BISTECCA

Easily my favorite steak place in Hong Kong. Maybe this whole world!

Porterhouse from Oakleigh Ranch in Oz. They cross bred a Wagyu with an Angus.

Canandian organic Tomohawk. This was AWESOME!

Awesome cheese thingy on top of toasted bread.
Nice tomato salad.

Home Made Yoshinoya

Beef bought at IFC City Super, cow from US.
Dashi stock, soy sauce, mirin, sake, sugar and onions then let the onions go soft
Mix in the beef and....
You have gyudon! Beef bowl. Anika's not really into fast food, but her favourite is Yoshinoya where they have the beef bowl. Anika wanted to eat it for dinner so I promised her I'd go to Yoshinoya to fetch her this. But instead of walking down 200 steps and back up to buy it, I bought the ingredients and made it myself, and it was easy at taste so yummy. Anika nearly made the whole thing by herself. Click here for recipe.

Osso Bucco

This was pretty TASTY - only problem was it was 7 hours overcooked. With slow cooking you have a large margin of error in overcooking, just not 7 hours. The veal was overcooked, not terrible, but obviously would have been a lot better if it was in there for 8 hours rather than 15 hours (overslept). Sauce was WONDERFUL and could be used as a nice pasta sauce I reckon. Recipe here.

Food toys

Salad spinner, so bloody expensive in Hong Kong (like US$50+) but in US < US$20. I love this thing, wet salad is not good.
My new herb garden. Humble beginnings!

Garlic Press. I'm lazy. But this thing is hard to clean .

Taiwanese Breakfast

I spent 7 years in Taiwan from 1998 to 2005, nearly long enough to get my permanent residency. Higher end food in Taiwan has a long way to go but their cheap food is good good good good!!!!!!! Very good memories of Taiwan eating off trucks, carts, side restaurants and generally street market foods. In Hong Kong there's been cropping up over last few years these Taiwanese restaurants serving beef noodle soup, pot sticker and the things below Taiwan-style.






Soy bean milk and this rice noodle oyster soup thingy otherwise known in Taiwanese O AH ME SWA. I don't know the Mandarin name, must mean its a Taiwanese Taiwanese dish as opposed to originating from the mainland.
Dumpling. Dumpling are good. HK$2 for each one.
The shop in North Point

Hot Italian Sausage and Tomato Pasta

Here's the recipe. Made a simple salad, soaked the spinach leaves in ice water so its nice and crispy cold. Added some mushrooms, pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and voila! A salad is born. Don't think I used enough arugula and basil. Should have lower used heat for cooking the onions as it started burning. Not bad for lunch.

Peking Duck at the Mandarin

WHO DOESN'T LIKE PEKING DUCK? So I see this ad that some chef from some famous Peking Duck restaurant in Beijing was going to be at Mandarin for two weeks, so I book it for the last day he was going to be there (I thought he needed some time to figure out using a gas oven versus the wood burning oven used in Beijing) Sommelier suggested a strong Californian chardonnay with the duck which was so good I would have ordered another bottle, but it was lunch. The skin with sugar was so good! Sorta like sauternnes cutting into the fat of foie grais.

The world's most handsome boy and diets

Just in case you don't know, below is my son, Kai, the cutest and most handsome little man in the world. He is on a very strict diet, not because he needs to lose weight, but because of his autism. All natural or organic specific carbohydrate diet to deal with all his gastrointestinal issues. If you have Crohn's Disease or IBS, or other GI issues I suggest you look into the diet here. I may be featuring some of his food in this blog which makes this post quasi-relevant to the title of my blog. Anyways, a lot of issues with GI has to do with pathogens ie bacterial, viral and/or yeast. I reckon Kai had all three. But basically, only protein, fat and fast absorbing carbs (mostly only fruit) can be eaten in the specific carbohydrate diet (we had to take it a step further to add glucose to the fruit to help quicker absorption into the system rather than linger in the gut. Pathogens live on carbs and less carbs in there, the pathogens starve and are killed off. About a week after Kai started this diet he stank worst than a trash can for weeks (this is good as it was a sign of detoxing and the pathogens dying off). Don't forget a large part of your immune system is in your GI tract (basically from your mouth to where the sun don't shine) and a healthy GI tract is good for your immune system. Don't forget your probiotics.

