|
|
Sometimes I want to make mini updates to mention a particular new dish at a place I’ve all ready talked about, or to show case a small something. Not a full update, but a mini-update.
My staple brunch item at Ghia’s, was the daily scramble. For the spring, they had butternut squash, kale/spinach, and goat cheese in an soft scramble egg, with a side of potatoes. The mild goat cheese and sweet butternut squash in this savory dish was eye opening. This time around, they had asparagus (which is in season now), mushrooms, and goat cheese… which for some reason didn’t tickle me as much. I like asparagus, but just not particularly with eggs or cheese. That might sound weird, since I think the idea of a poached egg on a bed of grilled asparagus sounds sublime… but let’s just say I wasn’t feeling it today.
Luckily, they had their vegan scramble, which sounded delightful. It had tofu, sweet potato, kale (the sweet potato and kale sort of recreated my butternut squash kale love from the previous dish – do you see a pattern, internet?!), scallion, spicy black bean sauce, with a side of ginger-lime tofu “cream” and toast. Uh… AMAZING. I also ordered a side of egg, sunny side up (beautiful orange runny yolk, just the way I like it. Excellent eggs, by the way). Whether you’re a meat eater, vegetarian, or vegan, this dish is so savory and creamy. So, definitely don’t miss this.
side note: WHAT IS IN THEIR ginger-lime tofu “cream”? It was super tasty and felt decadent, but without yolks like in mayonnaise or any dairy, I’m really curious what gives it its texture. I just googled and came up with a vegan sour cream recipe that calls for silken tofu, firm tofu, lemon, and soy sauce. I can’t imagine that those ingredients in a food processor would give you something like sour cream or this cream in question… hmmm.
I was going to include this in a dinner round up I tried to do some time ago. However, I can never keep up with my “ambituous” production schedule for this blog. Meh.
One of Ryan’s go-to dishes used to be pork stir-fry. He would do a really good job, tossing them in flour, cooking them in grapeseed oil, and then glazing them in a soy and mirin reduction. Recently, after my complaint that the crispy-ness of the texture was a little rough for me, we discovered using corn starch. Seriously, this makes for the lightest crispy texture in frying anything. It left the meat still tender, and really changed the way we fry things.
 
Wash, pat the meat dry, and cut in bite size pieces. We’ve started using chicken, but you can use pork the same way. Toss these suckers in the corn starch. Fill a pan with oil, just enough to cover. Ryan used to meticulously fry a handful of pieces each time, but found that dumping more than that, as long as it is covered, doesn’t do any harm. So now, it’s quick and easy mid-week meal for us.
I’m in charge of the vegetable sides and the carbohydrate (rice, noodles, etc…). He usually reduces a soy-mirin mix in a pac and throws the fried pieces back in in a stir-fry.
If you like spicy, we’ve taken to using szechuan peppercorns. We take the whole peppercorns and toast 1/3 of a cup in a pan, lightly tossing them around, just until the aroma is pungent and slightly toasty. Then transfer them to a bowl (a mortar and pestle, if you have one) and grind them. Then toss them into the reduced glaze.
You can do anything with these to finish them off. Recently, being such a big fan of Sri Lankan flavors, we went to our south east asian market and bought some Sri Lankan curry powder, chili powder, etc… and finished them off with that. THAT was lovely. You can be creative.
 
What are your go to dinner dishes throughout the week?
Writing about these beauties has been on the back burner for a while. I was inspired by Sarah’s Meyer Lemon Marmalade post, and wanted to try it. Ry also discovered Eataly, and loved that their produce section has Rangapur Limes (which basically look like little tangerines), which turned into a great Lime-aid. The peels went towards a marmalade of their own. I was really struck by the thick glossy peel these citrus fruits had. Or is that evidence of more care when farming?
Of course, I used Sarah at Sweet Pepper’s recipe.
2 cups of scrubbed, thinly-sliced Meyer lemons
2 cups sugar
2 cups water
Easy, right? Everything should be at a 1:1:1 ratio. (I bought like 7 or 8 of them, so I just followed her recipe exactly.) I found the most labor intensive part to be cutting the lemon’s into thin slices. As you can see, my lemon peels aren’t quite that thin, but once the marmalade is finished, it’s so tender, that most people don’t mind. Be sure to reserve all the seeds, as the seeds help thicken with its pectin (good thing to keep in mind when I make jam).
Heat the sliced lemons in a non-reactive pot, as described. I actually just heated up the ends and the seeds in a small pot on the side with very little water. When both mixtures are done (taste that the rind is soft and tender), strain the seeds and pulp out of the smaller pot and add the water into sliced lemons.
My digital thermometer has been freaking out on me ever since Thanksgiving, so at this point I stuck a small plate in the freezer (which we will use to test whether the mixture set). Add the sugar and heat over medium high heat. Let the mixture boil. You should see the color turning darker, thicker, and really I left it alone for around 20 minutes. After that I stirred the mixture around and periodically did the plate test.
Plate Test: Take the plate out of the freezer, drizzle a small dallop of the marmalade on to the plate, after couple of seconds (5-10?) run your finger on it and see if it wrinkles (or sets). If it’s runny, continue heating the mixture. If it wrinkles, it’s done!
 
