Black Pepper Cuttlefish
Another gorgeous photo. LA doesn't get much better than this. How many concrete parking structures have this view--in February?
I took advantage of the weather today and ran a few miles along the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. In this photo, I would be running along where the palm trees are. To get to the beach, I'd have to take a long set of stairs down the cliffside and cross a highway. I like the view from the cliffs and the shaded dirt path, plus there's no sand blowing around, so I don't bother going down to the beach. And to make it a very healthy day indeed, a balanced dinner! The cooking slump is coming to an end.
Tonight we had daikon kimchi, garlic stir fried spinach, and a stir fry of cuttlefish, carrots, and sugar snap peas with black pepper sauce. The strawberries I found at the farmers' market and had to have. How often does one find sweet, fragrant strawberries in February?
J's lunch tomorrow is a tower of ham, cheese, and greens. It's not gourmet, but he does enjoy a tall sandwich.
I took advantage of the weather today and ran a few miles along the bluffs overlooking the Pacific. In this photo, I would be running along where the palm trees are. To get to the beach, I'd have to take a long set of stairs down the cliffside and cross a highway. I like the view from the cliffs and the shaded dirt path, plus there's no sand blowing around, so I don't bother going down to the beach. And to make it a very healthy day indeed, a balanced dinner! The cooking slump is coming to an end.Tonight we had daikon kimchi, garlic stir fried spinach, and a stir fry of cuttlefish, carrots, and sugar snap peas with black pepper sauce. The strawberries I found at the farmers' market and had to have. How often does one find sweet, fragrant strawberries in February?J's lunch tomorrow is a tower of ham, cheese, and greens. It's not gourmet, but he does enjoy a tall sandwich.posted by Pei at
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Okra, andouille sausage, and chicken probably don't make an appearance together in too many dishes. Combinations of two of the three are common in Cajun cuisine, but all three? Not as often. I can't take credit for the gumbo because J is the resident Gumbo King. I do the chopping, and he makes the super dark roux and works his magic.
We shared the crab melt sandwich, possibly the fanciest thing on the menu aside from the crab benedict. The waitress assured me they use fresh Dungeness. I don't know if it was super fresh or frozen, but it was definitely good quality crab with large chunks of meat. Delicious, and she even split our sandwich and sides onto two plates without our asking. I like eating lunch with other girls. It's easy to share, and by sharing we have enough room left for dessert (in this case, Buttercake's red velvet cupcakes).
Food included a cold meats platter, cold seafood platter, braised beef, steamed beef, braised pork leg over green onions, creamy napa cabbage, fish cake soup, kimchi soup, glutinous rice with pork and mushrooms, Chinese mustard greens, seaweed, turnip cake, whole duck, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. That's me in my holiday red, discussing with my aunt where to start digging in. There's actually another table behind us in the other room filled with more food. We had some vegetarian sushi and such because Sandy brought friends who don't eat meat.
This is the dessert table. The princess cake I brought was very popular because no one had ever had princess cake before. The eight treasure rice, which Junei's mom made, was fantastic. Probably because she used lard in it. The new year's bread, sticky new year's cake, and fruity mango cake were all barely touched. Too much food!
Soon, I will crush you.
Sliced rib eye steak, blanched asparagus, and udon tossed in black pepper sauce.
My sister was talking about going to Clementine with her friend yesterday, so today I had the urge to stop in for breakfast. I got their homemade apricot yogurt, a raisin bran muffin (one of my favorite kinds of muffin), and a chewy caramel. Their homemade apricot yogurt confirms what I suspected after my own homemade yogurt attempts: homemade yogurt is watery, like gravy. Tasty, but more sipped through a straw than eaten with a spoon. 
The same sister found dark chocolate Kit Kats for me in Little Tokyo. Interesting, no?
The dumplings are just part of the usual batch of dumplings I make and freeze every few months. I took pork and chicken stock, cooked the dumplings with a few slices of ginger, and then added sliced green onions, baby bok choy, and napa cabbage when the dumplings were about halfway done cooking. You could add the vegetables with the dumplings if you like them softer. Noodles, other vegetables, a sliced up egg crepe, or some hot sauce would also be good additions.
Cooking geoducl is fairly easy. I killed it by slicing the meat away from the shells and removing the whole clam. Running it under hot water for a minute releases the tough outer skin very easily.
The whole thing is sliced thinly, then either blanched or stir fried in oil, and served with green onion slivers and soy sauce paste or oyster sauce. It's crunchy, light, and just a little fishy.
Also, we had record highs this weekend. I kid you not, it was close to 90 degrees in February, before noon. Ice cream vendors must love all this global warming.
I finished my sock last night. Thank goodness for small projects on not too skinny yarn. Unfortunately, my feet are wider than average so that pattern I used made a sock slightly too small for me. I'm going to play the Cinderella game at family dinner tonight. If the sock fits, you get both!
This huge tray of sushi (20 pieces of nigiri plus a spicy tuna roll) was $25. This isn't the kind of place where people ooh and ah over the pure simplicity of an exquisite slice of sashimi--it's the kind of place where you get colorful sushi rolls with crazy names, or party platters for a drunken crowd. 
The curry udon wasn't quite as great a value, but it was really tasty and I often like something hot to go with all my cold fish.
And look. two-thirds of a psychedelic sock. I sure hope it's wide enough for an adult foot.
I love knitting with alpaca. In addition to coming from 
This is the inspiration, as shown off by a well put together size 0 model. Mine will look closer after I wash and shape it so the bottom doesn't curl up and the whole thing won't look so bumpy. I'll take a better photo when that's all done. For now, I just want to roll up in it.
