Japanese Obon Festival

Today we went to Downtown San Jose's Obon Festival. After a long night of drinking, I needed gyoza, chicken salad, teriayki & sushi. I'm still shocked that they don't have yakitori or tako yaki. I mean how good would that be? I'm thinking about opening a tako yaki stand next year and totally sell out of those things. You can't have street food without tako yaki ya know? Or what about okinomiyaki?

Anyway, we got there about an hour earlier so we grabbed some much needed coffee before venturing into the farmer's market. As we perused the stands, we found a guy that was selling hummus, dolmas & olives so we bought some pita, hummus and olives for dinner tonight. Justyn's going to grill up some meat.. I can't wait!

After walking around a bit, we finally passed enough time for the festival to start. First thing's first, we went and got some food.

We walked around a bit more and Justyn bought me these beautiful flowers that almost have a ginger like scent. I'm a happy girl today!

I Won!!

Haha... the Iron Chef judge just came out with a ruling. I won!!

Here's what he wrote about my dish:

"fantastic presentation the fish was so tender that it was a slice of heaven in my mouth. the sesame seeds really do make a fine addition to the fish itself the infusion of the sauce and the Jap Chae make the flavor combination very exotic tasting. the sauce in particular was very well rounded and really was a fine addition.while eating this i could close my eyes and pretend that i was at a fine dining establishment. it was this well prepared."

And here are the results by point system:

Justyn:
taste: 10
presentation:9

Jaded:
taste:10
presentation:10

Battle: Halibut

Earlier in the week one of our friends went to Alaska and did some fishing. He caught a buncha huuuge fish and didn't know what to do with all of it. He offered a big slap of halibut to us since we love to cook. Since it was such a big piece of fish, I decided to make it fun and do an "Iron Chef" battle against Justyn. He quickly agreed.

Justyn went with flavors from Europe and I knew that I had to go with aZn. He cooked yesterday and made a White Bean & Halibut Stew. Here's how it turned out. It was rich, smoky (from the bacon) but not too heavy for a summer night's meal. Here's what our judge (Eric) said about his dish:

"what a combo.white beans bacon and halibut. the fish was perfectly cooked as was the bacon.the marriage of flavor between the 3 main ingredients was a cacophony of flavors all working to bring me much delight.it was a hearty flavor but still felt very light and refreshing. the seasoning was perfect and not too salty. being a white fish there was no fishy smell. the meat of the fish was firm yet fell apart perfectly when i ate it.this was easily the best thing i have eaten all week.i hungrily anticipate the other half of this challenge."

So onto my portion of the challenge. I actually did a lot of searching for a recipe that touched my soul. Eventually I found a recipe by Hosea (last season's Top Chef winner). Sesame Crusted Halibut w/ Ginger Cream Sauce served with his version of Jap Chae (Recipe: http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/sesame-crusted-tuna-with-ginger-cream)

It was perfect! Except... you know me. I can't go without modifying recipes. Instead of heavy cream, I used coconut milk and instead of tuna, it was halibut of course. So I needed a recipe to help me time how long the halibut needed to cook. So I used this recipe: http://www.harvesteating.com/public/800.cfm. I skipped the step of baking the fish since I didn't want to overcook it. 2 minutes on each side turned out perfect. The fish was tender and moist.

At first I wasn't even going to make Jap Chae but I figured I might need the extra boost to help me win. After cooking everything and tasting it, I'm pretty sure I'm going to win hehe..

It was a fun battle and I can't wait to see what the judge says about my dish. Cross your fingers for me! I wanna win this one bad! And who knows, even if I lose, we'll probably do future battles against each other. It's too fun not to heh.

Cooking: Chicken & Rice w/ Saffron

Well, I finally found an opportunity to use the saffron my sister got for me when she was in Italy.

I can't imagine how much she paid for this but I figure she'd appreciate me finally cooking with it. It's just too bad I decided to cook this dish on a weeknight, otherwise I'd have her over. Next time for sure :)

I browned the chicken on both sides in an equal mixture of melted butter & olive oil.

After the chicken browned, I removed some of the oil and sauteed the onion and garlic w/ some salt & pepper.

I added the rice and sauteed that for a minute before adding the broth, water, bay leaf & saffron.

I reseasoned it and then added the chicken back in, brought it to a boil and then dropped it down to a simmer for 27 minutes.

Here it is plated. I looove this recipe! And it's simple enough for a quick weeknight meal.

Recipe: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/06/dinner-tonight-chicken-and-rice-with-saffron-recipe.html

Dawn McVey's Color Challenge # 11

It's Dawn McVey's (dawnmcvey.typepad.com) 11th challenge but it's my first time participating. I loved the colors in the challenge so I couldn't help myself. In doing this challenge, I learned a lot about my new eyelet border punch. It took me quite some time to figure out how to use it properly. After punching out the black strip with the border punch, I thought it looked a little naked so I added some bright pink stitching. I then stamped "love" and then cut out the heart. I lined the heart with some light gray ribbon and then adhered some green ribbon behind that.

Getting Rid of Rocks

SUCKS.

In 80 somethin degree heat.

And it looks like we barely made a dent in removing these ugly ass rocks.

Oh yeah, I'm only blogging about this step by step so I can eventually make a scrapbook page about it :)

Cooking: Adobo Chicken

I had a massive craving for Adobo Chicken today, so I pulled up the recipe I used before and decided to seriously adhere to the recipe word for word. By that, I mean, I strained the sauce (which I never do) and reduced it by half. Man what a difference that made. This is by far my best batch!