Entries Tagged 'Food' ↓

Yesterday my husband and I went out on a daytrip to Pescadero.  We haven’t really gone out on the weekends for a while so this was quite special.  We really enjoyed our time in this small historic town, and here is the story.

I got up quite early for a Saturday and the hubby followed soon after.  He charged his camera batteries and we headed out.  We drove through the mountains and ancient redwood forests on the extremly windy highway 84.  Along the way there were many bikers and I wondered how they got up there, and my husband was simply annoyed that some of them were hogging the entire road.  Once we hit highway 1 we turned left towards Pescadero.  We planned to stop at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse first.

I first saw the lighthouse from a distance when my company took us to a retreat.  I remembered the order of things a bit erroneously so I thought that Pigeon Point Lighthouse was north of Pescadero.  Once we already past Pescadero and still did not see the lighthouse my husband started to doubt my directions.  Pigeon Point is supposed to be one of the tallest lighthouses in North America, and he kept on asking me why we still do not see it.  I started to point behind a bunch of bushes and once we past it he laughed at me and said I was just pointing at a stick.  Then suddenly he saw the lighthouse perched at the edge of the ocean.  We turned in and found some parking in the dirt.

The lighthouse is currently not open to visitors because in 2001 two large pieces of its cornice fell to the ground, and so far San Mateo has not raised enough money to fix it.  However, the grounds are open and there was a surprisingly large number of visitors there including a lot of parents with kids.  I guessed that many of these visitors were trying to save a bit of money since the attraction is free.   The grounds were absolutely beautiful as flowers of all colors are currently blooming.  The normally brown cliffs were covered with dots of yellow and sea birds glided in the sky.  We then walked around a small path to the front of the lighthouse, and there was a flower patch with two giant pieces of whale bone.  One was a vertebrae and one was a humongous skull.  They looked quite eerie in a background of cheerful magenta and yellow flowers.

After visiting the lighthouse it was nearly 1pm, so we went to find some grub.  We planned to go to Duarte’s Tavern, a historic restaurant and bar in Pescadero that has been there since 1894.    It is famous for its artichoke dishes, olallieberry pie, and various seafood since Pescadero is supposed to be a fishing town.  Everything there is made locally and my company actually took us there during the retreat.  I just didn’t know how famous it was then.  I did remember the delicious artichoke soup and ollalieberry pie.   It was actually  on an episode of Food Network’s Diners, Dives, and Drive-ins and the host ate the house special cioppino.  I saw the picture of the cioppino online and salivated a bit over it.  So we drove a few miles north from the lighthouse and stopped at Duarte’s.  There was quite a crowd there and we were told that we had to wait for 10 to 15 minutes.  This wasn’t too bad so we waited and got a round table very close to the bathrooms.

After we got the menu I looked at the cioppino, and it was the most expensive dish there!  My husband encouraged me to get it since we really didn’t spend too much money eating out last month.  So I ordered it and he ordered a crab melt sandwhich.  The waitress gave us two sets of dishes, crab crackers, and a bib for the cioppino.  My husband thought it was funny that we were given bibs, and then the GIANT dish of crab legs, prawns, and clams came out.  I put my bib on because I knew that I was going to make a mess.  The hubby thought that was so funny that he took a picture.  We shared the crab sandwhich first just to get rid of a plate, and that was quite excellent.  It was pretty much all crab meat hugged by cheese and well toasted buttery bread.  There wasn’t much vegetable fillers in the crab like you would find  in other restaurants.  Then we started working on the cioppino, and it was seriously the longest meal we ever had in a restaurant, but it was a lot of fun to pull out all the crab meat and then drink a bit of the soup.

After eating everything we were quite full but I really wanted some ollallieberry pie and I have talked about it so much that my hubby really wanted to try it.  So we walked down about a block to a small market and bakery.  They had a collection of all types of pies and all kinds of local foods.  Some of the artisan breads with artichokes and cheese just smelled intoxicating.   We just bought a pie to go and went onto the next destination - Pebble Beach.

