The We-Will-Make-You-Jealous Thanksgiving blog. Part 2 - Foodventure Friday!

I mean, you would think that we would've taken a break after all that cooking and eating, but how much better to maximize the time we had together over break than to foodventure it out on Black Friday, especially since everyone's out shopping and such (and not eating, or so we thought).

Our epic foodventure started very, very early that day--at around 2ish in the morning, where this list was drawn up by the foodventurers, who used Google Maps and Yelp--both of which proved to be excellent research resources.

"The List"

Our foodventure started at around 11:30 or 12 that morning, where we all got ourselves out of bed and into the car.

First Stop--90 Miles to Cuba Cafe: My friend recommended this to me and said it was delicious. She's Cuban, so I took her word for it. This was a very tiny restaurant, with merely a counter to order in just a counter of seats in the back to sit on--no actual tables or anything like that. The walls were completely covered with a lot of things--newspaper articles, memorabilia, and the like, making staring at the wall pretty interesting.

Mariquitas (Plantain chips): Loved these--they were delicious, freshly-fried and topped with a garlicky sauce. Yum. Reminded me a bit of the garlic fries that they have in baseball games from Kidd Valley.

Empanadas (one was guava and the other one was chorizo): These were hot and delicious. It was interesting to compare these to all the other empanadas I've had in the Philippines, because these were deep-fried instead of baked, and crisp instead of crumbly/flaky. The chorizo on the inside of one empanada had a nice spice to it, and the guava was more of in jam form--so was sweet and sticky, which went well with the fried crispiness of the outside layer.

Ropa Vieja sandwich: Yum. I guess you could say that this was analogous to having a pulled pork sandwich, except that the sauce for this was more tomato-based rather than barbecue-based. The beef in the sandwich was moist, juicy and flavorful, tasting like it had been stewing in the sauce for a while.
Cubano sandwich: If the Ropa Vieja was similar to a pulled-pork sandwich, this would be more of a ham and cheese sandwich. It was okay, but I thought it was unremarkable (which I guess goes without saying, because how much can you really do with a ham and cheese sandwich?).
Overall...I thought it was good, and a great way to start the foodventure. Cheap and tasty is always a good combination.

Second Stop--Hot Chocolate: Since this place has always been getting rave reviews from people (on Yelp, and otherwise) who claim that they had delicious desserts, we decided to try it out.

Chocolate #1 (chocolate souffle, salted caramel ice cream and salted pretzel): I mean, it was good--the chocolate souffle was bittersweet and slightly dense--which went nicely with the salty-creaminess of the ice cream and the salty-crunchiness of the homemade pretzel...but in the end it was just what it was: a pretzel, a chocolate souffle, and a scoop of caramel ice cream...nothing I haven't seen before (especially with the current trend towards putting salt with chocolate). It was pretty unexciting, so I would say it was definitely overpriced.

Creme Brulee: I was never really a creme brulee person to begin with anyways, and thought this was just okay. Even though I don't like creme brulees, I know I've definitely had better ones that were more custardy/creamy.

Brioche Donuts with Hot Fudge and Caramel Popcorn: Yeah...I can see what these people were trying to do--"dressing up" the concept of donuts with the idea of churros con chocolate. It was good, but it was just so... average.

Overall...It's okay, but it's just nothing I haven't seen before, and it can't justify the high price tags of the desserts at this place. Definitely overpriced. Maybe I should just try their drinks (they have a huge selection) next time.

Third Stop--Bellyshack: Bellyshack is one of two restaurants opened up by Bill Kim (the other one being Urban Belly, which I've also been to before). His main concept when it comes to food is to reimagine local street food and do something different with it. Since he's Korean, most of the things he had were more Asian-inspired, but he mixed a lot of non-traditional Asian ingredients in his reimagining of the dishes, and vice-versa (bringing in Asian influences to typically non-Asian food).

Belly Dog with Kimchi Salsa and Egg Noodle: Probably my favorite among the two things we tried, the belly dog took the idea of a hot dog and made it a bit Asian, with the addition of egg noodles and kimchi salsa on it. Although the hot dog was just a standard hot dog, the egg noodles added a crispiness in texture to it, which was complemented by the crunchy kimchi, which had a nice spicy kick to the belly dog. The Togarashi fries on the side with the curry mayonnaise was good too...and kind of addictive. I thought that this dish would've been a little more interesting if the noodles were slightly crispy, instead of just normal noodles, because the overall crunchiness would've factored in more as a textural component of the dish instead of you eating it and being like..."hmm, I'm eating two kinds of carbs..."

