Cantonese ginger sauce

I have had different kinds of Chinese dishes. Except for the volume, I never liked Chinese food around campus. After going to some good Chinese restaurants and tasting home-made Chinese food, I know why. It was the difference between real Chinese and American Chinese, lol. One of my favorite style is Cantonese! I still haven't researched enough to say much about it but I know several Cantonese dishes I love. One of them is the Cantonese ginger sauce. You don't really need an exact recipe. Just mix up some oil with chopped ginger and scallions, and sprincle some salt. It is one of the BEST dipping sauces for chicken. You can dip anything other than chicken if you like.

Suggestions of others

I am not very good at expanding my food horizons. I am somewhat of a picky eater, so it's hard for me to walk into a restaurant and pick something random on the menu to try something new. In the cases where I really want something new, I depend on recommendations of others. Saturday was that sort of day. I went to a Chinese restaurant near my work that is decent (it's hard to beat Yau's and Joy's.) But I didn't want the same old stuff I usually get. The menu at this place is actually very small, but there are many things I hadn't had yet. Nothing really stood out to me as something to try though, so I asked the person who worked there to pick something for me.

I have discovered that this is actually an interesting thing to do, because obviously people working there won't expect it. I was kind of worried about asking because I don't want to put people on the spot with that sort of thing, but I had had conversations with this particular worker before and felt a little more comfortable asking her. In the end, she suggested Chinese-style kung pao chicken. It was great, and distinctively different from the American-style. This actually opened a whole new idea to me, I had never thought of asking for Chinese-style versions of dishes at restaurants before. I think I will do it more often! Of course I need to find out which dishes actually have a Chinese-style first.

hot cocoa

When it getts colder, it's time for hot cocoa. I don't like drinks to be too sweet so I made myself hot cocoa with less sugar and more milk. I like customizing recipes.

The cup probably looks only half-full but that's because I was already drinking when I remembered to take a picture of it... I know what I want for a drink now. Apple Cider! I'm not sure if I would make one myself... hmm....

Baking Person

I went back to Columbus a couple of weeks ago. It was great to spend time with my boyfriend and buckeye friends:D. Before the trip, I wanted to bake something for my boyfriend's birthday. He wanted fruit tart but there was no way for me to take it to my 8-hour-long roadtrip. So, instead, making most of my ripe banana and apple bags, I baked apple banana cake! As usual, I found a recipe online and modified it to do with what I have in the kitchen, lol. I put one extra apple to make up for having less bananas. The apple chucks were taking up probably half the volume of the batter. It turned out moist and a bit fragile. Some pieces were breaking apart when cutting it into individual pieces. It is the top golden cake in the picture. Yes, I ate the little corner of the piece on the far right. It was applicious though! I would recommend this cake to all the apple lovers. I always thought I am more of a banana person but the combination of two was not so bad:D. I still have some apples and banana left. What should I bake this time???

I also felt like baking muffins. I just bought raspberry jam so I filled up a mini muffin pan. There was still a little bit of batter left so I poured it into the cake pan. The muffins were very tiny. I guess it was either I didn't add enough baking powder or the jam was too heavy. The one in the cake pan turned out flat and smooth as you can see from the picture. At first, I thought of writing a message on it but the chocolate syrop tube was too thick for that. Easy fix, draw a smiley on it. It looks like a person now. It is just a first step to bake a character cake. I will welcome any requests. I need some inspirations for this project;P.

寿司は美味しい！ (sushi is delicious!)

Really, can there be too many posts about sushi? I think not! Usually grocery store sushi is to be avoided at all costs. My first experience eating sushi was actually from a Meijer near where I used to work. It's surprising I still like sushi after such an affair! Now I know much better, I only get sushi from restaurants, with one exception: Tensuke Market. This weekend, Tensuke was having a big sale, so I had to go see how the sushi price had been affected. I am not sure on how often Tensuke has sales, but from as busy as it was you'd think a sale was a rare occasion that everyone has to attend. The parking lot was completely full, of both cars parked and cars looking for a place to park. Inside the store, there was a line from the front registers to the back wall, all the front lanes were open, and luckily they had an express lane open for people like me, who only wanted one thing. Another thing I learned is that I seem to know every single one of the non-Japanese employees at Tensuke. Maybe I should look into working there as well!

Sadly I went at 5 o'clock so there wasn't a very large selection. Not that what was left was bad, but for the discounted price, I would have gotten a much larger box if I could have. So now, without further adieu, a picture of sushi!!

spontaneous cooking

I normally buy some stuff and then look up a recipe with those items I already have. My cooking can be spontaneous. I rarely follow recipes. It's more fun that way. The other day I cooked two different things for dinner. It may not look fancy but yummy dinner appreciates diversity.

