Hollywood Farmers Market

So a continuation of the SoCal/LA trip... on the Sunday morning we were planning on leaving, we wanted to leave fairly early so we could hit up Solvang for lunch on the way up and then to stop by at Monterey Bay for dinner. Uuuunfortunately, the LA marathon happened to going on that morning, and it ran right in front of the hostel, so we couldn't actually drive out of there until noon-ish or so.

So we decided to walk to the Hollywood Farmers Market, which we had planned to go to originally (but it was supposed to have been delayed due to the marathon, but apparently people were setting up early anyway). It was so worth it! It was probably one of the best farmers market that I've been to.

The farmers market was extremely big, and oh, the samples. The samples were delicious and so filling (it was pretty much a mini-lunch for us, hehe). Not only that, all the produce was just fabulous. They were big, they were pretty, the prices were decent, the vegetables were leafy and green, and all the samples that we tried were so sweet and juicy. Also, what really caught my eye was the fact that there were so many fresh herbs!! Just bunches and bunches of a variety of great looking fresh herbs.

There was a great sorbet stand which had the most delicious cucumber sorbet... Carmela ice cream. The berries down there were delicious and sweet. Finally, there was the most awesome stand of dried fruist and dried nuts.

If you know me at all, I love dried fruits. I even stopped by Casa de Fruita on the way down this trip, hehehe. But the dried fruit here rivaled those at Casa de Fruita, and was so much cheaper! I got some dried plums (which are so so so delicious) and a great mixture of giant dried raisins (with red raisins, golden raisins, regular raisins, and all different kinds!). So good. OH! And their dried persimmons are SO GOOD. Best dried persimmons ever... thick and still juicy inside. And they weren't shy about sharing their samples either.

Anyhow, if you live in the LA area or happened to be visiting there on Sunday mornings, and if you love farmers markets, I highly suggest that you stop by there. <3

LA food: Murakami

One of my favorite types of restaurants to eat at are Japanese restaurants, especially if they have good sashimi or a delicious bowl of udon noodles (I love seafood and soup, what can I say?). Considering I don't really eat out much, especially these days, I didn't want to be stuck at some restaurant with mediocre sashimi. So after browsing Yelp and visiting a billion restaurant websites for their menu, I settled on Murakami in the Hollywood district, which had the best rating for sashimi aside from some ridiculously expensive and ritzy Japanese restaurant.

I think it was the perfect choice for a late afternoon meal after a giant breakfast and wandering around LA for a good part of the day. The portions weren't gargantuan, but rather perfectly sized, I believe. They focus largely on sashimi plates with some salads and some rolls. I'm not a big fan of rolls, and so therefore didn't order any, but if they're as good as their sashimi plates and salads, there's nothing to worry about.

It's a quaint, unassuming place with bright orange walls and funky drawings on the wall. You walk up to the counter to order and try and grab one of the 4 or 5 tables that are inside. My roommate was at first curious and surprised that this place received such a high rating on Yelp.

But don't let size and looks fool you. Their food is fresh and delicious. My roommate and I went with another friend we met at the hostel, and we all thought it was a good find. The sashimi is very fresh, the prices are decent for good sashimi/sushi, and everyone was very full and satisfied when we left.

I wasn't expecting any good, light vegetables at the Dreamworks party later that day, and I wasn't sure I'd be able to finish off a whole plate with rice and a salad, so I opted for the sashimi salad. The sashimi salad came with a fresh bed of greens topped with about 3 slices each of tuna (which they gladly let me exchange for more salmon!), salmon, albacore, yellow tale, and shrimp. It was also topped with cucumbers, tomatoes, kaiware sprouts, and sesame seeds, and dressed with a nice homemade miso dressing. The miso dressing wasn't actually my favorite--I think the sesame taste was a bit strong, and I would've wanted a little more of a miso flavoring to it, but it was still good.

The other two guys ordered the Murakami plate, which has fresh sashimi with sushi rice topped with cucumbers, nori, and sesame seeds with a side salad with miso dressing. They have a list of sashimi combinations that you can order, or you can even mix and match your own plate, how awesome is that? They both got the sunshine plate, which comes with avocado, salmon, and fresh crab. My roommate also ordered an extra side of tuna on top of that as well.

The plate was huge and delicious. I had a chance to try some of the crab and some of the sushi rice with nori on top. Oh my goodness, the crab was fresh and delicious... I love fresh crab, and I haven't had it in so long. I wanted to eat his whole serving of crab. :| The sushi rice was also fantastic. Although the sashimi is relatively good around the East Bay, I haven't really had some really good sushi rice on the side. It had just the right amount of stickiness and flavoring. Aaaah! I wanted to eat a whole bowl of it. And I might have if (a) there wasn't going to be food in just a few hours, and (b) if I didn't need to fit into my Chinese dance costumes that I can't quite squeeze into comfortably anymore for a performance coming up in April. Oops.

