A Wonderfuly Costco weekend!

I luuurve Costco! I'm a huge sucker for cheap stuff and good deals and that's why I love Costco! For the benefit of those who have been living in a cave for the last decade or so (though, if one has been living in a cave, I suppose internet access isn't likely), Costco is an American-based warehouse supermarket for the members. The basic membership costs a little more than $30 a year and membership benefits include purchasing groceries in insanely huuuge quantities for very cheap. I had not shopped for groceries in more than 2 weeks so this Costco trip was waaay overdue. Can you believe I spent over $200? I can't either. But anyway, we did get a lot of stuff (including liquor) so it wasn't too bad.

The highlight of my splurge was the frozen Maryland crabcakes. For the past few months, I have been having a seafood withdrawal symptoms due to the shortage of good, fresh seafood in my diet! Living in the Midwest, it's quite a challenge to get reasonably-priced fresh seafood. Recently, I have been craving for crab in particular. I think those scintillating Ruby Tuesday commercials featuring the new crab cake appetizer dish helps to fire a lot of the seafood withdrawal neurons in my brain. Being the suckah that I am, I did go to Ruby Tuesday (RT) and tried their crabcake. It was quite tasty but at $9 per pop (only one pathetic crabcake per order), it was a bit too rich for my blood. The RT crabcake was a little overcooked (charred) but there were quite sizeable crab meat chunks visible. It was served with a spicy mayo sauce and a mini baby green salad.

Since then, I've just been wanting to eat some seafood all the time. It doesn't help that my one and only sushi-eating friend was out of town for a whole month! Solution: Costco crabcakes. We immediately made some as soon as we got home. There were a few ways to heat them up: (1) microwave, ech(!), (2) pan-fry, or (3) bake and then broil. I chose the third option because I was a bit occupied (which I will get to later) and so, couldn't labor over my pwetty crabcakes the whole time. The turned out beautiful and delicious! I had mine with some Indonesian Cap Jempol chili sauce and it was perfect!



As you can see for yourself, the crabcakes didn't have gigantic chunks of meat (which I would've preferred) but it was very well-seasoned and is really, really good considering they ARE frozen! I mean, really, us beggars in the Midwest cannot be choosers. Fortunately, I bought two boxes of these yummy crabcakes at Costco. It'll have to last me until I visit a place with access to the sea.

Besides a whole lot of frozen seafood and unhealthy stuff, I managed to squeeze in a lot of wonderful fresh fruit. I bought a whole pound of Chilean-imported blueberries. Not only are they nice and plump, they pop and ooze fresh, sweet yet tart goodness when you bite into them. I especially luuurve a handful of blueberries with my morning cereal. Also, I can just eat blueberries naked, all them themselves. Now, THAT is perfection.


However, I have also been in the mood to bake muffins. There's nothing better than a warm blueberry muffin with a cup of hot tea on a cold winter day while you're knitting or reading or just watching TV. But, I restrained myself from degrading my fresh blueberries and made oatmeal cookies with dried fruit instead. It was horribly cold yesterday and the the wind never stopped blowing! I flipped open one of my favorite cookbooks, The Best Light Recipe, and used the oatmeal cookie recipe. Before adding the raisins, I halved the dough into two portions. Into one, I added the classic, traditional raisins. To the other batch, I added some dried cranberries and white chocolate chunks.

BEFORE


AFTER


The cookies turned out delicious and were crisp on the outside while it was chewy in the middle. Now that they have been sitting around for a day in the tupperware, they have crisped up more. I personally like chewy cookies so I probably should've underbaked them even more but the flavor is good. The oatmeal raisin cookies are simple and you can't go wrong with them. The oatmeal white chocolate cranberry cookies were quite exciting to me. It has a refreshing combination of sweetness and tartness that I really enjoy. I gave some to my colleagues and they remarked how they couldn't believe the cookies were "light" and that's pretty cool. So far, the light recipe cookbook hasn't disappointed. Even though all the recipes call for lower-fat or lighter substitutes, the flavor and taste is never compromised.

Another thing I tried out this weekend (I sure did a lot of stuff, huh?) was to make mochi. Not really "make" because I just basically heated one dried mochi in the toaster oven. It was pretty cool because the mochi transformed from this flat disc to a puffed-up ball of chewy goodness. I had it with some soy sauce and sugar, but it wasn't as delicious as some other mochi I had with peanuts and sugar. Hmmm... I think I need to get a pack of kinako (soybean powder) that the Japanese traditionally sprinkle on mochi.



