Beef Rice Bowl And High School

It only happened twice every year during high school. I would wake up (forget when....) 3am, 4am and drive to my school. The air was crisp and I would carry a light jacket just in case. By the time I get to school there would already be a line of people. Talking, sitting, waiting. We had to do this because that was the only way we would get the classes (or summer classes) we wanted and the schedule we wanted. Basically a bunch of high school kids sitting and waiting till 6am (or was it 7am?) to talk to our counselors and hoping to be early enough in line to get the classes we wanted.

Do you remember Yoshinoya? There was one in Times Square but it's long gone now. It's pretty common in LA and back in high school, I would go there a lot. They make a pretty darn good beef bowl, gyudon. I remember one time, while we were all waiting in the dark at our high school, someone had the awesome idea of going to Yoshinoya and grabbing beef bowls for some of us. I think it ended up me driving but when it's chilly and it's 4am and you're hungry. Man, that beef bowl was like heaven in your stomach.

I rarely eat beef bowls nowadays, I'm more an oyakodon person but when my friend, Benson, posted a video recipe on his Facebook for a beef bowl....I decided to give it a try.

Funny how you memory works. While I was eating this, I couldn't stop thinking about that one time in high school.

You can find Benson's recipe for gyudon here.

I like to redo high school.

Matcha French Toast, Hong Kong Style

After reading this WSJ article on why fruits and vegetables in Chinatown are so cheap, I decided to head over to Chinatown to buy some fruits. I was going to just buy one pound of rainier cherries but the lady said I should buy two and she showed me how much one pound was. Good thing I listened to her cause these cherries were crazy delicious and sweet. I probably ate a whole pound that night while Netflix binging.

So the idea for a matcha French toast came to me when I was attending Valentina's food styling and photo workshop few weeks ago. She made a matcha crepe cake during the workshop and that got me thinking because I have a tiny bit of matcha powder left and I should really use it up. Of course being the lazy me, I was not going to make a crepe cake. Instead I decided to make French toast, Hong Kong style.

I'm just gonna go ahead and tell you......the way I tried to incorporate the matcha powder into the eggs totally failed. Haha

I guess in my head, I imagined to somehow smoothly mix the matcha into the scrambled eggs, turning them into green scrambled eggs. But all I did was tiny clumps of matcha powder in scrambled eggs. Maybe I could've blended it with the hand blender.....hm......next time.

Anyways, Hong Kong style French toast is quite easy to make. All you need is bread, oil or butter, and eggs. It's typically slices of bread soaked with the scrambled eggs and fried in butter or oil. Served with a slab of butter.

Things you'll need:

• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon matcha powder
• 3 slices of bread
• Creme fraiche (or whipped cream if you like)
• Rainier cherry and strawberry compote (or jam or just fresh fruits)
• Butter or oil
• Extra matcha powder for dusting afterwards

Rainier cherry and strawberry compote

• 1 cup of rainier cherries (or regular cherries)
• 1 cup of strawberries
• Zest and juice of 1 lemon
• Sugar (about 1/4 cup to start)

To make the compote, remove the pits from the cherries and cut all the strawberries in half.

Add the fruits into a pot with lemon zest, lemon juice, and add about 1/4 cup of sugar to start.

Let the fruits slowly cook over low flames. Stir to mix and keep an eye on it. I nearly burnt the whole thing.

Cook the compote till the fruits are soft and has thicken. Taste to see if it needs more sugar.

Let compote cool in the fridge. Good to make the night before.

Matcha French Toasts

Combine matcha powder and eggs together. Try and get the matcha incorporated into the eggs as good as possible.

Get a pan hot on medium flames. Add enough oil or melt enough butter to cover the bottom of the pan.

Dip a slice of bread into the eggs, coat both sides and fry it in the pan until golden on both sides. Repeat for the other two slices of bread.

Place a slice of French toast on a plate, add a layer of creme fraiche, and a layer of compote.

Repeat last step.

To finish, dust some matcha powder on top and add fresh strawberries.

Curry Braised Pork Spare Ribs With Coconut Saffron Rice

So I'm a terrible person. I didn't really take down notes. I did mental notes instead. This is by no means an exact recipe but really how you feel that day and how spicy or curry flavor you want. And also you really should just use 1 onion instead of 2. I had binged on Youtube recipes on French onion soup and had this crazy idea of caramelizing a bunch of onions for this recipe. You certainly don't have to. And of course if you can't wait for 3hrs, go ahead and use ground pork or chicken or fish balls.

Of course the beauty of this dish is to let every cook....slow......and low. Really draw out the flavors of the ingredients.

As for the rice, it just so happened I had a pinch of saffron left. A gift from a friend. It's optional and you can totally experiment with other spices like cardamon or cumin.

