Peanut noodles

Peanut sauce: combine salsa & peanut butter with brown sugar and fish sauce in a sauce pan... Cook on low, stirring until it starts to bubble, then take off heat. Top noodles and enjoy :)

Kai Salad

This is my adaptation of a salad made by one of my dearest friends. 

If you've been reading me for any length of time, you know I don't do exact recipes or like to measure. So here's my rough recipe for this super tasty, savory sweet salad:

Two hearts of romaine or one 6 oz carton spring mix or a blend of your favorite greens

2 cups cubed chicken thereabouts (optional- my friend's version was vegetarian)

1 tub crumbled feta (I use Aldi's)

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1 red pear or Macintosh apple, cubed

3 Tbs sliced red or sweet onion

2/3 cup pecans (or walnuts if you prefer)

Dressing:

My friend just whisked an olive oil, garlic and vinegar and herb dressing together. I like to use my immersion blender to make an emulsion. It's up to you.

1/4 cup vinegar of your choice

A couple of squeezes lemon juice

3Tbs minced sweet onion

4 cloves garlic, minced

Oregano or favorite herbs

A few grinds black pepper

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 cup sugar

I usually blend the above until smooth, then pour a slow stream of olive oil as I continue to blend. I don't really measure the oil, but the amount of total dressing is about 3/4 cup. 

Mix salad and dressing before serving. If you don't mind wilted greens, this salad still tastes good a day later. 

Inside the Jarrahdale pumpkin

This blue pumpkin has already been made into a huge pot of soup and two 9x13 pumpkin pies!

Yummy plummy noodles

So, in order to get this blog back up and running, I've devised a new strategy-- mobile blogging from all the pictures I've taken over the last year... All those photos that I took thinking "I should post this on Moody Foodie," but didn't.  So, here we go:

I must say, the first time I made these Doong Ji Korean noodles, I thought they were a bust. For one thing, I wasn't in the mood for their cold slithery texture. Plus, I had over cooked them, allowing them to congeal into a cold slithery blob. 

Ok so why on earth would I blog about said slithery noodles? A couple of months ago, in the heat of a Kentucky August, I tried them again (this time following the directions.) And they were delightfully refreshing in all their slipperiness. The plum flavored cold broth is really different, but so good on a sultry evening. I topped mine with a hard boiled egg and veggies for a satisfying summer dinner.

Can I resurrect this blog?

So. It seems this blog has been completely defunct for more than a year... I don't have a good excuse. But as a way to make amends, I offer up a snapshot of my new favorite healthy ramen in all it's quirky Kor-English  glory :)

This particular variety has a unique bright red but mild soup base that oddly reminds me of kind of a tomatoey-paprikash with a touch of tandoori spice. So, not very Asian tasting, but quite tasty. 

Between-trip refrigerator clean-out

Salsa Peanut Sauce Chicken Salad

After coming home from our Florida vacation and before heading off to Chicago, I was on a mission to make the most of the ingredients languishing on my counter, in my herb pots and in the refrigerator.

I remember a former co-worker of mine mentioning that her mom made a sauce by mixing peanut butter and salsa together. It sounded gross, she admitted, but it was really good. I think I went home that night and tried to mix the two together and it was gross. Well, in a moment of clarity, many years later, I realized that said co-worker's mom must have cooked the two ingredients down into a more homogenized sauce.

There's a dish at my favorite Thai restaurant (Thai Garden in Hoffman Estates, IL) called "Popeye's Chicken," and the sauce that is slathered over the chicken and fresh spinach leaves is somewhat similar to this. Intensely peanutty, but also spiked with tomato and sweetness, the finished sauce seems surprisingly polished considering the lowly leftovers used to create it.

