We ordered Xiao Long Bao (soup dumpling), Won Ton Noodle Soup, Onion Pancake and Chicken Chow Mein

The soup dumpling was the best I’ve ever had. It is a dumpling but inside of it is a meat mixture and some soup. The best way to eat it is with a spoon. When you take a bite out of it the soup explodes onto the spoon. It is absolutely delicious.

The Won Ton Noodle soup was above average.

The onion pancake was also the best I’ve ever had. It was super light and crispy.

The chow mein was average but decent.

My daughter asked for some steamed rice and the waiter told her she didn’t need it. It pissed her off but I thought it was pretty funny. They brought her some anyway.

With a Tsingtao beer and 2 Thai iced teas the total bill came to $30.

A whole roast pig from Cheung Hing takeout –
2339 Noriega St in San Francisco. This is one of the best places in town for BBQ pork and roast duck.

Every booth at this show had free samples. I was in food heaven.

I’ll be doing several posts from the show but in the meantime, here is a slideshow with some of the photos.

Season and lightly flour a chuck roast ( I used 2 chuck roasts because I like a lot of meat)

Brown meat in oil

Quarter some potatoes

Add a bunch of garlic and some carrots ( I used baby carrots)

Heat on low for about 8 hours

Here it is 8 hrs later.

This is my lunch today from HRD 3rd @ Bryant in San Francisco.
Cost – $5.75

I ordered the

Cassoulet du Bistrotier

White bean stew with sausage, pork, lamb and duck Confit  – $19.50

and

Moules provençales a la facon Hiba
Steamed Mussels in white wine with tomatoes, thyme and garlic – $8.95

Both dishes were quite good. The mussels could have been a little more salty. This was the first time I’ve ever had a Cassoulet. It was super rich and even though I tried my best, I couldn’t finish it. Unlike the mussels, this was a little too salty but it was still delicious. The over saltiness actually made the 2 Stellas on draft go down better. I think I’m gonna try to cook this dish at home.

I would definitely come back to this place (I almost did for lunch on my last day) but if there was a line like last time, I wouldn’t wait.

Collard Greens – 2 for $1.00

Beets- $1.00 a bunch

Eggplant – $1.oo each ( these were huge)

Artichoke – $1.00 each

Brussels Sprouts – $1.00 a pound

Raw Peanuts – $2.00 a pound.

Total price – about $15.00

I had just made some corn bread pancakes with some buttermilk so I put the chicken in a bowl and covered them with the buttermilk I had left over and added about a 1/4 cup of Louisiana hot sauce.

So the next day I get home from work and the wife had already ordered pizza but I was craving something home cooked so I decided to throw this quick meal together. I pulled the chicken out of the buttermilk marinade, shook off the extra liquid and placed it in a baking dish with some sliced sweet onions.

I put that into a 400° oven along with another baking dish that had some Brussels sprouts, olive oil and garlic. I cooked both of those for about an hour, maybe a little less. I also boiled up some corn really quick.

This turned out to be a really delicious dish that required almost no work. The chicken was super moist and tender with a great flavor.

The pizza went pretty much untouched that night.

Tomatillo Salsa

Ingredients:

2 pound tomatillos, husked

1 cup chopped onion

3 teaspoon minced garlic

3 Serrano chili peppers

2 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano

1 teaspoon ground cumin

3 teaspoons salt, or to taste

1 teaspoon pepper, or to taste

2 chicken bouillon cubes

1 lime (juice)

5 tablespoons chopped cilantro

Cut the tomatillos and onion into chunks and add into a blender with the garlic.

Place blended tomatillo mixture into a pot and add the remaining ingredients except cilantro.  Cook for 10 to 15 minutes under medium heat. When finished, allow to cool then add the cilantro and an extra chopped raw Serrano chili (if you like it spicy).

Optional:

Red chili flakes to taste (Can add before cooking)

Olive Oil (Can add after cooking – add a little richness)

Mirin (Japanese cooking wine, can add a little before cooking – sweet)

Roasted Anaheim chilies

I made a dish from the Cooking Up A Storm cookbook. The dish was Chicken and Sausage gumbo.

I’m going to try to take you step by step through my process with photos below.

