Bertucci's La Villa Deli

This is gonna be a short post, but I just want to say that Bertucci's La Villa in Willow Glen has THE BEST mortadella sammiches I've ever had. Drool away ladies and gents!

PS - Oh and yes, some selfish bastard did take a bite out of the sammich before taking a picture of it. Sorry!

My Favorite Sushi

My current favorite sushi place is, crap I can't remember the name of it. I know how to get to it though. Don't you guys hate it when I keep forgetting the names of places that I've eaten at? What happens if you want to go? I promise to snap a picture of the restaurant name the next time I go which will probably be sometime this week.

This sushi place has stuff that no other restaurant carries. Things like tako yaki (octopus dumplings) and this. OK, maybe other restaurants have the tempura shrimp roll, but not tako yaki. I absolutely love this place because it's comfortable and well, their sushi is great! I mean take a look below. What's not to like?

Ate, Drank & Was Merry

To make up for my lack of posting I totally went overboard this weekend and ate, drank and was merry. (My little spin on Eat Drink & Be Merry hehe)

Justyn and I went to this Italian place called Tomato Thyme last weekend and we were so impressed with their food that Justyn stole the buzzer thing they gave us to let us know when they would have a table ready. OK, technically, he didn't steal it. It was an accident. So being that we had to return the buzzer, we went there this past Friday. The pan fried salmon pasta that I got last week was really good, but I wanted to try something else. I took notice to the plates of osso bucco that passed by our table last week so that's what I ordered. Justyn got the same thing as last week which was spaghetti with meat sauce and one meatball. Seriously good eats. Just talking about it makes me want to go back and try another dish! I had yelped this place and found that there were two other locations nearer to our place. Unfortunately they didn't get as high reviews as the one in Willow Glen. Someone knows what they're doing with this restaurant. It's located in a ghetto shopping center, but once you walk in, you can feel the energy of the employees. The service is superb too! Can't get any better than that.

Here are pictures of our food from last week.

So after a great meal, we hopped in the car to drive back home. I felt something land on my leg and thought it was a small branch from the tree we had parked under. Oh god, it moved!! I violently brushed it off. Whew! Half way home, it's back on my leg. OMG!! Get it off. Wait, it's kinda cute. It was a grashopper. By the time we had gotten home, it jumped off my thigh onto the dashboard and visited Justyn for a while. I didn't know these things bite and luckily didn't get bitten while trying to pick it up and put it outside. Justyn eventually used my carry out box to shoo it out. I miss this little bugger.

I was so full from dinner that I passed out on the couch. OK, not really. I passed out more from the wine I had drank heh. By the way, the house red at Tomato Thyme is the shit! I mean I don't have high expectations when I order house wines, but they actually serve drinkeable stuff here. Not that vinegar sour shit.

The next morning Justyn ran out to get ice for our coolers. Partay time! We straightened up the house a bit and got the sodas and beers into the coolers. Angel arrived earlier than everyone else so we could go through our presents from France. Yeah... France. She smuggled in some foie gras that was torchon style I think, lotsa wine, clothes, and my tagine. YES! Dammit, I forgot to get pictures of my tagine. She got me two tagines, one for cooking and one for serving in. When I make some lamb tagine, I'll post pictures. Just hold tight. Let's see what else. She also got Justyn some candies which I haven't tried yet, but I suspect they'll be good.

So Calvin and others started arriving and soon liquor flowed through our bodies and we worked it off by playing on my sister's Wii. I just want to say that the Wii is awesome! I want one so bad, but I don't wanna have to get in line at 6:00am to buy one. I rocked in Wii Bowling or so I thought. I made chicken adobo and Justyn grilled up some of his famous ribs. We all sat around in the patio and talked about my wedding in Vegas and laughed it up. Good company makes for a good party. Angel ended up passing out at 7:00pm and people hung around until 11:00pm. I eventually passed out on the couch around midnight.

Sunday morning arrived too soon but I was looking forward to Jason's BBQ. We went over there with some leftover beer and wine from the coolers and hung out with Jason & Donoho's friends. They're good people and I even learned how to play this weird game where you put tiles down that have pictures of roads and castles on it. I didn't do too well, but I like to think I knew what I was doing. Jason made roasted bell peppers, asparagus and portabello mushrooms. We were also fed tri-tip which was really juicy. I don't know a lot of people that would go through the hassle of making their own salad dressing, but Jason and myself. That was uber tasty as well. The Wii was turned on and I challenged people to bowling yet again. I won! Oh yeah, I'm the man hehe err woman. I had practice in the morning with Justyn and Angel. Haha, just thinking about that morning makes me giggle. Anyway, after we hung out at Jason's house, we left around 8:00pm.

