college cooking show

I've had this idea for doing a college cooking show for a while now. starting from my old university in la, i was going to try to pitch it to them to let me do a show. and now at my new university i have kinda given that idea out to someone.


my aims for this college TV cooking show is to teach college students the basics to eating and cooking well for themselves, building a good foundations for culinary experience and adventure. i want to introduce to college students living in pa, that food isn't just fattening or gross, that it is actually the key to really discovering the world and cultures. everyone has to eat and why not a better way of learning about other people's worlds than through their foods? if the school will let me, i think I'll come up with simple and fun recipes and some great tricks to help students in a college setting cook for themselves and feel a little more independent then the good old cafeteria. i hope that students will find themselves adventuring into new ethnic and traditional foods and that will help people get more open towards the global world we live into today.
i guess I'll have to wait and see if this show does come up and if i will be given the chance to show people in Pittsburgh how to make some amazing simple and healthy foods. as well as give them the tools to go out and venture into other cultural foods.

BOUCHON

Chef Thomas Keller's Bouchon

that was the destination for the vegas trip. my best friend/dearest foodie partner in crime have promised each other that in about 3 to 4 years we will be making that famed pilgrimage to the famed French Laundry. I probably have a few other on my personal list. but French Laundry is the holy grail for me. the story begins with a book by anthony bourdain. a man i hope to meet one day... but if i don't its okay, because he was the one that introduced me to the great thomas keller. bourdain a chef/author that i have come to respect idolizes keller. so i went on the journey to find everything about thomas keller. and that led to a signing at the william sonoma in pittsburgh, where at 7 am i got ready for the 1.4 hour drive into the city. i bought the special edition of the cook books for both the french laundry and bouchon.... and he signed them both. and on that day.. i was actually speechless...

so my best friend and i are in vegas.. its been like 5 years since we were there together,, this time around we no longer care about nsync but rather we're able to drink and go anywhere we please and perhaps play some cards... endless possiblities... so we make it to bouchon in the venetian. very excited.. we even put make up and heels on... yes.. that excited. **note to the wise.. dont go to a spa prior to going to an expensive dinner if you plan on eating everything....

so.. we both get cocktails...

then the bread and butter...

appetizers of course.. .

entree
braised short ribs over braised red cabbage along side with polenta...
i forgot to mention we ordered pomme frites as well... soo over did it..


mine... was
brisket cooked for 3 days over napa cabbage and trumpet mushrooms and fingerling potatoes.

i thought we were full then.. he came back with this...
this is what they call the dessert menu...
so we ordered this...
then my esspresso came with cookies... too...

and this is what happend to my coffee..


i finished it.. and thats pretty much what happened with the trip to bouchon.. a job well done.. next stop.. french laundry.. shout out to waiter with that crumber thingy

home.

there will be two blogs from my trip back to los angeles. the reason i went home was for chinese new year. i love the tradition that comes from this holiday or the festivies that come with it. family and food. now that's what i call life. going home and eating the traditional chinese new year eve, dinner with everyone in my family (all 30 of us) it was great. then in the morning snacking on chinese snacks while waiting for all the relatives to come to my house to send well wishes for the new year to my grandma and my parents was fun. talking and taking lots of pictures was all that was done for a whole day.

i should discuss more of the traditions of chinese new year but i'll do that later.. i am still a bit tired from the trip...

along with the trip i was able to go to a few of my favorite places to dine in los angeles. cafe laurent in culver city is one of my favorite places to have lunch. it is just a little cute place with a nice outdoor dining area. the french manager is adorable. and the cappuccino there is to die for.. actually i dream about the capps when i'm in pa. second spot in which i have to hit up is houstons. get my ribs and grilled artichokes. sometimes i look back fondly on the times i worked there other times i am amazed i worked there for so long.. 9 months.. .but mostly i remember the food... always consistent.
next topic is my sushi spot. i have two of them. and of course they are secretive. i might tell you one day where and what they are called but until i am ready to let the world know. and i'm sure when and if my sushi chef reads this blog he will laugh.. or be annoyed i'm not plugging his place. but the thing is.. both places are kinda unexpected places, holes in walls as some may put it. but they both have the most amazing sushi in all of los angeles. and i say this with the most confidence. i've only taken a handful of people to these places. one is in little tokyo. and the other. somewhere in the westside. i'm very serious about the secrecy placed on these spots... its bad enough that the little tokyo has a 2 hour wait now...and i've been going to this place for about 11 years now.. my westside spot is fairly new.. but by god is it special.

