One more place to spout off about food

Aaaaaand I'm now a "Dictator" on Citysearch's 3BuckBites site. Really it's $3.99 (buck) bites, but I won't quibble.

Keep an eye out for some cheapo eats!

From memory, a Filipino breakfast

My college ex-boyfriend was the one to introduce me to all things Filipino, and that included Filipino-style breakfasting. When he'd come to visit me or I'd come to visit him, he'd take a few cups of leftover white rice, plenty of chopped garlic, and some salt and stir up a pan full of garlic fried rice to be eaten alongside runny fried eggs and sweet, vinegary longanisa sausage. Ketchup and/or hot sauce were optional but welcome. And we ate, of course, with a fork and spoon.

It had been many years since I last ate a Filipino breakfast, but since I had a package of chicken longanisa in the freezer, I decided it was as good a time as any. Using my ex's old method I chopped up a head of garlic, sauteed it with oil and salt in a pan until the pieces became golden, and then added in two cups of cold white rice, breaking up any clumps with my spatula until each grain was hot and coated in the savory oil. In another pan I fried up the longanisa and the eggs, and I took out the ketchup and hot sauce from the refrigerator. Fifteen minutes later, I had a steaming plate of garlic fried rice, fried eggs, and fried sausage in front of me, and the way it filled my belly was just as good as I remembered.

Semi-fail: Roasted acorn squash

Maybe it was that I'd had the acorn squash on my counter for so long it went from dark green to mottled bright orange. Maybe it's that my oven runs hot, and burnt the outside of the squash before cooking the inside. Maybe it's that I just didn't add enough butter.

Whatever the reason, I wouldn't call my first time roasting acorn squash a success. It wasn't a failure, either, but in the end, something was less than spectacular about the results.

Oh, the innards tasted decent enough after I scooped them out and mashed them with more butter, more salt, and a drizzle of good Colorado honey, but really I was tasting the additions and not the squash itself. Next time: cook the squash before it gets old, and lower the temperature on the oven.

Romano's Macaroni Grill: Wherefore art thou, Carmela?

Romano's Macaroni Grill, like many other chain restaurants, has a particular shtick. In this case it's the bottle of house wine that's brought and left on the table, inviting the diner to pour glasses at will and to pay on an honor system at the end. There's also the giant plastic bottle of olive oil next to the salt and pepper shakers, and the server who pours that oil into a dish and writes her name in crayon on the paper tablecloth upon arrival.

Soon after ordering, "Tuscan bread" arrives to the table, a hot, fat, fluffy loaf with a slick of salt, oil, and dried herbs on the outside and the texture of a commercial hot dog bun inside. The diner and her companions are encouraged to tear off pieces of this bread and to dip them into the aforementioned dish of olive oil, which the server has also seasoned with pepper and salt.

While the diners are chewing on the second loaf, the entrees arrive. Above is "Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni": chicken, mushrooms, and caramelized onions in a Marsala wine sauce over rigatoni pasta. It is about what one might expect from a chain restaurant: everything done correctly and adequately, but without soul.

Despite knowing that chain restaurants are more for consistency than heart, this diner desperately wanted to taste something personal in the pasta she was eating…to see, somehow, that Carmela is a real person cooking behind the stove. But in a place like Macaroni Grill, that wish is nothing but silly.

Way to brew: Blomus Teastick

When I'm at home there is nearly always a cup of tea at my elbow, whether I'm at my desk in front of the computer, at the dining table with a proofreading project, or on the couch in front of the television. Most of the time, it's loose leaf green tea that I'm sipping; there's just nothing like a fragrant hot cup of the stuff to get me through my day.

A few months ago TL sent me a surprise in the mail: the Floz Design 'Utilo' Teastick for Blomus, a sleek and attractive little gadget. Press down on the top to reveal a little pocket for loose tea, fill it up, and pop the slim metal stick into a cup of hot water. Swirl it around to let water pass through the perforations and voila, your tea is ready.

While the tea takes a little longer to steep and there is some limitation to how much the leaves can freely expand, I do like the neatness of the teastick. It keeps floating leaves from sticking to my lips and makes for easy cleanup, too. Thanks TL!

Strange (bread)fellows: A celery loaf

I'm not really into celery—or rather I never think to eat it. That is, except in cold mayo-based salads like the krab version I whipped up one day, where the finely diced stalks added a tiny, refreshing crunch with every bite. I only used a few handfuls' worth in that salad, though, which left me with a sizable container of leftovers.

The diced celery languished in my refrigerator for a week or so before the guilt set in. I was loathe to let it go bad, but I couldn't think of anything I wanted to do with it either. Then it hit me—bread! I could up the health quotient of my loaf while ridding myself of an unwanted ingredient. And there was potential for interesting sandwiches, too: honey and peanut butter on celery bread; cream cheese and thinly sliced ham on celery bread.