The 71 miles of the San Mateo coast is unusual in that it is very close to large centers of population, but very few people visit so the beaches are quite pristine. The hubby and I have been to Half Moon Bay multiple times to beach comb and walk, but we never drove as far south as Pescadero.  As we were driving there the hubby said that we will not find these  uncrowded clean beaches in Southern California.  Pescadero has several beaches including Pescadero State Beach, Bean Hollow Beanch, and Pebble Beach.    Pebble Beach is a very small beach that is unique in that instead of sand it is covered by pebbles of all colors.  The pebbles are polished by the tides so they glisten in the sun.  There is also a very large area of tidepools next to it where you can find small marine life.     We walked down to the pebbles section and took pictures of the holey sand formations and pebbles first, and then walked over to the tidepools.  There were small fish, hermit crabs, and tons of snails in the tidepools, but nothing extremely exciting.  The hubby was hoping to see some colorful anemones or starfish so he could take pictures and he was disappointed.  So we went back to the pebbles area and dug around.  A lot of the stones were quite pretty and some of them were laced agates like the ones my mom and I used to dig up in construction sand when I was a kid.  It is illegal to take the pebbles because they are natural  materials, but we found some tiny pieces of sea glass so we took those.  The entire beach just smelled so fresh and it felt so good to sit down on the omnipresent pebbles.  It was definitely more fun than walking on sand.

After hanging around for about an hour we decided to head home as the sky became overcast.   We stopped to buy some vanilla ice cream and then I warmed up a slice of olallieberry pie for each of us when we got home and topped them with the ice cream.  It certainly made my tastebuds happy.

We definitely had a lot of fun exploring this part of San Mateo County, and I think instead of major vacations we could definitely save money by going on more day trips of places near us.  The Bay Area definitely has a lot of interesting places to see and experience just within an one to two hour drive.  After going to Pescadero we found that there is a seal preserve near by where you can see thousands of seals from December to March.  We might go visit next year!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 6

In Hawaii, I was able to procure green onion, salt, vegetable oil, and I also got some Chinese cooking wine from Honolulu’s Chinatown.  Additionally, I added Morri’s favorite sauce from Hong Kong called the “Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Oyster Flavored Sauce”.

After I prepared all the materials, I started making the authentic Yangzhou Chowfan.   After classes ended that day, I went to the cafeteria filled with excitement.  I saw that Craig was writing the day’s menu on a blackboard.  Morri saw me walk in and greeted me with a smile, “Today, you are the chef!  We will be your helpers.”

I said, “No way, you guys are still my bosses”.

As I talked to Morri, I saw what Craig wrote on the blackboard.  Hah!  He already wrote “Original Yangzhou Fried Rice”, and to emphasize the authenticity he added the line, “cooked by a chef from Yangzhou, China” on the bottom.

After I saw this advertisement I felt that I had a tremendous responsibility to create the best fried rice today to showcase  the culinary arts of my hometown and country.

I immediately jumped into the  hectic cooking process.  First, the main ingredient of rice must be prepared correctly.  Yangzhou Fried Rice isn’t exactly one single dish, but it is a dish mixed with the staple food of rice.  In China the best kind of rice to use for this is called Yangshan Rice.  It is a long grained rice that is not sticky after being cooked, and that is the best type of rice for frying.  Hawaii didn’t have this type of rice so I used Thai Jasmine Rice.  The Thai rice grains are rounder and smaller and gave off a pleasing scent after being cooked.   The most important thing about making the rice is putting in the correct amount of water.  If too much water was used then the rice would be soggy and not suitable for frying.  However, if there is too little water then the rice would be raw and uncooked.  At that time, we had a giant rice cooker and put in about ten pounds of rice.  Then, I put in water that rose about 5 to 6 centimeters above the rice, and started cooking.

