where is my mind?

I haven't updated at all lately and it's just out of pure laziness. I've been cooking a lot more at home lately and eating work food a lot more, too.



A few weeks ago I had dinner at my dad's house. He really likes deep fried things (and let's be honest, who doesn't?!) so he made me a breaded feast for at least ten people. We somehow managed to eat most of it among the three of us (my step-mom included).



He took a whole chicken and chopped it up into pieces. Most were hard to discern, the batter morphing them into similar shapes. The only ones easily identifiable were the drumstick and the wings, the rest were just a hodgepodge. The mushrooms were so hot after being deep fried, probably the moisture in them coming out via heat. So we had to cut them in half to have them cool down to a reasonable temperature. My dad learned this the hard way-- out of excitement he quickly bit into the mushroom and burnt his entire lower lip. Had to use a soda bottle from the fridge to get the swelling down. Hah!





Dad really likes the crispy breaded crumbs so he stacked the chicken like a tower to get to them. I have no idea if they managed to eat through the rest of that chicken. I'm sure it'd be easy, though. It was pretty amazing.

I've kind of been on a chicken fix as of late, though. There was this pretty amazing (and simple!) chicken and mushroom recipe on Food Wishes that I wanted to try out. It came out even better than I had anticipated. Paired it with some steamed rice and a simple mixed green salad.

Developing film = Automatic blog post

My commute to work is pretty tranquil. So much so I decided to take a photo. The weather (up until late) has been beautiful-- perfect breeze and coolness while still being incredibly sunny. I can't even explain really how happy I feel when I ride down this particular stretch of Kapahulu. Sometimes nature is just really awesome.



I saw Matt and Kim with Dan and it was a pretty amazing show! I really love Aloha Tower-- it's a pretty surreal venue. Unlike the Cat Power show, this one was really hot and muggy. Probably because of all the kids dancing. I punched a guy in the face! T'was a good night!



Kaz moved to Japan so SRSS has a new guitarist. Their last show was on the 29th. Still torn that he's back in Kyoto. I definitely need to make a trip out there soon.



And then here are some not-film photos of food. Takoyaki and Unagi+Ikura Chirashi-don.



These are my favorite chocolates. Before, the ones that are green tea latte cream flavored were pancake flavored. I miss them. The rest are delicious, though!





These were tarts that were on sale at Nijiya. They were actually pretty good! I really liked the caramel almond flavored. The yuzu one was okay.

Then I went shopping at Safeway and discovered that they sell sourdough bread bowls. So I made myself manhattan clam chowder and a salad for a late night dinner. I didn't know what to do with all the bread I took out (for the soup), but discovered that the chinese actually deep fry bread and eat it for breakfast! Next time!

holy pic spam update

So I've been really preoccupied with school and work and have been neglecting the food aspect of this blog. I think apart of it, too, is that I've been waging a pretty serious food photo war and there is just too much mediocrity to upload. So here are some of my favorites over the past few weeks.

I love steak salad. Even more when feta cheese is involved.



Juvana and I get lunch almost every Monday and Wednesday. Govinda's is one of our favorite spots. Cauliflower curry.



Joe and I went to Kaka'ako for lunch/coffee/study sesh. We ate at Kua'aina Burgers where I got my favorite avocado burger, then stopped by Mocha Java for lunch.




Then Joe got trapped in a space-age massage chair that had a "zero gravity" setting.



Some days I make myself a fancy breakfast. Homemade yogurt! Really upset that mom ran out of bacteria to culture anymore. Need to find a place here in Hawaii that sells it! Tea press = divine.



Another fancy brunch!



(and I saw Cat Power! with Fred. It was sweet.)



