Friday, December 18, 2009

Love?

A lot of people have different opinions about love. What love is. Love is a feeling, love is something you work at, It's weird how something so widely shared by millions, is such a different experience to everyone of us. Granted, a lot of us share similar ideas and thoughts.

Love... It truly is difficult. I've probably thought about this every now and then. If you think about it, two people meeting under the right circumstances, in the right time of day, in the right greeting, in the right style, with a the right first impression. And this is only the beginning. After the inital meeting, is then reaction, chemistry, wanting similar things in life, living with certain faults. Love... the act of love, the whatever you define love as, it really is an amazing occurance, no... happening. When i think of what i want from love, even if it is a little love, is to share some bit of that rightness with someone else.

Love happens. (i hope :D)

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

I call it Pork Tenderloin alla Napoli


INGREDIENTS

  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 (3/4 pound) pork tenderloins
  • 2 Roma (plum) tomatoes, seeded and chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped green olives
  • 1/4 cup dry white wine
  • 1 teaspoon chopped fresh rosemary
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon pepper
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Heat the oil in a pan on medium-high heat. Brown pork on all sides. I had to place all the pork on a baking pan, but if you can fit it, you can just leave it on the pan

Seperately mix all the tomatoes, olives, wine, rosemary and garlic in a bowl. Pour over the pork. Season with salt and pepper.
Put the pan in the preheated oven for 30 mins.
put all the juices/tomates/olives, etc. in the pan gradually mixing in the cream. Stir constantly, bring to a boil and reduce the heat to low. continue cooking for 5 mins, until the sauce is nice and thick.

Then slice the pork and pour the cream sauce over and enjoy!

Serving size for 6

The Searing and baking technique works wonders for keeping the pork moist!
I think this was the most delicious dish, ive made so far. well, the cuban style pork was good too.
The baking of the olive, tomates and rosemary mixed in with the cream was really favorful. the sauce is creamy and rich with a kind of sweet aftertaste.

Taste : 10/10 wonderful~!
Cost : 10/10 - $50 for 9 people. $6-$7 a person
Labor 10/10 - took 35 - 45 min in all

Improvements : add more tomatoes, olives, and rosemary!

This was really simple, not too many ingredients and tasted great!

- fill out! :P

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Memorial Day Weekend

This weekend was Memorial Day weekend! I decided it would be fun to throw a BBQ. Play a little B-ball, V-ball. And eat some good food! My culinary donation was Cuban Style Pork Chops!

This recipe was by far the most delicious yet. Ive been a little lazy in getting my 30 in 60, but i'll do my best. So, as you can tell, next up is Cuban Style Pork Chops. I saw one look at the ingredients and i really wanted to try it. Actually i think i've made this before, a little differently, it didnt turn out that great. It was... too bland and not delicious. So this is revised!

Ingredients

1. Orange Juice ( i fresh squeezed mine! took forever!)
2. Lime Juice (Again freshly squeezed i thought it would taste better)
3. Pork Chops (of course)
4. Dried Oregano leaves
5. Fresh Cilantro
6. Olive oil
7. Canola Oil
8. Ground Cumin (This really added flavor)
9. Garlic (chopped)
11. Ham
12. Swiss Cheese
13. Pickles (preferably the flat sandwich kind)

For the sake of feeding more mouths and not cooking the past week, i went all out and bought enough for about 15 people. It cost me about $60 for new ingredients. So about, $4 per person! Amazing! I think about $11 if you just bought it for yourself to make. These are directions for a serving size of 4.

First! Pork Chops
I bought the pork chops from costco. a little thick so i cut each piece in half and then butterflied them. After that i flattened them with a hammer. (make sure to keep the pork in one piece)

Part 2! Sauce
Add 1/4 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup lime juice, as much oregano you like, and the cilantro with a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Mix well, taste to check. This goes on the pork chops after its done cooking! You have my permission to drench! hehe

Next! marinade.
Whisk together 1/2 cup orange juice, 1/4 cup lime juice, 3 tablespoons oregano, 6 cloves of garlic, 3 teaspoons of cumin, and 1/4 cup canola oil in a large baking dish. Add the pork and turn to coat. Cover and let marinate for up to 3 hours in the refrigerator. The longer you leave it the better.