Anyhow, if you love Japanese food, and more specifically, if you love sushi and sashimi, and you're willing to shell out a little bit of money, this is the place to go for a good meal. And if you want to go someone who is a vegetarian, they also have some vegetarian choices as well. :)

Traveling means eating out: BluJam Cafe in LA

This past weekend, my roommate and I went down to LA/SoCal because he had a company party for the upcoming movie How to Train Your Dragon (which, unbiasedly, is an amazing must-see movie!). So my opinion of LA is that there isn't too much to do in the immediate area other than shop and eat, especially because of traffic. We arrived there Friday afternoon and left Sunday morning, with the party being Saturday night, so there really was no time to take a full day to drive somewhere farther and way and go hiking, or spend a full day at Six Flags Magic Mountain (which I love, by they way. Rollercoasters = awesome.). Therefore, we did a lot of walking and eating. Oh! And running on the beach. Running on the beach is awesome. Even though, in the Santa Barbara to LA area, if you run around barefoot, you get tar spots due to the off-shore oil drilling, yuck. And also meeting people. We stayed in a hostel filled with international travelers, so we made friends with various accents, hehe. Very full of awesome.

So the next few posts are going to be about food, so much food.

First, is the BluJam Cafe that we had for breakfast.

I'll be honest with you, I'm not much of a heavy breakfast type of person. Sure, eggs benedicts are tasty (though, I don't like much hollandaise sauce) but I don't really love french toast, and pancakes aren't my favorite things in the world. Sure, I can appreciate them, but I prefer a lighter breakfast filled with whole grains, fruit, and some light protein like some Greek yogurt or some egg whites. (I don't understand people who can eat steak for breakfast... I mean, seriously... fill up with your daily requirement for protein and saturated fats and sodium in the first few hours of waking?) Oh, and waffles. For some reason, I'm a sucker for waffles smothered in honey.

Anyhow, the BluJam Cafe is a cozy place for a great breakfast/brunch (don't know about their food at night, but I'm sure it must be good, too). It's located in the LA area not too far from Hollywood and West Hollywood. Oh yeah, it's also a great place if you can eat enough to food a normal family of four. Their portions are generous while maintaining the quality of their food. My only wish is that there were more people there so we could try more of the food. Though, looking at all the food that was served around us, many things on their menu looked pretty darn awesome. And huge.

I had pictures of the menu that I took, which I almost feel obligated to post because while I was taking these pictures, the person on the table next to me (I think she was actually an employee that was eating breakfast there) started laughing at me and told me that I could just take a take-out menu. I said I just really like taking pictures, and then she asked if it was for Yelp!, but no, I don't Yelp! either... *awkward silence* Oh well, I won't bore you with such boring pictures (the lighting was weird anyway).

My roommate had their stuffed brioche french toast. It was a giant plate of french toast stuffed with vanilla yogurt and blackberry jam, and topped with fresh bananas and sweet berries with a dusting of powdered sugar. The french toast is nice and fluffy, and the yogurt with the jam adds a refreshing lightness to it. It also came with a side of maple syrup, but for me, the french toast was good on its own.

Personally, I opted for a lighter breakfast. Or, at least, what I thought was going to be a lighter breakfast. When I was waiting for my food, I was watching the dishes pass by as the waiters walked back and forth to serve other customers. I saw a giant bowl topped with fresh fruit, and I wondered if that was going to be the oatmeal.

It was the biggest bowl of oatmeal I had ever seen. Not only that, the oatmeal was piping hot (which, if you don't know me by now, I love my food so hot you can still see it boiling or sizzling) and so hearty. No, they don't serve you a big bowl of mushy oats filled with mostly water, they are serious about their oatmeal. What also made me happy is that their oatmeal was not cooked with butter. I hate it when restaurants put butter in everything. Oh! Not only that, but the oatmeal even had a slight vanilla taste that added a hint of light sweetness to the oatmeal (okay, I think it was vanilla. I spent a good portion of eating my oatmeal just trying to figure out what that extra taste was). The berries were sweet, ripe, and delicious.

In case you couldn't tell by that bowl how enormous the bowl of oatmeal was, here it is relative to me... If I look tired, it's because I was. The hostel went out as a group to go partying, and I wanted to get up early to do as much as possible.

Picture courtesy of Mike Ross.