Ok, one last thing I did (the activity that kept me from pan-frying my crabcakes) was I (FINALLY!) finished my second knit bag, lining and all! If you remember, a while ago, I made a knit bag for my sister. Since I had so much leftover yarn, I decided to make another one for myself. The second bag is considerably bigger and the main difference is the lining. Instead of a pretty, flowery pink lining, I chose a green tea-ish shade of cotton that matches the green color of the yarn. It turned out pretty awesome and I'm so glad I finally finished this project. And hey, it doesn't hurt that I can use the bag and show my creation off the world. Yippee!

More Frisco Thxgiving!

The arctic weather has frozen Chicago solid and it's way too cold to do anything but to stay in and snuggle in my blanket while watching an unhealthy dose of TV. Besides the addictive "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" marathon, I managed to rustle the boyf out of our comfortably warm cocoon to shop for groceries on Saturday and we had steak and a bottle of wine at home. It was one of the best steak dinners I've ever had and it was well worth the money! (Yah, I'm cheap, I know, I know!)

Anyway, back to more of my SF Thanksgiving adventure with my fellow cousins! We went to the restaurant Citizen Cake for lunch on the day after Thanksgiving. We were really excited about it because we had heard a lot about this place (whether it's on the all-pervasive TV or magazines or word-of-mouth). It is a place known for its individual-sized cakes and pastries. After a whole morning of shopping (we got our asses off the bed at 6 am, in an attempt to scout out post-Thanksgiving deals), we were hungry and were hoping to have brunch at Citizen Cake. Unfortunately, they don't serve brunch on weekdays (sigh, and I was eye-ing the French toast already). However, their lunch menu had some yummy-looking fares too. It consists mostly of sandwiches and salads, all very light and delicate (how Californian! Oooo). I had a smoked turkey sandwich called the Pavo Rico. In addition to the smoked turkey, the sandwich also has cocoa nib mole (which I didn't really taste), delicious mozzarella, roasted red peppers and cilantro mayo in between grilled panini-style bread. It was served with a small baby salad on the side and I loved it! It's possible that my hunger (remember, no breakfast) made the sandwich taste even better but hell, it was good!


My dear sister ordered the pizza with marinara, pepperoni, mozzarella and baby arugula. It was very simple but well-done.

My cousins had their ultimate grilled cheese sandwich which had cabot sharp cheddar, gruyère on acme italian bread also grilled to a delicious crisp with a small side salad. It was also very scrumptious.

Having made a thousand-mile pilgrimage to Citizen Cake, we just had to try their desserts, right? I mean, after all, it IS a restaurant owned by a pastry chef. The item that was recommended by out waitress is this rich, chocolatey cake covered in a delicate ganache. It was perfect: not too sweet, not too bitter and 100% dark. Yum!

The second dessert item we had was less impressive: the rose petal creme brulee with saffron cookies. It was bruleed perfectly but the creme part was way too soft and liquid-y for my taste.The hint of rose syrup in the creme was nice and unique, but I found the saffron cookies unnecessary and too sweet.

The third dessert (yes, you read it correctly, THIRD) was the worst. I mean, it was rather disappointing but I must give them credit for inventiveness. It was named "gleaming the cube". It consisted of date-soft chocolate, sherry-date purée, pumpkin purée and coconut-thai sorbet. The plate was like a modernist piece of art but overall, the taste was bizzare and unfocused. I thought it was trying to do too much and ended up botching everything up.

I think maybe we should've stuck to the patesserie section of the place for dessert instead because the patisserie offering ranges from sinful cookies and cakes to fluffy, angelic meringues and cheesecakes and tarts. Maybe next time? Overall, it was an unexpectedly good place for lunch! And the sourdough bread they served was quite good. I mean, really, who in SF does NOT serve sourdough bread?


A better place we went to on our last night in SF was NIck's Lighthouse at Fisherman's Wharf. I know, I know, a rather touristy area but hey, they're by the wharf! So their seafood must be pretty fresh and it was. My cousin Jessy recommended this place and we started with a cup of lobster bisque and clam chowder. Both were delicious and creamy.

We then shared two main courses: the lazy man's Cioppino in tomato broth and a plate of lightly sauteed shellfish. I loved the freshness of everything and how well-cooked the seafood was. Sigh~ Just thinking of it makes me want to move to the coast.


Well, thanks to this entry, I'm now famished and it's time for lunch! Oo-ee! Leftover stuffing and microwaved Boca soy burgers, here I come!

Happy Frisco Thanksgiving!