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INGREDIENTS

Curry Pork Ribs

• Pork ribs
• Couple potatoes
• 2 medium size onions
• 1 stalk of lemongrass
• 1 tablespoon grated ginger
• 1 tablespoon grated garlic
• Coconut milk
• 2 tablespoon curry powder
• Salt + pepper
• Scallions

Coconut Saffron Rice

• Rice
• Coconut milk
• Pinch of saffron
• Pinch of salt

Get a real big pot or Dutch oven hot on a stove. Season the ribs with salt + pepper. Add enough oil to cover the bottom of the pot and brown all the ribs. Do in batches if needed. Remove the ribs and let them hang out a bit.

Add more oil if the pot is dry. Toss in the lemongrass and grated ginger and garlic. Stir. Add in the onion slices. Stir to mix everything together. Lower the heat to medium and slowly cook the onions till they start to caramelize, about 15-20mins. Sprinkle in the curry power and stir well.

Add the ribs. Add a whole can of coconut milk and than pour enough liquid (water or stock) to barely cover the ribs. Turn the heat up to high and bring the mixture to a boil. Once it start to boil, lower the heat to low, cover, and let it braise for couple hours.

Give it a good stir every 30mins.

2 hours later.....give it a taste. More coconut milk? Too much coconut milk? More curry powder? This is a good time to tweak it to your liking.

Add in the diced potatoes and cook till the ribs and potatoes are tender.

* I really wanted a thick curry, so I turned up the heat, after putting in the potatoes, and let the mixture cook without the lid.

To make the rice, cook the rice according to the directions on the package/box. And since it was my first time making coconut rice, I did half coconut milk and half water. Add saffron and a pinch of salt. Stir the uncooked rice. Cook the rice.

To serve, scoop the rice onto a plate, add couple ribs, add sauce, and sprinkle some scallions.

My Childhood Inspired Curry Fish Balls

There are few things that stick out when I think of my childhood in Hong Kong. 1) That one time I was wandering around while my mom was watching my sister's ballet recital. I was outside by myself and suddenly this old man took my hand and said "oh your mom is this way." He was totally pointing at a different direction. THANKFULLY I was able to pull away and ran back to my mom. 2) My teacher yelled at me because I had told her I needed to go to the restroom and after I was done, I bumped into my aunt. She asked me to go look for my cousin...or something and so I did. Then moments later my teacher found me and started yelling at me for wandering off. And before I could explain I was already crying. 3) My elementary school in Hong Kong sold fried fish balls in the cafe and everyday I wanted it soooo bad. But my dad wouldn't let me buy any. He would tell that the fish balls were dirty, the cooks would accidentally drop them on the ground and would step of them and then would pick them up and put it back into the pot..etc....etc.....etc. I THINK I only ate it once, ever, in Hong Kong. It wasn't until I had moved to NYC, like 18 years later, that I finally bought fried fish balls from a street cart. 18 years! There are no Chinese food carts in LA so yeah not until moving to NYC. I felt like a rebel, buying that skewer of fish balls.

So this recipe you can definitely use other balls. Beef, squid, cuttlefish, shrimp, pork filled. I was going to using the plain old pre-fried fish balls but these fish shaped fish cakes caught my eyes. And the addition of rice noodles (tube shaped) is a classic breakfast.

1 package of fish balls 1 package of rice noodles 2 tablespoon curry paste 2 cloves of garlic, minced 1 tablespoon grated ginger Couple scallions, sliced or diced Chicken stock 1 tablespoon flour Oil Salt + pepper Soy sauce Sesame oil

Add oil into a pot, over medium flames. When the oil is hot, add the grated ginger and minced garlic. Saute for 45secs or until fragrant.

Add curry paste. Stir it, incorporate into the oil, cook for a minute.

Toss in the balls (or fish shaped fish cakes). Mix a bit. Add in the chicken stock. You want the liquid to barely cover all of the fish balls. If it's not enough, add water. Bring it to a boil, lower the flames, and let simmer for 10mins. If you are using frozen balls, simmer the fish balls till they are warm inside.

In a separate bowl, combine couple tablespoons of curry sauce from the pot with a tablespoon of flour. Mix until no more lumps of flour. Add mixture to pot of fish balls. Stir and let simmer for another minute or so. Add a tablespoon of soy sauce and a dash sesame oil.

Taste the sauce and season to taste.

Add rice noodles. Add as much as you like. My pot was only big enough for half the package of rice noodles. Give everything a quick mix. The rice noodles cook quick, so keep your eye on them. I used a fork to poke at them to see if the center has softened. You don't want to over cook the noodles or they will absorb too much liquid and become way too soft.

Finish with scallions