Today’s lunch was mini-pizzas. I made the bread with some active dry yeast I picked up at Costco. The sauce was made with Ragu, onions, garlic, ground turkey, and some Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon. Toppings were mozzarella cheese, basil, salame, and capocollo.
Today’s dinner was a side of eggplant with ground beef and miso and hickory smoked pork with mole and Spanish rice. The eggplant was sautéed with ground beef, miso, sugar, sake, garlic, green onions, and chili oil. It’s not as sweet as our favorite nasu miso dish at Honda-ya (Yelp), but the ground beef does make the dish heartier. For the Pork Mole, I rubbed the pork with bacon salt, used Hickory chips in the grill, and made some instant mole by Dona Maria.
Today’s lunch was Chile Relleno, courtesy of Trader Joe’s. Ever since I had a Chile Relleno at Speedy Zapatos (Yelp) (which is THE best dish I’ve ever had there) in Fresno, CA, my eyes have been opened to how much I like them. I made Spanish rice and served up the baked relleno side by side.
Today’s lunch was Teriyaki Salmon. It was basically a salmon steak marinated in sake and brushed with Yoshida Sauce.
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of the Joy of Cooking and other recipes in my collection. I decided to celebrate my freedom this Monday by making myself a poached egg breakfast. This is the second time I’ve ever make a poached egg and I learned from the first time that you need to be extra extra careful to make sure the egg does not break. I think I did a pretty good job this time.
Poached Egg and Toast
For lunch, I made a Vietnamese Bun Salad. I added a bunch of toppings to the bun (rice vermicelli) including cucumbers, radishes, green onions, nappa, bean sprouts, and pork. I had marinated pork in hoisin sauce the day before, which I pan fried. I used the recipe I found here for the Nuoc Cham and it was fantastic.
Vietnamese Bun Salad
Finally, for dessert tonight Jessica and I made Grilled Peaches with a Balsamic Reduction Sauce. We halved peaches and glazed them with the sauce. We then grilled the peaches, added mascarpone on top and further baked them, and finally drizzled them with amaretto.
Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone & Amaretto
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Back in January 2008, I made some Hainanese Chicken from scratch, and it came out delicious. The chicken is uniquely cooked by boiling chicken broth, turning off the heat, and dunking the chicken in the hot broth for 8 minutes, repeat 2 more times.
I wasn’t sure what kind of dark sauce they use, so I used the Indonesian kecap manis, which is a sweet, thick sauce.
The rice was cooked with chicken broth instead of water, and mixed with half a stick of butter. Surprisingly, half a stick was the minimum to get the rice to taste how it should.
Hainan Chicken
