California Summer Rolls

I bought some of these summer rolls made by a local sushi place. Even though they are very plain, they taste so refreshing to me. I love cucumbers and avocados so maybe that's why I like these. They are like the California sushi rolls without the rice and seaweed. I also really like the spring roll wrapper that they used. It's very soft and not like the ones I have used before. I finally bought this one brand recommended by some people and I think I found the right wrapper! It tastes exactly like the one the sushi place uses.

Anyway, on a hot summer day when I don't feel like eating anything too heavy, these are great. These are also great because there is hardly any cooking involved. Making the tamago (omelette) is pretty easy.

Makes about a dozen rolls

Ingredients
1 cucumber
1 avocado
1 small package of imitation crab/lobster sticks or cooked shrimp
Tamago (Japanese omelette)
Spring Roll wrapper (Three Ladies Brand)
Spring Roll sauce (see picture)

1. Prep and cook the Tamago. See recipe below.
2. Cut the cucumber and avocado into long slices or strips (about 2 inches long, 1/2inch wide). Cut the crab or lobster sticks in half lengthwise. If using cooked shrimp, cut the shrimp in half lenthwise as well.
3. Fill a large deep bowl with hot water and put in a single sheet of wrapper into the bowl. I work with just one wrapper at a time to make it easier. Once the wrapper is soft and pliable, take out the wrapper and put it on a plate. You can put the wrapper on top of a dish cloth too, to soak up some of the water.
4. Assemble on top of the wrapper with one seafood stick or 2 shrimp haves. Top it with 1-2 strips of cucumber, 1 strip of avocado, and 1 strip of the tamago. These ingredients should all be clumped together. Then roll the right and left sides of the wrapper in, and then finally rolling into a roll. I didn't take any step by step photos this time, so feel free to reference here on how to roll these.


Tamago Ingredient and Recipe:
3 eggs
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp light soy sauce

1. Mix all ingredients well.
2. It's kind of tricky explaining the cooking part, so I recommend just following some videos on YouTube such as this one. I just used a regular round non-stick pan to make mine.
3. Cut the omelette into strips and set aside.

This is the lazy sauce I used for these rolls. This is also the same sauce I used (and mixed) for the rice rolls. I usually make a homemade sauce for other types of spring/summer rolls, but too lazy! Eventually, I'll make some more and different rolls, so maybe I'll post those and the sauce one of these days.

1st Restaurant Review: Amazing Thailand, Minneapolis

I think I mentioned this before, and in case you haven't noticed, my favorite foods are Thai, Vietnamese and Italian. My coworker who likes similar food as I do recommended this Thai restaurant in uptown Minneapolis called Amazing Thailand. He's been there a couple of times already, so I wanted to try it out for myself. The only other Thai restaurants I've tried are Taste of Thailand in St. Paul and Sawatdee in uptown a long time ago.

Just about everything we ordered was good. I was truly impressed. We ordered the Thai beef salad, red curry, Pad See Iew noodles, and papaya salad. My coworker told me their papapya salad was really good. Unfortunately, I didn't think it was that great. I was hoping it would taste more like the papaya salad I had at The Thai House in Fresno, CA. Somehow they made it simple, but so good. It's still one of my favorite restaurants because I grew up eating there.

Anyway, when you drive by Amazing Thailand, it's easy to miss because of all the shops around uptown, but you'll be surprised inside. It's actually a nicer Asian restaurant than most you see in the Twin Cities area. It is professionally and tastefully decorated with a Thai/Asian theme throughout. The interior was dark due to minimal lighting. They do have some seating outdoors in a small alley and out the front of the restaurant. I actually liked the small alley because it had some unique furniture and it just felt unique being out there, but my husband didn't like it at all. He said it was in an alley, but I thought it felt really exotic being outside. I'm not that big of a fan of dark-interior restaurants, but oh well...at least the food won me over. The service was good too. If I had to compare this to the two Thai restaurants in the Cities, I would rate this one above the other two because food was great, service was good, and the interior was nice. I do like the curry dish at Taste of Thailand more though, but T-of-T service is really slow. Every time we go there, there's like an hour wait to get our food and just when we think they forgot about us, we finally get our food and forgive them after we eat their curry dish. I won't even compare those two restaurants with Sawatdee. I only been there once and it was never that impressive. I'll have to try other Thai restaurants in the future.

So if you like Thai food, I would highly recommend Amazing Thailand. I meant to order a different noodle dish than the one I ordered, but I ordered the wrong one. Either way, it was still good. Yum. I was hoping that my family from WI would come up here and I have another reason to go out to eat, but maybe next time!

