Kabocha and Pork Belly

In my kabocha eating quest, I received this recipe from Friend E, for a Filipino dish of pork belly, green beans, and of course, Kabocha!

It's super delicious, so I do recommend it!

Ingredients:

1 lb of pork belly, cubed
1 Tbsp or so of garlic, diced
1 roma tomato, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1 large handful of Chinese string beans, cut to ~2 inch pieces
1/4 kabocha squash, cubed
1 Tbsp Filipino shrimp paste
1 cup water

It took me a while to find the super-pink shrimp paste, which Friend E insisted there is absolutely no substitute for. >.>"  I eventually found it in the fridge section of Ranch 99 though. Check your local Asian grocer!

Dice veggies.

Brown the cubed pork belly with the garlic, and a little salt or oil.

To be honest this step took me a long time because I didn't have the heat up high enough. I was scared of flying grease! And it did fly towards the end, so be careful!  Drain the excess fat, but leave enough to coat the pan.

Add in the tomato and onion next, and sautee until it resembles a beautiful mush.

Then add the kabocha and string beans.

Finally add the cup of water with the shrimp paste (there are eyeballs swimmin' around in there, lol).

Bring to a boil, cover and then let simmer until the kabocha becomes soft.

Mmm.

Serve over rice, and enjoy!

Seriously, this is some tasty stuff.  Though, it's pork belly! How can it not be delicious??

Thanks Friend E!

Kabocha Salad

So, Japan is really into using seasonal foods.  Much like we associate pumpkin pie and turkey with fall, Japan has their own autumnal favorites.

One of those is the kabocha, a green skinned pumpkin/squash which is quite delicious (especially in Thai curry, mmm).

While shopping for dinner in a department store basement one night (because that's where the food is), I found an interesting dish - kabocha salad.  Like potato salad, but with kabocha.

I bought it,  ate it, and liked it enough to want to try any make my own at home.

Look at me getting all fancy with the cucumber.

Want to try? It's easy!

Ingredients: 
- kabocha (I used 1/4 of the pumpkin but since it was small I should have used half or more)
- 1/8 to 1/4 an onion, depending how oniony you like things
- 1/2 a small Persian or Japanese cucumber..or whatever the small crispy kind are called
- Japanese mayo (kewpie or other brand) to taste

Dice up the veggies, and add a little salt to help draw out the moisture. You'll want them crunchy in your salad! Let sit while you deal with the kabocha, and later come back to dab/drain out the water.

Microwave the kabocha until it's soft, and then scoop it out and mash it up in a bowl.  Try not to mash it up too much if you want that chunky potato taste.  I pretty much creamed mine, which made the end texture a little too smooth for "potato" salad.

Add drained veggies and some mayo.  I added like, 4 tbsp, and it was way too much for the amount of kabocha I had.

I ended up needing more starch =_= So add the mayo slowly at a time until you find the consistency that you like.

Add some pepper if you like!

The flavor was really good, though next time I will add less-smashed kabocha and maybe cut back on the onions a bit..I had a big red onion and it was a little overpowering.

For comparison here's the kabocha salad I bought from the store in Japan:

I think it's the Japanese mayo that really makes the dish. I could eat that stuff straight, it's so good.

Kidding. I'm not going to eat spoonfuls of mayo straight up. That's gross. Though with a bit of vegetable matter mixed in it's totally okay though, right? Haha. >.>"

Also, if you don't like my made-up recipe, there's like a bajillion on the Japanese recipe site Cookpad. Don't worry, they have an english version. Just type in "kabocha salad" in the search and have at it!

Hetalia America Cake

Like the past three years, we had a lovely family BBQ and fireworks show at our house for Independence Day.

But not to forget all my friends who were braving the crowds at Anime Expo in LA - I thought an APH America cake was in order!

"Watashi wa HERO!"

So for those of you who don't watch anime - Axis Powers Hetalia is a short (5 min episodes) show that portrays countries as different characters. Mainly WWII countries.  It's irreverent, funny and definitely cute. I think it's on Netflix and Hulu?

Anyway, America is my favorite, obviously.

He's so cute! And he has a hamburger! Alfred Jones!

I made him with whip cream and chocolate (for lines) using the same method as V-Day's Keroro cake (using Kawaii Kakkoii Sugoi's tutorial).  Since this was my second time, it came out a lot better - I made sure to make the cream even, so there weren't as many holes when I peeled it off onto the cake base.  However, I used a different box cake mix, a "moist pudding" type cake mix, and it was almost too soft.  Next time I will stick to a standard cake mix as it holds shape better.

You don't know how long it took me to mix red, green, blue and yellow food color into BROWN and KHAKI. Ugh. A lot of trial and error. But still, he's pretty cool!

Aside from cake, we also had BBQ and lots of other tasty food for the 4th.  Unfortunately our grill broke that day =_= so we ended up ordering BBQ from Armadillo Willy's. Kinda lame, haha. But it was still good so all's good.

At night, fireworks in Foster City.  We watched from our deck, with patriotic tunes blaring on Dad's ipod.

The 92 San Mateo Bridge in the background

Mom got some good shots this year!

'Murica!

Oahu: A Map of Food & More!

So I finally put together the Sak's map of Hawaii vacationing. Haha!  I'm sure it'll be an ever-evolving map as we do and eat new things each time we go!

Click here for my google map of Oahu

It's split into three sections - food, nature (flowers and swimming and such), and shopping.

My shopping list is pretty pitiful and consists only of craft stores and used bookstores. >.>"

Anyway, I figure this would be a pretty lame post without some pictures, so here's to food shots! Haha! You can find all these places (and more!) on my map.