I think that's more than enough for now.

i want to nap forever

i feel like i've finally found the perfect balance of friends family school work. but now i never have time to sleep. napping has become almost recreational for me. on busses, at friend's houses, sometimes at work on the back desk, classes, brief moments in boring conversations. coffee only helps so much but leaves me erratic, jittery and sometimes even depressed. i think i'll slow down once the pinched nerve starts up again, hahaha (bad joke if you know me really well).

so yesterday a friend and i experimented with popcorn! i can't even really remember how the idea came about, but it was an absolute success. things to remember: allow the gummie bears to melt more. perhaps selective on the types of gummies we put in it? and wait till it's thoroughly popped, the kernels become quite a pain to remove.



my cake noodle adventure begins! i'm quite excited. will let you know how it fairs!

edit: update. cake noodle did not come out amazing. was lacking black bean sauce. oh and, uh, i didn't marinate. next time. ughh.

the noodles were fantastic, just a fyi. might deep fry them next time.

brownies and rusk

my mom used to bring these home all the time. i got them as a birthday gift from my step-mom/dad's friend sachiko. i love this rusk. it's really light and not too crunchy and perfectly sweet. i wish it came with larger portions, though.



last night i ate dinner at my dad's house. i've been promising him desserts for a while. he thinks of me as a really great baker (i think i kind of am, too). so i made a trip to the grocer and made these from scratch.



mac nut brownies
(recipe from hilaire walden's "the great big cookie book")

ingredients:
1 and 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, unsalted
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
6 oz white chocolate
6 oz semi-sweet or dark chocolate
6 oz milk chocolate
1 and 1/2 cup unsalted macadamia nuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9in. springform pan (a regular circular 9in cake or pie pan will do). Sift flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. In a small saucepan, heat the butter, sugar, and white chocolate until it's smooth. Cool, then mix in eggs, vanilla extract, and the sifted mixture into the pot. Then stir in the chocolate chips. Pour into baking pan, making sure the mixture is level.

Bake this for 20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Sprinkle the milk chocolate on top and bake for another minute. Take it out of the oven and with the back of a spoon, spread the milk chocolate evenly. Sprinkle macadamia nuts and then press it into the chocolate. Let it cool. With a knife, run around the edges of the pan to loosen.

anyway. the brownies are AMAZING. shocked at how good of a job i did. :)

supermarket finds!

a few weeks ago my mom and i made an unusual trip to salt lake to visit the carpet store. afterwards, we stopped by target which was right next door. salt lake/that whole area of aiea, pearl city, mililani, ewa, etc is such a strange place. i'm so unfamiliar with it... but to be honest everything looks exactly the same. maybe i am really a townie since i can only establish where i am based on landmarks around me. this cannot be so when you're out there. there's just houses. a TON of houses. i can officially say that suburbia scares me.

because there was only a pizza hut and a starbucks to eat at... we became desperate for decent food. luckily target has food in the form of a freezer aisle and this was on sale for $4. frozen pizza this cheap? unheard of! plus it said that the ingredients were "imported from italy." really?! i was excited.

(note to self: you can't fucking take pictures at 3ft distance. FIGURE IT OUT, GIRL!)

mom made caprese salad with cherry tomatoes and bits of anchovy on top! this ended up being much more delicious than the pizza which was a hot circle of garbage (thanks, kevin, from the office for this quote). why was it bad? there was no flavor! the goat cheese had the strangest texture... and since it wasn't evenly spread you'd just get huge bursts of goat cheese and then... dull... crappy... frozen spinach flavor. yuck. never again.

i've been trying to be more frugal lately but it's hard. i'm an impulsive buyer-- i'll admit it! so when i saw all these items on sale i could not resist. do i really need the equivalent of 20 servings of miso soup in the middle of the summer? ...no. but i might. plus this stuff doesn't go bad, right? right!

i'm really excited for the item on the far right, which is something i haven't seen before. it's just the miso paste except it comes with small baby clams inside! we will see how that actually tastes. i don't want to hype it up too much for myself (like i did for the pizza) only to be sorely disappointed. the miso ramen in the dead center is always good. the soup packets are delicious and the ramen is exceptional for the processed type. $1.50. i just wish it was a just-add-water kind of deal so i could bring it to work.

anyway~~ that's all for now. heehee.

semi-food related

man, writing about food all the time isn't so bad. i guess it's hard because i feel strange just describing what i've eaten. i wish i could show you guys, but my camera is still broken/i haven't bought a new camera. kind of getting back into the film thing again. i bought a snappy lxii at my friends garage sale this past weekend for a $1. very typical point and shoot, except that it automatically winds. yes! replaces my now defunct colorsplash.

speaking of cameras, i really really still want the canon ae-1. i wish i had it already. blah blah.

