Palo Alto Eats

Wid and I arrived in US last Friday after a hellish long trip. We were in the Palo Alto area for a few days to attend our friends' wedding. It was awesome seeing a bunch of my old friends, and it was like a mini MIT/Ashdown reunion. The food at the reception was some of the best food I had at a wedding. Wid and I had the beef which was way too big to finish, but it was nice that they provided a nice, hardy portion so no one would go home hungry. The wedding cake was great, and according to someone, it was from some Chinese bakery. The light spongy white cake topped with whipped cream frosting went well with the chocolate covered strawberries.

While we were at PA, we got our fill of food that we missed being away from US. One surprising good restaurant was the hotel's Pool Side Grill, which served "California cuisine." We checked out the restaurant the night we arrived because we were super jet lagged. Wid had the crab cake, which by itself was ok, but when combined with the sauce (some sort of tangy tomato sauce?), the crab cake because something extraordinary. I had the onion soup, which, while different from the usual French onion soup (one of my fav soups), was a bit tangy yet quite delicious with the large chunk of soggy french bread and the Gruyère cheese. I also ordered the chicken quesadilla with generous amount of salsa, sour cream, and guacamole. I really forgot how big American portion is, but I shared the main entree with Wid so we managed to finish it. Hahaha. The best part was the dessert. We saw the guys next table over with large blob of something in little glass cups. We asked the waiter wht it was and he said lemon sorbet. We were so intrigued by it, we decided to order two portions. The container that held the sorbet was actually a big hollowed out lemon, and the entire concoction was frozen before served to the customer. We marveled at the size of the lemon ("how the hell did they find lemons that big" was a question on everyone's mind, including our friends), but the sorbet itself was light yet very flavorful. In some ways it was like eating frozen lemonade but smoother.

Saturday we found ourselves in the middle of the Art and Wine (where's the wine?!) Festival on University Ave. For breakfast we grabbed some bagels and soups. I missed the good old bagels from Collegetown Bagels at Cornell.... My favorite combo was a toasted sesame bagel with copious amount of cream cheese and a hot chocolate made with steamed milk and topped with whipped cream. No such luck at this bagel place because they didn't serve any hot drinks except coffee. The place was packed and it took us 15 minutes of wait to get our 2 cups of soup and a toasted bagel with cheese. Needless to say, I wasn't super impressed by the service (they need better organization/assembly line). We checked out the fair and then we went to the Palo Alto Shopping Center where tons of posh stores were located. We finally found an outlet adapter after 2 days of search, and we got a bit of a lunch at a packed restaurant (Palo Alto Creamery?) where I got a cranberry salad (spring mix with dried cranberries, blue cheese, and sweetly roasted walnuts) and Wid got a hot dog and fries. We were very unimpressed by the "healthy" french fries. French fries should be fried, not oven baked. The texture was all mealy and there's no favor. The milkshakes were great though--full of fresh flavor, creamy, and thick.

After roaming a bit, we crashed back at the hotel. Closer to dinner time, our friends Andy and Quentin came to pick us up and we headed to our friends' pre-wedding BBQ. Met Anne and Joe's families, ate lots of food, caught up with some old frends, and overall had a good time. The best food was the super fresh, very sweet, white corns. We told Andy and Quentin about the lemon sorbet and they were so tempted that we went back to the hotel to get some of that dessert. We also tried the orange sorbet (also in a large hollowed out orange), but I think the lemon one is still better.

Sunday we met up with another MIT alum who's living in the SF area. We were supposed to meet Vince in SF, but Vince talked us out of it, warning us of traffic congestions and all. It was a very wise decision because by the time we met up with Vince and Andy's two non-MIT friends, it was already about 3 hours before the wedding. We jokingly said that we couldn't be late for the wedding or else the bride will kill us. Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. Good stuff as always but the waiter messed up all our orders. Boo. I wanted an eggs florentine but instead I got eggs benedict with just bacon. At least Wid got his Kobe burger, which was mighty tasty...

I mentioned about the food at the reception so I'm not going to repeat myself.

Looks like this entry is too long already so my report on food in Pennsylvania will have to be written later.