Asian Meatballs with Rice Noodles and Mint: I feel that this was their attempted version of a meatball sub, or a pita pocket, which was hard to split among 5 people, because everything kind of just fell out--what we ended up doing was taking a few bites and passing it on to the next person. I thought it was pretty interesting, but it wasn't totally innovative or something that required that much skill to make. Tastewise, it was okay. I felt like it was just a normal Asian noodle dish (similar to the Vietnamese noodle dishes where you have meat over rice noodles) inside a piece of bread.

Overall...Of course, it was nice to see the combinations that the chef did, which made one realize how much overlap there was among the street foods of the world, but once you had that idea--it's not that difficult to execute these things...they can just be done at home.

Fourth Stop--Crisp: Voted as one of the best fried chicken in America by Yahoo Travel (speaking of which, there's one in the article that's in Seattle that I should look into...), Crisp is run by a guy named Jay, who was working the counter while we were there. He had an interesting story--he used to be a hedge fund manager, who decided to open up this place, where he wanted to bring Korean food to the mainstream American taste, since he believes that there are a lot of Korean dishes that are variations of familiar American foods...like fried chicken.

Seoul Sassy and Crisp BBQ chicken wings: These were delicious, and executed so perfectly. I don't know how the guy did it (aside from saying later on that his wings were a 2-day work in progress), but these wings were not greasy, and the skin was caramelized very flavorfully with the sauce. For some chicken wings, you sometimes get the feeling that the sauce and the wings are two separate entities, but in the case of Crisp, both just went together so well and stayed true to the name--they were perfectly crisp. The sauces that they used were pretty good too--the Seoul Sassy was slightly sweet, while the Crisp BBQ used the ground red pepper sauce normally used for Kimchi (if I'm not mistaken) which added a smokiness and a little bit of heat to the wings.

Overall...Loved it, and would go back (especially since the owner Jay said he'd give me free kimchi next time...yay!)

Fifth Stop--Five Guys: So the five of us went to five guys as our fifth stop, because none of us had gone here and we'd all heard that it was pretty good for burgers and fries.

...they had Free peanuts! (which made Mindy happy, because they were free...not because they were peanuts)

French Fries: So Five Guys is known for having very fluffy and airy fries which are crisp on the outside. Yeah, that was true--their fries were pretty good. Not the best fries I've had though, but good all the same. Supposedly they have Cajun fries too, but we didn't get those. Maybe next time.

Bacon Cheeseburger: By this time, we were pretty full already from the day of eating, so we just split this big burger into smaller portions. Nothing much to say about it to be honest--it was a very normal burger. It was a good normal burger...but a normal burger is a normal burger.

Overall...I was kind of underwhelmed by Five Guys--not that I was expecting a lot either--it was just very average American food done well.

Overall on the Day...Foodventuring was fun, although we were all pretty full after (and during) the course of the day. Also felt the aftereffects of a food coma to some degree. Totally worth it though.

The We-Will-Make-You-Jealous Thanksgiving blog...Part 1:Thanksgiving Thursday, cooked in 2 locations.

So about the title...No, I'm not just a randomly vengeful person who likes making other jealous by taking random food photos and making lengthy descriptions...it's just that my aunts and cousins were having a reunion on the other side of the country, when they could've come to Chicago instead. In any case, they had their Filipino-food Thanksgiving back in Seattle, and we had our delicious one here, and we took a lot of pictures partly to make them a tiny bit jealous (or to make them wish--even just a little bit--that they could've just come here instead).

8.45 in the morning...woke up, even though I slept at around 2:45 in the morning planning Friday foodventuring (more on that later), making a sample batch of scones, and talking about the inside secrets of the restaurant industry.

9ish...started cooking--making cornbread

9.30ish...photoshoot with cooking utensils and aprons with Mindy (selected pictures from a long series of pictures and a video--note my awesome koala slippers).

10ish...cornbread out of the oven! I forgot where I got this recipe from online (it was pretty standard as a cornbread recipe, but it just had a lot of butter). I didn't like it as much as other cornbread I've had, because this cornbread was more on the dry and mealy side rather than on the sweet and bready side--which I guess is a preference thing on my part.

Sometime between 10 to 12.30...dried green apples for Apple-Cheddar Scones, and made them (but didn't bake them yet) too.

12.30...snacktime with Filipino food! We got turkey from Uni-mart (a Filipino store which is not related to the one in the Philippines), so my uncle got some other stuff, like Lechon Kawali, chopped up and fried pork--which was both fattening and delicious, especially since I had not had breakfast.

Turon! Yum. Delicious banana and jackfruit wrapped in eggrolls and fried with caramelized brown sugar syrup on top. Had this two days later, but it was still good. :)

1ish...Jason's Gingersnap Pumpkin Pies in the oven. The one in the bowl was our sample pie, and it was a delicious snack.

Butternut Squash Soup preparation--shredding the squash.

Baumkuchen (German tree cake)-making time!