Ingredients:

1   4-5 lb chicken cut into serving pieces
Salt
Cayenne pepper
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 cups chopped yellow onions
1 cup chopped green bell peppers
1/2 cup chopped celery
About 2 1/2 quarts chicken broth
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 lb andouille sausage sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/4 cup chopped green onions (white and green parts)
2 tbs chopped fresh parsley
Hot cooked rice for serving

First I combined the oil and flower to make the roux. I stirred it very often for about 45 minutes till brown.

Here it is after about 20 mins. It’s a little darker

This is after about 45 minutes. It’s pretty dark. I probably should have made it a little darker but I was getting impatient so I moved on to the next step.

Next I added the chopped onion, bell pepper and celery.

I cooked this for about 10 minutes till the vegetables were really soft.

I added the chicken broth, stirred to blend well, then I added the bay leaf, thyme and chicken and brought it to a boil. Once it was boiling, I lowered it to a simmer and cooked it for 3 hours.

After 3 hours I added the sausage, green onions and the parsley. I tasted it to check the seasonings. I then added some cayenne pepper and some salt. Boy was it good!

I also made a seafood gumbo that I’ll give the recipe for at another time.

So my Sunday dinner consisted of 2 kinds of gumbo and some delicious corn bread pancakes.
The corn bread pancakes were good but I still need to perfect this a little bit.

Hush puppies were ok. I’ve made better at home. The catfish po boys were delicious but they were pretty stingy on the fish. Hardly any there!

The sweet potato fries were lame. They were covered in cinnamon and none of us liked the flavor. I make sweet potato fries at home and they are much better.

The Gumbo was delicious. It is made with a dark roux, which according to all of the cookbooks I’ve read, is the secret to a good gumbo. You make the roux dark by cooking it carefully for a long time. My only complaint was that the liquid was not thick enough. There was one order that we didnt’ finish so I ate it the next morning. It was much much better the next day. The liquid thickened up in the fridge and it tasted fantastic.

I would go back again but I don’t recommend getting it to go. I think it would be much better there when it comes right off the stove. One other plus about the place was that they served Abita Beer from Louisiana.

He is a great rock photographer and now is taking some great food photos. I’ve never had this hot sauce but am gonna have to give it a try since collecting hot sauce is a favorite pastime of mine.

For dinner we had:
Smothered chicken with cornbread stuffing and Mac & Cheese.
Fried catfish with collard greens, fried okra and red beans and rice.
Sweet iced tea.

If I lived in Las Vegas I’d be eating here at least once a week. The food was fantastic and the prices were reasonable. The service was also great. Everyone there seemed to love their job and care about making the best food possible.

If you are ever in the Las Vegas area I highly recommend this place.

Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans

Here is the description from the Chronicle Books Website:

Cooking Up a Storm

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, thousands of people lost their keepsakes and family treasures forever. As residents started to rebuild their lives, The Times-Picayune of New Orleans became a post-hurricane swapping place for old recipes that were washed away in the storm. The newspaper has compiled 250 of these delicious, authentic recipes along with the stories about how they came to be and who created them. Cooking Up a Storm includes the very best of classic and contemporary New Orleans cuisine, from seafood and meat to desserts and cocktails. But it also tells the story, recipe by recipe, of one of the great food cities in the world, and the determination of its citizens to preserve and safeguard their culinary legacy.
Marcelle Bienvenu writes the popular “Cooking Creole” column for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans, and has collaborated with Chef Emeril Lagasse on several of his cookbooks. She lives in St. Martinville, Louisiana.

Judy Walker is the food editor of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. She is the author or co-author of five cookbooks on the food of the Southwest.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 cloves crushed garlic
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Related Posts:

Roasted Brussels Sprouts

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Before we played we went down the street to a Japanese restaurant called Ginza. The food was decent and the service was excellent. There were 7 of us and the owner let us split the bill into separate checks.

She gave us all complimentary miso soup. It was obviously the instant kind but for free it was fine.

Below is some sort of Gyoza. It was decent. There was more in the basket but it got eaten before I could snap a pic.This is a hamachi hand roll. It was excellent.

Note: These pics are all yellow thanks to the new iphone 4 crappy quality of indoor shots.