Masago Ahi Poke with a hint of wasabi - delicious! (from Alicia's Market)

 Dried Aku poke - chewy and oishii! (from Highway Inn)

 An example of a poke counter at Alicia's market:

Poi doughnut from Kamehameha Bakery - purpley goodness!

How about an onigiri? This one is salmon and ikura (roe)...mother and child >.>"!

From Musubi Cafe Iyasume, which has a big variety of musubi and onigiri.

How about Penga-bro's favorite brunch place - Cinnamons?  I may have inhaled this kalua pork eggs benedict!

Err. My arteries! Let's get healthy again with this tuna salad from Aloha Salads.

Okay, maybe it's not that unique. I do eat salad like, practically everyday here in California :P Let's go back to unhealthy.

Yes, that'd be a shrimp po' boy from Dat Cajun Guy, a food truck. Yummo.

More dessert? How about this cutie from a bakery in the Shirokiya?

It may be super cute, but it didn't stop me from eating it. :P

Or how about something with a cute name? The snow puffy from Paalaa Kai bakery! Light and fluffy and full of custard!

But you really can't go until you've had the shave ice from Ice Gardens. Yes, that'd be FLAN ON MY ICE. 

And to think I wasn't a big shave ice fan before :P  This is on a whole 'nother level! (No seriously, it's hard to find, go upstairs :P)

If flan isn't your thing, there might be a few other options for you :P

Lastly, you can't eat him, but if you get a smoothie from Waialua Bakery, you just might see him or his buddies hanging outside the shop railings looking for crumbs :P

Ah, now I'm hungry.

What's your favorite Oahu eateries so I can add them to my map next time? :)

Keroro Gunsou Cake

Since Valentine's Day fell on my regular day off this year, I went all out and made Sak a cake! Well, the cake itself was just boxed chocolate mix, but the icing took a lot of effort, so that counts for something!

I used this Hatsune Miku cake tutorial, which is really well done and tells you just about everything you need to know.  I suggest you check it out, there's a video too!

But here's how my experience went in any case!

I started by tracing an image onto the non waxy side of some freezer paper.  I used the bottom of the cake pan as a guide for how big to make the circle.

Flipped over, trimmed and taped to the inside of a pan.  Make sure this pan will fit in your freezer. I had to do some serious rearranging to jam it in =_=...

For the outline, I melted some fancy Guittard's chocolate chips that Sak had won from a white elephant exchange earlier.

Roll more freezer paper into a tube for piping.  This was kinda difficult because the melted choco was like a million degrees hot and intricate piping with oven mitts is near impossible.  I'd try and wait for the choco to cool a bit first if I did this again.

Freeze.  I used the leftover choco in a cute ichibankan mold :)

Next, whip cream!  The instructions said to use half dairy and half non-dairy whipping cream.  This is because dairy whipped cream doesn't hold its shape very long. I could not, however, find non-dairy whipping cream at Safeway or Trader Joe's.  So I used cool whip.  That's kinda non-dairy.  The other half I whipped from regular heavy whipping cream.  Since the cool whip is already sweetened, I didn't add a whole lot of sugar to the mixture.

Separate and use food coloring to dye batches of the cream as needed.  Keep everything in the fridge to keep it from melting.

Greeeen.  Between each color freeze for five minutes or so to keep the colors from mixing.

Whip cream the cake.  I put it on a foil covered pizza tray because I don't have a cake platter :P

And the moment of truth! Flip the frozen whip cream image over onto the cake, and peel off the freezer paper.

Add cream to cover the edges. Done.

Soooo cuuuuteeeee.

If I have one major flaw though - it's that I didn't apply the whip cream very evenly.  Thus, when I flipped it onto the cake, parts with thin whip cream "sunk".

The other major flaw (that my sister pointed out), is that I screwed up Kero's face.  The bottom part is supposed to be white, not green.  I'm so ashamed. >.>" lol.

But I'm still very happy with it overall! I stuck it in the freezer for a good 30 minutes or so just to make sure it'd stay in one piece, and then in the fridge whenever we weren't eating it.  It was pretty tasty, and I got to share leftovers with my sis and parents too!

If I ever had the time, I'd make another cake.  It's such an interesting method, and whip cream is the *best* tasting frosting there is. I definitely recommend checking out the link above! They have a roll cake recipe I want to try next.

And yes, Sak did like the cake.  Though I think he liked the spareribs we ate for dinner just as much, if not more. :P Cake just can't compete with a good slice of meat I suppose.

626 Night Market

(Rewind, Labor Day Weekend '13)

While visiting LA, my aunt mentioned that we should check out the 626 Night Market, a giant asian foodie gathering.  With Sis, Friend E, M and Cousin T in tow, we headed to the giant stadium parking lot in Arcadia.

There were a TON of food booths.  It's nearly impossible to decide what to eat :/

Lobster balls?

Nah, Lobster roll!

I did get to try the milk tea + custard/flan combo I'd heard about.  The texture was great, but it was sooooooo sweet. :P

Giant boba drink!

Dunno about my weird squat pose.  It was also 100 million degrees outside. So we're a bit shiny.

We stayed until it got dark, and it got more and more crowded!

Curry nachos.

HK macaron - too cute to eat!

Squid stick! and lamb kebobs.

Potato skewer!

Potato stick fencing @_@

It was a lot of fun! And tasty!  I wish they had this up North, but it'd probably be too cold to have the same fun night vibe. :P  If we go back to LA this summer I'd like to go again!