I highly recommend anyone in the LA area to go try out this place. We went fairly early in the morning, around 9:15 or so on a Saturday morning, so the parking and seating wasn't bad at all. However, around 10:00, you could see that people were starting to pile in, so I can see it getting pretty full during brunch/lunch hours on the weekend. Come with an empty stomach and a hearty appetite. I hear the crepes are delicious as well.

Chocolate Sushi and Tofu House

Another restaurant review! A group of us have been trying to have a dinner out maybe once a week (or once every two weeks...), and so two weeks ago, when I was house-sitting, we all went out to the Chocolate Sushi and Tofu House in San Jose.



Not sure why it's called Chocolate Sushi, but the place is a Japanese and Korean restaurant, including pretty good sashimi and tasty Korean tofu soup. Click below to see more!

Baking Fiasco, House Sitting, and Restaurants

Jambo! Habari za leo? Mzuri sana. That's Swahili for Hi! How are you? Very good. Yeah, I'm drawing a blank for how to start out my entries, and I've been missing Swahili, so I figured why not. This past week has been ridiculously oh my goodness so freakin' crazy busy. Yes. I'm currently at my parents' house house-sitting and have been so since this past Thursday night. This means that any baking that is to be had required driving and hour up back to my apartment, but making sure that I ended up back at the house to walk the dog and such. Oh! So yes, even though it largely sucks, and I can't really bake or process photos or anything, I have a chance to play with the dogs... m... fuzz therapy. :) Second, I get to play the piano which I've missed oh so much. &lt 3 ...Clearly, I just need to learn to play a more portable instrument...

So this past week (and change), I've worked on an order for 3 dozen oatmeal raisin cookies, those moon cakes I posted about earlier, snickerdoodle blondies, vegan chocolate raspberry cookies, celebration challah (it's like a two-decker challah, SO AWESOME!), carrot cake, more snickerdoodle blondies, and food for high tea at my apartment (Yes, I had a fancy, home-made tea party at my place with dance girls because WE DESERVE IT :D). I've also managed to fit going to the SF MOMA, Exploratorium, and eating out! I've been trying to hang out with my friends once a week--usually this means a late dinner, since everyone is working. Hopefully I will be too, soon...

Aren't they so cute?!





But enough about me... food! While I currently don't have any pictures ready for most of the things I've done in the past week. However, I like to introduce people to new restaurants that are different and exciting. A couple weeks before, we went to one of my favorite Chinese restaurants in the South Bay. It's called Tong Soon gardens, and is a Schezuan/Mandarin/Korean restaurant, and it's fantastic. No pictures of the food, but I'm sure I'm going back at some point, and will write a review then.

But, this past week, we went to Layang Layang, a Malasian-Indonesian place. Apparently the name means "kite," and the interior is beautifully decorated, albeit, a little dark. I don't have a picture of the outside, but here's a picture of their beautiful tablecloth!



I apologize for the poor quality of these pictures... the lighting was dim, and my camera was on some wonky setting that I didn't realize, making the exposure time way too short, leaving me with dark, not so pretty photos. Alas. But see more photos and reviews after the cut!

Casatiello and Pasadena/LA Foods

Greetings! So it's been a while since I posted about baked goods, but it doesn't mean that I haven't been busy with my lovely oven (Oh yes, I love it so... it's big enough to fit my large baking sheet, as opposed to my old oven in my old apartment which was tiny.) Also, I just went on a mostly spontaneous trip down to Pasadena with one of my good friends from high school, visiting his old college, Caltech, and his old college friends. It was a fantastic trip full of fantastic food... I haven't eaten out so much in so many days in a row in a while. Though, I suppose that's what happens when you go on a trip. I'm genius.

On the way down, we took Highway 101, a longer, but definitely more scenic drive down from the Bay Area down to the South. On the way down, we stopped by Morro Bay with its ridiculous fog, giant platters of salads, and shell stores, then Solvang, a quaint little Danish town (unfortunately, we arrived around 6:00, so everything was closed for the most part), and Butterfly Beach in Santa Barbara to walk along the beach at dusk (we missed sunset by about 15 minutes).

At Morro Bay, we stopped by Outrigger Restaurant, and I polished off a giant plate of Caesar Salad with giant prawns.


Photograph courtesy of Andrei Lita.

The giant plate sitting in front of me was an Ahi Salad with seared Ahi tuna, a delightful vinaigrette and a slightly spicy mango salsa. His was more delicious, but he decided to order it first, so I defaulted to my usual Caesar Salad with dressing on the side.

