Friday, January 15, 2010
I love soy sauce eggs and tea leaf eggs. But both of them take a long time to make, so I don’t normally make them. Whenever I go home, my mom always has them prepared and always cooks a batch for me to bring home. These are the eggs she made for me on my last trip home.
You can eat them for breakfast or cut them into slices and serve them with porridge. A lot of chinese markets have them ready made, but I think they are too salty.
I think the best tasting soy sauce eggs is cooked in the sauce left after making soy sauce chicken. It gives the sauce a richer taste. However, you can just make the eggs without making the chicken. I meant to get the recipe from my mom, but I haven’t had the chance. However, I did find this recipe from Use Real Butter that appears to be similar to the one my mom uses. Though I think my mom uses a five spice package in hers. If I ever get the recipe from her, I’ll add it to this post.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Last week I was contacted by McFarlane Promotions, inquiring into whether I would like a sneak peek at San Diego Restaurant Week. They were offering me a complimentary 3 course prix fixe meal at one of the following locations: Cowboy Star, 333 Pacific, Island Prime, Sbicca, Kensington Grill, Café Coyote & NINE-TEN.
As someone who participates in Restaurant Week every year, the invitation for an early sneak peek, plus a complimentary meal was too good to pass up. I went through the menus of the various restaurants (all of which can be found on the San Diego Restaurant week website). Island Prime had the menu that looked most appealing to me.
Boyfriend and I have dined at Island Prime a few times after its grand opening back in around 2005. We enjoyed it but we stopped going back. I don’t think we really had a reason. There were just other restaurants we preferred more and we were busy trying other places.
We came to the dinner armed with my Canon Rebel XS camera. Usually on food outings, I only bring my small digital camera in order to not draw attention, but since the restaurant knew who I was and why I was there, I thought I might as well bring along my nice camera and take some pretty shots.
We were given a table right next to the window, with a beautiful view of the harbor. Though really, there is no bad view in the house. The restaurant is designed so that the side wall is an enormous window, giving all its dining patrons a nice view of the harbor.
Shortly after we were seated, the supervisor for the night came out to speak to us, and provided us with the restaurant week menu. I had a hard time getting the complete menu in my picture, but you can view it online as well.
On my previous trips to Island Prime, I thought that what they did best was steak and other red meats. The filet mignon definitely caught my eye. I do wish that Island Prime would offer another red meat option for restaurant week, such as their lamb chops, but perhaps I feel this way because I’m a big red meat lover when I dine out. In order to make the most of our sneak peek, Boyfriend and I decided to order completely different dishes, exploring as much of the prix fixe menu as possible.
After we ordered, we waited for a little bit before we were provided with the bread. A server came around with a warm basket of bread, and he picked out and placed on each of our plates one giant roll. The bread had a mushroom-like shape,. The inside was hollow when broken up. By itself, the bread was slightly sweet. It was also dense and chewy rather than fluffy. I really enjoyed the bread. Accompanying the bread was some whipped butter. To my surprise, it was a whipped sweet butter that was also slightly spicy. It provided a very interesting taste with the bread. My bread was slightly burned on one side though. But other than that, I enjoyed it.
For my first course, I chose the butternut squash soup. The bowl of soup was quite large. The use of sunflower seeds was a great idea. It provided the soup with a great texture, letting you chew and crunch rather than sip all night. The soup was slightly sweet. I do wish that it had another flavor to it. A spicy kick to it perhaps? After drinking about half the soup, I did grow a bit tired of it and it was making me full.
Boyfriend chose the BLT salad. It was served on a wedge of lettuce, with bits of bacon, and accompanied with a crunchy slice of baguette. It tasted fine, but there was nothing special about it. It tasted like a regular BLT salad.
For my main course, I chose the filet mignon. I ordered it cooked medium. When I cut it open, I was pleased to see that it was cooked exactly right.