The owner also gave us complimentary mussels with some sort of cheese sauce. I liked them but most of the table was afraid to eat them.

I also ordered chicken udon. It was average. I wouldn’t get this next time. My total bill was $17.20 including a Sapporo beer.

The recipe is after the photos. Note: I quadrupled the recipe because I like to have a lot of leftovers.

The picture below is step 2 of the recipe. You add the stripped corn cobs to the soup to help make the broth. They get removed after 30 minutes.

Corn Chowder Recipe

The gig last night was fun but what impressed me most was when we were loading in yesterday afternoon, the owner was cooking meat on a huge bbq grill for our dinner.

They had 2 grills in the back. one was a double propane gas grill that the owner was cooking on and a huge charcoal grill that wasn’t being used.

I’d love to have both of these in my backyard!

This place used to be called CoCo’s and was owned by 2 super hot Chinese girls.The service was always ok but they blasted bad music on the stereo and the bathrooms were disgusting. There were tons of Yelp reviews about it.

Coco sold the place to a Vietnamese guy and he’s trying to turn business around. The crawfish is fresher now and the service is much better. The bathrooms are a little better but can still be dirty at times and the bad music is gone.

Crawfish is one of those things I eat that always gives me a food high.

Other than Louisiana, the best place I’ve been to so far for crawfish is in Las Vegas called Hot n Juicy Crawfish

Recipe after the photo

Ingredients:

4 packets of Sazon Goya (mexican spice)

Preparation

In a large pot, brown chicken and set aside.
On medium high heat, add onion, peppers and carrots to pan and cook till tender (about 10 minutes)
Add garlic and cook for 1 minute
Add Sazon Goya, cumin and stir
Add wine and cook for about 2 minutes
Add chicken, potatoes, olives and water
Cover and cook on medium low for about 2 hours.

Serve with white rice

add potatoes,

There was too much for us to finish so with the leftovers I threw together an oyster chowder. I’ve never made it before but I winged it. I fried up some chopped bacon. After they cooked I removed them and cooked up some chopped celery, onions, carrots and bell peppers for about 10 minutes. Then I added some smashed garlic and cooked it for a minute. I then added a cup of white wine, 2 cups of heavy cream and some diced potatoes. I simmered it till the potatoes were cooked then added the leftover oysters and their juices. It was fantastic!

Photos of the chowder will hopefully be coming soon.

I may do a cooking with butler with the peanuts and the brussels sprouts if I can get up the motivation.

Click the pictures to enlarge for some beautiful food

Last night I tried my hand at making some strawberry ice cream. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. The photo above doesn’t do it justice. I took it in low light with my iPhone.

I used a Cuisinart ICE-25 Classic Frozen Yogurt, Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker

I altered the recipe slightly that came with the machine. The recipe is below. I added 3 egg yolks to the mixture.

FRESH STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM
Makes ten 1⁄2-cup servings
1    pint fresh ripe strawberries, stemmed and sliced 3    tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice 1    cup sugar, divided 1    cup whole milk
2    cups heavy cream 1    teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a small bowl, combine the strawberries with the lemon juice and 1⁄2 cup of the sugar. Stir gently and allow the strawberries to macerate in the juices for 2 hours. Strain the berries, reserving juices. Mash or purée half the berries.
In a medium mixing bowl, use a hand mixer on low speed to combine the milk and remaining granulated sugar until the sugar is dissolved, about 1 to 2 minutes. Stir in the heavy cream, reserved strawberry juice, mashed strawberries, and vanilla.
Turn the Cuisinart ClassicTM Frozen Yogurt-Ice Cream & Sorbet Maker on; pour the mixture into freezer bowl, and let mix until thickened, about 20–25 minutes. Five minutes before mixing is completed, add the reserved sliced strawberries and let mix in completely. The ice cream will have a soft, creamy texture. If a firmer consistency is desired, transfer the ice cream to an airtight container and place in freezer for about 2 hours. Remove from freezer about 10 minutes before serving.