I talked about my curry spice mix in a curry soup story. I still have a bunch left so I decided to cook some potatoes with it:). I adjusted the amount of spice mix for my taste this time. I probably added less than a teaspoonful of it into 2 cups of water. To prove the mildness, the color of soup turned out brown instead of red. I just let the onions and potatoes absorb all the good flavors. I say it was a success! I need to get more potatoes and some rice for next time.

I have wanted to eat macaroni and cheese since kris mentioned it. I saw instant boxes in columbus so got two of them;D. It really was a piece of cake to make it. Just boil macaronis and mix everything in a pan! I haven't had this much of chedder cheese in a while<3 Actually over the weekend, Carolyn told me that the only difference between white chedder and yellow chedder is the food coloring! I assumed two kinds of chedder cheese existed. According to her, people don't make a big deal out of it because the coloring is natural or something.

OSU Chinese Restaurant

I decided to go back to Ohio for the weekend. My friends were asking me to pick a restaurant for lunch--of course, we were already talking about food. I thought of Sushi Ting, which serves decent Japanese food near campus. But, I couldn't do without Yau's. Hiroko and Naoya used to go there often. At that time, I thought it was just too far away from M-Castle. Once I tried the food there tho, I got addicted to it. With the construction of Ohio Union, Yau's was one of the few decent Chinese places close to campus. Since we went there more than once a week, Yau's was like our home towards the end of my last year at OSU. Like Kris mentioned, I have some favorites there. One is Chao Gui Dew. The ingredients are a mytery to me too. I like different kinds of meat and the wide rice noodles in it<3 Although it is spicy, I can never get enough of it. Another one is Mushroom Ginger Pork! If I haven't mentioned, I am a BIG mushroom lover. If I am looking upset, please offer me some mushroom. That can make everything better. Anyways, I did a bad job of taking a pic of mushroom ginger pork. I got more rice than mushroom, lol. This is a kind of dish you want with plain steamed rice. I thought it was a lot but I ate the whole thing without trouble;P. I have mushrooms and pork. I can try to experiment and find out the recipe for the light sauce. I think it has soy sauce, salt, rice wine and oyster sauce but I could be wrong. Chinese food seems so easy but yet hard to make it right!

If I had more time, I would have gone to a lot of places tho. I shall write down a list of places I remember off the top of my head:
Sushi Ting
NorthMarket
Pat Thai
Happy Greek
Akaihana
Japanese Steak House
Minga
Japanese Oriental Restaurant
Cazouela's?
Taj Mahal
Sunflower
Waffle House:)
Hoggies
Mamma's?
Yum Yum Tea?
Rally's
Buckeye Donuts!!
Lee Garden
Northstar Cafe
Some other Chinese places I don't remember the names of

Lunch with Mameco!!!

Mameco came all the way from New York just to have lunch with me! Ok, she didn't come just for me, but I can pretend. We went to one of the best Chinese restaurants on campus, Yau's Chinese Bistro. Usually at Chinese resturants I have no idea what to order, so until I am more comfortable at a restaruant I usually go to my regular standbys: moo goo gai pan, and General Tso's chicken. Moo Goo is actually one of my favorites, but it seems hard to find resturants that actually have it, so General Tso's is a "safe" dish that at least I know what I'll bet getting. However, in the case of Yau's, a month or so ago Mameco told me her favorite dish: chao gui dew. I tried it and it was very good! So on this magical meeting of the food friends I had this very meal!

The exact contents of chao gui dew are a mystery to me. I know there are bean sprouts, pork, noodles, shrimp, duck and onion. but I'm not sure if there is anything else thrown in there that I missed. I am wondering if it is maybe the type of dish that is personal to the chef, because the first time I had it, there was pork sausage instead of pork, and also this time there was egg, which I don't remember being there before. Either way it is a delicious and spicy dish that was designed to be eaten by me!

Mameco! I just realized, we took pictures of the food, but not US together with food. I demand a do-over! You have to come back so we can do it right!

Temaki Sushi

Today was a lucky day. I have been thinking of going to a sushi restaurant for my birthday since I heard about some good all-you-can-eat sushi restaurants. I was gonna wait until November but I got some free sushi today!

One of my co-workers brought some squid, mentaiko, rice and seaweed for everyone. I had two of them and I was happy for the rest of the day, lol. The squid was half-transparent and chewy and fresh. Mentaiko was spicy and addicting. I HEART SUSHI.

