sassybat

i also have to recommend the roberto's chain: some of the best chicken burritos i have ever had. (they don't put rice or beans in it, so while it's very...uh....juicy....it's also just filled with chicken and veggies, so you don't feel like you're getting the short end of the stick because of a burrito that is 3/4 rice and beans). for fairly inexpensive sushi at a halfway decent price, i would say ichiban in pacific beach(?) or their sister store niban on clairemont mesa. for pretty darn good sushi, i'd say tadashi's in la jolla (all you can eat, made to order, for less than $20 for lunch, $25-27 for dinner). for really good, but more expensive sushi, i'd say nobu in solana beach or yummy sushi in carmel mountain. yummy sushi is great for just plonking yourself down at the sushi bar and letting the sushi chef be creative and make whatever they think you might like. the last time we were there, we got a roll with unagi in the middle and seared salmon skin on top. it was so good! even though it's become a huge chain, pat and oscar's pizza chain is pretty good. they're all over san diego, and if you just try their breadsticks, you will see why my friends and i have deemed them the home of the crack-laced breadsticks. plus, the san diego pizza (avocado, feto cheese, red onion, and pesto) is yummy. you can wander around clairemont/kearney mesa on convoy street for a wealth of relatively cheap, really good asian places. nozomi's on convoy is a great korean/japanese restaurant. my favorite pho place is phuong tran on convoy has great egg rolls and $5 bowls of pho. the gaslamp district downtown has great food, particularly if you want to escape from all the generic chains that seem to be everywhere in san diego. one of my favorites is a little italian restaurant/bakery called assaggio on 4th which makes some of THE best ciabatta i've ever had. their foccacia is great too. the gaslamp district is a lot of fun to just wander around and go into whatever catches your eye. my SO and i went down there one day to restaurant hop, because we didn't know what we wanted for dinner. so we had sushi as an appetizer at sushi itto, and dinner at trattoria la bocca, and we would have gone somewhere else for dessert(ghiradelli soda shop, maybe?), but we were too tired and full at that point. just be warned that like most downtowns, parking can be a pain in the butt.

tuesday's dinner was kind of made up on the fly. i pan seared some scallops, then deglazed the pan with white wine, and finished the sauce with butter. then i tossed the sauce with some angel hair pasta and served it with salad and roasted cauliflower.

last night was roast chicken with garlic and rosemary, herbed rice, and roasted cauliflower. the SO was practically drooling by dinnertime, until he saw the cleanup job he was going to have to do on the kitchen. i discovered last night that i can cook and talk on the phone at the same time, but not cook, talk on the phone AND clean at the same time.

my current method is slathering the bird with a mixture of chopped garlic, rosemary, salt, pepper, and olive oil and roasting it at 400 degrees until it's done. but after reading this topic i might have to experiment with other methods..... i see a lot of roast chicken in my future. as for accompaniments, i'm all for mashed potatoes and some kind of yummy veg, but last night i made roast chicken with herbed rice and roasted cauliflower. it was good, but i kind of forgot about the cauliflower for a little while and they ended up being browner (and slightly more burnt) than i would normally let them get. still good though.

chicken soup and spaetzle

in-n-out burgers. they must have been sent from god. the #1 (double-double, fries, and soda) for approx. $5 is heavenly. i second the bk chicken sandwiches. they were the first fast food chicken sandwiches where the chicken was actually kinda *gasp!* juicy! not dried out!!! plus, i never liked tomatoes on my sandwiches or burgers, and the bk chicken sandwiches don't come with tomato, which saves me the trouble of explaining to the cashier that i don't want tomato on my sandwich. when i was a child, my mom would only get arby's roast beef sandwiches or McD fillet o' fish when we went for fast food. so that's what i grew up on. they will always hold a special place in my heart and kind of count as a fast food version of "comfort food" for me.

another term i've heard with the same connotation is "twinkie"... yellow on the outside, white on the inside. i can say this, because i'm one of those people who could be considered a "banana" or a "twinkie". i used to get a lot of flak from my cousins (from china) and grandparents for not being able to express myself fully in chinese.

i usually try to make extra food at dinner so me and the SO will have something for lunch the next day. but on the days when i didn't cook the night before, or worked at night so didn't have a chance to make a decent dinner, i'm stuck with being at the mercy of the university's food court. (i work at UCSD) there are only so many days of eating at rubio's before you start running away screaming at the thought of fish tacos (again!)

i remember reading the laura ingalls wilder book on the banks of plum creek and wanting to try the vanity cakes they described.

more hotpot leftover usage: last night i turned the leftover sliced beef and "wonton meat" (pork and shimp mixture that my mom uses for wonton filling as well as "meatballs" for hotpot) into stirfry with green beans. i roasted some cauliflower too for the first time. i am now a convert.

i was given a single-bladed mezzaluna as a gift for christmas, and i enjoy using it for garlic and herbs. sure, i could use my chef's knife to mince them, but my mezzaluna is usually just sitting there and staring me in the face, waiting to be used, so i just give in and use it. it's one of those items i could easily live without in my kitchen, but there's just something kind of fun about using it to chop garlic...