Japan Club June 2011

Natto Bean with squid sashimi. Not quite what I was looking for, gooey with gooey. Natto Bean deserves its own posting, but later. See what bit of wasabi in the center left? I accidentally ate that whole thing in one go. After I finished this dish except for the wasabi I scooped into my dish Anika's macaroni salad as she did not want to eat it. As I was eating it, I scooped the whole clump of wasabi in my mouth. Thank god it was fresh wasabi and did not have that god awful spiciness to it.
There's something to be said about Japanese rice. It just taste so good!

Japanese pickles. The yellow one is my favorite, takuan (I think that's how its' spelt)

I think this is the dashi broth with Japanese herbs and two pieces of salmon. I really do love Japanese soups. So simple yet so much yummy!
When in doubt I always order the unagi, really hard for anyone to screw that up and always satisfying. Going to need to go here more often, I'm not going to be a member for much longer I reckon.

Guinness Lamb (Shoulder) Stew (Part 1)

First time I've ever bought lamb shoulder. A lot more bone than I thought there would be. Either there's gonna be a very lucky dog or I'm gonna make some lamb bone broth. You can see above the meat my recipe book (iPad2) and the recipe can be found here. It got five stars out of five on food.com for whatever that is worth.

All cut up in absolutely un-uniformed size pieces. I was no born to be a butcher.

Fun father/daughter activity. Anika caramelizing the onions.

The main ingredient. Read more about it here. Did you know some studies show that Guinness is good for the heart?

So all in the slow cooker. Lamb, carrots, onions, thyme, garlic, rosemary, celery, potatoes, beef bone broth AND GUINNESS!!!! First (and I think only time) I had this was on a friend's place in Hong Kong circa 1997. His mother was visiting from Ireland and made some of this and we sat on his rooftop and drank. And I've been meaning to make it ever since. 14 years later, here we are. Hopefully it turns out to be just as good (still has to sit in cooker overnight)!!!!!!

Dry Aged Pork

I'm a really big fan of dry aged steaks, WELL aged. I don't mind my pork chops at all either (I think I have been blessed with the god-given ability to appreciate any kind of food). Somehow those two concepts occcupied my mind space at the exact same time so had to look it up on the internet. They do seem to have dry-aged pork, in the US though most of the pork industry in the US has been tailored to produce lean meat so it can be marketed as "the other white meat" and lean meat = easy to dry out, can't dry age. There are some breeds which have marbling, and thus can dry age them. Next time I'm in US I will order some and try it out. If you are in US now, order some up and let me know how it is. You can buy from here. An article about dry-aged pork here. Below is Anika on Space Mountain at Disneyland here in Hong Kong, I had a similar expression when I found out there was dry-aged pork.

Random pics

Thanks Jono


Thanks MossyThanks Mossy
Thanks Kimchee
Thanks Viv
Random pics of food friends have sent me recently

Beef Bone Broth

With my chili
Nice clumps of marrow in there
This baby was cooked for 48 hours in the slow cooker. Just a splash of vinegar with some water. Anika mixed it in with her rice and said "Daddy, no taste". I took a sip of mine and she was right. Added a bit of salt and got a thumbs up from Anika. I was wondering why my pork bone broth tasted much better than this. I think for two reasons 1) You are suppose to roast the bones a bit first before putting it in slow cooker and 2) Some meat on the bones would help as well. Going to use this broth in my Guinness Lamb Shoulder Stew tomorrow. This recipe looks like a good one for beef broth.

Vongole with Anika

Father/daughter team action last Saturday with making the spaghetti vongole (clammed spaghetti). A friend of mine recently told me she had a serious weakness for vongole and I had no idea what that was. Looked it up on internet and found this video and it looked easy peasy. Not much ingredients: clams, white wine, garlic, olive oil, parsley, cherry tomatoes, salt and pepper. Anika took command of making the spaghetti and did that 100% on her own producing perfect al dente spaghetti, couldn't have done it better myself. She also helped chop up some of the cherry tomatoes in half. If had to change anything I'd add more garlic, and also heard its amazing with the canned Italian anchovies. Probably the best pasta dish I've ever made in my life, but its a really low base comparison as most the pasta I've made was spaghetti with Ragu poured over it, but recently I've been using this Japanese pasta sauce (First picture on top). Mendaiko pasta sauce. Warning though, most people, especially non-Japanese, would not like it.