The outside of the steak was crusted with spices and salt. Boyfriend
thought it was too salty, but I think it was fine as long as you
weren’t only eating the outside of the steak by itself. Accompanying
the steak were mashed potatoes and french green beans. The green beans
were crisp and cooked just right. The helping of mashed potatoes was
quite generous, but they weren’t that special though. (Sorry for the
different lighting on some of the photos. I couldn’t decide whether I
preferred the natural dim lighting for the food or altering the white
balance so that the food would look brighter, so I kept switching
between the two.)
Boyfriend got the salmon.
The salmon was encrusted with a sweet glaze. The black linguine was served with a very creamy sauce. The cucumber salad was a nice refresher. I liked each item on their own. Boyfriend did too, but thought that the linguine sauce didn’t complement the salmon sauce well. Overall, I preferred my steak to the salmon.
Our desserts were served together on a large plate. We ordered the pineapple upside down cake and chocolate hazelnut torte. The torte looked so small compared to the pineapple cake, but what it lacked in size, it made up in richness. The torte was extremely rich and chocolatey, with little bits of hazelnuts inside. The outside of the pineapple cake was a bit dry. But the inside was very moist and fluffy. I also liked the rum sauce accompanying it. It took a while to get used to, but I ended up really liking the pineapple cake. It was a lighter dessert, after a heavy meal.
Overall, it was an enjoyable experience, much like our past experiences at Island Prime. While some restaurants offer cheaper menu items for their prix fixe menu, I think Island Prime has fairly generous offerings, with their 8oz filet mignon option. The food was well prepared and we were quite full after our meal.
The beautiful view and the fact that Island has its own parking lot is also a plus. Service was very attentive and I don’t think it was just because we were there for the sneak peek. The other tables got equally attentive service and we received good service on our previous visits.
Restaurant week runs from January 17-22. You can visit the website to get a list of all restaurants particpating, as well as their menu offerings. Reseverations are pretty much a necessity.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
One of my Christmas gifts was a Nordic Ware Platinum Collection Petits Fours Pan I was trying to decide how best to use it. Mini yogurt cakes? Madeleines? I decided on madeleines and then decided to find a new madeleine recipe. While searching for one, I came across recipes for Kuih Bahulus. I've never had Kuih Bahulu before, but it was explained as being the Malaysian version of madeleines. The little cakes looked so cute. According to the brief research I did, Kuih Bahulu is a traditional Malaysian dessert, and is made during various Malaysian holidays and also Chinese New Year. There are specific molds for these treats, but my molds looked similar in size and design, so I thought it should work as well.
Reading that these treats are made during Chinese New Year made me want to try these out even more. I've been trying to do some Chinese New Year themed stuff, as it is coming up next month (February 14!). I was slightly concerned I wouldn't enjoy these treats because I read that they are a bit dry and best eaten with coffee. But I decided to try them out anyway.
I found several recipes, and ended up trying a recipe provided by Rasa Malaysia. The recipe called for a little bit of oil (noting that it is not traditional to contain any), but I thought this would ease my concerns about the cakes being dry. These were simple to whip up, and the recipe amount was the exact amount for my pan.
Afterwards, the cakes were a bit hard to take out. I don't know if it is because of the cakes or because of the pan. To me, these did not really taste like madeleines, but tasted a lot like chinese sponge cakes (but more dense and dry). They are definitely on the dry side, but they are still tasty.
Recipe from Rasa Malaysia
1 cup sugar
1 1/4 cup flour (sifted)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons cooking oil/butter
1. Beat the eggs with an electric hand-mixer until frothy and then add
sugar. Continue to beat until the sugar is well dissolved and the
mixture becomes sticky.
2. Add in the vanilla essence and fold in the flour gradually and then
add in the cooking oil/butter. Continue to beat the batter with the
hand-mixer until well-blended. Grease the kuih bahulu moulds and fill
up to the surface level. (I recommend slightly below surface level as these cakes do puff up)
3. Bake in preheated oven at 375 degree Fahrenheit for about 15 minutes
or until golden brown. Remove bahulu from the moulds and cool on wire
racks. Dust with powdered sugar, if desired.