Dat Ass

One of the things I miss about living in in Los Angeles is buying roasted meat like pork and duck at local Cantonese restaurants. I had my mind set on making my own cha siu (marinated roast pork) but when I went home, my uncle already had cha siu marinating and gave me a big hunk to bring back to SB!!! I had been craving cha siu with rice, a fried egg and vegetables..which is EXACTLY what I made! 

The pork butt was marinating in a mixture of honey, hoisin, garlic, five spice powder, sesame oil, soy sauce, and rose wine. Just before I put it in the oven, I chopped up garlic and stuffed it inside.

Pork that was marinated for 4 days!

I knew we weren't going to finish such a big hunk of meat, so I cooked the entire piece at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, and then broiled it for 5 minutes. I would say 70% of the butt was cooked, which is good because I froze the leftovers to encapsulate the flavor and I can defrost and cook it fully the next time we eat it! 

After 45 minutes of baking and 5 minutes of broiling. Love the charred parts!

I made some white rice, fried up a couple free range, organic chicken eggs I received from my other half's parents! (They have chickens at their house and these were fresh from the butt!), and steamed some cauliflower for the dish. 

Air bubble covered the other yolk, but free range, organic eggs! The yolk was WAY more orange. Yum!

This dish brings me back to New York where I would eat it as a kid every time I visited Chinatown and to Hong Kong where I would order it at every restaurant. I mean, who doesn't love fluffy, sweet white rice paired with a sticky, perfectly charred piece of pork with a lush runny egg yolk?! So simple, yet complex at the same time. I'm tempted to make the other piece of pork as I write this! 

Cha siu with rice, egg, cauliflower, sunburst cherry tomatoes and garnished with cilantro!

Perfectly moist pork

I can eat this everyday.

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia

To-may-to To-ma-to

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday! It feels like forever since I last blogged, but I have been cooking and I'm excited to share them with you!

I went to Los Angeles a few weekends ago and stocked up on some amazing cherry tomatoes and tomatoes on the vine..at the .99 Store!! The produce there is surprisingly very fresh because the produce at the SB store is always...rotten. I still had a few packages of tomatoes left to eat, but we were leaving for Thanksgiving, so I decided to make a fresh tomato sauce with them! I love making my own sauce because it's healthier, easy, and tastes great!

First I roasted onions, garlic, shallots, chili peppers and mushrooms in the oven to blend with the tomatoes.

Ingredients for tomato sauce!

Then I decided to blister the tomatoes open in a pan before blending them. After they were blistered, I didn't take too many photos because I was in the zone of getting it done and..forgot about photos.

Tomatoes in the process of blistering. The glare is from the condensation on the tomatoes.

Once the aromatics were roasted and the tomatoes were blistered, I blended them together and added ground black pepper, garlic powder, cayenne, red chili flakes, cilantro, and parsley. In the pan, I sauteed more garlic, onion, and shallots and let the sauce simmer and I added mushrooms and balsamic vinegar. Because I didn't add salt, I decided to add a little bit of nuoc mum (Vietnamese fish sauce) to give it a salty/umami flavor. The tomatoes were acidic, so I balanced the sauce out by adding some hoisin sauce.

Simmering sauce! 

We ate the sauce the next day over medium sized shells and it was SO good. The hoisin gave it a nice sweetness, but you were still able to taste the acidity and freshness of the tomatoes. The cilantro I blended in also really stood out.

The mushrooms added a meatiness to the dish.

I love the deep red color!

I had leftover sauce and I froze it until the next time I make pasta or pizza! I really want to grow my own tomato garden, but sadly, I have no space nor that much sunlight near me. Hoping to get more tomatoes to make sauce! If you haven't tried making your own sauce, I highly recommend it. Way better than the bright red sauce that comes in jars..although, I do use that too.

                                                      Until Next Time!
                                                          CheFelicia

A Few of my Favorite Things!

It feels like forever since the last time I blogged, so I thought I'd dedicate this post to the things that I've made, but never blogged about! And also some of my favorite eats around Santa Barbara!

I had gotten a bunch of great cherry tomatoes and wanted to make a tomato sauce, but didn't get that much to make it, so I divided them up into different meals. This stir fry I made with onions, shallots, garlic, crimini mushrooms, cubed pork loin, bursted tomatoes, and coconut water. My aunt had given me a ton of large Zico coconut water and besides drinking them (I'm more into drinking coconut water from a real coconut), I decided to cook with it! With this stir fry, I paired it with a garlic quinoa&brown rice. This meal is really good on a cold nigh because it's warm and filling. The acidity from the tomatoes rounded out the spices and balsamic vinegar that I added.