The next day, we ate at some Asian noodle restaurant in the Alhambra area for lunch, explored the Caltech campus, and eventually ended up at his newly-wed friends' house. There, we proceeded to eat dessert at Bulgarini Gelato, an amazing little gelato store tucked away in the back corner behind a Rite Aid in the middle of Pasadena. Although I wasn't too hungry, I snuck some bites from everyone else. Their chocolate gelato is slightly salted and was fantastic. The hazelnut gelato is made from hazelnuts freshly roasted and ground right there, and is amazing. They also had interesting flavors such as goat's milk with cocoa nibs (I'm not a fan of the goat flavor, but I can see how somebody who likes it would love it), lime with milk, cantaloupe, and just so many different unique flavors. I wish I had a chance to take photos, but unfortunately, I wasn't able to bring my giant camera with me.

After gelato, we proceeded to Park's BBQ in Korea Town in Los Angeles. There, I watched what was basically 3 small-ish guys finishing off what must've been about 7 or 8 pounds of beef--2 orders of Bulgogi (seasoned sliced beef), what I think was an order of another type of beef cut, and 1 order of beef tartar, which is raw ground beef with an egg (or just an egg yolk?) cracked over it. My goodness, I wish I had my camera to show just how much meat was consumed. I can't say how good the beef is since I personally do not eat beef (although, I did eat the smallest sliver of beef tartar just as a new experience, and, well, I guess it tasted like meat?), but the others seemed to like it. There was also an order of pork belly... I'm not a big fan of slices of fat, but I can see how it was good. The meat aside, though, Park's BBQ had an amazing assortment of small Korean dishes like kimchi, pickled cucumbers, and the like. All of it was great, and if you or your friends are big meat eaters, I suggest that you try out Park's BBQ. Next time if I end up there, I would love a chance to try out their marinated shrimp and assorted mushrooms (basically the only thing on the menu not beef and not pork belly).

The next morning, for brunch we all went to Elements Kitchen, which has an amazing and fantastic brunch menu. When my friend and I arrived (late, oops), there were small slices of a raspberry cream cheese danish that was delectable, and a piece of a candied ginger scone that I did not try, but had rave reviews. People ordered an array of things from Ebelskivers to Mac 'n Cheese with Truffle Oil to Banana Fosters French Toast to a Farmer's Market Salad.

What are Ebelskivers, you ask?

Here is a look into one:



What a beautiful breakfast pastry stuffed with home-made blueberry jam. If you look closely, there's a drip of amazing maple syrup dripping from it. Unfortunately, I did not know the other people well, so I was too embarrassed to ask for photos of their food.

But my Farmer's Market Salad was beautiful.



It was a decomposed salad (Yes!) composed of beets (I usually don't like beets, but it wasn't too bad in this salad), baby zucchini, figs, strawberries, pears, and heirloom tomatoes (which weren't too flavorful, alas), candied walnuts, prosciutto, and buttered lettuce with a vinaigrette drizzled on top. It was delectable, and the vinaigrette really tied things together. I had a bite of the Banana's Foster French Toast, and although I'm generally not a fan of french toast, this one was amazing. ...Maybe it just means that other french toast, including mine, wasn't amazing enough... :|

Anyhow, that was the culinary exploration for the past few days. If you're in the area, go check out these places--you won't be disappointed.

And now, back to the baking. I've been wanting to make Peter Reinhart's Casatiello, an Italian rich bread filled with pockets of cheese and spiced salami. I haven't had a chance to, just because, although I often have left-over cheddar from making quiches and such, salami isn't in my usual pantry, but I made a trip to Trader Joe's just because, and came back with this:



Which, after much mixing and kneading (oh my goodness, the mixing and the kneading...), I placed my dough in a 9" cake pan and sprinkled it with more sharp white cheddar:



After the oven, resulting in:



Isn't it beautiful?



And it was amazingly tasty. Which is amusing to me, considering I don't really like rich breads and I don't like salami, but it was still tasty, darn it! Next time, I want to cube the cheese more than grate/shred it, but I liked the white sharp cheddar as a choice for cheese. I was debating making a sort of "vegetarian version" with just different types of cheese. :d

I also made a whole wheat, low fat chocolate zucchini bread that day. I managed to only put half the sugar in compared to the original recipe... I had planned to halve the recipe, but then decided not to, but forgot about this fact when I put in the sugar. Oops. But it still didn't turn out too bad, and was polished off by people at my roommate's workplace.

Anyhow, that's all. I'm not really inspired to make anything right now... although, I did also pick up some agave nectar when I went to TJ's, and I have some bananas in the freezer, so I might play around more with the whole diabetic-friendly (or at least, more-friendly) banana bread loaf. I hope the amount of text wasn't too over-whelming, or, at least, was informative. :)

Cheers!