You should find that the marmalade is sweeter, milder, and sunnier than regular lemon marmalade. It’s a little closer to orange marmalade, but a bit more lemony. It’s a great quick morning staple before heading into work. I like to drink tea with it, :P and on Japanese Shoku-Pan bread, (over a little bit of butter) it’s absolutely amazing. This recipe made 3 medium jars worth. I packaged a tiny jar for Ryan to sneak home for his dad. I also brought a little over to my mother. They both loved it.
This recipe is from the wonderful Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa How Easy Is That? This recipe is so totally fool proof and decadent at the same time. Look at that BUTTER! That Half & Half! CREAM! Mussles! It’s like everything I love in soup form. I don’t even want to think about the calories. (We will NOT mention this bisque and calories in the same paragraph ever again.)
-
1 bottle dry white wine (I used Trader Joe’s Sauvignon Blanc)
-
4 whole canned plum tomatoes
-
1 ½ cups half-and-half
-
1 cup heavy cream
-
(Recipe asks for 3 lbs mussles) 1.5lb clams
-
6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter
-
2 yellow onions
-
1 large leek
-
2 carrots
-
3-5 cloves of garlic (of course I used around 5-6)
-
½ teaspoon saffron
-
salt and fresh ground pepper
-
fresh dill
 
The night I decided to make this, Whole Foods never received their shipment of mussles. Seriously. So, desperate, I decided to get large clams to substitute. I love clam broth and it should make a good base for a bisque, right? Well it did. (Phew!)
Needless to say, clean the clams (I usually scrub them and leave them out in some water until they spit out all of gunk/sand stuck in them. You might see some of the spit – kinda fun!). First, the recipe calls to boil 1.5 cups of water and 1 cup wine. Whenever I make clams or mussels, I just steam them with a splash of wine and/or beer. In the future, I would use a little less water. That’s just me. Clean leeks (and discard tough green leaves) and chop the tender white area, mince the onions and garlic, chop the carrots. When the water/wine boils, add the clams/mussels and cook over medium for a few minutes. To avoid over cooking, I would listen for some of them to pop/open. Don’t cook for over 5 minutes. Take the mussles out and when they are cool enough to handle, separate the mussles from the shells (in my case, clams!). Discard anything that didn’t open. Reserve the cooking liquid on the side. (Strain it with cheese cloth to separate from any sand.)
Chop the butter up and heat up a pot. Melt the butter and add the onions, leeks, carrots, garlic, and saffron. Sauté for 5 minutes on high medium heat, and then cook covered for 20 minutes on low heat. I cooked them until the carrots started to tender just a bit (which definitely took some time). After that, add the tomatoes and cover for a few minutes.
Add 2 cups of the reserved cooking liquid (clam/mussle broth) and the rest of the bottle of wine (you weren’t drinking it were you??!?!). Bring the mixture to a boil on high heat, then lower the flame and simmer until the carrots are tender. Once the carrots are tender, add the half and half, cream, and mussles/clams. Heat the mixture and stir until steaming (not boiling). Finely chop a handful of some dill and mix in. Add some salt and pepper to taste.
This takes a little time, but is REALLY EASY to make. You can’t really make a mistake. I mean, it’s going to taste good… look at the butter, half and half, and cream. It’s just butter, cream, broth, and vegetables. And my very talented friend Genevieve (great cook) showed me how to steam mussels and clams years ago and it’s really the easiest thing in the world. The most labor intensive part is just the cleaning. (Which is just quickly scrubbing the buggers and emptying the bowl it sits in for 30 or so minutes)
This was lovely with some nice crusty bread. (And open another bottle of some dry wine!)
 
Let me preface this by saying that I adore Bon Yagi’s restaurants, Otafuku, Sobaya, Sakagura, and even his bar Decibal. In fact, Sakagura is my place of choice for any special occasion. You can imagine that I was really excited to go to Robataya right next door to Sobaya in Bon Yagi’s little Japan Town freakin’ empire.
The whole shtick behind Robataya is simply grilled food with great ingredients. It’s Japanese, of course, and has a pretty extensive menu of seafood, vegetables, etc.
You can see where this is going right?
Unfortunately, I was very skeptical about the reviews on Yelp that this place was bland. BUT IT IS! Ridiculously bland. I don’t even want to hear about, “it’s about grilling great ingredients,” line, because cooking is a careful alchemy of texture, taste, and careful curation. I’m even more surprised at this reaction since… I don’t think this of any of his other restaurants. Even Soba… which I was skeptical that I would want to eat outisde of my own kitchen (or my mom’s), was great. When I went to Sobaya, all the food was delicious, balanced, and SOLID. Japanese food isn’t an explosion of flavor like… most Southeast Asian foods, but it’s definitely NOT BLAND or uninspired.
  