phil is his name the sushi chef. and you walk in welcomed like it is his home. but with the time he spends there and the family hanging out and his daughters munching on sushi during lunch time... you are coming into his home. this is a place where you just smile and say.. give me what what you want. i let phil take the reigns of what to order... and sit back and enjoy. this time going back home i took three of my friends. janell, jeff and luke. janell is turning vegan sooo i wont discuss her much yet. jeff is the only person in the group to have gone to my other spot and now that he's gone to this one he loves this one just as well. luke is a friend who has happened to have spend some time in japan, and he liked the sushi here too.. so i'm pretty confident that i pick the best sushi places as my favs... anyhow having dinner at the westside secret sushi spot made my trip back to los angeles finalized as a good trip as far as foodie life goes.

so with that everyone. read the next blog regarding.. bouchon....

eat extrordinary everyday!

throwdown/cookoff

recently, one of the funniest things happened to me. i was challenged to a food cook off. why is this funny? well the person who challenged me doesn't have a clue what type of food i cook, the range, the skill, the experience that i have with food and cooking. He thinks his skills out do mine, i find it very funny that someone would challenge, Me, to a cook off, without knowing anything about my cooking background.

this person is a class mate, a young man a little too confident and too cocky for his own good. lets not say confident. rather he is a bit crazy thinking to challenge me. more than a few people have asked me if he was crazy to challenge me to such a cook off. he has many restrictions on the way and what we should cook. he doesn't do dessert. he says he will blow me out of the water. he blogs about food as well, he takes some food porn and post up a few recipes up for the world to see, wanting to show his readers to cook their own food. I've read this blog of his. i' have seen what he considers good, he hasn't even seen what i can make and he is already talking up a storm. he says he's passionate about it but i don't think he knows what my extent of passion goes for food and cooking.

well i am not going to reveal what my plans are for the menu. but surely it will be great. no doubt. i have many many hours put away in studying food and the art of it. i've even written papers on food. o yes. a lucky professor had to deal with my horrible writing all about medieval cookery. but i had a blast going through hundred years old recipes. my bookshelves are out of room for cooking books/magazine. my recipe collection is growing. and with my culinary adventures in los angeles/new york/ las vegas and more to come will surely help with my challenge to come.

AND i'm pretty sure that my challenger has not even a clue who this man is. he happens to be one of my chef heroes.

this should be interesting. i shall post more up soon.

eat extraordinary everyday!

spam.

this word is just a bad sounding thing. and of course why not, it is used to describe the shit we get in our emails.. but spam is actually something a bit more strange. it comes in a strange square can. along with the odd shape of the sardine cans... i think the square rectangular form that the spam can takes is just odd. the way in which you pop the lid open with no need for a can opener, I'm sure they thought that a can opener would hate its existence if it had to open a square-ish tin can.

i find myself when in I'm the weird way i am with food, so i have to say that i do occasionally eat this odd stuff. there was a big 0o0o0 and ahhhh when a contestant on top chef made something great with spam. but spam if the ingredients are ignored, i think the taste of it is very interesting. its salty and sweet and its tangy. the texture is like a morphing type, it can be fried and made hard and crispy or it can be diced or stripped up into soup. I've had it many ways. not that i sit around thinking of ways to make food with spam. but rather i have gone to places where it was on the menu. a Hong Kong cafe in Los Angeles, has it in their daily soup of macaroni and peas/carrots with a light chicken broth with of course tiny cubes of spam in it. they also serve it along side with eggs as you would any breakfast dish. and of course in Hawaii they have the musubi, the spam is joined with rice and wrapped in seaweed. i find myself when in Hawaii getting one of these spam musubi and munching on it as i walk around the beach.

i guess i don't really have a problem with this spam product. but it is not on my normal list of foods that i crave and keep stocked in my pantry. although if you give me a can a spam. I'm sure i could make something quite interesting for a newbie to spam.

try it. it could change your boring life of Bologna or not. its fun regardless..

eat extraordinary everyday.

new year food...