Mellow Mushroom Pizza- Panama City Beach

The huz ordered this pizza, as I was staying back at the condo with a sick and sleeping baby. All that to say I don't know the proper names of these two flavors. I believe the slices in the foreground were Mellow Mushrooms' vision of Thai-style toppings. The base was a sweeeet curry sauce with chicken. Those are some outrageously perky chunks of cucumber and a smattering of parmesan over roma tomatoes. I thought the cucumbers were, forgive my pun, cumbersome, but overall, I thought sweet and spice pizza worked. If I were in charge of the universe, I would have sliced an English cucumber paper thin, briefly marinated them in vinegar-sugar-water and sprinkled the whole slice with mint, basil and/or corriander.

The background slices are some sort of Mediterranean melange of chicken, feta, olives, red pepper and chives. It wasn't as flavorful as what you'd think the sum of several flavorful ingredients ought to be, but not bad.  Mellow Mushroom's crust is thick and toothsome, without the oil coating that many pizzerias use. Taken in isolation, I liked the the dense doughy chew, but I think Mediterranean pizzas are best on thin crust.

Oishi Thai - Panama City Beach

Because we vacationed with our good friends, Joe and I got a date night at Oishi Thai. This sunny little restaurant was off the touristy path, but packed full of patrons. Most tables seemed to be filled with empty nesters, but a large contingency of Asians filled two pushed-together tables, which I took to be a good sign.

After researching all that Panama City Beach had to offer, I wanted to eat at Oishi because they serve two of my favorite cuisines: Thai and Japanese. Their sushi, as you can see, is gorgeous. I love the way this spider roll looks like a fairy castle set in an asparagus forest and surrounded by a moat of eel sauce. That made my meal. It was quite tasty, though I could have done with much less eel sauce. In fact, I would have been fine without it. But that's because, as I've said in a previous post, I like my seafood to be dressed sparingly so its delicate sweetness can come through.

Who doesn't love crisp soft-shell crab legs and nutty pencil-thin asparagus? Probably only those who haven't tried them!

For my entree, I ordered Tofu Kee (?) Krow (?) Ok. I could have totally made that name up. It was something similar to Pad See Ew, but with tofu instead of chicken and a ton of barely cooked veggies instead of broccoli. This dish, which I requested as medium spicy, was loaded with big flecks of freshly ground black pepper. The lingering heat from the black pepper and the refusal of the tiny venue's AC to function, made me remember my 'real' Thai meals in the steamy streets of Bangkok several years ago. I was sweating, but it was a happy sweat.

 Joe's dish... Duck Pad Ped, was equally bright, crunchy and black pepper laden. Let's just say we were both in a happy sweat. This dish was good, but the duck was lightly breaded and fried-- a preparation that seems redundant for such a naturally rich and tender meat.

Overall, we enjoyed our date night. While it wasn't the very best Thai or sushi I've had, it certainly was beautiful to look at.

Finn's Island Style Grill Food Truck

Just cuz it's a food truck doesn't mean this is fast food. Again, Joe and I were beyond starving with two crabby nap-needing children in the back seat. Again, the food took longer than expected. I noticed that in PCB, it seems that well-known customers get served first, even if they breeze in after tourists have been waiting several minutes for their food. Perhaps I'd be more forgiving, since good food should take time, but it was around 2 p.m. and the wait shouldn't have been so long, in my humble opinion.

I ordered the "Finn-tastic Wrap," which was basically an enormous fish taco with lots of romaine toothpicked together in a pleasantly chewy (at first) green tortilla. While I did really like the colors and textures of this meal, I didn't really think the grilled fish was that great. Perhaps it was too spiced up with sauce and I was craving more of a fresh, clean, sweet fish taste. Also, I couldn't finish the green tortilla at the end because my jaw got tired. But that was quite tasty.

Joe got the classic fish tacos. I didn't get to try any, but it appears to contain the same fish I had in my wrap with a crunchy fresh slaw, cilantro, lime, tomatoes and cheese on a corn tortilla.

On a side note, my gold standard for fish tacos is probably all the wonderful varieties we had in Maui back in 2004... or '05? Perhaps I just like my fish to be delicate and subtle. I don't want fish pretending to be red meat.

