Fresh Lemon Cake

One of the people I had hinabe with was saying how he used to get home-made sweets from another guy's wife before she left for Japan (and her husband was also leaving a couple of days after the dinner night). He made me think of cake and that easily motivated me to bake again. I was certain I will make something with lemons that were already left in the fridge for a while. As usual, I googled a lemon cake recipe and picked one that looked easy to follow. This one required syrup to brush outside with. I am normally not a big fan of glazing or syrup because it feels like killing the original taste of the cake, but this time I loved it. I think the best part was mixing regular syrup made of sugar with lemon juice. The buttery rich flavor went well with lemon's refreshing flavor. Although the inside was not thoroughly baked at first and had to let it sit in the oven for longer than I expected, this cake is definitely one of my favorites now. My roommates liked it and people at work would take a bite and came back to ask if it was really home-made. One guy jokingly told me I should rather be a confectioner than a journalist. I am not going to be a pro but I will keep cooking more delicious stuff! Kris, let me know when you are ready to open up a cafe with me, hahaha.

Indonesian Bento

There is an Indonesian grocery store around my neighborhood. It is a tiny place that sell some dry and canned food and Indonesian bento boxes. Cocoya loves the place so much that he got dinner from there three days in a row at one point. Since the place doesn't take credit cards just like every other small shop in New York, I normally can't go there--I never carry cash. One day, Cocoya and I were walking home together and I borrowed him 6 or 7 bucks to get one bento box! It had beef curry, chicken with mixed veggies, lightly flavored versaille noodles, an boiled egg, a HOT sauce, and rice. I enjoyed it very much even if the hot sauce made my tongue numb, lol. I wanna explore Indonesian food more!! But, according to my Indonesian friend in New York, there isn't an Indonesian restaurants nearby.

Hinabe

Cocoya has been talking about this Chinese-style hot pot whose Japanese name is hinabe. This dish is one of the famous Sichuan HOT dishes. He would explain how amazing the combination of the super spicy soup and the regular one is whenever we talk about food. I wanted to try it but I never had a chance. Yesterday, I was working late to make a phone call to a Japanese person and was gonna leave right after. Luckily, this guy in the office asked if I wanted to come along with the economic journalists and have some Chinese. I was kinda hungry so I was super happy to be invited. Yeah, free food is always good. I was a bit nervous about talking with those supposedly experts over dinner at first though. Despite my concerns, it turned out to be a great night! I tell you this hinabe can be crazily spicy. We sorta let the waitor pick ingredients for us and without the proper knowledge of hinabe, we put literally tons of seafood and vegetables in the pot. Not surprisingly, the soups soon overflew and got mixed up. It was ok at first but as we kept adding too much of food in each soup, the regular soup turned RED like the other one... My favorite toppings were firm tofu, shrimps, thinly sliced beef and oysters! Mmm, as you can imagine I was stuffed at the end of the night. The good thing was we were also drinking Qingdao beer, a Chinese hard liquor with sugar and white wine! Man, those guys were awesome. One of them turned out to be a big food lover like me and I am definitely going to get his email address and talk about food with him! Other guys told me how some young people quit work too soon and other work-related stuff. But the whole time, I could tell how nice each person was to each other. The funny thing is that one of them told me they were not typical journalists. He said normal journalists at their company (I assume people in Japan) are really up-tight and somehow like yakuza, LOL. I am not exactly sure about what he meant by that but it seemed funny at that time.

New member in the kitchen

My roommates and I had longed for a toaster for a while. With it, we can toast bread or bake something little without having to move all the dishes and kitchenware we store in the oven, or feeling guilty about using a disproportionate amount of gas for a tiny dish. The only problem with the new toaster was that its code was too short to reach the only output in the kitchen. But, the Van Loon rangers aka Mameco, Cocoya and Akk taped an extension code all over the kitchen wall and fixed the problem a couple of days later:D. The toasted bagels in the picture were crispy and delicious!!!! But, even better was the baked mochi! Japanese people normally eat mochi to celebrate New Years but we decided to celebrate the new addition to our tiny kitchen with mochi!! Actually, mochi was the first food that came to my mind when I saw Akk setting up the toaster. I am totally in love with its chewy texture on the inside. Back in the day, we didn't have cheese in Japan but I bet the chewiness of mochi was good enough. I'm going to make pizza made of mochi with this toaster soon. Keep tuned, lol!

Surprisingly tasty looking.

Last night I decided on Chinese food, but I didn't want to drive very far. There is a place nearby to my work that I'd never tried before, because it seemed like it would be very Americanized Chinese food. I can't say for sure that I've ever had anything that would be considered 'authentic' but I try to avoid the places like this in general. So I ordered honey shrimp for my main meal, and after talking to a friend about chinese food and remembering how much I love the meats on a stick, I ordered an appetizer of the skewered chicken.

When I actually got to the restaurant I was surprised! I'm not sure I've ever seen a place like that so packed on a Sunday night. When I left there was still a line halfway from the counter to the door. A work friend told me that it is because they have some sort of student special, although I don't know what it is. It's not really in a place easily accessible from campus either unless you have a car. Once I had my food and was in the parking lot, I decided to sneak a piece of chicken for the ride home. When I ordered, I assumed it would be the standard chicken on a stick, put in the type of bags that usually egg rolls end up in. Instead I see what is in the picture! Not only is there the chicken, but an entire salad under them! For an appetizer, it is almost bigger than my meal!

I couldn't eat any then. I had to wait to come back and take a photo! Needless to say they tasted as good as they looked. While not the star of this post, the honey shrimp was also delicious! Maybe next time Mameco comes to visit, I will drag her to this place.