Tomato pork with garlic brown rice and quinoa

The next thing I made was a turkey bolognese in a tomato sauce with almost bursted tomatoes. Super simple and a quick dish to make! As usual, I put sauteed garlic, onions, and shallots, sliced button mushrooms, lean turkey, semi bursted tomatoes with cellentani pasta. I LOVE the shape of this pasta..I can't get over it. It's just so....cute!! These cherry tomatoes bursted in your mouth and were sweeter than the ones before. But good thing I added a little fish sauce for umami and saltiness since I didn't add any salt.

Turkey Bolognese. Love how the tomatoes burst in my mouth!

One thing I hate is to buy Vietnamese spring rolls because I know I can make them at home, although I can't roll it that well/it always comes out larger than what the rice paper can hold. And this time was no exception, however, it's still delicious and light! In my roll, I put romaine lettuce, green onion, slow roasted pork loin at 275degrees and seasoned with ground black pepper, garlic, and Japanese seasoned dried chilies, rice noodles, and lastly shrimp. I wanted to fat to drip and meld into the pork, but then I turned the broiler on to give it a crispy texture.

Baked and Broiled Pork for the Spring Rolls!

I had some hot house tomatoes that were getting pretty ripe, so to give the roll an extra freshness, I made a salsa with red onion, green onions, lime juice, garlic powder and ground black pepper. And I also made a spicy peanut sauce with crunchy peanut butter, water, hoisin sauce, sambal, fish sauce, and balsamic vinegar.

Shrimp and Pork spring roll with salsa and peanut sauxe

One night I felt like eating something reallly bad, so I made cheesy, beefy filled cresent rolls. I never had Pillsbury anything and DAMN. They are SO good. It makes me want to try ALL Pillsbury baked good products BUT I am going to refrain myself. I used leftover taco beef and added some more onions, garlic, and shallots and stuffed it into the crescent and put salsa con queso..(the one in a jar, I know),  on top of the beef and rolled them up! I would say that crescent shaped rolls may have not been the best vehicle to roll them up in because they're not that large, but they still turned out REALLY good. If you ever want to eat something bad, that is it.

Golden, flaky, fluffy deliciousness

Blurry, but oozy gooey cheese and seasoned ground beef. YUM.

I have more things I've made but never posted, but I don't wanna bore anyone! Moving onto some good eats in Santa Barbara!

Beautiful Santa Barbara!

Sushi Teri is one of my go-to sushi restaurants in Santa Barbara and we ALWAYS get a volcano cake. It's salmon wrapped around sticky rice and topped off with scallops and baked. They finish it off with teriyaki sauce and  squeeze of lemon juice. DELICIOUS.

Volcano Cake

We also get a variation of a couple rolls, a chirashi bowl, and a spicy tuna bowl. The fish is always fresh, but the service is not always on point.

Chirashi bowl

Couple of rolls

Spicy Tuna Bowl

Another great place I recently discovered for lunch is Sunnyside Deli and Market. There are a lot of sandwich places in Santa Barbara, and there's not many that I like because I don't think the price is worth it. I don't know if it's normal for sandwiches to cost around $9.50-$12.00, but if I'm paying that, I want it to be a damn good sandwich. However, I've finally found Sunnyside! Most sandwiches here are $9.50 and you can also make your own. I went and made my own with pastrami, roast beef, jack cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, pepperonchinis and jalapenos on ciabetta bread for $9.50. There's also a ton of aiolis, condiments you can add, but I like my sandwiches without. It's one of the first sandwiches that just taste SUPER good. The meat isn't fatty, produce is fresh, and the bread is fresh. You can taste every single item in the sandwich and it's super flavorful without all the condiments. Can't wait to go back!

Build Your Own Sandwich - Ciabatta, Pastrami, Capicola, Pepper Jack Cheese and Garlic Jalapeno aioli

A great brunch place for the weekend is Paradise Cafe. When I went, we wanted to get breakfast, but unfortunately they ran out of what I wanted, so we ordered lunch. The prices are pretty reasonable from $12-$18. I ordered the Oak Grilled Salmon filet and got half salad and half fries and my other half ordered the Ortega Burger with jack cheese and pasilla peppers. I ordered my salmon to be cooked medium without any butter or salt, but with slices of lemon. The salmon came out PERFECT. The oak gave the fish a great smoky flavor and the lemon enhanced its flavor even more and it was cooked perfectly.

Salmon lunch. Simple and fresh!

The burger is very simple as you can see, but the patty packed great flavor. I was surprised at how good the burger was for being so simple. Thinking about it makes me want their burger...the patty was just that good.

The best burgers are simple and flavorful. This was one of them!

I have been cooking so expect some upcoming posts soon! 

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia

Curried Away!

Sorry for the lack of posts, but I have been cooking and I'm excited to share them with everyone!