So I kneaded handfuls of diced celery into the dough of my standard bread loaf before putting it in the oven to bake, trying to cram in as much as possible. In the process little green bits dropped all over my counter.

I hadn't counted on the earthy sweetness of the baked celery, which lent its flavor and fragrance to the resulting loaf with good results. There was a pleasant vegetal aroma to the bread that complemented most anything I put on it without being too strange. It might not be my favorite bread, but if I ever have leftover stalks again, I now have one more way to use them up.

Kinda makes me wonder what other vegetables I can hide in my bread….

Hard-boiled: Soy sauce eggs and tea eggs

This past Lunar New Year was, for me, one of my least festive and most lonely. Without my family or any Asian-minded friends around me in Colorado, there was little to do in way of celebration but hang around in my apartment doing homework, wishing there was a parade I could go to or a feast I could attend instead. The only thing I could think of that would be a little out of the ordinary and manageable for a single girl in the kitchen was to make a batch of tea eggs.

There's no reason for tea eggs to be a special occasion recipe, however—the process is dead easy and the ingredient list is simple. I tried to follow Jaden's directions over at Steamy Kitchen, but because I had to leave out the cinnamon stick and star anise (I still haven't stocked my spice rack), in the end I only had black tea, soy sauce, and sugar in my brew. The flavor was different but still good.

After hard-boiling the eggs, lightly cracking their shells with a heavy spoon, simmering them in the tea and soy sauce for two hours, and letting them steep overnight, this is how they looked. More than anything else, I love the beautiful pattern that appears all over the egg once you peel them. Like stained glass, or a drunken spiderweb of sorts, no? Considering these were marinated for so long, they are actually a bit pale—I could have cracked the shells harder to let more of the tea and soy sauce seep in.

Looks aside, the paleness also meant they were bland, so later I peeled all of the remaining eggs and plopped them directly into the tea marinade. After bringing the mixture to a boil, I let them simmer for another hour before taking them off the heat.

It's funny, but Jen at Use Real Butter just wrote a post about eating soy sauce eggs as a kid, which I totally identified with…as a kid I too was ridiculed about the shade of my lunch egg, and found it terribly humiliating when my oddly hued specimen was greeted with a chorus of ewwwws. After the first time, I stopped eating them in public. But you can see how little I care now; I let these eggs become a deep, warm brown. Without their shells hindering the absorption of the tea and soy sauce, their flavor increased by leaps and bounds. Next to dumplings, half a pomelo, and some stir-fried chicken and napa cabbage, these soy/tea eggs were the perfect thing for my solo Lunar New Year's meal.

Maki-making at home

So I'm pretty proud of myself for this one: I started making my own California rolls! Ever since I realized I could pretty easily keep all the ingredients I need on hand, this Americanized maki recipe has gone into regular rotation. Krab sticks can be frozen; unripe avocados last for weeks in the fridge; sushi rice, nori, sugar, and rice vinegar all keep in the pantry.

The method is about the same as when I made avocado maki. Mix freshly cooked sushi rice with a bit of rice vinegar and sugar (about seven ounces of rice is good for two rolls) and let it cool; spread half the seasoned rice over one full sheet of nori; lay avocado slices (about one quarter) and a krab stick (split in two, lengthwise) across the middle, and roll it all up using a mat (or if you're like me, your fingers). Lay the roll seam-side down, slice into eight pieces with a sharp knife, and repeat. Have wasabi and soy sauce for dipping on the side.

By the way, two rolls makes a really substantial meal, so depending on my appetite I often cut down on the amount of rice. (For some reason I can't bring myself to make just one roll at a time.) And while my kitchen is definitely no Sushi Yasuda or Masa, making this stuff at home means I can wean myself off of buying supermarket or takeout sushi in moments of desperation.

After all, here's the cost breakdown:

Two sheets of nori, $0.125 ($7.99 for a pack of fifty)
Half an avocado, $0.50 ($1.00 for one)
Two sticks of krab, $1.00 ($4.00 for pack of eight)
One-third cup uncooked sushi rice/about seven ounces cooked, $0.25 (estimated, I paid $5.00 for a five pound bag)
Sugar and rice vinegar, $0.10 (estimated)
Soy sauce, $0.10 (estimated)
Wasabi, $0.10 (estimated, a "family size" tube was about $2.50)

TOTAL: $2.18 for two rolls/sixteen pieces*
*And if you're curious, that comes out to about 485 calories and 11 grams of fat.

Compare that to five or six bucks per pack of eight for takeout California rolls, and I save myself about eight or ten dollars every time I have a maki jones. Yes!