Japanese Cheesecake

I finally had time to make the Japanese cheesecake. Unlike American style cheesecake, the Japanese variety is fluffy and light in taste and texture. The lightness is achieved by beating the egg white until still peaks are formed and folded into the cheese/egg yolk/flour mixture. It has been a few months since the last time I baked the cake so I have forgotten some of the details. This time my cake shrunk quite a bit after it was taken out of the oven, but I suspect it's because of the eggs (not warmed up to room temp or too old). At least the cake didn't collapse and the taste was still good.

I was reluctant to make this cake because of our totally unreliable and overly large oven. Temperature control totally depended on the gas fire, and only one person in the house actually has the skills to keep the temperature steady. In the past the temperature would decrease or increase significantly (as much as 50 degrees celcius in about 30 minutes) which caused many baking failures. Miraculously enough, the Japanese cheesecake is my only cake that has not suffered any failure. I believe the reason is that this is the only baking recipe I have that uses a hot water bath (helps maintain a more uniform/steady temperature).

Almond Tofu

Yesterday Wid's mom requested almond tofu (杏仁豆腐) for tonight's dinner party. I made this dessert several times a couple times already, but the first time, it was kind of hard to convince Wid's mom that I knew what I was doing (i.e. I was using too much water). My guess is that people here haven't had "real" Chinese almond tofu and the only ones that they have tried are stiff cubes of agar agar. Almond tofu isn't made of soy bean; it's agar agar, flavored with almond extract and evaporated milk and sweetened by white sugar. Because of the large volume of liquid, the solidified agar agar is soft like tofu and quite slurpable. This dessert is often served with fruit cocktail. The guests at the party dinner loved the dessert because it's not too sweet.

The dinner consisted of Indonesian and Indo-Chinese foods (satay, fried meat balls, meat ball soup, grilled fish, gado-gado, etc.) and quite tasty. Some of the food were spicy (of course!) but I was able to eat them anyway.

I also made a Japanese cheesecake yesterday, but I'll post something about it tomorrow.

Ma Jolie in Kuta

Sunday night we met up with Sulis and Lexo for dinner. Because of them we have been introduced to new eateries. This time we tried Ma Jolie, which is supposed to be a French restaurant, situated right on the beach in Kuta. The place looks like the typical villa/international restaurant that are popping up everywhere, and the price is a bit below Ku De Ta in Nusa Dua (i.e. expensive by local standard). We had the very nice seating right next to the beach, but since we were there for dinner, we did not have the chance to see the ocean view. The cool breeze was refreshing though.

The menu consisted of French (supposedly) as well as Italian dishes, with focus on seafood and lamb. I ordered the fettuccini with smoked salmon and capers in cream sauce. Wid got the three fish dish with a bit of pasta in cream sauce and steamed vegetables. Sulis had the seafood pasta in red sauce. Lexo ordered the lamb, but since I didn't get a good look at his dish, I can't give a full description here. I was actually interested in the beef roll, but since I wanted to try the dessert also, I opted to get the fettuccini instead (cheaper and hopefully less rich). We received complementary mini apeptizer in forms of bite size pizza and clam cooked in some sort of vegetable red sauce (one piece/one clam per person). Soft, fresh buns and slices of bread with butter were served while we waited for our entry. Wid really enjoyed his three fish dish, but he liked my pasta even more. The sauce was surprisingly light for a cream sauce with good flavor. The caper and smoked salmon might have been a bit too overwhelming in saltiness, but they do compliment the sauce pretty well. The portion for the pasta dishes was perfect for me and Sulis, but the portion of the meat dishes was a bit much for the guys. Still, overall, the portion at this restaurant is about the same as most restaurants that serve this kind of food. For dessert I ordered cream puffs filled with vanilla ice cream and drizzled with melted chocolate. The size of the dessert was surprisingly large so Wid and I shared the dessert.

The bill came to around 160k Rp per person, including the service charge , and most of the cost did come from the entry. Pasta dishes cost about 60-70k Rp each while the price of the meat dishes ranged from 100k to 180k Rp. I did not check the price of apepetizers but I expected that the cost is about the same as the desserts (around 40k). The food was quite satisfying and delicious, but, like I said before, the place is more expensive than what locals usually go for. Overall, the view is good, the restaurant is clean, the staff is friendly and fast, and the food is quite good even if it's expensive. Not a bad place for a romantic dinner.