Liza's - Panama City Beach

The Warm Napoleon Salad-- Eggplant, Tomato, Goat Cheese stacked on spring mix with balsamic vinaigrette. This was very good, but the fact that it took over 30 minutes to carry out diminished the experience. Also, eating out of styrofoam might have had a thing to do with it too. But, with two beached-out children asleep in carseats, eating in wasn't really an option.

Joe's Muffaletta. Italian meats, olive tapenade on foccacia. I think he liked it.

Mennonite gyros

Homemade pitas just never turn out for me... These were either pocketless and soft or pocketed and rock hard. The "gyro" recipe I followed from my East West Mennonite cookbook was pretty tasty, as was the yogurt sauce and hummus.

Emily's Stuffed Eggplant

Inspired by my February outing to Anatolia Turkish Restaurant in Nashville, I've been making a fair number of eggplant dishes lately. Anytime I see them dip below $1.99 a piece, I snag a few of these purple beauties for stuffed eggplant. My version of the dish is less saucy than Anatolia's. Plus ground turkey or chicken sub in for the cubed lamb and I added some mozzerella to the top to weld it all together.

If you'd like to try it:

1. Halve eggplants and slather in olive oil before placing cut-side down on a large baking sheet. I use a jelly roll pan lined with oiled foil. Bake at 400 degrees until eggplant is extremely tender and skins are a little shrivelled. (Somewhere around 45 minutes)

2. While eggplants are getting soft, saute your favorite vegetables to go inside, such as bell peppers (any color), mushrooms, zucchini, onion and tomato. (Maybe 2 peppers, 1 cup mushroom, 2 zuch, 2 tomatoes, 1/2 onion.)

3. Next, saute a pound of ground turkey or chicken with onion powder, garlic powder, oregano and a dash of cumin. Add fresh chopped onion and garlic and salt to taste. All the seasonings are to taste. You can't really overdo it with any of them except the salt, in my opinion.

4. Blend the tender vegetables with the cooked ground meat in a bowl.

5. Take eggplant out of the oven and flip each half over. Scoop the vegetable and meat mixture over each half and top with a generous sprinkling of shredded mozzerella.

6. Return to oven and cook until cheese has melted or slightly browned.

This recipe makes enough for two or three eggplants-- so four to six servings-- depending on the size of the eggplants and how many veggies you cook and whether you like to have still crisp veggies or completely soft veggies. For this dish, I like everything to be uniformly mushy :) It's the ultimate vegetable-rich comfort food.

Another note: When selecting eggplant, I find it's best to choose slender fruits rather than the seedier bulbous ones. If you do get a lot of seeds, you can scoop some of it out after the first baking and before you stuff them with filling.

Blissful Cupcakes

Stephen was a good helper at Aldi yesterday, so I decided to swing by Blissful Cupcakes on Sixth Street for a little reward. Julie, the owner, had already sold out of my suggested Magic in the Middle cupcakes (inspired by Joe's favorite chocolately-creamcheesy treat growing up), so Stephen had Lemon Drop with Chocolate Frosting.

Rockam had a cookie from my purse.

Mostly, Stephen just licked all the frosting off.

Julie's downtown shop is probably causing Hopkinsville to collectively gain a few hundred pounds. Since she opened four months ago, she's had several days of selling out before closing time. Last week she closed at 3:00 one afternoon after selling 3,000 cupcakes in a day. Her cupcakes sell for $1.50 and feature natural ingredients. For example, she juices real strawberries to go into her strawberry buttercream frosting. I could taste it.

Anatolia Turkish Restaurant in Nashville

Ever since our good friends, the McQueens, moved to Turkey, I've been a little obsessed with all things Turkish. Despite my love for ethnic food, I'd never been to a Turkish restaurant. So when the 34th birthday arrived, I chose Anatolia Turkish Restaurant in a quiet part of Nashville for our night out without children.

