FAWK

@#$(*!)@($*! I lost my S95 so... I lost all the pictures I took in Dallas.

Dammit I'm just not meant to have the S95 or something.

SF: Donuts, Burrito, Beef Tartare

In Dallas currently with nothing to do, so decided to do a short post for the time I was in SF this past weekend!

Before I left for Tahoe last Friday, Ahrhan and I stopped by Dynamo Donuts for a quick breakfast. Ever since I had it last time, I've been waiting for the day that I could go back and bite into their tasty fried goods. This time I got there a little bit late so a few donuts were gone but still got to try 3 new ones!

Dynamo Donuts & Coffee
2760 24th St (between Hampshire St & York St)
Mission, San Francisco, CA 94110
www.dynamodonut.com

They didn't have the Strawberry Earl Grey, which was my favorite here last time :[

HAHA she thought I was taking a picture of the donuts.

Went for the Molasses Guinness and the Meyer Lemon Huckleberry. Meyer Lemon Huckleberry was whatevers... but...

The Molasses Guinness was surprising and tasty. A molasses donut with pears then topped with a Guinness glaze. At first we thought they gave us the wrong one but is definitely the molasses donut since it had a darker hue than the other donuts.

Darker coloring = molasses. It has more of a flavor than brown sugar.

Also got the Passionfruit Milk Chocolate and the Chocolate Rose Geranium Hazelnut.

Chocolate Rose Geranium Hazelnut. Yup, a hazelnut donut with a rose geranium chocolate glaze. First bite, you get a flavor of the rose, then the geranium hits you. If you know what the geranium flower smells like... well, it tastes EXACTLY like it. It's a bit weird, and definitely a... hipster-ish donut :P

Last time when we came, the Passionfruit Milk Chocolate was my 2nd favorite and the glaze was still wet from the warmth of the donut! Not as fresh this time but still very tasty. Tangy and the milk chocolate bits give it a bit of sweetness.

Of course had to get a cup of latte. Not gonna lie, SF peeps really know how to make some good coffee.

Ahrhan's mocha.

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Afterwards, met up with Justin, who's taking me to Tahoe and the three of us decided to grab a quick lunch before Justin and I left. Justin recommended eating at this Mexican joint near his place.

The Little Chihuahua

292 Divisadero St

(between Haight St & Page St)

San Francisco, CA 94117

www.thelittlechihuahua.com

On the way there saw this weird and hilarious logo of this restaurant O_O Wth is going on??

Little Chihuahua. It's not the traditional Mexican restaurant... more California Mexican.

Salsa bar. They have some great salsas.

Pico de gallo, roasted tomato, tomatillo.

Free tortilla chips! My favorite was definitely the tomatillo salsa.

Went with a chili verde chicken burrito, with chili verde chicken, black beans, rice, salsa, cabbage salad, and pico de gallo.

Very clean tasting and you don't feel any grease or any heaviness after you eat! All the meats are sourced from sustainable farming also. Very SF :P For each bite I tried it with different salsa and they all go very well with the burrito.

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After I got back to SF from Tahoe, I had a few hours to kill before my flight back to LA so I met up with Tiffany and Jordan for dinner at Bluestem Brasserie, which is a fairly new restaurant, but good, in SOMA.

I took the pictures with my iPhone since I forgot my camera... so it's gonna suck :P

Bluestem Brasserie

One Yerba Buena Ln

San Francisco, CA 94103

Neighborhood: SOMA

www.bluestembrasserie.com

Steak Tartare with quail egg, mache, and pistachio oil. Solid solid solid. The mixed quail egg is a must to make everything bind together. Comes with toasted bread to eat with and you can really tell that Bluestem has some high quality beef.

Steamed Mussels was recommended by our server. She mentioned how it was steamed in Pinot Noir rather than how it is done traditionally in white wine. You can definitely taste the red wine but not very apparently. The mussels were just alright but the sauce was great to soak the toasted bread in.

Roasted Half Chicken with brussels sprouts, garlic jus, and a side of macaroni & cheese. RIDICULOUSLY tender. I didn't really expect much since it is just a roasted chicken but my goodness, it is one of the most tender chicken I've ever had. We just used the regular knife they provided and it just comes apart. The mac & cheese and the brussels sprouts were great as well. Mac & Cheese is not too cheesy to make you sick after a few bites and I like how they caramelized the brussels sprouts.

Butter Beans with Escarole, which is butter beans, garlic, and endives. A lighter and healthier side. I like how they have whole chunks of garlic in there.

