Sesame Oil Chicken

Chicken has been widely available in our household for awhile.  After making many baked chicken dishes, which is really my lazy way of making a home-cooked meal after a long day at work, it was getting pretty old. I started to browse cooking blogs again to find inspiration, and I found it at Rasa Malaysia. After making this simple yet tasty dish, I am excited to try many more from this website.

Sesame Oil Chicken
from Rasa Malaysia

I paired the dish with noodles and sauteed vegetables.

Crock Pot Treat: Beef Chili

I may be a crock pot addict.  I have been waiting for an excuse to buy a crock pot for awhile, and a few months ago, it finally happened!  I actually didn't have much of a good excuse, but it was one of those days where we had nothing to do and ended up walking down the aisles of Target. I quickly grabbed the box and put it into our cart before my husband could open his mouth.  I gave him the "I really want it!!" look, and he returned a "sigh, of course..." look.  I excitedly purchased this piece of equipment and finally cracked it over this past week.  After making the below chili, I am totally hooked.  It is so easy to use and so relaxing for the cook.  All it took was a few chops of the ingredients, a little mixing, then turning on the crock pot and walking away. 

This chili is a bit different than the typical ones I make.  Chili usually contains ground meat, such as ground beef or turkey.  However, we haven't had a big juicy steak in a long while now, so on a recent Costco run, we purchased 3 big slabs of ribeye steaks.  On the same day, we fired up the grill and had grilled steaks for dinner (delish).  There was one slab left, so I decided to use it for chili because I believed the slow cooker would have made the steak cubes tender and soft, which turned out to be true.  You just wait, more crock pot treats to come!

Beef Chili

Ingredients
- 1 large ribeye steak, seared and cubed
- 1 Tbsp olive oil (for searing steak)
- salt and pepper (for searing steak)
- 1 green bell pepper, diced
- 1 large carrot, diced
- 1 medium yellow onion, diced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1/2 box of sliced cremini mushrooms
- 2 small chilies, finely diced
- 1 15 oz can kidney beans
- 1 14 oz diced (or crushed) canned tomatoes
- 1 cup unsalted beef broth (can use chicken stock if that's all you have)
- 2 Tbsp chili powder
- 2 Tbsp ketchup
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper

Tools
- crock pot

love this thing!

Steps
1. Heat a pan with 1 Tbsp of olive oil and place the ribeye steak in the pan.  Salt and pepper and steak and sear the steak for 5 minutes per side.  Remove from pan and let the steak sit, for about 20 minutes.  Cut the steak into small cubes and set aside.

2. Place the bell pepper, carrot, onion, garlic, mushrooms, chilies, kidney beans, canned tomatoes, beef stock, chili powder, ketchup, salt, and black pepper in the pot and mix. Add cubed steak and mix.

3. Turn on the crock pot to High and let it cook for 4 to 5 hours (yes, just walk away from the machine!).  Depending on how thick you like your chili, check the chili at the 3-hour time point and add more stock as desired.

Serves 6-8.

Just Pictures: Off The Grid (Part 2) & Edgewood Eats

Off The Grid is expanding out of SF and opening up in different cities in the Bay Area!  Just last Monday, Off The Grid held a soft opening in downtown San Mateo with a few food trucks.  We went there solely for the reason of the two below pictures, Chairman Bao.  We've seen this food truck a few times now and there are always really, really long lines.  We desperately needed to check out what this bao thing was all about, so knowing that they were at a soft opening in a city that was so close to work, we had to go!

Truck and menu

(From left to right)

Braised pork with cabbage and preserved mustard seeds on steamed bun

Tender pork belly with pickled daikon on steamed bun (the BEST one)

Red sesame chicken w/ pickled cucumber & carrots on baked bun

Palo Alto also has a food-truck event on Mondays called Edgewood Eats.  Located in a small runned down plaza off Embarcadero Street, this event features about 10 trucks from 5 - 9 pm.  Bring your own chairs and blankets, and enjoy a good variety of food trucks on a Monday night!

An The Go (from owners of Thanh Long and Crustacean in SF) and their special garlic noodles (so yum!)

Litte Green Cyclo

Sweet potato tots with spicy mango ketchup

Special of the day - five-spiced chicken spring rolls with seafood sauce

Just Pictures: Ad Hoc (Part 2, A Year Later)

Three years have passed by since we've said, "I do" in front of our family and friends.  Wow, time really flies!

Last year we had a great time at Ad Hoc and decided to come back once again for our anniversary. Heck, we may make this a tradition!  Incredibly fresh ingredients, light yet fulfilling dishes, and a nice and informal ambiance overall.  We miss it already!  But don't worry, we will be back soon to try the new addition to the restaurant, Addendum, that sells the infamous buttermilk fried chicken and also barbeque.  The rule is that they sell from 11 am to 2 pm, Thursdays to Saturdays, and only makes a certain number of orders a day.  If it's all out, then better luck next time!  Can't wait to try.