I recently made seafood yellow curry with enoki mushrooms, but there's not many photos because once I got in the zone of cooking, I forgot to take photos. My bad!

Making curry is super simple and you don't need a lot of ingredients to make it good. For the curry base, I used Mae Ploy Thai Yellow Curry paste which you can find in any Chinese supermarket.

I first sliced and diced up my staple ingredients: garlic, shallots, onions, and I added ginger (not a staple ingredient). I sauteed them in the pan until they became tender to release their oils and added the curry paste and melded them all together. Then I added half a can of full fat coconut milk, let that simmer for 15 minutes, and added ground black pepper, garlic powder, and a tablespoon of sambal (chili paste). Since seafood and enoki mushrooms can overcook easily, I dropped them in at the last minute when I turned off the stove.

I love this mix. I can eat it raw!

Scallop, shrimp, and calamari seafood! The calamari was whole and I had to clean them, that was pretty fun. I did have an accident when one of the eyes popped and ink? splattered all over.

My aunt had given me a few packages of quinoa and brown rice mix and I decided to pair the curry with that.

Yellow seafood curry with enoki mushrooms on a bed of quinoa and brown rice garnished with green onions.

I like using all different types of Mae Ploy's curry pastes because it's super aromatic and spicy! It makes making curry way easier at home and better than most restaurants.

I forgot to slice the calamari, but they were super tender whole. Yum!

I love leftovers because I can turn them into another meal by pairing it with another carb or vegetables, and it's like a whole new meal! Which is exactly what I did with the curry!

Curry udon!

I had leftover curry but no more quinoa mix, so I decided to make curry udon and added some yellow corn kernals. All I did was boil 2 packages of udon, heated up the curry with the udon and added corn. It was sooo good. The curry had much more flavor and heat. The udon was a great vehicle for it.

I added black sesame seeds with some spicy Japanese seasoning my friend got me!

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia

Pig goes LARB!

I admit it, I did something I normally don't do - follow a recipe. And it was hard. The recipe was easy to follow, but I felt SO WEIRD. I told myself if I was going to follow it, I was going to do it right and right felt so wrong (in a good way). Whose recipe did I follow? Well, it all started when one of my greatest friends and largest supporter of this blog told me she had gifted me 3 meals for 2 from Blue Apron. She's a regular customer of Blue Apron and her food ALWAYS looks amazing.

What is Blue Apron? Located in New York, they are a weekly subscription service that delivers fresh, portioned out ingredients to your door with colored recipe cards with photos. You can choose vegetarian or meat and fish options. A subscription plan may sound scary, but there is no commitment to it meaning you can skip any week. I think for $9.99 a meal is a great price because you receive fresh produce, protein from places that practice sustainability, and speciality ingredients you may not have worked with before so it allows you to try new things! Besides the great food, Blue Apron offers FREE shipping, which can cost A LOT. My box was 19lbs!! I love free shipping. 

My box! Blue Apron shipped it out on Monday and it arrived Wednesday still ice cold!

Now onto the food! For this post, I made their pork larb with coconut rice. Larb is a dish normally seen in Thai restaurants, but it's the national dish of Laos. Larb may sound peculiar, but it's really a salad of minced meat with fresh vegetables, that's it. I commend Blue Apron for recreating a Southeast Asian dish because Southeast Asian cuisine is hard to mimic correctly. There are a ton of different spices used, layers of flavor like sweet, salty, tangy, umami - something very hard to get. I must say, I was quite impressed with their simplified version of the dish but it still packed a lot of flavor, however, I would've liked more heat and an amplified level of sourness (Not their fault though, I'm Malaysian Chinese, so I can handle more heat and sourness than most). The coconut rice accompanied the larb well and it was easy to make!

Ingredients for the larb!

Ingredient list so you know what to pick out from the box! I love how everything is individually packaged and labeled.

Recipe card! It's in COLOR and there's PICTURES. What's not to love?!

I forgot to take a photo of the rice, but all I did was put 3/4 cup of jasmine rice, 1 cup of water, 5.5ounce of coconut milk, some salt in a pot, heated it up, placed the cover on, reduced the heat and let the rice cook for 20minutes (rice and coconut milk provided by BA).

Then I started mincing the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, slicing the red onion, plucked mint leaves off its stems, chopped cilantro, cut the birdseye chili, and slice the cucumber. Included was a carrot, but I'm allergic so I omitted that. I also kept the fibrous layers of the lemongrass for my own for soups! I never worked with lemongrass before, but it wasn't scary! I always thought you pound the stem and stick it in stocks, but there's a pliable core! 

Garlic, Ginger, Lemongrass, Red Onion, Cilantro, Mint, Birdseye Chili, Cucumber (full portions not shown for the cucumber and red onion) It smelled SO good.