I had studied the menu before we came and knew I wanted to try the Anatolia Eggplant from their "Classical Turkish Home Cooking" section of the menu. At $15.95, the eggplant half is roasted to a silky texture and brimming with cubes of lamb, tomatoes and bell peppers. It might not look very pretty, but I ate the entire thing up to the woody stem tip.  It was that melt-in-my-mouth tender. Joe ordered kabob of some sort, but ate it too quickly for me to remember the details. Sorry about that. I was really fixated on my own eggplant deliciousness.

Soft spotlights, Turkish wines, rugs and pottery decorate the walls. The ambiance was quiet, but friendly, with lots of what seemed to be Turkish accents coming from the servers, all of whom were friendly and unobtrusive.

And for dessert, we ordered kunefe-- a warm, crisp nest of pastry over chewy unsalted goat cheese oozing with sticky rose water syrup. Think baklava meets pizza and turn it upside down. The dessert paired perfectly with the clean flavor of hot Turkish Tea. Joe enjoyed sticking his pinky out as he sipped the very manly Turkish coffee out of a very girly demitasse.

Months ago, my cousin Amy was dreaming about Kunefe, the dessert her friends raved about, which she had never sampled. I'm going to have to figure out how to make it. The difficulty will be finding shredded filo twigs that form the top crust... I think mozzerella would serve in for the goat cheese and I could get rose water the next time I pass through Champaign on my way to Chicago. Now I'm dreaming about it too.

Emily's Awesome Peanut Noodles

 

 

These noodles are not in any way authentic. It's my version of a Thai peanut noodle dish... except I've borrowed elements of Vietnamese and Japanese food to make it. So... fusion peanut noodles.

 

Noodles (mix all this together):
1/2 box (1/2 lb) angel hair or thin spaghetti, cooked al dente, drained
1/4 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup watered down vinegar-- about 1 part vinegar, 3 parts water
about 3 Tbs sugar
4 cloves minced garlic
soy sauce maybe 3 Tbs

Sorry, I never measure anything :( Just taste it and add more of whatever flavor you're missing. If it's too sour, add more PB and sugar. Too bland, add more garlic or vinegar or soy. Too salty? Don't worry because you're going to be adding a bunch of stuff to the noodles.

 

Toppings:

• Eggs: Beat three eggs with rice vinegar, sugar and salt to taste. About 1 Tbs vinegar, 1 Tbs sugar, dash salt. Cook this mixture like an omelet, then slice into strips. Or just scramble the eggs.
• Fresh pickles: Thinly slice 1 cucumber and marinate for an hour in vinegar, sugar and water.
• Shredded Cabbage: Just shred maybe 1/2 cup or more depending on how much you like cabbage.
• Chicken: Bake three small chicken breast halves, seasoned with salt and pepper. Let cool and shred.
• Green onion: Chop finely.

Makes 4 big bowls.

 

Eat warm, room temp or cold! Tastes good the next day too :)

Momocho

Even the name of the restaurant sounds like something a babbling baby would say to express hunger. Mo-Mooooooo- Choooos, Mommm-mommm-nomm! So, when my sister-in-law, Cris, was describing some of the food at Momocho [smoked trout guacamole, please!], I was finding new space in my stomach despite the previous day's Thanksgiving gluttony.

 The Ohio City restaurant, featuring "Mod Mex" cuisine, is nestled in a cozy neightborhood with quaint homes and narrow alleys. Once inside, The restaurant was very dark, very crowded, and somewhat intimidating because of its lucha libre and Dia de los Muertes themed decor, and its hip, slightly snobby wait staff. But that only made me feel more giddy... Date night! No kids! Restaurant featured on Food Network!

While our husbands ordered the first off beat beverages they found (cervezas especial michelada style with ice, lime, salt, worcestershire and hot sauce), Cris and I pored over the paper menu, squinting in the dark at the extensive guacamole list and scribbling tick marks in the margins of the main dish and appetizer sections.