 Unfiltered Fresh Ginger Ale by Bruce Cost 

(tangy, spicy, insanely refreshing!)

 Salad  Baby Iceberg Wedge

(bacon lardons (my fave part of this salad), pickled red onions, 

brioche croutons, living arugula, shaved radishes, blue cheese dressing)

 Glazed Pork Tenderloin

(tokyo turnips (these are awesome), mokom carrots, caramelized 

spring onions, pea shoots, asparagus coins, carolina rice)

 Cowgirl Creamery Pierce Pt. cheese, farm honey, toasted mixed nuts

Chocolate cake, popcorn ice cream (omg, money!!!), candied peanuts and caramel sauce

We blew out candles for a happy anniversary.

A walking path right across from the restaurant. Grapevines everywhere!

Vietnamese BBQ Pork Vermicelli (The Cheating Way)

I am calling this recipe "the cheating way" is because of two reasons... one, I already had Chinese barbequed pork courtesy of my parents as part of their take-home items from our Sunday dinners, and two, not all of the items for a typical Vietnamese vermicelli dish were used because I did not have them in my fridge.  This hodgepodge of food ended up to be equally delicious!

Vietnamese Barbecued Pork Vermicelli
Adapted from Barbecued Lemongrass Beef, Steamy Kitchen

Ingredients
- 10 oz narrow flat rice sticks (same as the ones I used for pho)
- 2 large Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced
- 1 large carrot, thinly sliced
- 4 iceberg lettuce leaves, thinly sliced
- ready-to-go Chinese barbequed pork, sliced

Fish Sauce:
- 2 chilies, sliced and deseeded for desired spiciness (I was excited to use my own-grown Fresno chilies!)

- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 3 Tbsp lime juice
- 1 Tbsp rice vinegar
- 3 Tbsp fish sauce
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 tsp salt
- sliced carrots (optional)
- chili-garlic sauce (optional)

Tools
- mortar or food processor

Steps
1. Soak the rick sticks in water for about an hour prior to cooking.

2. In the meantime, make the fish sauce by mashing chilies and garlic together with a mortar or food processor. Then add all of the other ingredients (except carrots and chili-garlic sauce) until sugar is dissolved.  Add sliced carrots for decoration, and if the sauce is not spicy enough, add chili-garlic sauce until desired spiciness is reached.

3. Slice all the vegetables (cucumbers, carrots, and lettuce) and the barbequed pork.

4. Cook the soaked rice sticks in hot boiling water for about 1-2 minutes (and not any longer!).  Drain the noodles in a colander and rinse with cold water.

5. Place all the ingredients together - noodles at the bottom, then vegetables and pork, then pour about 1 to 1.5 Tbsp fish sauce over the noodles.  Mix and enjoy!

Serves 4.

A few tips...
...if you don't have parents that can supply you with BBQ pork, run out to the nearest Chinese supermarket and look for the hot foods counter to purchase pork!
...after the rick sticks are rinsed with cold water and is resting, it can quickly clump into big balls of noodles.  Don't worry (as I did...) because as soon as you pour the magical fish sauce on it, the noodles will once again loosen up.

Just Pictures: Say Cheese!

When my friends and I asked our cheese factory tour guide to take a picture of all of us in our tour-required sanitary outfits (it looked pretty ridiculous), she said, "Say cheese!" and took the picture.  For once, it was an appropriate place for all of us to shout out "cheese!!".

Thanks to LivingSocial, my cheese-lovin' (alright heck, FOOD-lovin') friends took a VIP cheese tour at the Marin French Cheese Factory in Petaluma. 

The cheese factory is known for their World Champion (this was mentioned a couple of times) Triple Creme Brie.  After a bite of that brie on fresh French baguette, I can taste why it was the champion.  Divine.

We were all dressed to the nines in cheese factory standards, which meant a whole-body mesh gown, footies, hairnet, and nose/mouth guards to keep us from contaminating the cheese as we walk through the factory.  We went downstairs to the area where they made the cheese, looked around at empty rooms (cheese-making only ocurred Mondays thru Wednesdays), saw different cheese molds for 1 pounder, 8 ouncers, or petit cheeses, and finally, the most exciting part, looking at all of the cheese are that currently aging.
 

(The cheese is deliciously creating mold... the picture is not fuzzy!)

It smelled like sour milk all over the place, but looking at the cheeses in different stages of their moldy life was an overall fun and great experience.  Of course, after the walking tour, we were greeted outside by the picnic area to taste 7 different kinds of cheese with unlimited red and white wine.

The cheese factory also gave us a nice parting gift of cheese board, knife, a cheese map around the area, and three cheeses to take home: Morning Cheese, Bleu Cheese, and their champion Triple Creme Brie.  I am looking forward to cheese-ing myself out for the next couple of months!

Marin French Cheese Company // Petaluma, CA