Temaki is a kind of sushi roll. Seaweed is normally longer for this type of sushi because you have to wrap it in corn shape. I used to have temaki sushi parties at home. I don't know why but Japanese people like to cook for ourselves at the table. You can pick your own toppings and eat as much as you want! That's the way to do it.

The person who brought sushi sometimes brings food for people and it is always delicious--I love our lunch break for that. I think last time I had some pumpkin tempura and grilled pork from her...mmm. I wish she were my neighbor. I would go visit her everyday then, lol. Today, another co-worker was saying that she was also appreciating free food. Really, food can bring people together.

Blackened chicken

It's always a treat to find a great deal on food. The other night at Kroger, I found these huge boneless chicken breasts for under two dollars! I wish I had bought the other two, because when I came back the next day the price had tripled. I'm guessing they were marked wrong, but their mistake is my tasty meat! I don't have anything fancy to cook with, or lots of spices, so I decided to grab some blackening powder and have blackened chicken. Cooking with blackening powder is always an adventure in my new apartment because it makes a lot of smoke and I have very sensitive smoke alarms. I'm glad I am friends with my neighbor or else she might get angry at my 2am smoke alarm cooking. Usually turning on the stove fan, and the furnace fan is enough to keep the detector at bay.

The chicken turned out amazing, and was eaten too fast to even take a full picture of it completed! I made potatoes and corn to go with it. The corn was nothing special, but the potatoes were great and I have a whole post planned to honor them. I dare you to look at the pictures and not be hungry!

Curry, Rather Bland

The first and only time I ever had curry was at the JSO Welcome party last year. That was over a year ago now, but I still remember how much I enjoyed the curry. Ever since I had thought about trying to make it, but never braved it until a few weeks ago. I'm didn't really use a recipe because I have yet to find one that I like. The first attempt was ok, but a little watery.

I had my second attempt at making Japanese curry a few days ago. Unfortunately I still don't think I've got it right yet. When I think of curry I think of the spice, all the smells and flavors. I imagine successful curry will make your house and clothes smell like curry for the rest of the day. I think I should invest in a fan to blow smells from the pan to the living room. My curry has not yet lived to its potential. It was good enough for me to eat way more than I should have, but still not up to what I think of when I think curry. I will definitely be trying this again soon. I have actually found a recipe to make the curry spice blend from scratch, perhaps that is what I need to reach my goal of awesome curry.

jaga jaga

On the way back to my place, I was thinking of nikujaga. We normally use beef for the dish but I only had chicken. Meat is meat, after all, so I decided to make it today. But the chicken went bad in the fridge! Hmmm... it really ruined my plan and excitement. No meat, no life. Well, that's too extreme, lol. I still wanted nikujaga so I call it "jagajaga" cuz niku means meat and jaga means potato in Japanese. It sounds cute and kinda implies that there are lots of potatoes in this dish. The recipe I found online listed 2 cups of water... I thought it was a lot of water but just followed it. I guess it was ok to have that much of water but it took too long to cook. I had to cook some other things like instant ramen for dinner. I just couldn't wait for jagajaga. At least, jagajaga turned out to be as good as nikujaga so I was happy. The potatoes did absorbed all the flavors of the sauce (soy sauce, sugar, mirin, chicken broth and rice wine). I think I like anything with potatoes in it. Mmm... I wanna make that potato gnocchi I made for Kayo. She told me it was great but I wonder if she was just being nice or not, lol. I am supposed to be cooking with my roommate on Saturday so maybe we will make potato gnocchi together;D. I need to buy some ingredients tho like cream and walnuts... Jagajaga will be my lunch tomorrow<3 I love left-overs.

Stew with rice

My schedule is very busy recently and I don't have a lot of time to make complex food. Usually I get home from work and just want to go to sleep. So I make things that are quick and easy. And nothing says easy like canned food! Nothing really fancy here, what you see is what you get. Normally I'd prefer stew over egg noodles, but I already had rice, so this was much easier. Although it is so simple and from a can of all places, it is still delicious! I enjoy the canned stew much better than any home made I've ever had.

