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.