We finally settled on:



Guacamole with smoked trout, bacon and chile poblano. I was thinking about it later, and the reason this works so well is because it's a little bit like a revved up California roll, minus seaweed, crabstick, rice and tobiko. OK, it's nothing like sushi, but the avocado and uncooked fish textures and flavors work so well in Japanese cuisine, that I'm not surprised that they dance together in this rich dip.

Just in case you're interested in the other varieties that we didn't try, I brought home the menu from the night. As avocados are on sale this week at Kroger, I think I will have to try to make some of these at home:

• goat cheese, tomato, chile pblano
• jicama, pineapple, chile habanero and mint
• garlic confit, blue cheese, chile verde
• honey crisp apple, mango, chile serrano and thai basil
• pickled corn, crab, chile chipotle

Seared Sea Scallops with cauliflower and hominy frita, jalapeno creamed corn. This was my favorite dish, aside from the trout guacamole. The flavors were light, creamy and sweet, so they didn't overpower the delicate flavor of the scallops, which were just slightly undercooked in the center, but still pretty good :-) The ball in the middle is kind of like a cauliflower hush puppy. It would have been better if there was more cauliflower than hominy.

Butternut squash and goat cheese empanadas with oaxacan red chile and chocolate mole.
This was Jack's favorite dish of the night. I also liked it, but it was almost a dessert with all the sweetness and richness. As far as I'm concerned, anything with goat cheese is good.

Smoked gouda tamale dumplings. Cris found these to be a little bit dry, but I thought they were pretty well balanced when forked with a bittersweet heap of the crisp onion and corn saute with which it was served.

 Our server recommended the sofrito green beans, adding that they were very popular. But these were actually my least favorite dish of the night. If you've been reading me for any length of time, you probably know I generally prefer vegetables to the other food groups. In my not so humble opinion, a good green bean should be flash fried just enough to be bright green, but still crisp enough to bite through the strings, OR they should be slow cooked down to a buttery-melt-in-my-mouth slurp of a legume, preferrably laced with pork fat. I would have expected the crunchy end of the cooking spectrum for this dish, which was heavily seasoned with the sofrito. (I'm guessing the mix included chili, cilantro, onion, garlic and maybe tamarind or something to give it bite.) Instead, the beans were in that no-go doneness zone in the middle. They were too cooked to maintain their crispness, and not done enough to eliminate the stringy toughness. In addition, I felt that the flavor was too sour and too bitter, when I was craving savory, zesty and sweet. OK. That's enough philosphizing about green beans! On to the wild boar....

No joke, we orderd chancho, adobo braised wild boar taquitos with pickled jalapeno and mustard crema. After all, the guys needed something to go with their worcestershire beers, and this was one of the more awe-inspiring meats on the menu.

(As a side note, please excuse the horrible quality of my photos from the night. The room was exceedingly dim and I didn't want to draw attention to myself by flashing the food every 60 seconds.)

I'm not a fan of tough meat, or even red meat in general. And this was overtly both very red and tough meat. However, a little dollop of boar shreds on a mini corn tortilla with copious amounts of the pickled jalapeno and mustard crema was pretty good. And if I wasn't so stuffed that I felt every bite was bound to come out my ears, I might have liked it more.

Ironically, neither Jack nor Joe really liked this dish, despite Cris and my chidings that they didn't add enough of the salsa and crema. If I were to get a do-over on ordering, I would have thought less about what others might like and ordered what I knew I'd like: the picadillo, ground lamb shoulder with mint, walnuts, red chile and chocolate mole, which sounds like a pretty amazing little taco. Or, the camarones, achiote shrimp al postor style with pineapple and jicama salsa... or pato, slow cooked duck confit with chile anco and pomegranate barbacoa. Or...

 

There's always next time.