So, when asked what I wanted for dinner tonight, I said burritos. We drove to the place down the street but they close at night so we drove down to Olympic and Sepulveda and gave California Mexican Grill a try. I gotta say, good find. Solid food, decent prices, big portions. The steak enchiladas came with rice and beans.
The steak burrito in a grilled tortilla was the winner for me. The toasty tortilla smelled so good on the car ride home! The steak is charred around the edges, very smokey, and tender. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of the inside.
I tried to make mocha cookies like the ones I love at 
Here's an unusual workout photo too. Today I'm reminding everyone that stretching is important! I've always been able to touch my toes because, let's face it, I have short legs. But now I'm past the palms touching floor stage and trying to get my elbows to touch the ground..
The cake itself was great too. Light, fluffy whipped cream that's just barely sweetened, a fruity jam layer, and very thin marzipan that's fresh and not grainy. The jam could have been just a touch more tart, but that's a very picky comment.
Their napoleon, by comparison, was kind of bland and buttery tasting. Stick to the princess cake, folks. B&L is also the only place I can remember decorating and puting fresh fruit on their single slices of cake, which is a really nice touch. And, best of all, sheet cake versions aren't expensive!
I also bought a slice from Viktor Bene's inside the Century City mall. For being half a mile from me, this was pretty darned tasty. The jam was super tart, and they use a light custard mixed in with their whipped cream, which I like. The slice was smaller and the same price as B&L's though, and their whole cakes are not as pretty and are kind of a scarily dark shade of green. So you know who wins, but Viktor Bene's is still delicious. I think it was $4-5 a slice.
Mustard greens in noodle is a standard item on Northern Chinese noodle/dumpling shop menus. You can buy the mustard greens cooked and salted in an Asian market, near the tofu. I boiled down some chicken bones last night, and today I brought the stock to a boil, added the mustard greens and cubes of pressed tofu, and salt and white pepper to taste. When that came back up to a boil, I added slivers of raw pork and turned off the flame (you don't want the mustard greens to get soggy). I boiled fresh Taiwan style noodles in a separate pot, drained them, put them in bowls, and poured the soup over them with some green onions. Fairly easy if you can get your hands on the ingredients, and very tasty.
Basically, you need a blend of hoisin sauce, peanut butter, lime juice, and sugar. The rest is up to you, but here are some guidelines for two people:
I went to the gym today, making it the first Sunday in ages that I've exercised. It was really nice because the place was deserted on Super Bowl Sunday.
The chocolate raspberry cake was fine, but frankly not very raspberry-y. The ganache was good, but the cake was a touch on the dry side.
I love lemon curd cake, but this was a pretty poor version. There wasn't enough lemon curd, the curd itself didn't have much fresh lemon flavor, the frosting didn't have any lemon zest or oil in it, and the cake itself had no lemon flavor and was dry and crumbly. Almost everyone's first comment about any of the cakes was that the lemon one kind of fell apart on the fork.
The triple berry shortcake was better than the other two. The fruit was really good considering it's the middle of winter, and the flavor of the cake was really pretty fantastic. But again, the cake was dry and kind of crumbly--though not as bad as the lemon cake. And one really gross thing about all the SLJ cakes was the frosting. I don't like buttercream to begin with, but the dark colored frosting was truly revolting. My sister said it tasted like sewage. 
I do like Porto's. I like the vibe, the variety, the prices, and the product. I don't like that it's so far. Even so, none of these cakes were perfect. The carrot cake was really great with delicious cream cheese frosting, but my friend Paul's comment that he's had carrot cake just as good before is true. The Cuban cake with pineapple filling and brandy glaze was too sweet for everyone, and the opera cake was just bad. I think I've decided I don't like chocolate cake that has an overpowering coffee taste to it. 
I think I liked Berolina's cakes the best. Too bad the bakery is far and expensive. I love princess cake, and theirs was perfect except that the marzipan should have been rolled out thinner. The canoli was crispy with a light, not too sweet ricotta filling (but too many chocolate chips). The cheesecake had an incredibly fluffy but not souffle-like texture, but the flavor needed a little more oomph. Oh, how I love for a Schubert's princess cake from San Francisco!
This was a kind of mean post, and my search for the perfect cake will continue. But i have to admit, this plate was pretty tasty.
My sister came over to eat cake and pick up the bibs and blankets I made for her friend's baby shower. Didn't we do a fantastic job wrapping the gift? She's going to tie a rattle or pacifier to the top after she goes shopping this weekend.
There are two cases of cake at Porto's, and then three or four more cases of pastries and an entire back wall of bread. I had to close my eyes and ears to the bread and lunch menu because I knew otherwise I'd never get out of there.
Unfortunately, I had to move quickly to get photos without swarms of people standing in the way, so I didn't notice that the cake I thought was prettiest didn't show up well in either of these photos. In this photo, it's in the center of the top row. It's a triple chocolate mousse cake with a mound of paper thin white chocolate sheets on top. I don't particularly like white chocolate, but the way they assembled the cake made it seem very airy and delicate.
For now, I want to sing the praises of green bean starch sheets. They're called liang zhang pi (literally "two sheets of skin" in Chinese) and they're exactly like clear mung bean noodles you usually get in hot pot--but in sheet form! I know, it's not a huge deal, but it's a nice change. Sort of like how sometimes you want linguini, and other times you just want angel hair.
