Tom Kha Soup

I love that my huge family has a huge appreciation for food. For my sister's wedding in November - which was absolutely beautiful - we were in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic at an all inclusive resort. That means ALL YOU CAN EAT. Let me say that again - AYCE. For the Hung family, that's pretty much perfect. Ha! Not only did we always get together to eat - from larger servings that what should be allowed to snacking on plantain chips every time we were at the pool to having far more than the three meals per day - we took pictures of all the food consumed. I will share those shortly.

We also don't take no for an answer when trying to make you eat something that is just so good but you think you are too full. Really, you are never too full. Each night after eating dinner, we take a quick peak at the night buffet by the beach to see what they were serving that night. I anxiously waited for the delicious nutella cake each night while my cousin went for the main course. One night when we claimed we were absolutely beyond stuffed (actually, this is the same comment we made after every meal...sigh), she saw a mushroom risotto that was just too appetizing to pass up. I heard her say, wow, they have risotto, it looks so good, I think I may get a spoonful. When she came back to our table - that spoonful turned into a large bowl that she undoubtly forced all of us to eat. Damn her!

I digress....talking about food and family pretty much go hand in hand. Anyways, we talk about food as much as we eat. Cousin Nat told me she had a perfect recipe for Tom Kha Soup, which has multiple ingredients I've never heard of or knew where to get. When she shared the recipe, I thought galgangal looks like ginger, perfect, I'll substitute! Ha, then I read and researched a little more to find that you really can't do since there is no other ingredient with galgangal flavor and Tom Kha actually means boiled Galgangal. One of Ross' frequent restaurants in the Heights is Asia Market - half Thai restaurant and grocery store - and they had fresh lemongrass, kaffir (lime) leaves and galgangal. Perfect!

The only thing I would do is cut down on the amount of fish sauce. Start with only a tablespoon and taste test before you add more.

Tom Kha Soup

Need 1 big pot and serves roughly 4-5 people depending how many bowls you eat yourself!

2 cups chicken breast (2 chicken breast)

1 cup tofu cut into small cubes

2 cups chicken stock (1 can)

9 oz can coconut milk

1 cup straw mushroom

3 lemon grass (you want the bottom white part about 6 inces only and cut into 2 inch segments)

8 slices of galgangal (sliced fairly thin)

4 kaffir lime leaves (rip off hard part and then tear each in half to help extract some of the oils)

3 tbsp fish sauce

1 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3-4 tsp fresh lemon or lime juice

Lightly chopped cilantro (if you want, not absolutely necessary)

1. Take the lemon grass segments and with the back of your knife or something hard, quickly hack the lemongrass to extract the flavor.

2. In a big pot, boil the chicken stock. Once boiling, add the lemongrass, galgangal slices, lime leaves and sugar. Let it cook on medium heat for roughly 10 minutes.

3. Then add the coconut milk and add only one tablespoon of fish sauce. Take a quick taste and if you want more saltiness, add more fish sauce one tablespoon at a time. Put heat to low so soup simmers. If you want to add some red/green chillies here, it adds a little kick.

4. Next, turn up the heat to medium high and add the mushroom and chicken. Once chicken turns light - 5 minutes - turn off the heat and add the tofu. Add the lemon/lime juice and some sprigs of fresh cilantro on top to complete the dish. Deeee-lish!

Love Me Some Eggs - Eggs en Cocette

I love eggs. I can probably attribute this to my dad who loves eggs just as much as I do. When I was little and my mom was in Taiwan for the summer, it was the pops and me alone for an entire summer. Pretty fantastic - from getting Burger King Whoppers, learning to sing Taiwan music in the car to having eggs for breakfast, lunch or dinner, it was a pretty memorable two months. He'd put eggs in soup, pan fry eggs for dinner, add an egg to an onion pancake for breakfast.

So I found this recipe from Cooking Light and immediately made this the next morning for brunch. It reminds me of a dish my mom would make for lunch - a salty steamed egg custard that served as a side dish when she'd make rice porridge. Hrm, I need to ask her how for that recipe!

So what is Eggs en Cocette. Baked eggs with cream where the yolks is warm and deliciously runny. Why do you need to have runny yolks? So you can dip your toast and sop up all the goodness! Ack, so good.

These things are popular! Not only did Wednesday Chef make a recent post, Liz Chuk also mentioned how delicious this would be. Too bad our BFs don't appreciate the goodness of such a decadent dish. Le sigh. It's okay, more for us! Wednesday Chef had a good idea to add in some veggies to the dish so I will try that next time. I made one slight adaptation to this recipe and cut down on the butter.

