge mall but 20 stores but again not strip mall either). Shopping was relatively easy since I knew what exactly I needed. Some grocery shopping at Trader Jones (I will do another posting about what we made from the ones we bought there), and stopped by at a bakery to buy coffee cake like pecan ring cake for afternoon coffee time - sorry no picture.

Our dinner was Korean short rib AGAIN along with roasted vegetables salad. We ate total of ELEVEN ribs (you see only SIX in this picture). We were satisfied...

Friday Dinner

Someone was cooking last night - home made chicken soup in Kosher style.
Kosher chicken which has more flavor (I think it has been brined in salty water) was used, so the soup naturally had more flavor. Short noodle and matzo ball, just like you can have at a Kosher restaurant. It was really authentic and tasted just like the one you can get at one and only the 2nd Avenue Deli in NYC.

I went to Junior in the Grand Central station to buy a slice of cheese cake, this time chocolate mousse cheese cake, which was really good - very rich cheese cake bottom and light but tasty chocolate mousse on top.

Beef Stew Dinner

Remember? We bought a big chunk of meet on Friday.
It was a cooking time... Look at how big this meet was - over FOUR pounds...

Cut it into two inches cubes along with onion and carrot... After browning the meat and the vegetables, add red wine, tomato paste, diced tomato and chicken stock (and other stuff - did you think you can get all my secrets?) after FOUR hours of cooking, our beef stew was done and boy it was good. We enjoyed it with red wine, which was very cheep but good enough for us.

I bet it becomes even better next day or two...

French in Connecticut

We drove to Connecticut to see nice houses and for lunch.
We found a French bistro in a small RICH town in Connecticut. Isn't it cute looking? The inside is very cute and feels like some town in France.

Soup of the day was green asparagus and two additional dishes - French ham and cheese sandwich, which had very fancy name something like King/Queen and pate sandwich.
Soup looks very simple, but it had depth in the taste - we could not identify the base (chicken, beef, vegetable or even seafood???).
Cheese sandwich was like savory version of French toast (melt in your mouth) and the pate was a half inch thick one.
Fun drive by watching big houses and by having a nice lunch.

Cod for Dinner

After thinking about what to eat this weekend, one thing came to my mind was some sort of stew - so warm and comforting... So tonight (Friday) we decided to do something light, which meant chicken or fish. After starting the shopping at the Whole Foods as usual, cod got our eyes - was it on sale or just looked good. I don't remember.
We made ginger Miso glazed fish and cooked bamboo shoots and fried Tofu (I bought bamboo shoot when we went to Korean or Japanese grocery by thinking I would make something Japanese over New Year, which did not happen)
Both came out good and we were ready to eat something HEAVY this weekend.

Guilty Pleasure in New Jersey

I had one place in New Jersey to try after watching several TV shows (of course food related) - Italian hot dog.
Today was the perfect day to go to this place since it was "a kind of" on the way back from the office I visited to home.
It was not a typical hot dog, but very unique. They use pizza dough instead of typical hot dog bun, and they deep fry meat and vegetables, in this case onion, green pepper and potato.
Big and HEAVY as you can see, so before biting into the bun, I needed to eat a few pieces of heavy cut fried potatoes.
I was not sure I was able to finish all (for your information, they have single (half of this bun) as well), but after 15 minutes of fiting, all went down to my stomach. When I left the store, the lady at the counter was asking "did you finish it?" and I said "yes, and it was awesome!!". She seemed a bit surprised because I (not skinny but smaller than typical Americans) finished all.
BTW, it is a half the price every Tuesday. I wished this meeting had been yesterday...

Sunday Korean Meals

After eating heavy food (steak, and huge cake) on Saturday, we wanted to eat something "light", plus it was rainy all day meaning no grocery shopping.

Lunch - Korean style noodle (this is just my take of Koran cold noodle), which I could have hard boiled egg, but again I wanted to have "light" meal. On the way from Philly on Friday, I stopped by at my favorite Korean grocery store (H Mart) to buy a bag of (yes a bag of) kimchi.

Dinner - Boiled pork belly (I know it was supposed to be "light" right, but I boiled it so all the fat was supposed to be melted away) with Korean hot sauce made with the red paste, vinegar and green onion (thank to my friend, I found out what the red paste I had in my refrigerator was). It was really good and I think I can use this sauce for chicken and others in the future.