What I Ate in LA :: Summer 2014

Some of the food I consumed while we were in LA ... just the stuff I photo-documented!

[Double-Double @ In-N-Out (near LAX)]

[Kotteri Ramen @ Asa Ramen (Torrance)]

[my sister's strawberry pie]

[tons of Korean food @ Mountain (Gardena)]

[Japanese grilled mackerel (鯖の塩焼き)]

[Mottainai Ramen with thin noodles and an egg @ Mottainai (Gardena)]

[Buttermilk Honey Fried Chicken and Biscuits @ The Kettle (Manhattan Beach)]

[Camarones Borrachos and Shrimp & Octopus Ceviche Tostaditos @ Coni'Seafood (Inglewood)]

[Kai-Shio (seafood salt) ramen @ Jidaiya (Torrance)]

[Prime Rib @ Lawry's (Beverly Hills)]

[Huevos Divorciados @ North End Caffe (Manhattan Beach)]

[Tsukemen @ Tsujita LA (West LA)]

[Omakase (and sushi for Maya) @ Maruhide Uni Club (Gardena)]

Bucato (Culver City) where they don't let you take pictures ...

Fried Cauliflower Sicilian Style ($10)

Stringozzi cacio e pepe ($13)

Maccheroni di Busa (duck ragu, pecorino sardo) ($15)

Panzanella ($14)

Octopus with chickpeas, escarole, roasted tomato, and nduja ($18)

[Bourbon Pecan Pie Ice Cream Sandwich @ Coolhaus (Culver City)]

[Carnitas Tostada and (complimentary) flan @ Zacatecas (Hawthorne)]

[Uni Club Donburi @ Maruhide Uni Club (Gardena)]

[Tokyo Aosa (seaweed) Ramen @ Jidaiya (Torrance)]

[Jidori Chicken and Waffles @ Workshop Kitchen + Bar (Palm Springs)]

[pork shank from the summer menu @ Cork Tree California Cuisine (Palm Desert)]

[Omakase @ Okumura (Encino)]

What I Made for Dinner :: Paella

One of my dearest friends in Los Angeles, S, and I often end up talking about food and restaurants, usually via text or Instagram. When I told her I was visiting LA for half of the summer, she really wanted to cook together. Since we were tag-teaming on the cooking, we decided on something a bit ambitious and chose paella. We based our version on this recipe from Chow.  It's really not that difficult of a dish to prepare. Expensive, yes. Complicated, not so much. Ours came out quite well, I think, and we were able to feed five adults and three kids.

The one thing I screwed up on was the sausage: I bought Portuguese Linguiça because I couldn't find Spanish chorizo, and it was much too spicy. For the kids, we rounded out the flavor by dolloping a lot of sour cream on theirs! 

What I Made for Dinner :: Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala

There are some weeks that I have too many ideas of what to make for dinner, and there are other weeks when I am just completely bone dry of ideas. This is one of those weeks. It took me an hour to come up with dinner ideas for two nights. Two nights.

I'm leaving town on Wednesday with the kids so I asked my husband what I needed to pick up for him at TJ's to stock the kitchen. One of the things he requested was the frozen Chicken Tikka Masala, which gave me the idea to make it for dinner, which means I didn't buy it for him like he asked. Oh well, it's for the good of the family!

Maya helped make the sauce for the Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala and she had fun measuring out the yogurt and mixing in the spices. She kept commenting on how good it smelled. I used boneless, skinless chicken thighs because I'm not a fan of chicken breast. Other than that, I pretty much stuck to the ingredient list and didn't make any modifications. (I didn't add any cayenne because Maya doesn't like spicy, and it figures that she went next door to have dinner with her friend!)

I served it with rice and naan, and sautéed spinach.

What I Made for Dinner :: Beef Stroganoff

http://allrecipes.com/recipe/beef-stroganoff-iii/?sitepref=ar

What I Made for Dinner :: Slow Cooker Roasted Drumsticks and GrilledNectarine Salad

Officially, summer doesn't start until Saturday, but the heat is enough to make me want to stop cooking. Even using the stove makes me sweat, and let's not even talk about turning the oven on. So I'm now on the hunt for more slow cooker recipes to add to my Pinterest board.