While the rice was cooking, I started to prepare the other materials.  First I chopped the chicken leg meat and lean pork into tiny squares, and then I chopped up the shrimp.  Hawaii didn’t have the small river shrimps we usually used in China, but they had giant prawns from the ocean.  In order to make these ingredients tender in the rice, I added some cornstarch and a little bit of salt and cooking wine.  In China, we would also add some MSG, but in America MSG is considered bad for health.  Even though you could buy the best Japanese manufactured MSG for very little money, many restaurants in America would post a message in their menus that say, “No MSG”.  So I also followed the local customs and stopped using MSG in our cooking.  Now we haven’t purchased MSG for over ten years.

After all the materials were chopped and mixed, I asked Morri to light the kitchen’s large furnace.  The cafeteria has a gas furnace that made a loud ping when it was lighted.  I used a small frying pan first and put in some oil and fried the chicken,pork, prawns, and snow peas for about three minutes and then took them out.  Since these materials will go back in the pot with the rice later they do not need to be cooked completely.  If they are cooked completely and then cooked again they would not be as tender and would not taste as good.

Now the rice was cooked, so I told Morri to take all the rice out and put it in a large flat pan to cool a little bit.  Also, I asked her to break the large clumps into smaller pieces so the grains could dry a little bit and be better for frying.

Five minutes later, I put a very large wok on the  furnace and added vegetable oil.  Then I poured in the scrambled egg mix with some chopped green onion.  The eggs sizzled and jumped in the wok and many white and yellow bubbles started to pop with oil.  The sizzling paired with the howling of the fans and sounded like a kitchen orchestra.

The rice must be put into the pot not long after the eggs are in.  This is so that the eggs can be cooked and mixed evenly with the rice.  Then the other materials can be added with a little bit of oyster sauce and sesame oil.  It would be ready after a few more minutes of mixing.  This fried rice contains the yellow of the eggs, green of the onions, red of the various meats, and the white of the rice.  Additionally, the sweet smell of the jasmine rice and the flavor of the oyster sauce made it a perfect dish full of color, scent, and flavor.  Morri immediately ate two bowls and said that it was delicious.  She also bought some additional bowls for her family.

That day lines were forming before I even finished cooking my rice.  Since it was a student cafeteria, the price couldn’t be very high so they decided that they would sell my dish for $4.00 per bowl.  After I was done cooking, Morri and another student helper scooped the rice into plastic bowls and passed them to students to teachers as Jane and I collected the cash.  The ten pounds of rice were sold extremely quickly and by popular demand I cooked another batch, and similarly it was sold quickly.

Later, Jane did a bit of a cost/profit analysis and found that authentic Yangzhou Fried Rice may not be very profitable.  Even though the main ingredients are not very expensive, a lot of man hours were put into chopping up and preparing the dish.  Nevertheless, I brought the dish to the student cafeteria for one day, and Morri called me “chef” since then.

To be continued!

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This is a continuation of my family’s immigration story originally written by my dad in Chinese. For more of my dad’s narrative see the category marked Fifteen Years in America. If you can read Chinese you can read the original at my dad’s Yahoo blog. He has just finished Chapter 8. Enjoy!

Continued from Part 4

In the previous chapter I mentioned that I really wanted to bring the authentic Yangzhou Fried Rice to the school cafeteria. The reason for this is that in America Yangzhou Fried Rice is a dish in almost every Chinese restaurant. I tasted a couple and it seems that none of them are authentic.

One day at work I told Morri that I am from Yangzhou and I knew how to make authentic “Yangzhou Fried Rice”.  I said to her, “If you try my Yangzhou Fried Rice, then you would know how good the real Yangzhou Fried Rice is.”

