Another Cooking Day

It has not been a great summer weather wise. It was on and off rainy day today, so we decided to cook meals, vs. go out. Since I got the inspiration from the Italian the other night, I decided to try Chicken Cacciatore - a traditional Italian home cooking I believe.

Basically brown the whole chicken - we used TWO breasts and FIVE legs for this instead, cook the vegetables (onion, pepper and fennel), add white wine, diced tomato and chicken stock, bring the chicken back, and simmer it for one hour.

We ate with brown rice and it was SOOOOO good, especially considering I have never eaten and did not follow the recipe. I can't follow the recipe - measure the ingredient in general (that's why I am not a baker, but I usually get an inspiration - ingredient wise and method/temperature wise.

Don't they look yummy?

Italian Dinner

We tend to go out for Friday dinners. Today it was an Italian night. You can find Italian restaurants anywhere in New York - every town has one or two and everyone has his/her favorites, but the one we went to today was one of our "go-to" Italian restaurants in the Bronx. You might not have an image that there is a good Italian restaurant in the Bronx, but actually there are many Italians living there and there is the famous Arthur avenue where you can find a lot of authentic Italian restaurants and grocery stores.

All the customers looked like Italian (or at least partially) along with the servers. We got our favorite, I don't remember the name but technically chicken cutlet with tri-color salad over it, which is very refreshing. The other one was veal scalipini (white wine sauce with pickled hot pepper and mushroom). They served bread with Olive in, which is good for the first bite but a bit too salty for my taste.

Do you feel like you had a short trip to Italy?

Chicken Dinners

I don't follow recipes because I don't like to measure the ingredients and because I think I have a good "sense" of foods.

We got a few pounds of chicken breasts, so I roasted all after marinading them. First dinner was grilled chicken (picture attached), which was moist and tasty. Of course we could not finish all the chicken, so I had still more than one pound of grilled chicken left.

Saturday lunch was chicken salad with celery sandwich. We used raisin challah bread (egg bread), which was bit sweet and good with the salad I made.

Saturday dinner - we still had a few chicken breasts left, so I made the pasta with arugula and tomato in the lemon sauce with lemon zest. It was really good. Using zest was very new to me when I came to the states, but it gives more flavor than its juice.

I have a few TV chefs I like - Ina Garten who lives in Long Island New York. She is called as Bare Foot Contessa. She is smart, elegant and the food she cook is always easy to make but has class. (http://www.foodnetwork.com/barefoot-contessa/index.html)

p.s. We are on vacation to Maine from tomorrow, so I might not update this blog until we get back on Wednesday. I will give you the updates with pictures so stay tuned...

Good Start

Typical morning routine - wake up around 7:30 without any alarm set, boil the water for coffee, and set the bread in the toaster...

Depending on the day or type of the bread I have, I have several combinations of topping - peanut butter and jelly, cream cheese and jelly, butter, butter and jelly, nutela (Hazel nut spread), butter and honey, and sometime I make grilled cheese sandwich.

This morning was the most typical combination, peanut butter and jelly more specifically raspberry jam. It is the most popular sandwich for kids in the U.S. but this combination was/is not seen in Japan maybe because we didn't/don't have peanut butter itself, except the one which is super sweet and not peanut butter but peanut spread. I learned this when I was in Japan from my English teacher, whose favorite was this combination more specifically grape jelly. Speaking of peanut butter, there are two types - smooth and chunky, and I like chunky over smooth for sure. This gives me an energy to get going for the day.

Tasting the Summer

On the way back from the gym, I stopped by at the farmers market this morning. I wanted to buy some vegetables and fruits for the week, and I ended up with more than I needed - donut peaches, cucumbers, tomatoes, and corn. I have to believe that the taste of majority of fruits in Japan is far better than that in the U.S., but this donut peach (I think it is available in Japan as well) is not too bad, even though you have to pay the premium - $4 per pound vs. $2.5 per pound.

Majority of the produce are more expensive than what you can buy at a grocery store, but they are so fresh and you can see the different in appearance and of course in taste.

Do you smell these fruity sweet peaches?

Final Product - Brisket

Here is the final product of brisket. This time with brown rice, but it could be mashed potato, noodle like pasta, or other grains.

The meat was tender and the vegetables absorbed all the juice, so they were VERY good. Worth to wait for a day to see this final product?

Making Brisket

It was a rainy Sunday so we decided it to be a quiet day - no going out or visiting anywhere. It is usually a winter dish, at least for me since it is stew type dish, but I decided to make a brisket today... I don't think it is something Japanese makes but it is like a tomato base beef stew.

Got a great chunk of brisket cut (over FOUR pounds at Whole Foods) and placed it in a heavy pan (1st picture), after scrubbing salt, pepper, garlic and Thyme on it.

On top of that, place carrots, celery and onions along with a whole can of crushed tomato, which gives enough liquid for cooking (2nd picture).

After covering the pan with foil, dump whole thing in the oven at 350 degree for 3.5 hours, yes 3.5 hours, but you don't have to anything but just wait.

After 3.5 hours of waiting, you remove the meat from the pan, and put the pan back on top of the stove top for 30 to 60 minutes (while doing this, you can add some potatoes). After the liquid was evaporated to a half of the original, you put the meat (sliced it into one quarter inch thickness) to heat them through... (3rd picture)

Now it is ready to eat... Are you READY?