(many kitchen appliances--mixer, food processor...sink were running at the same time while this was going on)

4ish...people (Mallory, Sebastian, Mark) head over to the satellite kitchen (Mark's recently renovated kitchen) to bake the baumkuchen, which needs an oven of its own (read the Wikipedia page, it will tell you why--hint: lots of layers). While this is ongoing, the oven in the main kitchen gets more action (cooking and reheating everything), garlic mashed potatoes get made, the table gets set, people go and shower/change...

...and we ate, at about 5:45.

Butternut Squash soup: My cousin Mallory's specialty dish (or at least one of them), which is basically butternut squash and green apples blended together with chicken stock and other things. She served these with a sausage garnish and some Sriracha+sour cream on top. It was delicious. I always like how the sour cream+Sriracha adds a bit of a kick to the otherwise-basic squash soup.

Apple and Cheddar scones: I thought these turned out pretty well, even though I had to change the recipe a bit since I made a mistake with the dough. I added a lot more sugar to these scones though, because the sample batch, which I tried the previous day, was too tart and sharp for my taste. They were good warm, and also with cranberry sauce.

Figs with Prosciutto+Asparagus with Chorizo (done before I woke up, which is why I have no pictures of these in progress): Yum. I've always loved figs, and was so glad that my suggestion to use figs was taken seriously. Haha (yeah, I really shouldn't try to take credit for this dish but whatever). In any case, figs+meat is a delicious combination, as it takes into account the sweet and the savory--and there's just a nice mellowness that comes with the interplay between the two, which was complemented by the goat cheese between the prosciutto wrapping and the fig. Part of me wished that the cheese was a bit sharper, and that there was a little bit of a fruity tartness/acidity for the dish--for example (this is just me randomly thinking), if the prosciutto was brushed with some balsamic vinegar (the one on the sweet/syrupy side) so that it would caramelize while cooking, or if there was like a small piece of pear in between the cheese and the prosciutto...but yeah, it was good as it was. Asparagus was delicious too.

Squash stuffed with beef+Garlic mashed potatoes+cornbread: Squash was from Whole Foods--it was pretty good, I think they brushed some maple syrup on it. Mashed potatoes were very garlicky and fluffy--definitely disregarded the recipe at this point and just put a LOT of garlic (some roasted, some pan-fried) in it, which made it a lot better. Props to Mindy for looking up engineer suggestions for perfect mashed potatoes as a general basis (yay!). Cornbread was okay--buttery but slightly dry.

Lechon Turkey: From Uni-Mart, the Filipino grocery store nearby. Lechon is more normally thought of as roasted suckling pig over a fire, but other things can be called lechon. We asked the people working at Uni-Mart why they called the turkey lechon, and they said they used the same seasonings for this turkey as they did for the lechon, and just cooked it the normal way. It was delicious and very moist. It was also delicious as paksiw (stewed with liver sauce, vinegar, peppercorn, garlic, onions and sugar) a few days after.

Chorizo-Cornbread Stuffing (also done before I woke up): I really liked this, because I thought it stayed very moist, was slightly crisp (because of the browned cornbread), and was very flavorful because of the chorizo. Was also good (and not dry) as leftovers for the next few days after.

Gingersnap Pumpkin Pie, topped with ginger-infused whipped cream and ginger syrup (not in recipe): Of course, by this time we were all stuffed, but dessert is a must-have, and this pie was good. I liked how the crust (made from gingersnaps) had a more interesting texture and bite through the addition of the candied ginger to it (made by Jason the night before), and the subtlety of the ginger flavor was brought out even more with the ginger-infused whipped cream and ginger syrup. Normally I don't like gingery things, but it was just nice and subtle, and it just made sense in this pie.

Baumkuchen: When I read the recipe for this (not attached because it's not from online), I was blown away by the amount of butter it required (7 sticks--maybe more, if I'm not mistaken), as well as the large amount of skill+effort+time needed to do this laborious cake. I was in mild shock when I saw how much cake was made (one big ring+one big sheet pan), but the efforts were not in vain. Cake was good, a bit on the dense side though (but then again, I had eaten so much at this point, so that was probably affecting my judgement).

Overall, a successful Thanksgiving with a lot of eating...and can you believe we ate a lot again the next day?

Deep fried everything, the unhealthiest "meal" in my life (ever) and the itis.

Sorry that this is late. I started it the day I did it, but am only finishing it now (midterms+work+lack of sleep explain the long gap in between).

So it was Daylight Savings Time Day.

To celebrate, I suppose, the extra hour of the day, I spent two hours (or one hour, depending on how you look at it) learning all about deep-fried food for a school event (part of the Culinary Club). Suffice to say, it was very enlightening and extremely unhealthy, but there's just something about deep-fried food that both repels you and draws you in at the same time.