Simple Baked Eggs
Need: 6 oz ramekins (one per serving but I was able to eat two!)
Butter
2 large eggs
S&P
2 tsp heavy cream
fresh grated parmessan cheese

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Rub the inside of the ramekins with butter (take 1/2 tablespoon cube and lightly rub). I tried to use as little as possible. Sprinkle a tad bit of parmessan cheese at the bottom then carefully break the egg into the ramekin making sure not to break the yolk. Add a pinch of S&P (be care on salt especially if you add the cheese which has its own amount of saltiness) and a teaspoon of cream. Sprinkle a tad more cheese on top. 3. Put the ramekins into a deep baking dish and fill the baking dish with hot water until it comes up half way of the ramekins. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Enjoy! Serve with toast so you can sop up the runny goodness of such dish!

Sun Dried Tomato Pasta

Hallo! I am back after a hectic month and oh, how I’ve missed cooking and enjoying dinner at home. With a crazy work launch, moving (woot!) and my sister’s wedding, November was a very good but busy five weeks. Dinners for the past month have consisted of quick & microwaveable meals, pasta from the can (I know, for shame..), dumplings that just need a quick boil or simple takeout.

You can probably tell from my posts that pasta is one of my favorite dishes. Why? Because you can do SO many different things with it. Make it healthy with a light toss of salt, pepper, herbs, veggies and olive oil, toss in a little a tomato sauce, make it taste even better with a few tad weee spoonfuls of cream or have it with protein or seafood. So many ways, I die. I found this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, The Kitchen, which incorporates recipes from a myriad of sources, latest kitchen styles, kitchen/cooking goodies and information about food you may never have heard of. I just love it. I was attracted to the sun dried tomato (which I love when I have in restaurants but never really used or cooked with it myself), basil and of course, cream. This was simple but incorporated very few ingredients that are each packed with flavor so just adding a few things together make a pretty awesome dish. I varied the recipe in how I cooked them but I’ll list both ways below.

As the Mantis said in Kung Fu Panda, “This is so good, I wish my mouth was bigger!” Enjoy.

Sun-Dried Tomato Pasta (adapted slightly from the Kitchen)
(Serves 4) Need: Small food processor, pan for sauce & one large pot to boil spaghetti

5 cloves garlic
3 tbs of fresh basil leaves
1 packed cup sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, drained (I made this recipe again and actually used sun dried tomato puree & spread that was also in the same section of the grocery)
1 tbs olive oil
1 cup milk
1/2 cup cream
1 tsp hot red pepper flakes (I omitted this)
½ cup parmesan cheese
1 lb. fettuccine or linguine or enough to feed 4 people (there’s a lot of sauce and I tend to like a lighter sauce on pasta)1. Boil and cook to al dente the pasta according to package directions. Put the sun dried tomato, basil and 4 garlic cloves in the food processor. Blend until lightly chunky as the below picture. (The Kitchen recipe only processed the tomatoes and manually minced and chiffonaded the basil. I liked forcing all the flavors to combine first in the processor).2. Heat a pan, put a splash of olive oil and mince the last garlic clove. Add the minced garlic clove until your kitchen gets that yummy roasted garlic smell. Add the sun dried tomato mixture and lightly cook on medium heat for a few minutes. 3. Add the milk and cream and lower the heat. Cook it for a good 7-10 minutes until it thickens a bit and cooks. (You can add in red pepper flakes here if you’d like). Taste and add salt and pepper if needed. (The sun dried tomato mixture is already pretty salty so I just added a pinch of pepper.)
4. Once pasta is al dente, add directly to the pan. Turn off heat and quickly mix the pasta with the mixture. If you need to add some pasta water you can. Last, I tossed in a handful of parmesan cheese to top it off. 5. Serve and enjoy! I served this with a light zucchini salad tossed with a lemon vinaigrette.

Restaurant Review: Beavers

Can you believe it's November?! Gorgeous weather this weekend - 60 degrees with the sun and slight breeze. Lunch on Saturday took us to Beavers on Sawyer.