these past two days have been good cooking days for me, so i actually felt brave enough to post. sunday: i did a hotpot with some friends, and made potstickers. i tried to imitate my mom's hotpot ingredients as best i could, and no one complained, so i guess i did all right. monday: the great thing about hotpot leftovers is that it's all raw food that's already been sliced and prepped. so i just took the leftover squid and shrimp and turned it into seafood risotto (ala mark bittman, but i had to make some adjustments due to lack of clams and mussels). it turned out pretty good. and we had salad with balsamic vinagrette with the risotto.

the cooks at my parents' restaurant use for the seasoning a little salt, MSG, and soy sauce. huge quantities of soy sauce. but my mom told me that the soy sauce they use at the restaurant comes in buckets (they buy it from a restaurant supply store) and costs less than the good soy sauce we use at home. why? people like the color it adds, but it doesn't have much flavor. my mom referred to it as food coloring. so that's probably why it's harder to get it as dark as restaurants. you need crappier soy sauce. whenever my mom cooked fried rice for me or my siblings, though, she would use salt as seasoning and no soy. i actually like it better that way.

What was your family food culture when you were growing up? I'm Chinese, so that factored a LOT in my family food culture. Rice really was a staple, and soups with unidentifiable ingredients that were "good for you" were a nightly occurance. Was meal time important? Mealtime was very important. My parents owned a restaurant, so they were rarely home in the evenings, but my grandma lived with us and would cook dinner, and we were all expected to be there. The same went for when my parents were home for dinner. In that case, my mom normally cooked, and we were still expected to all be there. No one ate in front of the TV, and only if you had something else to do (i.e. studying at school, etc.) were you excused from being at dinner, and then you had food waiting for you when you get home. Was cooking important? Cooking was very important. Microwaveable foods did not exist in my house. We did have some toaster foods like Eggo waffles and Pop-tarts, but those were for breakfasts on school mornings when my mom didn't want to get up to make us breakfast. (Working late hours in a restaurant does not make you receptive to the idea of waking up at 6am to feed kids) What were the penalties for putting elbows on the table? I never knew there was such a rule until I went to friends' houses. My parents never instilled that rule in us, and to this day, the rule still makes no sense to me. Putting elbows on the table put the rice bowl at the perfect height for eating with chopsticks. Who cooked in the family? (See above) Mostly my grandma, because she was the one who was always home. Whenever my mom had days off, she would take over cooking, and sometimes my dad would when he had days off. My grandma cooked standard Cantonese fare, such as stir-frys. My mom stuck to those mostly too, but she got to play with more interesting foods, ie crab, lobster, etc. My dad went to culinary school for a while, so he was usually the most experimental. That could be good, but on some occasions, it was kinda bad......... Were restaurant meals common, or for special occassions? Restaurant meals (other than the ones at my parents' restaurant) were rare, and usually on a whim. On special occasions, my parents would usually cook something special. Did children have a "kiddy table" when guests were over? It depended on the number of guests. If my aunt stopped by for a visist, or we had a couple friends over, it didn't make a difference because our table sat at least 8. 10 could be squeezed in. (The large table was necessary. There were 5 kids in my family.) But during large family gatherings around Thanksgiving and Christmas, there would be a kiddie table simply because the table could not house all my aunts and uncles and us and all our cousins. When did you get that first sip of wine? Probably sometime in my pre-teen or early teen years, I can't remember. Though I do remember a time when I was a teenager, and my dad had made a mistake with the wine ordering for the restaurant, and so we ended up with three cases of a so-so cabernet sauvingnon. But most of us were and are lightweights, so even the 7 or 8 of us couldn't finish a bottle in one night. Now my older brother and I have more of a tolerance, but my grandma, my younger sister, and my mom aren't big drinkers. A quarter bottle of Smirnoff Ice can get my sister red-faced and giggly. Was there a pre-meal prayer? Nope. Was there a rotating menu (e.g., meatloaf every Thursday)? There wasn't really a set rotating menu, but my grandma's menu wasn't very broad, so we ate a lot of stuff over and over again. But I do remember a period of time where we had boiled chicken every Friday like clockwork. How much of your family culture is being replicated in your present-day family life? Some, but not all. I love cooking, and I try to stay away from microwaveable foods as much as I can, but there are days when I'm just too tired to cook. Normally those are the days when my roommate will pick up cooking duties, or we'll go out and get something to eat. But when I cook I like to try and recreate a lot of the foods my grandma and mom make, partly out of nostalgia and partly because it's good food, dammit. but i also branch out into other foods. I'm a big fan of pasta and Italian food, and roast chicken is a godsend. when both my roommate and i are home, we eat dinner together, and that's something I'd like to keep when I have kids.

wow... that's a lot of differing opinions about steak. i decided to go with marlene's steak marinade recipe, and the ribeyes turned out nicely, but i think i might try the kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper next time... i wanted to go for a dry rub, but my luv wanted a marinade. he won this time, but next time i'm holding out for a salt and papper rub.

does anyone have any good marinades or dry rubs for steak?