Here’s the “About ” section of their website:

Like the title says….”Where BBQ Meets Metal” Combining 20 years of restaurant, and over 30 years of Rock n Roll experience comes………………. “Rock n Roll Ribs” Rock N Roll Ribs satisfies two great passions….food and music, and what better tastes then BBQ and Rock n Roll. Rock n Roll Ribs concentrates on a simple yet exciting high quality menu of both, see. • FOOD:   BBQ…of course, specializing on our award winning Baby Back Ribs and signature sauces. • MUSIC: You guessed it….Rock n Roll!!!….you wont hear any lame, piped-in Musak nonsense here, see. Nothing but the best timeless Rock n Roll. • ATMOSPHERE:   One word…..Wild and Fun…. ok that was two words. Picture yourself, center stage at a rock show….guitars, walls of amps, drums lights music and then…. The best BBQ you’ve ever tasted…pretty cool huh??  No having to buy a ticket, or “know a friend” to get backstage, see …everyone is a VIP! The Men Behind The Mayhem

On Thursdays they have live rock from a band called Riff Raff

Karamiso Ramen, which is spicy miso flavor soup with boiled bean sprouts and sliced chashu pork. It is a huge bowl and really spicy. I am sweating bullets by the time I’m done eating it but it is delicious. It costs $8.50.

For appetizer I get Rebanira itame, which is sauteed beef liver & vegetables but since I didn’t have my glasses, I accidentally ordered Reba Karaage, which is deep fried beef liver. I was bummed out at first but it was actually very good. Cost – $5.50

I had a large bottle of Asahi beer to drink.

I left here tonight with a food high. Just enough beer to give me a slight buzz and just enough food to be quite full but not in a food coma.

Tanpopo on Yelp

Total cost: $21.90

Ingredients

• 1 pound large shrimp, peeled, deveined
• 1 teaspoon salt, plus additional as needed
• 1 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper flakes
• 3 tablespoons olive oil, plus 1 to 2 tablespoons
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
• 3 tablespoon chopped fresh Italian parsley leaves
• 3 tablespoon chopped fresh basil leaves

Directions

I’m gonna cook these in the oven instead of deep frying them. I lay them out on a baking sheet and put some oil and salt and pepper on them. They taste great.

It’s pretty much your traditional dim sum place. The most popular place in town is Tong Kiang but this place is way cheaper and easier to get seated. I think it is just as good too. The wait staff knows us by now so we always get great service.

Here is what we got today:
Egg Rolls (we only get these when my daughter comes along)

Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce

green onion pancake

Tofu Skin Rolls

My daughter always gets the roast duck and rice plate for herself

Steamed chicken feet.

Shanghai dumplings (they have soup inside and they are fantastic)

Egg custard buns for dessert

Total cost including beer and sodas : $37.07

The leaves of the coca plant contain several alkaloids including cocaine;[in fact, they comprise the sources for cocaine’s chemical production, though the amount of cocaine in the leaves is so small, around 0.4%, that in order to make a gram of cocaine, 250 grams of coca leaves would be needed.A cup of coca tea prepared from one gram of coca leaves contains approximately 4.21 mg of cocaine.

Below: Tako Kimchi (raw squid in a spicy sauce), albacore tuna, edamame.

Below: Hamachi mini shashimi, Ikura (salmon roe)

Below: not sure what it is but it’s one of the cheapest and it’s great. The one on the right is squid on a mint leaf.

For the pickle juice I boiled 1 gallon of water, a cup of distilled white vinegar and 3/4 cup of kosher salt. I know I should use pickling salt but kosher is all I have on hand. I shot a Cooking With Butler video episode awhile back that shows me preparing them.

In the photo below are 2 jars of okra. They both have a clove of garlic and about a tbs of fresh dill. The jar on the left has a little bit of red pepper flakes in it as an experiment. I’ll let you know how they turn out.

In the photo below, the pickle cucumbers in the 2 left jar are sliced because my daughter likes them on her sandiches.
The one in the center has pickle cucumbers that have been quartered lengthwise. The one on the right are whole. All of them have a little fresh dill and a whole clove of garlic.  They’ll be ready to eat by tomorrow night.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds Brussels sprouts
• 3 tablespoons good olive oil
• 4 cloves crushed garlic
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions

Today I purchased some beautiful fresh okra and pickles for another batch of Punk Rock Pickles