Seafood Lunch

Coming back from the beach, we stopped by at a restaurant in City Island in the Bronx. It was an Italian seafood restaurant, so we got Manhattan style clam chowder (compared with New England style which is cream base, it is tomato base) as a starter. The waitress apologized that she over filled the bowl, but I was like "no need to apologize but THANK YOU for doing that". It was very tasty (not over powered by tomato taste) and you can taste the clam and the vegetables.

For entree, we got Italian sausage rigatoni (no picture, sorry) and fisherman fish fries - flounder, scallops, shrimp and clam fries. They were so tender and juicy inside and crunchy outside. They went very well with home-made tartar source. Surprisingly we did finish all the fish dish, but we could not do the pasta, so we asked them to doggy bag it to go home. We will definitely come back here.

Turf and Chicken?

Surf and Turf - this is the expression you would see at a seafood restaurant usually. Surf represents seafood, while turf does beef. I guess people still want to eat meat at a seafood restaurant after all.

Coming back to my topic. Since we made steak and chicken (not seafood) for dinner, I named this combination turf and chicken. Too straightforward? Originally we thought it would be a chicken day, after eating kind of heavy meals over the weekend, but ribeye steak was on-sale at Whole Foods, an organic food store chain, we could not pass it, how cheap are we? We ended up eating grilled lime marinade chicken and steak along with potato salad and roasted carrots. I know Japanese don't roast the vegetable so often, but it is so easy and tasty to do. You just need to put salt and pepper (and other spices, like thyme and garlic, if you like) with olive oil, and dump it into the oven at 375 to 400 degree for say 20 to 30 minutes.

Too many topics about food?

Food, Food and Food

I try to be healthy in terms of food I eat. I mainly cook only vegetables, while I eat ANYTHING when I go out. After eating OX tail noodle soup for Lunch, our dinner at home was "lighter" side - fried chicken tenders with greens, so it can be categorized as "salad".

Lunch on Saturday was a different story, since we went out, meaning I can eat ANYTHING. So this time we went to Apple Bees - neighborhood restaurant chain, and got a big BBQ burger with onion rings (1,500 calories per their menu).

As health conscious person like me, my dinner was of course lighter side - salmon with Miso glaze along with broccoli, zucchini and brown rice. It came out really good except the room smelled like Miso over night.

Can I still say I am a health conscious eater after these three meals?

Business Lunch

It has been a while since last lunch with my ex-coworker, Jim and Tosh. This time we went to a Chinese restaurant in mid-town close to the Grand Central Station. Tosh chose this because they have OX tail soup noodle only on Wednesday and Friday. It was very tasty - it could be very fatty but the lettuce cut the fattiness of the meat. I ordered with spinach noodle to feel a bit healthier as Jim did too. Having lunch with them is always exciting to talk about their projects and what they are doing in their lives. They give me a positive energy and thinking for my future...

To meet another friend, MH, I took the S train to the Times Squire Station. I don't take this train often, but they had a promotion of some TV series and all the interior was painted for that scheme including seats. I have never seen anything like this, even though it is common to have only one kind of advertisement in a car, but not covering the seats.

Hair Cut and Brendan

I had a hair cut, which was postponed by one week, in East Village as usual... It's summer so I went "very short". I think it came out good.

I met up with my friend, Brendan for dinner at a Ramen shop he found. I got their special - Sesame Miso Ramen, while he got Nagasaki Ramen, which is his favorite. Both were very good. He likes to talk so before and without eating it, so he started talking about his friend's (Lindsay) wedding a few weeks back. I know her through him (and she helped me choose my apartment's paint color several years ago) and she is one of the most beautiful people I have met. (I will post her picture here once I get permission from her.) Since she is an artist, it seems like their wedding was very story-telling and a themed one, which could be difficult to understand if you were not there.

After a bowl of ramen we walked several blocks to an ice cream shop, which again he found, for another round of TALK. I got sesame and chocolate peanut butter ice cream, while he got only one scoop of chocolate mint.

It was very much fun to meet up with Brendan.

Guilty FREE Dinner

Since I had sweets during the day, today's dinner is pure vegetarian in Korean style. I made cucumber pickles, bean sprout and garlic broccoli, and got two types of kimchi from the Korean store. At that store, I found brown sweet rice (Mochi-Gome in Japanese), which I have never seen, so I had 50/50 brown and sweet brown rice tonight. Aren't they looking good even though there is no meat.

Guilty Pleasure

This is the last piece I got from Baked the other day. Blondie - for the people who are not familiar with, it is Brownie without chocolate, but to me more like soft cookie bar. It was their new recipe and it was good, especially with coffee.

Beach and Korean Chicken

We go to the beach almost every weekend during the summer. Not to face a heavy traffic or two, we leave early in the morning and come back early afternoon.

On the way back from the beach this time, we stopped by at a Korean fried chicken restaurant in Flushing Queens. We got a whole chicken, even though a waitress said that it is "supposed to" be for three people. Spicy and their original sauces half and half. They were crispy and really yummy... We will add this spot to our lunch place list we stop by after the beach. Aren't they looking yummy?

Baked Chocolate Cake

Here is the update on the cakes we bought at Baked.

We have never eaten this chocolate cake (there are several types of chocolate flavored cakes), and it was moist and really good. (Maybe after leaving it at room temperature for a while to make the frosting creamy.)

I Love Cooking...

I love cooking and sometimes I took a picture or two when it came out pretty.

Here is one I made a few weeks ago - Japanese (kind of) mini meatloaf.