Deep-fried broccoli: I think that this cancels out the nutritional value of the vegetables, but the broccoli was surprisingly good--it was cooked all the way inside and was nicely encapsulated in its breaded...sphere.

Deep-fried sweet potatoes: Was a bit like eating sweet potato fries (which we also experimented with), but at first the sweet potatoes were a bit raw on the inside. The second batch of this involved par-boiling the sweet potatoes a bit before dipping them into the batter and frying them, which turned out a lot better.

Fried Chicken: Fried the chicken legs and breast pieces in Crisco (shortening) instead of normal vegetable oil, which we used for everything else. Using Crisco made the chicken skin much more crisp, such that its skin had a crackly texture. Of course, the chicken that we made couldn't compare with the chicken I've had in Southern Kitchen (or for that matter, fast food places like KFC and Jollibee)...but it was still good--and I have to say that it was very juicy on the inside and not dry (which is a common problem for a lot of fried chicken I've had in the past).

Deep-fried Snickers bars: Our "dessert" for that afternoon snack, the candy bars were first frozen (recommendation is to freeze them a day beforehand), then dipped in tempura batter (with a lot of sugar added to it) and deep-fried. These were probably my favorite part of the "meal," because they were so unexpectedly delicious, even though I was fully aware of the large amounts of combined fat and sugar I was putting into my system. The caramel-peanut filling oozed out of the Snickers bars when you bit into them, and the fried chocolate outer layer allowe everything to come together to completion.

...Oh, totally forgot.

The after-effects of eating deep-fried food, are called "the itis,"a general feeling of sluggishness, satisfaction, sleepiness and satiation. It was a lot of (unhealthy) food, and a lot of carbs. The entire experience made me come to appreciate what I had previously thought was a pretty crazy part of the American sub-culture of deep-frying (I mean, I still think it's pretty crazy, but can appreciate it more now).

Coma-inducing* goats? Yes. They are delicious.

Fridays are the best, especially today, which came after a particularly long week. In any case, Alice and I decided to go over to Birrieria Zaragoza, which has the most excellent reviews on Yelp. This was a very epic foodventure, whose epicness shows our absolute commitment to delicious food, as it was relatively hard to get to; it required a long bus ride and a 20-minute walk before we reached our final destination (by that time, I was very hungry already):

Birrieria Zaragoza is a relatively small, family-run restaurant, which was nice--the owner was very present throughout our entire meal, and talked to us about things like onion and garlic tea with lime and honey (which is supposed to be good for your bronchials), and that the cinnamon sticks that they sell in the stores is not really cinnamon (it's cassia, which is cheaper and less flavorful/fragrant than regular cinnamon). They also had an open kitchen, which was nice since you could see your food being prepared, as well as your corn tortillas being made by hand.

Note their short menu--they only have around 3 entrees here: goat (in 2 sizes), tacos and quesadillas.

Condiments that they gave you for your food: lime, cilantro, chopped onions, hot sauce and chilis. They make their hot sauce fresh every day from the chilis (I loved their hot sauce--it tasted fresh and smoky, and was more predominantly chili-based, unlike other hot sauce varieties, which are sometimes vinegary or watery).

Their plato chico (child's size portion) of goat, for $7 (the adult-sized plate was $9). It was good and well worth it--the goat was fork-tender, and the tomato-based consomme spooned on top of the goat added to the natural flavors of the goat itself. The subtle smokiness of the goat's natural flavors was highlighted by the spices that it was roasted in, as well as its slightly crisp texture--reminded me a bit of eating carne asada.

Of course, as good as the goat was on its own, these handmade corn tortillas completed the meal (as well as added a lot of carbs to my meal intake). They were a bit on the thick side, and were freshly-made with a distinct corn flavor--they were also perfect for soaking up the extra sauce (consomme) from the goat.

I'm really not a big coffee person, despite being from Seattle, arguably the coffee capital of the US, but I decided to try their Cafe Casero (cinnamon-laced Mexican coffee), and was not disappointed. According to the owner, what they do is blend 3 types of coffee beans from Starbucks (yay Seattle!) to make the coffee, to which they add some cinnamon tea (from real Mexican cinnamon, not the cassia which people usually think is cinnamon--apparently, real cinnamon breaks very easily while the cassia cinnamon does not). Their coffee was very smooth with a strong, yet not overpowering cinnamon flavor...and since refills were free, I had 2 cups of coffee and brought back another cup to take home.

But yeah, the thing with their food is that you just...keep eating (the tortillas fill you up too). After eating each of our child's plate portions, we ended up splitting on half of an adult's plate, the rest of which is in my fridge at the moment with condiments and tortillas (all of which will surely be consumed before the week is over).

*coma-inducing: apparently goat has tryptophan, which like Thanksgiving turkey makes you both sleepy and happy.