Frozen Yogurt<3

There is a rumor that bubble tea is considered old in NY. That should mean there is something else that is as delicious as bubble tea. People say it's frozen yogurt. When I heard about it from Ian, I thought of my cousin who used to leave his yogurt containers in my grandma's freezer. She would not let me have it because she promised him to keep it for him. I was slightly jealous but was not that curious. One day I got to take some bites but at that time, I didn't like ice cream that much either. When I was little, anything stimulating (too sweet, cold, or spicy) or filling was not good, lol. I had a small appetite as a little kid. It's not like I did not like to eat though. I did enjoy whatever I can eat in small portions. I loved vegetables and soup instead of snacks. Anyhow, I knew I could make frozen yogurt at home if I wanted. I never did it though.

Actually, frozen yogurt is soft served. So, it was different from what my cousin used to enjoy. There are two major frozen yogurt places, red mango and pinkberry. I went to both places. There are three flavors of frozen yogurt: plain, green tea, and coffee. I have never tried coffee but the idea of mixing yogurt and coffee does not sound right. I might eventually try it but I was never in the mood I guess. At least, I can tell you that the frozen yogurt they have is really thick overall. I prefer plain to green tea because the yogurty flavor is interfering with the green tea flavor. Although it is pricy (almost 4 bucks for a small cup)What I love most about frozen yogurt is that I can choose fruit toppings. As a matter of fact, if you try to order frozen yogurt with only two toppings, I hear it costs more than with three toppings... I guess they really want us to add toppings. When I was choosing toppings, I was naturally attracted to different kinds of berries. Raspberry always comes first but there were only a few left at that time. Also, I noticed blueberries did not look good for some reason. So, I looked at the label and ordered blackberries. My friend and I were a little surprised to see how big blackberries are. I didn't mind the size but she seemed uninterested in them. Frozen yogurt takes better with berries I believe. I wonder if Columbus will have any frozen yogurt places in a couple of years...

Tea break

I finally used my new hand mixer! I found out it is too strong to mix some powdery stuff even if I set it as 1, which is the lowest. It blew away some sugar and butter at the beginning. Except for that part, I am liking my new cooking device;). It is definitely saving some preparation time for me. Wait for me to come up with my own baking recipes!

Well, I started off with earl grey cake. My mom gave me her recipe through her blog. I imagine we will be good competitors in the food blog world. Anyhow, I mixed sugar and butter, added flour and tea leaves, and shoved it in the oven! I think it took longer for me to measure ingredients than mix everything. Actually, I could not whip the butter and egg until it turned whitish because the hand mixer was just so strong that I was afraid to lose too much of the mixture all over the kitchen counter. I learned something from it so I stirred the mixture before I turn on the hand mixer in the later steps.

The best thing about it is the cake was delicious! It was sweet and addicting. What was even better is to share good food with people. I shared it with my roommates like how my old roommate used to do--I miss her baking, lol. Everyone liked the cake and we took some ramdon pictures. Two of them brought their sweets to share and it turned into a late night food party. I'm so glad I didn't live by myself. The other roommate suggested me to have a baking basket in the kitchen. She said I could wrap individual pieces and leave price tags on them. For a second, I thought of it but then I remembered how my roommates used to share their bread, cakes and cookies at M-Castle. If there is any left, I will probably just leave it on a kitchen counter and let people take it. If I really need to fundraise for something, I might temporarily open a little bakery. For instance, I really want a certain cooking tool or something. I believe sharing what I bake with people is part of the joy. My next challenge is cake with soy milk or soya drink according to the label. I will welcome any crazy ideas for it:D. I am thinking of soy milk cheesecake but I haven't decided on the details yet.

Here is a picture of my tea cake on top and some delicious brown rice balls wrapped in shiso leaves. Shiso is apparently called beefsteak leaf in English but I have never seen beefsteak in a regular grocery store so I will call it shiso here. It has a strong herbish flavor in it. We use it when we wanna make things take kinda refreshing. My roommate is really good at decorating things. He made those little rice balls into wonderful artworks. I was full but still had to try one of them:). It's a food critic's destiny. Taste it or leave it... Just so you know my cake does not go well with those rice balls. They were two separate things.

Soy sauce egg on toast

Kris' egg sandwich story reminded me of one simple egg recipe I learned from my friend in elementary school. My siblings and I started cooking eggs for the family as kids. I guess that is the only cooking that was easy enough for us to handle. I tried to be creative but kids only know so much. I made an omlet, boiled, scrambled eggs, and stirfried eggs with vegetables. I didn't know anything fancy but I had fun cooking.

To make soy sauce egg on toast, crack an egg into a pan and take it out when white is cooked but before york gets too hard. Put the egg on top of a toast and pop the york and pour some soy sauce on top. I think it was the first time I wanted to cook from a recipe but not from something my mom cooked. I love the mushy texture of the egg. And the soy sauce flavor! Mmm... I wanted to eat it everyday.