This restaurant and "ice house" is a cute little bungalow on Sawyer with an outdoor seating area - where we ventured since the weather was so kickin. I started with a wonderful cup of coffee - nothing like starting the weekend with a good cup of joe. I ordered the Market Garden Risotto with a side of their "Killer Coleslaw. " The risotto was okay. The risotto consisted of carnaroli rice, spring peas, roasted Texas shrooms, smoked tomatoes, sweet corn, herbs and sprouts. It was as creamy or flavorful as I had imagined and wished that I could have tasted the mushroom or corn flavoring in the rice. I didn't notice the smoked tomatoes. Unfortunately, it was not so memorable that I end up consuming the entire plate and still think about it later that day. The Coleslaw on the other hand, pretty darn delicious. I love slaw - one of my favorite sides and this was no let down. It has cabbage and jicama - yum, one of my favorite ingredients! Veggies were fresh and crunchy and the dressing, oh my, the dressing. The three seed creamy dressing was the clincher. It was sweet with a little peppery kick and it didn't make the slaw soggy. It was just a perfect combination - I think this is giving KFC slaw a run for number 1 spot. If I learn how to make that dressing - coleslaw every night!
Ross had the pork sandwich - double of coure - and ehh, it was way too salty in my opinion. When you oversalt, you really can't go back and do anything to make it better. Homemade chips were okay - not as crispy as they looked.

All in all, the slaw was freakishly good but the meal itself was sub-par. Don't think I love this place and probably will only come back to check out the drinks or if I'm craving a slaw snack.

Restaurant Review: Benjys on Washington

Hilda was in town and after spending the morning showing the house and waiting for inspections (and on only one mug of coffee), we went to Benjys on Washington for a quick lunch before I had to go to work. I've only been to this particular restaurant once and I remember it being pretty good for dinner - a tad pricey but good.
I like the atmosphere - industrial mixed with comtemporary touches. So let's start with the complimentary dips/breads. First was a nut mixture that Hilda was pretty fond of - probably b/c of the kick it had. I didn't like it as much. They also had these cheddar biscuits that were mmmmm! Crumbly and flavorful. Last, there were paper thin disks of grains? which I didn't like very much.

For appetizer, we shared the Spicy Tuna Tartar on crispy edaname cake with avocado couills. I LOVE this. Too bad there were only five. Tuna was flavored so well but not too overpowering. It complemented the edamane cake so well (who knew you could make edaname into a cake?) and the mix of balsamic dressing and avocado sauce was fantastic. Perfect combination of flavors. They were so good, I'm pretty sure I could have popped 10 or more of these thing. They remind me of the amazing tuna tartar appetizer from Picos in Sausilito.

Hilda had the Asian salad with wonton crisps, cashews, peanut sauce and soy-garlic dressing. It was pretty good - still not as good as Magginos chopped salad. I think this would be have been better with some type of cheese - blue cheese, feta or even white cheddar would have been good.

I had the Pepper crusted tuna with nicoise salad. Not as good as Hildas. I liked the tuna - seared and cooked well but I did not really taste the pepper crusted outside. The salad has potatos, onions, eggs and croutons. I was a tad disappointed in the salad - don't think it complemented the tuna slices very well.

So on a scale of 1 (bad) to 10 (best), I'd give this place a 6. Love the appetizer, enjoyed the atmospohere even thought it was a tad loud and disappointed by my salad. For the price ($16) for an okay, okay salad - I definitely will not get that again.

Turkey Empanadas

During one weekend, I was on a bread kick. Why? I love my kitchen aid mixer and realized it had been weeks (weeks, I say!) since I put that dough kneader to work. It’s hard pressed to find a good empanada when I don’t venture to Mexican or Spanish restaurants much. The last empanada I had that was so perfect – in Puerto Rico on the beach where “chef” was walking around yelling if we wanted some. I still remember the crew of us standing on the beach, chowing down on empanadas with sauce dripping from our fingers. So very yum.

This was not the perfect recipe but it was good and I’ll try and experiment again soon. The dough was good (it must be with 2 sticks of buttah!) but the filling could have been a little creamier – a tad too dry for me. And for the filling, I probably should have followed a recipe but I thinking I was so great, I made it up. Yeah, I’m not a chef and shouldn’t be doing that often – ha! Next time, I may add potatoes to the filling so its gives a more creamy, starchy consistency.