the other day i made the most amazing ramen. there's this open market on fort street three days a week and i picked up some choy sum there. generally speaking after that chinatown rat scare i've been really hesitant about open vegetable marts as i don't really know where they've been sitting. but the old lady at one of the stands is really sweet and always offers to help me out (as i'm clueless when it comes to picking out good veggies) so i guess i trust her.

i was a little unhappy that i had to use thinly sliced beef instead of shabu shabu pork, but it was delicious either way. poached egg on the top with togarashi seasoning!

did you guys know you can freeze certain vegetables? it really cuts on prep time. i've been doing this with green onion! a few weeks ago i bought some green onion and only used a third of it before it went bad. frustrated, i googled ways i could save green onion. shazam! my mom has been using most of it, though, which i guess i don't mind.

anyway more pictures later i gotta play sims 3!

updates for updates sake

It's so hot. I'm eating ice cream and it's almost 7PM (dinner time). My diet hasn't been the healthiest lately. Today I ate a slice of vegetarian pizza from Boston's Pizza, two spring rolls from Pho Tri, $14 worth of sushi at Genki, and a fudgey cupcake from the Starbucks cafe. I know what you're thinking. "Arisa, you're so skinny! You don't have to worry about your weight!" Shut up. I am skinny fat and I should probably be working out so I can get toned and shit.

Anyway this isn't a blog about me it's a blog about food. I forgot to write about my slow-cooked ribs adventure. Basically I discovered what I did wrong the last time and reattempted some weeks ago. It was an absolute success.

I followed all the steps except the part about baking. The oven was on bake at 275degreesF. I wrapped the ribs in two sheets of foil, top and bottom, and then sealed the sides closed. Then I put it in a casserole dish of sorts, with a lid! This way the moisture stays inside. Who would have thought!

So after baking for about two and a half hours I opened up the foil and then basted them with BBQ sauce. Then I broiled them for about twenty minutes.

FALL OFF THE FUCKING BONE! I was in disbelief. Ask my mom! I almost started crying!

Anyway it turned out to be a horrifyingly oily meal that I won't attempt again for a while. Maybe broiling on a broiling pan instead to help with the oils sitting. Either way, aaaaaaamazing!

magical acai sundays!! +recent lunches

Not that I'm trying to push drugs onto you but man, my new favorite Sunday routine is a bowl to myself and then an acai bowl. I've been meaning to make a trip out to the Health Bar but it's kind of out of the way. So lately I've been making regular trips to Blue Hawaii Lifestyle. Sure, $8 for an acai bowl is pretty damn steep (considering the economy yadda yadda) but a once-a-week treat, I say it's alright!

How could you resist that? None the less, I kind of want to make it a routine with someone else (instead of uh, randomly calling up people to have them watch me eat, hah). So if you're interested, holla at me! Also side note: the teas there are pretty darn good if I do say so myself.

Unreleated (but totally important!). I have lost weight as I mentioned before, so I've been making it a new habit to eat healthier, with the occasional It's-it sandwich as a treat! But here's a picture of my lunches lately.

I KNOW YOU'RE JEALOUS. So here's the breakdown. Basically I'm in love with spring mix salads (prepackaged because it's a pain to get all those assortment of leaves). Topped with sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced onions, cheese (usually mozzarella/cheddar mix) and dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette. Then on half to 3/4in. slices of baguette bread, I top them with a margarine, diced onions, cheese, and sometimes tomatoes if I have some left over! So so so good. The cheese is a great protein instead of meat which really helps hold off hunger. Love this.

ramblings, discoveries

I haven't been posting because I've been sick. I've lost about three pounds as of today because of the flu/cold/funky virus thing I've had and am still sort of unable to eat certain solid foods, so I've been sticking to soups and chazuke just to play it safe. Anyway, this is going to be a mega post to sort of cover the last week (or so?) in terms of food.

I've been shopping at Safeway a lot lately because the amazing variety/cheap prices. Have decided to take baby steps, so bought a few things I've really really wanted. New obsession: meat rubs.

Also new old obsession: flan. I have a great espresso creme brulee recipe that I can't wait to try out, but instead I did the instant version via Jello. It was alright, at best. Won't be doing it again.

Also, Poore Brother's chips. So amazing. Addicted to the salt and peppered ones. Why didn't these exist when I was a kid?