Egg Sammich

My dad almost burnt the house down every time he cooked at my house, so he was banned from the kitchen. Even before he got banned I don't remember him cooking very much. As a matter of fact egg sandwiches are the only thing I ever remember him cooking, ever. They are so easy to make and so cheap. I'd probably eat them all the time if I wasn't worried about cholesterol from so many eggs. Just fry two eggs as you would if you were making them sunny side up, then when the bottom is firm, pop the yolks with a fork and flip the eggs over to cook on the other side. That's it! With eggs I always add salt and pepper very close to the end, if you add them early you can't taste them as much.

For the sandwich itself, I enjoy them plain, my dad used to put a slice of onion and tomato on it. Another tasty alternative is to put it on buttered toast instead of bread, then it's like a mini breakfast. I keep trying to think of things to flavor the egg with. When I have a better spice / ingredient collection in my apartment I think I will experiment with the type of things that get added to tamago sushi and see how that works out.

Yakitori more like yummytori

Last night was our JSO welcome BBQ, and obviously with a name like that there's food involved. This is my favorite thing about JSO, no matter where we go, or what we do, we must eat! I didn't actually make these, Rika did them all the night before, but I did get to cook them! They were even more tasty than they looked.

Must-Have Baking Tool

There are five people sharing the kitchen in my apartmenet. We share most of the kitchen utensils and ingredients. The other day, I found some baking pans and sheets in the oven, which was thought to be broken and used as a storage space. If someone bought baking tools, it should work I thought. So, I having been thinking about baking some muffins and cakes. I did bake some muffins but then I thought this apartment does not have any whisks, let alone a hand mixer. I looked for some cheap whisks but at the back of my mind, I knew I needed a hand mixer to mix and sometimes formulate things easily and efficiently. I decided to be strict on my daily spending so I was still debating. But, I could only think of delicious baked goods like muffins, cakes, pies, etc.. I went to Macy's but I had a second thought then. Some days later, my mom called up when I was again at a shopping mall. She said to me "As my daughter and a baking lover, a hand mixer is a must, Mameco." So I made up my mind and went to a Target's cooking utensil section. One guy was actually looking at the hand mixer shelf in front of me. He took the last one that was on sale. I was like awww but soon I happened to find one that was even more affordable, yay. I am not certain if this hand mixer will work fine but I took a risk:). Now one of my roommates and I are happy to aquire another kitchen utensil. We are secretly planning to bake some cake for another roommate whose birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks;). He better not check this blog, lol.

Curry Udon

Curry udon is one of millions of Japanese dishes that I love and crave often. I think it hasn't been long since curry udon first came out at restaurants in Japan. I would say maybe 10 years? Anyhow, my mom is a kind of cook who takes the challenges of new dishes at restaurants and who finds the recipes for them on her own. One day, I was telling her how I had a crave for curry udon. At first, she was thinking. About 30 minutes later, she came out of the kitchen with a bowl of brown stuff which was making me hungry even more than ever. It was just right. Udon was absorbing all the good flavors in the soup. She told me it was exactly how it tasted at a restaurant. I asked her how she did it our of curiosity. At that time, I was a bit interested in cooking but not as much as eating. She told me that she used Japanese curry base, milk and some Japanese broth called dashi to make it taste mild and Japanese/fishy and seaweedy:).

Now I have this Indian curry that has been added too much spice in there... I can barely take a few bites. At first, I just mix it with chicken broth but I have some udon noodles in the cabinet.... I know what I have to do;D! Using my instinct, I start heating up the curry and add some water and dashi. When it starts boiling, I add the noodles. Nothing complicated. just keep it on for about 10 more minutes and it is done. By cooking the noodles in the curry soup, more flavors are added to them. Of course, it is still spicy but I think it adds a good kick to it. I think I succeed in the Indian curry make over!

Spicy shrimp ramen

When I got home last night I decided to use some shrimp I still had left in the freezer. This is a recipe I've been making for a while, and the actual formula changes every time.

To start with the ramen, I pretty much ignore the directions on the package. I cook the noodles in water that has had chicken bullion dissolved in it, and then drain the water completely, and add a half spoonful of butter and about a quarter of the ramen flavoring packet.

I cook the shrimp in butter, with black and red pepper, draining the melted water every so often, the more water it seems the more likely the shrimp will become rubbery. Once it's all the way cooked through I add teriyaki sauce and cook it in the sauce for the last two or three minutes of cooking.