Morri listened to what I said and sounded a bit doubtful,   “Are you sure?” She said to me.  I confidently told her that there is no doubt that I could make it.  I asked her to agree to one term, which is that I get to pick the ingredients I want and she needs to get all the ingredients for me.  Morri couldn’t agree to that so she brought the proposal to the head chef Craig.  Craig is also a Hawaiian.  He is sturdily built, not very tall, and sported a thick mustache.  He spoke pidgin and was a graduate of a famous culinary academy in New York.  He chose Kapiolani Community College after he graduated because the college has a very strong culinary program.  Craig is not only the chef of the cafeteria but also did demonstrations for culinary students.  When I was working there I often saw Craig work with a gaggle of students wearing chef hats and aprons.  Craig and another professor named Kent often had a myriad of sauces and containers and did various lessons.  At that time, I admired those classes quite a bit.  I thought to myself, if I were 15 to 20 years younger, I should also major in cooking and maybe I could have gone back to China and opened a restaurant featuring western cuisine.  Perhaps my restaurant could have been quite popular.  Recently, I received an alumni magazine from the University of Hawaii and there was an article about the Chinese Ministry of Education visiting Kapiolani’s Culinary Arts department.  The goal was to speak about educating more Chinese people in western cuisine.

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Part 6

Morri told Craig that I wanted to bring Yangzhou Fried Rice to the students and staff of Kapiolani.  Craig is a person who is very open to new ideas and suggestions.  He loves to cook food from different countries such as France, Italy, and Korea.  One particular dish I thought was quite interesting was a Hawaiian dish called Laulau.  Craig would take some  ti leaf and wrap pork in it, and then the package is roasted until the pork is so cooked that it falls apart.  After it is cooked the leaves would be removed and its aroma would flood the room.  Honestly, I thought that it tasted pretty good, but the presentation was quite ghastly.

Craig heard that I want to make some Yangzhou fried rice and he agreed heartily.  He told me to make a list of the ingredients and I thought about the things my neighbor taught me about Yangzhou Fried Rice.

Yangzhou Fried Rice is also called Yangzhou Egg Fried Rice, and legend has it that it is the favorite dish of  Yang Su of the Sui Dynasty.  It was called “Broken Gold Rice”.  When the emperor of Sui was touring Yangzhou, he brought the dish to the city, and it was further enhanced by chefs of many generations.  The Huaiyang cooking school has an emphasis on “seriousness in choosing ingredients, expertise and care in preparation, exactness in portion and color, and preservation of original taste and juices”.  Eventually, Yangzhou fried rice became one of the most famous dishes of  Huaiyang cuisine.

Authentic Yangzhou fried rice has the following main ingredients: Chinese rice and eggs from grass fed hens.  Side ingredients include sea cucumber, grass fed chicken meat, Chinese sausage, scallop, fresh water shrimp, mushrooms, fresh cooked bamboo shoots, and snow peas.  Additionally you would add diced green onions, salt, cooking wine, chicken broth, and vegetable oil.

At that time in Hawaii we didn’t have so many Chinese ingredients.So we used Thai jasmine rice and cooked it with a bit less water than usual.  That makes the rice stiff and better for frying.  We also didn’t have eggs from grass fed hens because all eggs in America were produced in large scale chicken farms and shipped in cartons.  This worked just fine and I also added chicken meat, lean pork, shrimp, and snow peas.

To be continued!

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Yesterday was the free scoop day at Ben & Jerry’s. However the closest scoop shop to us was about 20 miles away so we just stayed home. We received a flyer sometime last week for the 31 cent night at Baskin Robbins and have been looking forward to it ever since. It is supposed to be an event to honor the firefighters of America and the closest Baskin Robbins shop is only 2 miles away from home! What’s even better is that their limit is 10 scoops per person so we can each try a few flavors. When the hubby heard that it’s 10 scoops per person he said, “Ice cream for dinner!” However, I’m pretty sure he won’t buy ten, but it is a good deal because each scoop is supposed to be 2.5 ounces.

I haven’t been to a Baskin Robbins for a very long time, so tonight we are definitely going. My mom is probably going to read this and say, “YOU NEED TO LOSE WEIGHT”, but that’s another story for another day. So if there is a Baskin Robbins near you, take a stroll tonight and get some cheap ice cream!

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