Arugula Salad with candied walnuts, blue cheese, and pear. I just wanted some greens so decided to go for it. It was good but... portion is somewhat laughable :P

We also got the Kennebec Truffled Fries and Spinach Currants and Capers but the pictures I took with my iPhone was just horrible...

Hmmm... I think I'm ready for another trip back to to SF already. More Dynamo, try some more of Bluestem's menu, and discovering more!

Cabin Cookin'

I love to board. Been boarding for quite a few seasons now so I always try to plan a boarding trip or at least attend a trip. To me, staying in a cabin, cooking, and eat with a good group of friends is one of the best part of the trip! It's always interesting too, because depending on the group I go with, the type of food changes, dramatically. Right at the beginning of 2012, I was able to go on two snowboarding trips and it is the perfect example of how two different group of friends eat so differently!

First trip I went to Big Bear and booked a cabin for 7 of us. If you're into snowboarding, Big Bear is not exactly the ideal destination, but it is close to SoCal and less troublesome in terms of travel time, which also meant we were more flexible in bringing up the items we wanted to eat and we decided to go the Korean/Mexican route. The drive is only two-three hours so we weren't afraid of food spoiling during the travel time so there was no problem hitting up a Korean market and a Mexican meat market! Here's just a little of what we made:

Prepping for dinner. Lighting at the cabin was HORRIBLE... so some of the pictures might be blurry :P

Glimpse of our dinner table hahah.

Three Koreans in the group so of course we had kimchi :D

Carne Asada from La Venadita, which is this awesome Mexican meat market in Carson. It's always a must whenever we gather for any occasion. Comes marinated and ready to be cooked!

Add some guac, some salsa verde... and that is one bomb carne asada taco :]

Made some ramen salad, using the same recipe from the Thanksgiving dinner.

Rather than getting marinated mean, we got a ton of chadol, aka brisket from Korean bbq, and just pan fried it since we didn't have a griddle. Still just as good! We actually also made pork belly but... we killed it before I remembered to take a picture of it haha.

For breakfast, we had a lot of food leftover so we decided to continue on and add a few more items :P

More brisket with sesame oil for breakfast :P

Since we had rice left from the night before, decided to make one of my favorite, kimchi fried rice! Even the Koreans said "not bad" :P

Since we still had some brisket left over, decided to toss it in and made a chadol omelette!! That's definitely a first for me haha.

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The next weekend, I took off for Tahoe with a quick stop in SF (next post). Like I mentioned, the food brought and cooked all depends on the dynamic of the group. This time around, the group had no Koreans and we were all guys (8 of us) so you can imagine what type of food we brought along hahah. Also, we weren't too familiar with the Folsom, where we stopped for food, so we went crazy at Costco, buying tons of frozen food, while others stopped by Harris Ranch on the way from LA and picked up some bombtastic steaks.

Filets cooking on the grill.

Beautiful piece of Harris Ranch rib eye! We actually bought these from the actual location of the ranch, although you can find Harris Ranch beef at Gelson, Sprout's, and higher end specialty markets. I've even seen Harris Ranch burger patties before at Costco :P

Dinner: Harris Ranch filet mignon & rib eye.

After we let it rest so the juices won't flow out, Jimmy carved it up so it is easier to share. Perfectly cooked.

Damn that's pretty.

Jimmy & Edwin went fishing before we left for Tahoe and they even caught two fresh bass!

Small, but damn it was fresh and tasty.

Edwin, one of the cooks of the weekend, making eggs for breakfast.

Maple cured bacon from Costco. Must be one of the best bacon I've had.

Caramelized onions in bacon fat.

I found some Aidells Habanero Pepper Jack Sauasages at Costco, so we grilled it up and served it as breakfast sausages. I wanted my breakfast items together, so got a hot dog bun, added a fried egg, the sausage, and some pepper jack cheese!

Then I added a piece of bacon with caramelized onions cooked in bacon fat and Sugar Ray's BBQ sauce. What a perfect breakfast sausage :D BTW if you've never had Sugar Ray's BBQ, GET IT. They have it at Ralph's. It was and still is my college roommates and my favorite!

Of course gotta have eggs for breakfast. I think we killed 4 dozen eggs that weekend :P

I'm actually sad cause when I was looking through my camera I realized I completely forgot to take pictures of the dinner on night two and the breakfast when we made breakfast burgers! I'll admit... I wasn't exactly sober on night two and my excuse for forgetting to take pics of the breakfast burgers was cause we still had to clean up the place before we left at 11am :P

The snow sucked this year... really hard, but at least ate well for both trips, and good food with good friends always result in an awesome trip!