one of my favorite things to do is cooking on new year's eve. last night my sister and i sat together and made 60 egg rolls. just as my mom makes it. if you ever go and have Chinese food with me you will notice that i rarely eat egg rolls and that's because of my taste. i like and adore the way my mom makes egg rolls. there is so much preparation in it that it is actually special to eat it. the way she makes it is not like anyone else I've seen. I've watched and listened to the many ways in which other people who claim to have the best egg rolls make theirs and i know for a fact that my mom was right, she does make the best. i wont be giving away her recipe any time soon or show people how to make theirs better. there are a few things that i will keep to myself and to our family. but that doesn't mean i wont invite my friends over for great food!

many new year's eves ago. my grandparents *dad side, my dad and my mom all sat together and they taught me how to wrap a traditional Asian recipe of goodies in banana leaves. it is called banh tet, traditionally given out for Chinese New Year to friends and family. It has many things in it to symbolize a prosperous year to come. it had a special short grain rice in it, beans, meat and a hard boiled quail egg. and you steam this little goodness packet and after wards you have something yummy to eat. most of the time you find these in the stores around Chinese New Year, and they are huge rolls or squares all very big and not very appetizing. the thing about the way i was taught to wrap them was as individual packets. we would then steam them and tie about 8 together to give to our family. we made a hundred or two hundred. i got really good at wrapping them towards the end. i guess its the Asian tamale. i really like that tradition. the whole making something for giving out to the family. it really keeps the tradition of family and good food alive.

i think that food is great, because everyone has to eat. you taste my vary from your upbringing but if you have an open mind and a brave stomach there are endless possibilities of learning other cultures through their foods. even regional foods are fun to learn and taste. the cuisine of north and south Vietnamese is very different, the variation of BBQ ribs from Memphis to Texas to Kansas city, even pizza from Brooklyn taste differently from the thick crust in Chicago. i love the adventure that food alone can take a person. so i urge everyone this new year to go out and try something new from a different region you wouldn't normally eat from. perhaps you might hate it, but better you might like it.

eat extraordinary everyday!

Banh Mi....

it started in 1857. the french came and colonized Vietnam. my birthplace. there will be many more blogs to come regarding this dynamic relationship, so hold on till then.

this blog is just about banh mi. its the Vietnamese word for bread. but I'm not talking about just a regular piece of bread. I'm referring to this term as a sandwich. one of my favorite ways of eating bread, meat and spread. with the french influence this sandwich starts on a fresh roll baguette. cut and toasted, spread of pate on one side and freshly made butter (egg and oil) on the other. and that's pretty much all the french gets credit for. next comes the meats, made from pork a form a meatloaf or cold cuts what ever way you say it. its our Bologna or salami. its placed on top of the pate spread. then cilantro, slices of fresh chili to give it heat. pickled white radish &carrots to give it a tang and bite and if you're lucky some places put paper thin slices of onions that have also been soaked in vinegar. then a dash of nice soy sauce. and there you have a banh mi bale (bale being Paris since there is the whole pate and bread credits) but that is what you can order, its known now as the dac biet which is the special that has all the goods as described on it. its simply good.

i grew up on these sandwiches, i remember going to chinese school every weekend and my father would stop off to pick me up something to eat before my 4 hours of schooling in a language *Mandarin that would never stick to my tongue. nonetheless i loved getting these sandwiches for 4 years i knew what i was getting for lunch and i had no problem with it. although each weekend i tried new sandwich fixings. there was tit nuoung *grilled pork or garoti *rotisserie chicken all with the same preparation of pickled goods and the soft toasted baguette.

this blog was inspired because i was brought some "fast food" Vietnamese banh mi from Texas today. on a flight direct from Dallas to Pittsburgh in a box was a few Lee's Sandwiches.. this is the Vietnamese version of subway with great coffee instead of soda *pop. the fixings on the side of course to keep the meat dry and for better preservation of the bread. and after i toasted up the bread and meat adding the cold pickled carrots, onions, white radishes it was just yummy all around. reminded me of Los Angeles and the ease of driving up to a Lee's and getting one of these sandwiches for 3.50 and be filled for a few hours. I've tried many sandwiches of different sorts from various cultures and i must say for certain that this type is my favorite.. i think the runner up is still funny as it has a french background as well.. Le croque madam. i may be a little leaning towards the french Asian culinary side in this blog but I'm pretty sure there will be more about the love affair i have with Italian food and the best friend of Mexican food...

eat extraordinary everyday.