This recipe for Slow Cooker Roasted Drumsticks is supposed to mimic the flavor of rotisserie chicken and it actually comes pretty close. Sadly, you don't get the crisp skin from an oven roasted chicken, but I'm willing to sacrifice that for a few months until I can turn the oven back on.

I was rather skeptical and a bit worried about the amount of brown sugar the recipe calls for, but the sweetness was hardly discernible. I did use a tiny bit less than the recipe called for, though. As for the seasoning, I used Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning with extra salt and pepper.

This is a really easy recipe and I plan to make this repeatedly during the summer with other chicken parts too.

The chicken was accompanied by a Grilled Nectarine Chopped Salad that I improvised based on this recipe.

Edited, September 14, 2014 :: To get better color and slightly crispier skin, I broiled the chicken for a few minutes on each side. I prepare about 12 legs so there's no way I can get them into the slow cooker in one layer. You can rotate the chicken half way through the cooking time, but I didn't bother this time around. The pieces that are on the bottom layer are more tender and are almost fall-off-the-bone, but the pieces on top don't dry out and end up with firmer skin.

What I Made for Dinner :: Pasta with Kale, Lemon, and Salmon

I love having "foodie" friends because they're always willing to share their food knowledge, whether it's about a restaurant, recipe, or cooking tip. I was recently texting with a friend in LA and we were going back and forth about quick and easy recipes. She shared this recipe for Pasta with Kale, Lemon, and Toasted Walnuts with me, and mentioned adding salmon to it. For me, the addition of salmon was perfect because no one in our family likes walnuts and I needed to sub in a good source of protein.

I cooked the kale first, like the recipes says, and then plated it. In the same pan, I cooked the salmon in butter and olive oil. Then I combined everything else in the pan, adjust the salt and pepper, and tossed in the pasta.

It was a quick and really delicious meal. My son especially likes kale so this was a great way to get him to eat more vegetables.

What I Made for Dinner :: Turkey Tsukune

I love yakitori (焼き鳥). My favorites aren't the "usual" tori (chicken) pieces, but rather the odds and ends like gizzard (sunagimo: 砂肝), liver (kimo: レバー), skin (kawa: 皮), and cartilage (nankotsu: 軟骨). Occasionally, this solicits grimaces from people who aren't used to eating parts of a chicken that are discarded by most Americans. One of the few types of yakitori I always order that's made from regular meat is tsukuné (つくね), chicken meatballs. (My current favorite version is the one from Torihei in Torrance (CA).)

So when I saw that Nami-san of Just One Cookbook posted her recipe for tsukuné, I had to give it a try. Unfortunately, I didn't have access to ground chicken that day so I made do with ground turkey. I would have loved to include the shiso leaves but no luck there, either. (I should've called the tiny mom-and-pop Japanese market in Bethesda to see if they had any.)

Shiso is a lovely herb that's part of the mint family, but is sometimes referred to as Perilla, Beefsteak Plant, or Japanese Basil. I would love to grow some here along with other basic herbs; it goes really well with Japanese udon noodles, fried as tempura, eaten with sashimi, and rolled and grilled with thin-sliced pork. My mom includes it in her homemade gyoza filling.

Anyway, I made do with what I had and decided that because I was too lazy to skewer the tsukune, I would just make meatballs. I also don't have a grill rack so I broiled the meatballs on a grill frying pan.

Tsukuné Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 2 tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon miso (I used 
• 4 scallions
• 10 Parella leaves (shiso: しそ), if you have it
• salt
• shichimi-togarashi (七味唐辛子) pepper, as a condiment

Yakitori Taré Sauce Ingredients:

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup mirin
• 1/8 cup sake
• 1/8 cup water
• 1 teaspoon packed brown sugar
• green part of 1 scallion

Follow the rest of the instructions on Just One Cookbook.