I used the rub on the ribs (mentioned in the previous post). They came out disasterous, but it's because of the meat I bought and not the cooking technique. Next time, I'm going to buy a full rack and get it from a reputable super market/deli (fuck you, Kaimuki Times, and your shitty beef section).

Step 1, after peeling the membrane off the ribs I rubbed them down with olive oil and the rub mix. They sat like this for about eight hours in the fridge.

Step 2, on a greased pan I placed them and put them in the oven at 250F for about two hours, occasionally opening and oiling them with a paint brush.

There was so little meat on the bones to begin with but what WAS there was tasty. I probably didn't have to bake it as long as I did, which caused it to get tough and a bit dry. Hopefully the next time will be a bit more successful!

i made a cassarole!!

Improvising is slowly becoming second nature. I was totally one of those anal-retentive cooks that HAD to have everything on the recipe list and would immediately blame my failure on lack of some minor thing, like not fresh spices, or using the wrong baking pan. I realize now that it's really technique and intuition. It might say it'll be done in twenty minutes but sometimes it's done in ten. Feeling my way through some terrible kitchen disasters I'm starting to figure out what to look out for (undercooking=bad, smoke? you should probably pull it out, taste test everything!).

Yesterday I made my first attempt at a rice casserole and it came out amazing. Here's the scoops. It's a chicken and barley bake, but I didn't have pearl barley so I just substituted rice. Turned out better than I had anticipated.

Ingredients
4 Chicken thighs (I used with bone and skin, but you can do boneless skinless)
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup chopped carrots
3/4 cup water
1 cup rice
Half a block of chicken bouillon (like a teaspoons worth?)
Clove of garlic, minced
Parsley for garnishing

Directions
Preheat oven to 350. Rinse the chicken and pat it dry. Season with salt and pepper and fry in a skillet with olive oil, five minutes on each side or until brown evenly. Set aside, and in the same skillet fry the onions and garlic. Add carrots, water, bouillon, rice. Bring to a boil. Pour the mixture into a casserole dish.

Now I did something wrong here; I put them in casserole dishes I could not cover. I moved them immediately after this photo into a larger casserole dish with a lid. Otherwise, the rice won't steam. Make sure the rice mixture is moist with a bit of excess water; it has to steam in the oven. Place pieces of chicken atop the rice mixture.

Bake it covered for at least an hour or until the chicken is no longer pink and the rice is soft. You don't want to disturb it too much because you'll release the steam (thus disrupting the rice cooking process). After it's done, let it sit, covered, for ten minutes before serving. Garnish with parsley.

My mom was really pleased! The veggies in the corner were a complete bust so I won't even go into any details. But as you can tell, the parsley I used was dried and not fresh. I don't think it affected the flavor so much so, but it didn't make it look as appealing as I had hoped. Lesson learned! The rice was a little worrying, too. If it comes out a bit dry, just add a little water and mix it around. It'll fix itself.

I'm making ribs and flan now, so I'll post about that a little later!

Look what I made!

Because I'm slacking, here you go.

Scallops and Feta Cheese Pasta

Ingredients!
Olive oil
Scallops
Garlic (3-5 cloves)
White wine
Linguine
Tomatoes, chopped
Spinach
Oregano
Basil
Feta cheese

Directions!
Heat the olive oil, garlic, and scallops over medium heat. Add some white wine (I kind of eyeballed it?) and let it simmer for about five minutes. Meanwhile, boil the linguine with a pinch of salt for about 10 minutes. While the pasta is going, mix the chopped tomatoes, spinach, oregano, and basil until everything is kind of tender. Toss the pasta in the sauce and feta cheese and serve!

So originally the recipe called for shrimp. I bet it'll taste a lot better with that, too. But because I have a shellfish allergy I substituted and it came out fine! It's pretty much the only dish I've made to date that my mom has absolutely approved of.

As for the white wine, I say choose one you like to drink (as everyone says). I used Rodney Strong Sauvignon Blanc. Speaking of! I suppose this is sort of a wine revolution, so to speak, because corks are out and screw on tops are in. Yes! It actually keeps the wine for much longer and is easier to use! I hope that all wine companies jump on that. But back on topic, I like to cook with chablis as well! Both are fantastic to drink.

I think I'm going to try and stray from tomato/wine based sauces and try something simpler. So next up? Maybe a tobiko spaghetti with olive oil? We'll see!