Lastly, The cooking part
I did mine over a charcoal grill. First cook the pork cut side down (this makes it easier later) After you're done, turn it over and add 1 slice of swiss, ham, a few pickles, and another slice of cheese to one half of the piece. Then fold the pork so its a sandwich. make sure to cook the pork till its done and serve! Oh Dont forget the sauce!



Due to the location, i couldnt plate this dish! :) but it still looks good. At the BBQ, i only got one bite! But it was really, really good. The citrisness of the pork was great and the cilantro was awesome! And the Cumin really brought out the Cubanness! The ham and cheese and pickles, man! Yummy.This was really good!

Taste: 10/10 - It was so good!
Cost: 9/10 - i would do this again for BBQ's, better for large groups!
Labor: 8/10 - It's a little time consuming butterfling the pork and hand squeezing oranges and limes, but if you get just OJ and Lemon juice it'll save a lot of trouble.
Overall Rating: 9/10

Improvements: use OJ and lemon juice next time!

I really enjoyed BBQing. All the prep and good company made it that much better! Thanks Everyone!


- Fill Out!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Shrimp Paesano!

I found this recipe online. I didn't know what it was, but it sounded good, so i decided to make it. Since it had the word shrimp in it hahaha.

Ingredients:
1. 1 lb of Shrimp
2. flour
3. Olive oil
4. 2 sticks of butter (yea, this i didnt like)
5. half and half Cream
6. 4 cloves of garlic
7. 1 egg yolk
8. some salt and pepper for seasoning
9. Pasta i used linguine
10. chopped parsley
11. freshly squeezed lemon juice (1 lemon)

For this i only bought the pasta and half and half cream since i've had some of these ingredients from the before dish and at home. Estimated cost to make : $13

There are three parts to this recipe

Part 1 - Shrimp

I soaked the Shrimp in the half and half for about 30 min. After i drained them and lightly sprinked flour on one side of the shrimp. Then i proceeded to pan fry only one side of the shrimp, the flour side.Only cook for about 4 min on med in the vegetable oil (important) While i was doing this i was preheating the oven to 400 degrees. after place the one sided fried shrimp on a cooking pan, fried side down. Put the oven to broil and cook for about 5 min.

Part 2 - Pasta

Just cook whatever pasta to your liking. i choose linguine. boil in a bot for about 7 min, i like my pasta a little softer.

Part 3 - Sauce

This takes like 5 min so do this while you're broiling the shrimp. Make sure that all your ingredients are cold. Take 1 stick of butter and cut in to 1 inch pieces and put in a saucepan with the egg yolk and lemon juice keep stirring, this is important so that the yolk and butter mix correctly, this keeps the sauce to keep the same consistancy. After the butter has melted add the garlic, and parsley. Add in the rest of the butter(cut in 1 inch pieces) And you may add half and half if you want it creamier. I added about 1/4 a cup and found it to be too creamy. Make sure to consistantly stirring throughout this process. After the butter melts the sauce is done!


The shrimp should be done by now, allow to cool a little bit. Mix everything on a plate and enjoy!




I like the plating part a lot :). It looks better than before right? So this dish i really liked the shrimp. It was crispy and soft. I think its the combo of fry and baking the shrimp. The sauce was really rich. too rich and oily. Something i knew, i didnt like how much butter went in to it. But the sauce tasted good. The serving size came out to be about 4.