One final note: While the dishes we tried that night were delicious, it might not mean all the dishes are good. The last time Wid came to this restaurant, he did not like the dish at all so there might be differences in quality from dish to dish.

A Typical Japanese Dinner (for us)

Last night I cooked Japanese food for the family. We were supposed to go to an arisan at the Hong Kong Garden, but we weren't in the mood. Besides, earlier in the day Wid's mom requested us to make a Japanese dinner for them. She "ordered" donburi, goma-ai, and miso soup. Wid and I went out to look for gifts for my family, and on our way back we stopped by at our favorite Japanese grocery store Papaya to buy, among other things, tofu skin and fresh tuna. We decided to make spicy tuna and inari for Wid's parents even though Wid's mom was worried that it might be too much work for us.

First, I made sushi rice using the freshly cooked Japanese rice. While waiting for the rice to cook down a bit and for the sugar and salt to dissolve in the rice vinegar, I chopped veggies and stuff for the other dishes. Once the rice was ready, I showed our awesome cook how to fill the inari. Wid made the dressing for the goma-ai and the spicy tuna mix. Wid's spicy tuna is a huge hit with the family, but he's still constantly trying to perfect it. I think he's trying to recreate his favorite spicy tuna sushi at our favorite Michigan restaurant Yamato. His goma-ai (spinach and green bean topped with sesame dressing) is a crowd pleaser too.

Since I didn't have to keep an eye on the sushi rolling, I started on the hot dishes. While boiling the hot water for the miso soup, I started cooking the donburi. Oyako donburi (chicken and egg) was one of the very first Japanese dish I learned to cook, and to this day it's still one of my favorite dishes. The dish is chicken, shiitake mushroom, and onions cooked in a soy sauce/mirin mixture. To finish the dish, beaten eggs are added to the top and cooked slowly. Miso soup is the usual stuff (bonito flakes, a tad of dashi, shiro miso, tofu, wakame seaweed, and scallions).

Once I finished cooking the dishes, Wid was done with his stuff and the cook finished rolling the spicy tuna. She and her assistant were inspired by the picture on the nori pack and made a couple of hand rolls using the last bit of the spicy tuna mix. They also places one of those plastic grass sheet on the plate. I have no idea where they found the plastic grass. Hehe. For the final touch, the cook placed a tomato flower on the platter.

Everyone enjoyed the dinner. We went got out the brand new ceramic soy sauce dishes that we bought earlier that day (hurray for the anniversary sale at Jenggala). Wid's mom said that now she's less tempted to go to Japanese restaurants because I can make all these dishes at home. I think her favorite is still Wid's spicy tuna, followed by my donburi. Wid's dad always wants goma-ai and inari. All the dishes turned out ok, but that's because I had plenty of practice already. Haha.

Taiwanese Cake (part 2)

A few days ago I decided to try the salty cake recipe again. I made this cake for Wid's dad who wasn't feeling well and didn't have too much apetite. Because of the Chinese medicine he was taking, he couldn't have pork so I decided to make the salty cake except this time I use chicken instead of pork. I managed to break the hand mixer when I tried to beat the egg and sugar. The mixer made a large pop sound along with a bright spark; the mixer shorted out the fuse in the house so everything went dark.

Besides almost electrocuting myself, everything went pretty smoothly. I modified my protocol (sounds like a science experiment. haha) a bit in an attempt to fix the texture problem from my previous attempt. I believed that the dense, doughy texture was due to the overly long cooking time and not enough steam. First change was to use a bigger steamer. Not only more steam would be generated and go through the slots, I could also use a larger baking pan (22 cm instead of 20 cm). Instead of moistening the paper that lined the bottom of the cake pan with butter, I just laid the paper on the very lightly buttered pan, like how we place a small piece of paper under buns for steaming. I tried to maximize the amount of steam produced as well as trying to cut down the total cooking time. I kept the fire on high for full boil during the entire time the cake was steamed. I also cut down the amount of cooking time down from 1+ hour to total of around 35 minutes (about 25 for the first layer and 15 for the second layer), and I checked on the doneness of the cake periodically with the toothpick. Because of these changes in the equiptment and cooking, the cake was perfect! Instead of being doughy and dense like the last cake, the cake had the perfect soft and fluffy texture.