After I prepped everything, I heated up the pan with some olive oil and added the ground pork. When the pork started to brown, I added the garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chili, and kaffir lime leaf and stirred it around until the ginger and garlic became fragrant. 

There was a lot of steam and I couldn't get a photo without steam!. Pork, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, chili, and kaffir lime mix

I stirred in the cucumber and red onion to the mix and let the other ingredients flavor them for a few minutes. Then I added the palm sugar and ponzu sauce and let everything simmer together.

I was blowing the steam away when taking this picture! Added red onion, cucumber, and ponzu and now letting everything blend together. YUM!!

The last step was to add the mint leaves, cilantro, and lime juice and stir. I checked on the rice and it turned out very well! It was light, fluffy, and had a great coconut aroma. 

The final product! Pork larb with coconut rice with black sesame seeds on top! Can you spot the lettuce heART?

In all, it was a great meal! The larb had developed flavors I was not expecting in the short time it took to cook. It was sweet, salty, tangy and went well with the freshness of the bib lettuce and the coconut rice. I could've eaten the rice with excess juice poured on top and that would've been great! I added sambal, a chili paste with seeds to mine because the heat wasn't there for me, but other than that, it was a homerun! 

Larb is typically eaten with sticky rice, but this coconut rice is a great sub! And if you add sugar, you can turn it into a sweet coconut rice and eat it with mangoes! 

I would never attempt to create a Southeast Asian dish at home because there are just so many different ingredients that isn't available where I live, so I'm glad Blue Apron simplified, yet still kept the traditional flavors of larb alive with this meal. 

In all, I'm a HUGE fan of Blue Apron! They let me try different ingredients and cuisines I normally may not cook at home. Perhaps next time I may "follow" their recipe while also adding my own spin to the dishes! ;)

If you want more information about Blue Apron, you can visit their website by clicking here. *I have no affiliation with Blue Apron, but I'd love too! =)* I'm just here spreading the love!

I know this post has been long, but I have a favor for the readers! If you haven't done so, please vote for my photo for the Santa Barbara News Press Food Photo Contest! It would mean a lot! Voting ends tomorrow 9/20! Please click HERE to vote!! 

In case you missed the link above, click HERE to vote!! I appreciate it! Thank you!

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia

Santa Barbara News Press Contest!

Hello Everyone!!

It would mean so much to me if you guys would kindly vote for my photo for the Santa Barbara News Press Food Photo Contest!

Please click HERE to vote! And if you can spread the word, that would help tremendously!!

Voting starts today and ends Friday, 9/20!

1st place wins dinner at different Santa Barbara restaurants and 2nd place gets a cooking lesson at Williams Sonoma!

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it!

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia

Mollusk Mania!

I love checking out the local seafood markets in Santa Barbara and this weekend was no exception! (Especially since I had a 30% discount to use ;)) This market had a larger variety of fish than other markets, but I was in the mood for scallops. They had beautiful diver scallops and I grabbed 1.5lbs which came out to be 13 pieces. 

13 big scallops!

Look how thick that is!

The weather has been a bit hotter and I wanted to make a lighter meal, so I paired the scallops with a fresh mango, tomato, and corn salsa (I plucked the kernals off the cob myself), and brown rice.

The first thing I did was wash the scallops and hand dried every single piece of them to get rid of the excess water. I heated up some olive oil in my Le Creuset nonstick pan, placed the scallops in the pan and left them untouched for 90 seconds to let them create a golden brown crust. I was actually a bit scared to make scallops because if you don't pay attention to them for a few seconds and they overcook, they're done. Rubbery scallops suck. And these were larger and thicker which only increased my anxiety. 

The quality isn't that great, but it shows what I'm doing.

I feel bad for the scallop to the left...someone mishandled him and it wasn't me. But a great crust is forming! It smelled so good in my kitchen!!

To pair with the scallops, I made a simple mango, roma tomato, and corn salsa seasoned with fresh lemon and lime juice, green onions, ground black pepper, garlic powder, parsley, and red chili flakes. 

I've been trying to make my plates look nicer and I thought the plating of the scallops is one of my best yet! 

The finished product! 

To show the thickness of the scallops

If I do say so myself, the crust I created is amazing. I'm proud!!

SUCCESS! Not overcooked, perfectly cooked scallops.

I did not use any salt in this dish because I don't like cooking with salt and because this dish didn't require it! The scallops had a naturally sweet and briny taste to it that was enough for the entire dish. The salsa paired well with the sweetness of the scallops because of the acid I put into it. The brown rice made the meal a little heartier. I like the contrast between hot and cold and the cold salsa paired well with the hot scallops. For my first time, I'd honestly give myself an A for not making rubbery scallops and I really like the plating! I can't wait to make more!!

Until Next Time!

CheFelicia