Taste: 7/10 - wonderful shrimp, sauce was too rich
Cost: 9/10 - Most of the items i had from home so i saved a lot of money
Labor: 6/10 - The shrimp takes a long process but i think it's worth it. Everything else was nice and simple

Overall Rating: 7/10

Improvements: find another sauce that doesnt use a lot of butter. This only tastes good hot, do not store and serve, the crispyness of the shrimp is lost if you do that, i learned that because thats what i did. It didnt taste the same.

Things i liked: i liked the fry oven method, interesting and delicious!

Next up ... dont know yet

- Fill Out!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Shrimp Risotto! Yum!

I've only had risotto once. It was New Years and my brother, the food expert, suggested a place in SF. They served it with lamb. I loved it, just the texture of risotto, it's so good. My brother said it was... eh! ok. I forget the name of the place. It cost about $40. Since then, which was 5 months ago, ive been dying to make this at home and feel that wonderful texture again! So, i started looking for recipe's and how to make a good risotto. I found it to be pretty simple. So here it goes....

Ingredients
1. Arborio Rice (must have, this is what keeps the texture consistant)
2. Shrimp (obviously), i chose tiger shrimp about 12
3. 4 cloves of garlic
4. 1 medium yellow onion (chopped fairly small)
5. 2 sticks of celery
6. 2 quarts of chicken stock
7. fresh parsley
8. butter
9. olive oil
10. Dry Vermouth (i didnt use this, i used desert wine, worked fine)
11. mushrooms
12. fresh tomatoes diced

Not too many ingredients right? this all cost me about $12

So i first boiled the chicken stock and put the shrimp in, to add shrimp flavor to the stock!
5min, done, take the shrimp out cut to bite size pieces. Next, olive oil, butter, onions, mushrooms, celery, garlic in to the frying pan. After about 30 sec on medium i added desert wine, and the rice. So the proper way of making Risotto is you put in the rice, wait for it to soak all the liquid in the pan, then repeat until the rice becomes (al dente! i didn't know what this meant, but according to wiki :rice or beans that have been cooked so as to be firm but not hard) So you start with the vermouth and then wait till its all soaked up and add one scoop of "boiling" chicken stock (the boiling is necessary for the rice to completely soak it all up. So you wait till it soaks up and repeat till the rice is al dente! I then proceeded to add the shrimp and fresh parsley. Then added fresh tomatoes on the dish and Bam! Shrimp Risotto.



I plated it :) hee~! It may not look that great, but it tasted really, really good. I could taste everything from the small amount of butter i added, to the wine. The texture was so creamy, though i am not an expert. the fresh tomatoes and parsley was a refreshing coolness to the warm risotto. The total serving size came out to be about 3. I would definitely cook this again!

Taste: 8/10 - wonderful aroma, even better taste, creamy texture + fresh tomatoes = GOOD!
Cost: 9/10 - compared to the $40 dish i thought this was much better!
Labor: 8/10 - prep=5 min, cooking=30 min & took less than a min to devour it all!
Overall Rating 8/10

Improvements : I think if i used a better quality Shrimp it could've tasted better, and if i seasoned the shrimp. The shrimp was a little bland. and... i wish i had made more! hahaha!

Things I liked : How the rice soaked up all the different flavors of the wine, butter, and stock. You could really taste them all individually

Next up.... Shrimp Paesano

i bought a lot of shrimp :)

- Fill Out!

New Project

So lately a friend of mine started 40 in 40. Forty movies in forty nights and writes about them in his own aspects, what he thinks about them, what kind of things that they remind him of. I thought this would be a great thing to do except i wouldnt want to do the exact same thing he's doing. So.. i decided i would cook. Lets call it my 30 in 60? haha 30 recipes in 60 days. I would cook something new, well, something i havent done before that i think would taste awesome! Now you may ask, 30 in 60? thats only 1/2! I do declare, it is not! muhaha. 1 day to find a recipe and to get fresh ingredients. 1 day dedicated for cooking. I think it'll be fun! and Oh! so delicious, or really bad! hahaha. :)

I'm really excited for this project! If you have any favorite dishes, ill try to cook them the best i can, in a "cheap" way. I figure we spend about $10 on food daily if we were to eat out every day. So i plan to keep the price around $10 for ingredients. :)

1st up, Shrimp Risotto - been dying to eat risotto!