Turkey Empanadas

Filling:
1 /2 to 1 lb ground turkey
Frozen corn
1 tomato cut into cubes
5 shallots sliced
1 Bay leave
Dry basil
Dry oregano
Dash of hot sauce
Dry Italian seasoning/herbs
Dash of cumin
A tad of chicken broth

Dough from Smitten Kitchen
4 ½ cups flour
3 tsp salt
2 sticks cold butter, cut into cubes
2 eggs
2/3 cup ice water
2 tbsp vinegar

1. Start with the dough since it needs to be chilled in the fridge for 2 hours. In the kitchen aid mixer bowl, cut the COLD cubes of butter into the flour. It should end up being tiny modules of doughy lumps. In another bowl, mix egg, water and vinegar. Put the mixer on slow with the kneader and slowly add in the wet mixture. Let it knead until it forms a round ball. Put on counter and form into a ball and wrap with plastic wrap. Chill for 2 hours in the fridge.

2. 30 minutes before your 2 hours are up, start making the filling. Cook the ground turkey with some olive oil. Season with salt, pepper, oregano, basil and Italian seasoning. Once almost done, take out the turkey and put in a bowl. Using the same pan with the turkey juices, cook down the shallots (add somre more olive oil if you need) until they are soft and makes your kitchen smell delicious. Add in the tomatoes and let it cook a little more.

3. I also added in a tad bit of chicken broth to help cook and steam. Once tomatoes are soft, add in the frozen corn and season with salt and pepper. Add in the turkey. Season with a dash of hot sauce and cumin. Add additional dry herbs if needed – I tasted every step of the way.


4. Take dough out of fridge and cut it into four cube. Take half and cute them into size of a golf ball. Roll out into a flat dish, fill with turkey filling, and with some water around the edges, seal them into that pretty empanada shape we all love. This recipe makes about 20 empanadas. Do a quick egg wash on the top if you need.

5. Cook in 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.

Roasted Red Bell Pepper Wheat Pasta

Oh, the many ways to make pasta. I religiously read Smitten Kitchen and Sassy Radish food blogs and came across this from Smitten Kitchen. When I’m busy at work and get home late, I want simple, clean dishes that also don’t dirty up a sink-ful of pots and pans. So easy, I omitted a few things, added a few things and needed to add a little protein – ground turkey.

In an effort to cook a little healthier (ha, and pasta’s the answer right?), I started using wheat pasta and maaaaaan, I’m telling you, just not as good. I don’t fall into that dreamy, content state after eating a really good meal, which this SO much better without the wheat pasta. Not saying this dish was not good – it was, but I’m always looking for that oh so perfect dish.

I’ll be conflicted the next time I make pasta. Do I be healthy with wheat pasta and still enjoy a good meal or be naughty use regular pasta to enjoy a great meal? Probably the latter =)

Roasted Red Pepper Wheat Pasta
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
(4 cooking items: Big pot to cook pasta, pan to cook ground turkey, food processor and bowl to mix)

1 pound of small wheat pasta
¼ pound ground turkey (I wanted to add some meat to this dish so feel free to omit for veggie dish)
Pinch of dried basil (If you decide to go veggie, don't need this)
Pinch of dried parsley (If you decide to go veggie, don't need this)
Pinch of garlic powder (If you decide to go veggie, don't need this)
3 red bell pepper, roasted, skinned and seeded
1/4 cup olive oil
4 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 medium shallot
1 garlic clove
Pecorino cheese (I just had this in the fridge so use whatever cheese you have or you can completely omit)
S&P
***Per Smitten Kitchen, you can also add any type of veggies - peas, broccoli, corn, etc.

1. About 1.25 hours before you want to eat, wash and completely pat dry the bell peppers. Do not cut! Lightly pour olive over them (just a teensy tad) and put in 350 degree oven for 1 hour. I like to turn them at 30 minutes to make sure they are cooked all the way around.

2. 45 minutes into this, start boiling water to cook the pasta. Take the ground turkey and I mix it with the basil, parsley, garlic powder and salt and pepper. Tad of olive oil in pan and cook the turkey completely. Make sure to drain any of the oil when done.

3. Once the bell peppers are done, take then out and let them sit for 5 minutes. I like to cover them with plastic or aluminum to trap the steam which also helps you easily pull the skin off. Complete peel and deseed the bell peppers.

4. Put them in a food processor with the peeled garlic clove and shallot. Give it a good blend. Then add in the red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. I love the taste of red wine vinegar so I tend to put more than what folks like to eat. I think this would be fantastic with some champagne vinegar too. Give another good blend and then slowly pour olive oil into the food processor. This should be a creamy, delicious dressing now. 5. Now, putting it all together! Take a big whopping bowl and put the pasta (drain well), ground turkey and then pour the dressing in portions to see how much/how little you want to add. Sprinkle pecorino cheese on top. Next, take a big whiff of the pasta, grab a glass of wine and enjoy.