French cuisine, crepe

In Japan, crepe is a popular dessert. You can find a lot of crepe vendors on streets of Harajuku and many other cities. It is originally from France but Japanese people like to adjust anything to our taste. The other day, I was lucky enough to taste a French crepe.

The name of the restaurant was Creep Tree or something... hmmm somehow it doesn't sound right. Anyhow, my friends and I found this place when we were walking around St. Marks. Since many of us had a late lunch, we were looking for a place that served small dishes. The restaurant had cool dark brown wooden furniture with dim lights. In the small space, many small tables and chairs were piled. Somehow it was kinda cool. In the long mirror placed by the wall and ceiling, I could observe the kitchen space where they cooked crepes on top of the round crepe hot plate.

My crepe that had goat cheese and avogado... I think, lol. It was filling. The cheese was very rich so I liked it but some people might find it too cheesy. The white sangaria was DELICIOUS. It was sweet and refreshing. I like a red wine version of it too but the white sangaria sure went well with my cheese. I want to go back there and try their sweet crepes next time.

I just want soup and rice!

I love soup and rice but I'm too tired or lazy to cook something new and creative. That's when I cook vegetables in a soup and add rice to it. It's simple and delicious. The soup flavor can vary but normally I got with soy sauce, rice wine, and dashi.

Cafe Habana

Cocoya took me and Muffin to Cafe Habana. It is a small Cuban restaurant whose interial design only makes us feel like we are in a carribbean island. According to Cocoya, people love its grilled corn. It was around 4 dollars and came with two cubs of corn. The sauce was I guess Cuban and was sour cream, paprica sprincled on top. As an option, you can squeeze a slice of lime to add a flavor. It was satisfying. I actually forgot what my main dish was exactly, lol. I remember I had some meat, fried red beans with corn tortilla and rice?. It was good at first but I got tired of eating it... I think the flavor was rather plain. Although the wait was crazy like an hour, it was an interesting adventure.

Reunion @ Applebee's

Some buckeye friends including Kris and I went to Applebee's for lunch while I was back in Ohio. I don't know why but Applebee's always has some special deals. I picked this "2 for 20" deal and ordered two entrees and one appetizer for $20 to share. As usual, I got mozzarella sticks. Cheese in a deep-fried bread crumbs... what can you ask more? The steak was so-so... It was too firm overall. According to Kris, Applebee's steaks are normally like that, lol. Oh, I also got raspberry iced tea. Raspberry is my life.

Thanksgiving Hot Pot

About a month before thanksgiving, Dr. J and I talked about cooking together for thanksgiving on the phone. This year, I wasn't planning to tag along with anyone's thanksgiving so if I wanted to eat turkey with gravy I knew I had to get it somewhere... I knew how big the turkey was and how nasty it can get to clean the turkey... Dr. J told me she was going to hang out with Hiroko for thanksgiving so I couldn't really plan for thanksgiving with her any more. There was no way for me to prepare everything by myself (even with Ian's assistance, lol). On the day of thanksgiving, I was still not sure if I wanted to cook turkey or not. That was when Ian told me that his parents had bought all the ingredients for Chinese hot pot. I had no objections, hehe. I don't have to cook! What is better, I get to enjoy delicious Chinese food and warm up with the soup, mmm. They had tons of shitake as you can see as brown spots in the pot. I also enjoyed king oyster mushroom, cleaned intestines, shrimps, radish, Chinese cabbage, fish and beef balls, beef as far as I can remember. Cantonese soup is normally very light. It was perfect for a hot pot. I loved how the mushrooms were making mushroomy juice as I took a bite. The radish sucked all the goodness from the soup. Beef balls were very flavorful but not greasy at all. They had tendons with the meat. Cooked shrimps were mildly sweet. I did not need any sauce for them.

Chocolate chip cookie art

Before I went back to Ohio for thanksgiving, I baked chocolate chip cookies. Since we don't have baking sheets, I needed the shelves wrapped with alminum foil for my cookies. I accidentally heated the oven with the shelves left inside. So, instead, I used cake and muffin pans. It was a bad move, considering that cookies DO get bigger by baking powder, lol. What amused me was that the shapes varied depending on where I put the cookie dough. The muffin hole ones were perfectly round but the bottom was more brown than the top surface and interesting. Two placed on top of the pan looked like Dali's clocks, very artistic in a way, lol. The cake pan ones made a shape of a bow tie and flower. The glass pan one became a big piece of cookie. I used a toothpick to articulate the lines of each cookie. Despite the unique looks, the cookies were crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, mmmmmmmm. I left one bag at the apartment, gave another bag of it to my drunk friends and shared the other bag with Ian. I wanna bake more cookies!!!!!

Chubby baguette

Cocoya baked bread again! This time he tried to bake two baguettes.
The attempt produced delicious bread for all the roommates but the shape was a bit different from what we expected. It was like Luigi turned into Mario.
I haven't made bread from scratch but it seems baguette is relatively simple to make. Making the dough takes a bit of an effort but it didn't involve that many ingredients. The dough leavened did not get bigger but it looked very smooth:). Naoya said it was very moist. He folded one half and didn't the other half. We thought the un-folded one would be longer than the other but the result was opposite. It may be because the dough got too dry or we didn't use any mold to keep the bread long in the oven. Ohya and Cocoya both found some tips to fix it for the next time. There is nothing you can't find on the Internet it seems. I can't wait for Naoya's next bread!

Well, just so you know, he made this bread a while ago... I just never had time to post a story.