- Fill Out!

Friday, May 8, 2009

Life of Technology

Today as i was walking in the park, i saw an old couple, i think about the ages of late 60's maybe early 70's. They were talking a walk both with cellphones to their ears yapping away. I sat down just to see how long they would continue ignoring each other on their walk. After about 15 min, one of them hung up and dialed another number. !!! Ridiculous! I wonder if in the future, people will cease to have human interaction. It be like calling someone sitting right next to you so you could talk. Its pretty sad, that we are turning in to these machines that require to be "plugged in" at all times. A few weeks ago i lost my cellphone, which i use for pretty much everything. Calling people, Google maps, texts, emails, instant msging. I was without a cellphone for 5 days. At the same time, we had switched internet services and was without internet. I never had such a quiet 5 days of my life! I spent my time studying, reading, exercising. It was so liberating! And then i got a replacement phone and internet and i was hooked on it again. Its like a drug. I dont know what i'd do without my cellphone or internet. But i guess it isnt all bad, phones do help you connect with people in our busy lives. I just think we depend on it too much, like i do.

end of rant!

- Fill Out!

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Voice Coach

This all starts with my friend. The past 4 years of my life, I've been developing these relationships with people.. very much like me. They are my classmates. Its weird when you find that at the highly specialized school that you go to, almost all of the people there are almost exactly like you. But, it's really cool, we share a lot with each other and hopefully for our lives to last! Anyways, one of them is getting Married. She's 27, and getting married to her college sweetheart. About a year ago, her(henceforth known as girl), another one of our classmate "noona" (yes, korean, girl, but... married) and I went to a Karaoke Place and sang our hearts out! It was pretty fun, i couldnt understand most of the songs sung but i found out that the noona was a pretty good singer. Kinda hard to tell when the mics are all made to make you sound good. So... the girl asked us if we would sing at her wedding when she got married, i thought she was joking. Apparently not. So we're doing a duet for her wedding which is in 2 weeks. Exciting!

We're singing "Endless Love" by Luther Van Dross and Mariah Carey. Yea, tough song.
So we met up to practice last week and the noona says that she has a friend that is a voice coach and is willing to help us out. AWESOME!!!

I think singing is one of my passions that I often think, i could enjoy spending my life doing. This is supported by people who have told me, i have a good voice. Honestly i thought everyone was just being nice. Well, we met with this person, her name is Lauren, japanese, excellent english, great voice! We met for 2 hours. At first we sang the song, so she could hear what she's dealing with. heh heh, i was kinda nervous. The first hour, we just warmed up, something ive never ever done in my life. It was... enlightening. We would do scales and some breathing exercises. Then we practiced the songs. Along the way she made some comments about both our voices. To me, "Phil, you have a beautiful tenor voice. and have pretty good range!" "When you sing, i can tell you have a lot of confidence." I thought COOOL!!!! Thinking of when i actually started singing, you couldnt hear my voice even on a mic! And then she suggested things i could work on! This i really wanted to know! " Phil, sometimes you have trouble hold a note and sometimes go flat, but its not too much where you can notice it. " "also when singing these type of songs, try to not pronouce the R's. They stick out like a sore thumb. Also pronouce your T's and make your S's short. Try to sound british. Like "Heart" would be "Haart"

In all it was a really enlightening experience. If you count all the exclamation points in the post i think you can tell how excited i was. :) Afterward she was talking to me and said if i ever wanted professional help, i think you could go very far! HEE :D

not that i will, but it's good to know hahaha. Hopefully i could record our performance and post it up online. I hope i dont mess up!

- Fill Out!