Rating: Highly recommended. 4/5 stars for a restaurant in its class. Why only 4? I wish their papaya salad was good as well. I'm probably being too picky, but a 4 in my book is a 5. haha

(Sorry I took the above pic with my cell phone. I didn't know I was going to do a review). :P

Korean Short Ribs (kabi)

This uses the same marinade as the recipe for bulgogi. I was trying to be a little more adventurous by trying a different marinade recipe. Should've just stuck to what I know is good. I tried a different recipe today and the meat turned out too salty. It was still yummy, but too salty. I would've liked it to be sweeter. Part of the reason is probably because I also tried out a new soy sauce instead of my usual lower sodium soy sauce and the recipe called for less sugar than one I used earlier. Also, I bought the kimchi from a non-Korean grocery store, and it did not taste as good as the one I previously bought. The kimchi was also too salty. All in all, the meat and kimchi were too salty, so they did not complement each other as they were supposed too. I would make this again, except I would just use the recipe I made in my earlier post for bulgogi.

Here is a good post on how the flaken-ribs should look like when you look for it at the store, but I do not recommend the recipe. It turned out too salty for my taste. It didn't even have ginger or regular onions so I added them on my own. I wanted to add more sugar too, but wanted to "trust" the original recipe. I think it's time I trust my own cooking instincts. I'm getting better at cooking now, so why not?? :P If I did, I wouldn't have thrown up when trying this other recipe I found a while back when it called for one or two tablespoons of shrimp paste. Gross. I mean, the only time I use shrimp paste is in my papaya salad and I only use a little, itty bit of it. Again, I should've known and trusted myself! I guess I thought the thought of using that much shrimp paste would've been okay since that is how curry paste is made, but this one wasn't a curry dish. The picture looked so good too. Oh well, this blog is a food adventure-blog after all. No (more) regrets! :P

Ingredients:
4 lbs flaken-style beef short ribs (I found mine at Dragon Star oriental store)

Marinade:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 Korean pear or Asian pear, grated with juices
2 tablespoons finely chopped garlic
1/2 small white onion, grated or sliced
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
2 tablespoons light brown sugar
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 green onions, thinly sliced
1 (20-ounce) bottle lemon-lime soda, optional (recommended: Sprite or 7-Up)

Method:
1. Mix all marinade ingredients together in a large bowl. Add meat to the bowl and mix well. Transfer the marinated meat to a Ziploc bag and marinate overnight. Make sure to let out all the air from the bag.
2. Grill meat on grill for about 4 minutes, or if using oven, set to BROIL at 500 degrees and broil each side for about 4 minutes or until slightly charred. It should not take very long to cook these since they are cut thin.
3. Serve with rice and kimchi. This would also go well with sides of veggies. Yum!

My Attempt at Making French Macarons

I wish these were mine. They're actually from the site mytartelette.blogspot.com. I attempted to make French macarons. Twice now. The first ones were chocolate, the second ones just a plain recipe with pistachio middle like my favorite ones from Cocoa and Fig. The chocolate ones I had no problem whatsoever removing them from the sheet, but the second ones I could not move a centimeter without messing them up. They tasted so good though. I didn't throw them away. I scrubbed them off the baking sheet and ate them as is. They weren't cookies anymore, but some odd shape. lol They also turned out flatter than what I've seen. I think it's because I just didn't' have the exact measurements. The recipe I used was in grams, but I don't have a food scale to measure in grams. I tried converting it, but it's too off. Baking is not like cooking. If you're off by one speck of flour, then the recipe is ruined. At least that's what it seems for me. So, as soon as I buy my scale, some powdered food color and other things, then I will attempt these again. I know I can get these right! Darn it! I was so excited when I put them in the oven and they formed feet.

Look how flat and ugly mine looks :( :

Malaysian Enche Kabin Boxing Chicken Wings

I've been meaning to try and make these for a while now since I've discovered Lily's blog last year. I guess it was the deep-frying that delayed it. As much as I don't like deep frying foods, I have deep fried foods 3x now in the last two weeks. One of those (orange chicken) did not turn out. Guess I'll just stick to Panda Garden's orange chicken lol. There might be a 4th deep frying session coming soon since I've been meaning to make some egg rolls. Those are too tedious though! :P

Ok, back to this recipe. This was very good. I couldn't find a meat curry powder, so I just used like two different kinds of curry. A powdered one and a paste one. I just mixed it all together with the other stuff. I think it still turned out good. I don't think I would bother deep frying these next time though. I might just pan fry it first and then bake it in the oven or vice versa. When the wings were done, I thought they tasted good, but nothing spectacular. It was when I dipped it in the sauce was when I thought to myself, "Yum, these are good!" I really liked the sauce. It went well with the wings. To think I was going to skip making the sauce! Good thing I didn't. I have a new favorite dipping sauce. The dijon mustard made a difference. I rate this recipe 4/5. Anyway, here's the recipe from Lily's blog.