I just came back from San Francisco for Thanksgiving and I must say that I was rather impressed by SF's food scene. Maybe I'm just too deprived of great Asian and seafood options in the Midwest but I am very happy with what I tried out there. It was also just wonderful to catch up with my cousins and be with (somewhat) like-minded people in terms of food. Most of my friends just don't understand why I am so passionate about something they consider to be a mere necessity. I personally believe the enjoyment of food with all the senses is a daily joy and is something to look forward to. So anyway, we tried many different places but I'm not going to bombard you with too much in too little time. I'm going to recount our culinary adventure little by little.

I'm going to start out with the best places we went to so that if I got tired of writing about the trip, you would only miss out the places that weren't so great. Yay! So the best joint that we went to is Swan Oyster depot. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of place that serves some of the freshest seafood I've ever had. I first saw it on Rachael Ray's "$40 A Day" and my interest was piqued. It is also the place that many chefs cite as not to be missed when in SF when I was reading issues of Gourmet magazine. Swan Oyster Depot is a very small place, it fits approximately 12-15 customers at the bar. My cousin, Jessy, and I waited in line for a little under an hour and we both thought it was totally worth it!


Besides being a restaurant, Swan Oyster Depot also sells fresh, raw wholesale seafood to those who want to cook their own seafood at home. We saw some of the biggest and juiciest-looking scallops but unfortunately, they weren't on the menu (unless we wanted to have them sushi style). We started with a half dozen fresh oysters that our server recommended. There were six different varieties and we thought we'd try them all. All of them were super fresh and awesome! Each had a different taste and mouth feel to it and they were all very well-shucked. Topped with a small dab of cocktail sauce and horseradish, the oysters were heaven on a shell!


The other items we had were lobster and crab cocktails. When our first cocktail came, it was already mixed up with cocktail sauce and we thought that it would be served with the sauce on the side so we asked our server if we could have ours on the side and he obliged immediately. Now is that great service or what? So he went ahead and cracked open a new, freshly boiled lobster and collected the meat for us with the sauce on the side. The crab and lobster were tender and tasted so fresh that I almost cried. The bar that all the customers were seated at was very intimate in that we get to essentially witness the food preparation. There was a huge slab of smoked salmon in front of us and we weren't sure what it was and so we asked about what it was. The proprietor gave us each two slices of the smoked salmons and that's how I had the best smoked salmon ever! Not only was it perfectly smoked, it tasted fresh and didn't smell fishy at all. Its pure salmon taste filled my mouth and I felt like it melted in my mouth.


I am so happy that I found and ate at Swan Oyster Depot. Like many others, I think Swan Oyster Depot is that place not to be missed when in SF. Not only is the service friendly and warm, we were made to feel like we were just visiting a friend's place (a friend who happened to be a fisherman). Even though it's on the pricey side and we had to wait in line to eat, the fresh seafood was totally worth it!

The second awesome place we went to was this small bakery in Chinatown that sells the usual slew of Chinese pastries. My cousin, Jessy and I went there the morning we were departing SF for a small breakfast. Prior to the bakery we had already visited another Chinatown eatery for the famous leaf-wrapped steamed glutinous rice (for lunch on the plane) and shiu may (part of Jessy's breakfast). At the bakery I ordered my two all-time favorite Chinese pastries: egg tart and paper-wrapped steamed chiffon cake. Jessy had a custard filled bun that was topped with a layer of sweet cookie.


The egg tart I had was the very best egg tart I have ever had. The puff pastry crust was rich, buttery and melted in my mouth. The egg custard filling was even better! It is not too sweet and has the perfect texture. The filling was like the creme of creme brulees that one can get at top notch restaurants, not too creamy yet not too solid. If only I had bought more to bring home to Chicago...


Jessy's custard bun was also delicious. I had a bite of it and really loved the crispy cookie crust that topped off the bun. Its custard filling was a tad sweet but the bread was soft and pillowy, and the cookie crust was perfectly baked. Eaten with a piping hot cup of tea, this is the breakfast for (Chinese) champions!


The paper-wrapped steamed cake was also very good. I like that it was only slightly sweet and its faint vanilla aroma was just nice. Its texture was very light, even lighter and fluffier than an angel food cake. The shiu may that Jessy bought were also delicious. They were packed with meaty goodness and so much flavor. Dipped in some soy sauce, it was even better and provided some protein for our breakfast.

So these were the two top places (I think) that we had the fortune to eat at. They are definitely places I will return to when I visit SF in the future. I find that the SF culinary scene is alive and bustling with a lot of excitement, whether it is a good old American seafood or a quintessential Chinese meal.