And you know what? It’s not as if I was like, “did I order the right thing?” I mean, I had the 8 course ($50) tasting menu. If the “right thing” isn’t in the tasting menu, then I don’t know where it would be hiding. It filled me up and it tried to be interesting… but most of the time, I was just like, “?!”
The first course was 3 slices of fluke, some spring brocolli with fish sauce (not thai, but a creamy house glaze), and some uni floating in some gelatin. The fluke was fine, but the moistness of the combu it was on… it was hard to eat… came apart (it was sashimi) and stuck to the thing. It was pretty badly executed. The uni was good, but the gelatin was completely bland. I had some with soy sauce. There was no indication of what to use for what. There was a side of delicious salt. I guess.
The second course was tuna, hamachi and white tuna… one piece each. It was fresh and good, although the tuna wasn’t an amazing fatty cut or anything.
The third course was shredded/pulled beef in a daikon beef broth with a piece of daikon. I really liked this. The broth was really good. NOT BLAND. And the beef was good, if a little tough. The daikon was cooked well with great flavor. Not bitter at all.
The fourth course was the vegetable plate with eringi (king trumpet), eggplant, and shishito peppers. The veggies were grilled to perfection. The mushroom was yummy, but just seasoned and cooked w/ butter. In fact, it’s kind of exactly what my mother and I do. But I LOVE eringi mushrooms, so I am not complaining. The shishito was hot and delicious. I tried a small piece of the eggplant, which was soft and tender… since I am technically allergic.
 
The fifth dish was a rather large piece of tsukune (ground chicken meatballs) and grilled beef. The “kobe beef” wasn’t the tenderest of kobe beefs I’ve had. It was kind of hard, but it was pink on the inside and the flavor was good. The tsukune was tasty enough. My SO thought the tsukune/chicken was gamey. It was full of onion. (It doesn’t beat Yakitori Totto, though.)
  
The sixth course was the fish and rice, which was a lot of food. The mackeral was dry enough that I doubted it was a mackerel at first. Haha. The rice was quality with salmon roe and steamed salmon. My issue with the rice, though, is that I LOVE getting the salmon and salmon roe rice at Sakagura and this dish is NO WAY NEAR as good or transcendent as that dish. Why? I don’t get it. I wouldn’t even mind if they did the same exact thing, honestly. I just want something good. The rice was good, but it didn’t nearly have enough ikuras in it. THE MISO SOUP WAS BLAND. I expect that at other Japanese restaurants, but again… Sakagura’s red miso soup is DELICIOUS. This time here, they use white miso and the thing is bland bland bland. And the fish was BLAND. I put some salt on it… and it was ok, but mackarel needs to be oilier than this fish was…
Our companions didn’t get the tasting menu, since they didn’t like fish. They did order a couple of a la carte dishes (similar to what came with ours – such as the Kamameshi w/ mushrooms, chicken tsukune, steak, etc…). One such dish was the fried yuba gyoza, which was one of the more tasty and interesting of all the other dishes.
The final course was the desert. I got the Shiratama with green tea ice… although that’s not what it is called in the menu… my memory is failing me now. The thing is, this dish only came with two shiratama pieces in a full bowl of sweet cold soup. I wasn’t impressed, but this was my SO’s favorite thing about the meal, I think. I think anything at Cha-An would have kicked this desert’s ass, though.
Sigh, and I guess the point is I was disappointed. I was surprised and disappointed. The food was bland. I understand the salt here is PREMIUM, but no. My mind is really confused, reconciling this place with Bon Yagi’s other places. This simply isn’t the same standard I’ve come to expect. The food is filling, but nothing I would ever really come back for again.
|
Umi 
"There is very little that I cannot / wouldn't eat. However, Ryan was able to get a good laugh out of a panicked look I had on my face while drowning back raw baby squid with beer."
Ryan 
Ryan needs to write a blurb here about himself. Like the time he almost lost his shit over the greatness that is Japanese Bento and set lunches. Needless to say, we both like to eat very much. This is where Umi and Ryan discuss food There will be food reviews, recipes, links to resources, food news, and general food talk.
This website was coded in textwrangler on a mac by Umi H. She and her cat spent many hours one night not sleep or chasing shadows on a wall.
|