Potluck Thanksgiving

I've mentioned before that Thanksgiving meals when I was growing up were usually this weird combination of traditional and Chinese and sometimes fried chicken or lasagna. Since I've been married, we usually head to Joe's parents for the big meal. This year, my mother-in-law decided that everyone could just bring what they wanted. So there were Chinese dumplings (made by my Italian Auntie), Nicaraguan floutas-- akin to taquitos but way better-- made by my Canadian sister-in-law and garlicky salad made by me. There was also plenty of traditional food like baked sweet potatoes, green beans, ham, a free-range turkey and stuffing.

I really like the ratio of greenery to other things on my plate.

And afterwards, I felt good enough to go on a nippy walk around the West Side neighborhood where the Parrinos live with Cris and Amy.

That made us hungry for dessert. Amy concocted one with Trader Joe's puff pastry, fig butter, pistachios, almonds, dark chocolate and Brie. I was a little concerned that there might be too many things going on in these pain au chocolats, but the flavors melded wonderfully!

Fujiyama in Clarksville

Hidden in a quiet commercial strip off Wilma Rudolph about 5 minutes past the heavily trafficked shopping area, this Clarksville, Tenn., sushi bar is a tiny treat. Both times I've visited, I've had my two boys with me. But even though my attention has been divided between stuffing my own and their two tiny gullets, I found the presentation to be pretty, the selection broad and the sushi plump and fresh.

Pictured above, special bento boxes with California rolls, teriyaki salmon and teriyaki tofu, xiao mai, crab rangoon and rice.The tofu was silken, but fried to a crispy, chewy crust on the outside, making it my most shared item off my box.

I can't remember the name of the sushi roll that looks more like a still-wet oil painting than food... but it was really good. Sorry. I'm writing this post about four months after the fact. Again, little gullets getting in the way of my goals as foodie and blogger...

A salmon-bone to pick with IKEA

The trip between Hopkinsville, Ky., and Cleveland, Ohio, with two little ones in tow, is ardorous. The one bright spot had always come in the form of a cobalt blue building looming on the horizon of the interstate not far past the "Florence, Ya'll" water tower. IKEA. The land of modern but affordable DIY furniture, random houseware bargains and, a decade ago, an exciting Scandanavian cafe. The West Chester IKEA, outside of Cincinatti, is our half-way point and stopping point of choice because of the kid-friendly bathrooms, eating area and play areas. It has ceased to be an exciting stop for me, though, because I can only taste my memories of favorite dishes like Pittya-pana and Three Salmon plate.

They've still got the multi-colored carrots, Swedish meatballs, elderberry flavored drinkboxes, and maybe one overcooked fish dish on their menu, but IKEA's top-floor cafe has slowly slumped in my opinion from a destination ethnic eatery to a hum-drum cafeteria.

The rest of the store's offerings include chicken fingers and fries, mashed potatoes, soggy steamed vegetables, mac n cheese, dried out wrap sandwiches, a hockey-puck sized conglomeration of spinach and eggs and limp salad bar fixings.

It really depresses me!

Sushi Ya

I know I've written about Sushi Ya in Schaumburg, Ill., before, but I tried some new makis that I had to share :-). On my recent trip home, I ate here three times! The bento box was really yummy, but I didn't have my camera on me that first trip. We ordered sushi take out our next two trips.

My new favorite, "Green Turtle Maki," is shown in the lower half of the box. It has eel, cucumber and crunchy stuff at the center, with avocado, shrimp and green tobiko and some kind of light special sauce on the outside of the roll. Above is just the standard Spider Roll, with a tempura soft-shell crab at the center, along with cucumber and avocado.

It was so good that my mom and I returned a second time during my recent trip to get another Green Turtle and to grab Sushi-Ya's "Schaumburg Roll." It's fun to eat local-named makis. (Just realized I had tried this before back in 2009, though it seems like it had carrots then and not now. I didn't miss them!) We at our rolls by the duck pond in the town square before taking Stephen to the nearby splash fountain.

The Schaumburg Maki is also crammed full of my favorite sushi components: Soft-shell crab inside, with a generous crust of eel and avocado outside. I feel a little sad to be writing this post since I'm hundreds of miles from Schaumburg and its namesake maki.