What a weekend! I'm still recovering, but it was well worth it. Thanks to everyone that came on Saturday and to Donoho and Jason for inviting us over.

Cooking: Japanese Spaghetti

It's not what you think. No tomato sauce, no spaghetti noodles, no meatballs. What the hell am I talking about then? Well, not till recently I discovered tako yaki balls. It's rice flour batter stuffed with bits of octopus. I know my description doesn't do it justice, but it's good! You would normally serve tako yaki with tonkatsu sauce, Japanese mayo, a sprinkling of seaweed and bonito flakes. Take this as a recommendation and try it if you can find it! We store bought ours from Mitsuwa in Saratoga/Cupertino and also got some yaki udon (kinda like chow fun/mein)from the refridgerated section.

Yesterday we also bought some thing cut beef from Lucky in which Justyn marinated in teriyaki sauce. He stir-fried that with some napa cabbage and yellow onion. After that, you just add in the noodles until they're cooked to tempurature. Then you add in the seasonings included in the package. He microwaved the tako yaki balls according to the bag they came in.

Time for plating. He put some of the yaki udon on the plate and topped it with the "meatballs". After a sprinkle of seaweed, bonito flakes and drizzle of tonkatsu sauce it's ready!

Here's the final plate. It was good although I would've liked the beef sliced thinner and more veggies. I thought it was cute to call it Japanese spaghetti and truly is a neato idea!

OMG!!! Very Exciting News!!

I feel soooo special having made it onto tastespotting.com. I had sent in 3 other pictures before my Adobo Chicken one! I'm so so so honored to finally make it onto that website!

Check it out on: http://www.tastespotting.com/

Cooking: Chicken Adobo

I haven't posted in long time or cooked in a while for that matter. I dunno, I've just been crazy busy with other things and haven't found the time to catch up! This past weekend, I got a breather and hung out with my sister on Sunday. I had already planned to make Chicken Adobo on Sunday at home, but the more the merrier. My sister invited a friend over so I cooked for them, her roommate, Justyn and myself.

My sister helped me prep the ingrediants. We basically chopped a couple onions, some garlic and prepped some greenbeans for a side dish. Since we had time to kill, we watched Princess Mononoke while we waited for dinnertime. Sipping wine and making fun of the movie was probably the highlight.

At 4:30pm we seared the chicken which was probably not necessary, but whatever. I could have dumped everything in the pot, but I felt like that would be too easy hehe. In fact, what I should've done was saute the onions with the garlic and chili flakes but I forgot.

I did the chicken in two batches so after I was done searing, I put all of it back in the dutch oven and covered it with a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, peppercorns and bay leaves. (I'll post the recipe at the bottom of this post in case you're interested in making this)

Since I forgot to saute the onions, I just sprinkled them on top of the chicken and put a lid on it.

An hour later, and this is what I got. It was really really oily, so my sister helped me ladle out almost all the oil.

Dinnertime!! I really like how this picture came out. It looks nice and professional huh? I think so at least. The greenbeans were sauteed with onion, garlic, chili flake, oyster sauce and soy sauce. Not bad, although in retrospect, I should've blanched them a little longer.

Recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Adobo-Chicken-with-Ginger/Detail.aspx

Vung Tau's Bun Bo Hue

The trilogy ends here with Vung Tau's Bun Bo Hue. I finally got to try it tonight.

Honestly, the broth was good but it had this very heavy MSG background to it. I mean, don't get me wrong. It was no where near as bad as Pho Vy's version of it. Good lemongrassy flavor and heat to it. I just might have to go back to Bun Bo Hue An Nam & Danh's Restaurant for something more deep. It sucks because I really held high expectations for Vung Tau's noodles. The noodles.... they were a little on the mushy side. I mean I tried to scoop them onto my spoon and they just cut in half. However, there is a redeeming point here with the service. I swear, no less than 5 minutes after we ordered, our food arrived. I know I've posted this before when we went here for my sister's birthday but god damn. There was a huge table next to us whom had ordered before us and we still got our food fast!

So here it is.. the last of the bun bo hues for me. I think I'm noodled out. OK no, I lie. I'll be back for more. Where? I don't know, but I'm on a quest to find the absolute best! Not that the others weren't good, but I know there's more out there to try!

Yelp Reviews

From now on I'll be posting my reviews for restaurants on yelp.com. I just think it's repetative to post them here and there.

Here's a link to them: http://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=BdTXw_Xy7m3Jy25FMVXqSQ