Thanksgiving Our Way

My family only started cooking for Thanksgiving roughly 4-5 Thanksgiving ago. Prior to that, we've always gone to a family friend's place and eat those Chinese-style Thanksgiving turkeys. The reason it is Chinese is because rather than putting stuffing in there, these turkeys are stuffed with sticky rice! While I do like the turkey, over the years we found that it is too tiring and too much for us. Most of my relatives still live in Taiwan, with only an uncle and a few cousins here in the US, so for the past 2 years, we've prepped ham instead of turkeys!

Now... I'll admit, we don't make everything from scratch. In fact, we love it when we can find shortcuts to things, sorta like Sandra Lee and her store & home prepped ideas. Some is worth making from scratch, but some store bought items just taste... good, and if we like it, why change it :P Also, my family's Thanksgiving isn't very... American in terms of the food we prep. We take inspiration from everywhere and as long as it is tasty, nobody minds at all, so this year we have American, Hawaiian, Taiwanese, and Thai!

So this year, we went for the Kirkland Smoke Ham from Costco but of course we enhanced it a little! We used pineapple and OJ as glaze, then stuck a few cloves to give it additional flavor. Honeybaked? Psh... ours is better :P

Cloves stabbed in there.

Usually we make have a mixed green salad with lemon balsamic vinaigrette, but this year, we decided to try something with a little Asian flair. Bought some shredded cabbage (the ones from supermarkets for cole slaw) and Maru-Chan ramen packs to make our own ramen salad! We just toasted the ramen a little, then tossed it in with the cabbage with some awesomePietro Sesame & Miso dressing. Pietro's dressings have always been family favorite!

Toss a little bit of sliced almonds, and there, restaurant quality ramen salad :P

Taiwanese style fried chicken. Gotta have something Taiwanese! We made the marinade usually used for popcorn chicken, and soaked the chicken overnight to give the breast meat some flavor, then breaded lightly to be fried! All it needs is a little white pepper and everybody's happy :]

Oven-baked Thai Salmon. The sauce is just soy sauce, vinegar, fish sauce, lots of lemon juice with come chopped up red chili peppers, parsley, basil, and garlic! Simple, healthy, and super easy to make!

Of course, it wouldn't be Thanksgiving if the table didn't have mashed potato. Last year I made garlic mash with some chopped garlic, but this year, taking it to another level by adding truffle to make truffled garlic mash potato! Russet potatoes, fat free half & half (I don't like it too fatty :P), garlic, garlic powder, and just a little little bit of white truffle oil.

La Tourangelle Infused White Truffle Oil. This one is actually made in Sonoma, CA, rather than Italy. I actually have truffle oil from Italy as well, but figured since Thanksgiving is an American holiday, gotta go with the American-made truffle oil!

I've been buying these small bottles of truffle at TJ Maxx & Home Goods, and yes they are still good and there's nothing shady about it! TJ Maxx & Home Goods are actually two of the best places to buy specialty food items since it's always at a discount. You just have to search for a bit since it is sorta like treasure hunting. I've seen truffle oil go for as low as $7 from their retail price of $25+! The one above was around $12, and yes even though it is small, a little bit of truffle oil goes a loooooong way.

We LOVE our Pepperidge Farm Texas Garlic Toast. Garlic bread is definitely one of those items where we could've baked our own garlic bread but why move away from the family favorite??? Look how perfectly golden brown it is :P

There's always some sort of dessert, and this year, a family friend of ours dropped off a rum-soaked cake, and gotta admit, pretty damn good. First bite gives you a huge kick in the mouth with the rum, then a little bit of sweetness together with the flavors of all the nuts.

There's always leftovers after a Thanksgiving meal and one of my favorite leftover meal is definitely the ham fried rice I get to make the next day! Leftover rice, ham, pineapple, eggs, green onion, soy sauce, white pepper, with a sprinkle of tasted sesame seeds.

We also made some tiny potato pancakes with the truffled garlic mash but I totally forgot to take a picture of it. Smelled to good and I devoured it before I remembered haha.

So that was our Thanksgiving dinner! A little unorthodox in terms of what we eat for Thanksgiving this year, but nevertheless, we are thankful for what we have and the time we get to share with family, even if it is only with my parents, sister, and cousins this year!