When I was growing up in Hawaii, we’d sometimes go buy school supplies at the Japanese bookstore. They always had lots of cool or cute stuff that you didn’t find in the regular stores. The Japanese always designed things that were a step above anything else.
Apparently, they didn’t limit cute design to just erasers and gadgets. They’ve found their way into food as well. Annie got these cute little egg molds sent to her from Japan via Singapore.
Before I met Annie, I generally preferred my pasta sauces to be red – tomato based. I avoided “alfredo” type white sauces because…actually I really don’t have a good explanation of why I don’t like white sauces. Anyway, these days Annie usually makes pasta sauces with cream, olive oil, and vermouth, keeping it light so you can actually see all the other ingredients.
This linguine alla carbonara recipe (based on a recipe out of “Lidia’s Italian American Kitchen”), contains bacon, olive oil, onions, chicken stock, linguine, egg yolks, grated Pecorino Romano cheese, and s&p. Our additions included portobello mushrooms, thyme, and some toasted onion powder from Penzey’s.
Oh, it was sooooo good. Made even better by that special onion powder.
If you can get your hands on some, I do recommend it.
Aloha, Nate
Our Vietnamese neighbor’s son was having a birthday party, and we were invited to come over and join in the celebration. Even after stuffing ourselves with all the amazing salads, rolls, noodles, and fried chicken, we couldn’t say no to dessert – a lovely bowl of hearts, eyes, and frog eggs.
No, there aren’t really animal parts in this dessert. It’s actually made up of hearts of palm, dragon eyes (longan fruit), and what Annie calls “frog eggs” or biji selasih, (otherwise known as the seed of Holy Basil), swimming in a cold, sweet syrup.
It was so good, I had seconds, and thirds, and took home a container full to enjoy the day after. 🙂
I wish I knew where they got the Holy Basil seeds. I’ve only seen them sold in the Asian grocery as a drink. I wonder if the Indian store has them.
Aloha, Nate
Annie found a packet of three servings of miso ramen at the Asian grocery, on sale for 3 bucks. These aren’t your typical fried and dried “Top Ramen” type packets with the overly salty spice powder packet. The noodles are fresh and the sauce is a wet paste. The preparation is straightforward – boil water, make broth, pour over warmed noodles.
To the soup bowl, I added in some frozen corn sauteed in butter, blanched bean sprouts, a barely hard-boiled egg, some slices of home made char siu, and garnished with nori and chopped green onions. I added a few dashes of shichimi chili powder to mine to spice it up a bit.
This really hit the spot. It was just as good or even better than Ramen Halu in West San Jose (supposedly the best ramen in the South Bay).
Aloha, Nate