I'll post the pics of the experiment later.

Food in News

I'm reading a news article in the BBC that says that overweight people now outnumbers hungry people in the world. This is a rather disturbing news, and it's interesting that obesity is becoming a global problem. I remember this one prof I worked for totally dissed/made fun of Americans having so many morbidly obese people when in UK where the prof is from has quite the growing obesity problem also. At least here most people are still fairly normal in weight but that's because many (most?) people can't afford to be picky about what they can and cannot eat. Still, it seems to be that there are more and more fat kids here compared to fat adults. At least other eating disorders, such as anorexia or bulimia, aren't present in large numbers yet, though I do notice that someone I know is way too skinny to be normal. I am skinny by nature so I know that's normal skinny. Even then I still have muscles (and curves!), especially on the legs.

It's interesting to note that in US many of the people in poverty are overweight while here the ones here are skinny, but I suspect the reason is that fast food is the cheapest food in US while fast food here is still considered luxury food/treat. I'm guessing the cheapest (processed) food here is instant ramen noodles.

I haven't made anything interesting in the past few days, but I'm supposed to bake some Japanese cheese cake today. If it turns out well, I'll post some pics later.

Taiwanese Cake

Last night I made some salty cake (鹹蛋糕) which is a Taiwanese speciality. The cake is actually sweet but the topping consisted of minced pork and fried shallots which give the cake its unusual taste. This is the third time I experimented with this recipe. The first time I was forced to use the oven to bake the cake because I didn't have a large steamer. The second time I used a steamer but because I cut down the amount of ingredients, the cake was a bit too flat. This time the result was much better and the cake is much fuller, but I still have to experiment with the cooking time.

Before making the actual cake, I cooked the minced meat. Instead of following the recipe, I went with my mom's way of preparing this dish. The meat was normally used as an awesome topping for noodles or rice, but it is great for this cake. The pork was stir-fried with garlic and ginger, followed by the addition of water, rice wine, soy sauce, sugar, black and white pepper, and salt if necessary. Fried shallots was added right at the end before everything was transferred to a pot for slow cooking.

While the meat is being slow cooked, I started with the cake batter, which consisted only of eggs, flour, and sugar. Once the eggs and the flour were beaten until stiff and cream-colored, flour was sifted and folded into the egg-sugar mixture. About half of the batter was poured into a 20 cm pan that's greased and lined, and some of the meat and fried shallots were added on top of the batter. After about 10 minutes, the remaining batter, meat, and shallots were added, and the cake was steamed for another 10 minutes. Wid's mom complained that the cake was not completely cooked so she steamed it for another 40 minutes, which I thought was too much time because the cake ended up being more doughy than it supposed to be. Oh well. I'll try again next time and cut the cooking time to around 40 minutes instead of over an hour.

With the exception of the chewiness, the cake turned out well. The taste is perfect, and the saltiness of the meat and the sweetness of the cake complemented each other nicely. Besides trying to perfect this recipe, the next steamed cake I'll try is Ma La Gao (馬拉糕), which is a Cantonese style cake that you often find in dimsums.

Here's a picture of the cake. Click on the image for a larger version

Oh Noes

File this in the department of WTF.

Last night I messaged my friends to see if they wanted to go to Lanai Cafe for breakfast. The previous weekend for dinner my friends took us to the restaurant which situated on Beach 66 in Semiyak. Our friends were friends of Renee the owner, and we got extra attention from her. When the waitress messed up our order and for some unknown reason 4 out of 6 of us didn't get our main course, she helped fixed the problem and gave us a pitcher of her sangria. The food was really awesome even though the menu was totally random. Fish was extra fresh, sangria was strong yet tasty, and the desserts were to die for. Renee was so friendly and quite the saleswoman--she made everything sound so much more delicious and tempting. We saw the breakfast menu and it looked mighty tempting (plenty of food for a very good price, under 30,000 Rp). We also thought that since the owner is American (originally from South Carolina), she would know what's the proper American breakfast.

We all decided to meet up for breakfast tomorrow at Lanai, but this morning I got a message from my friend--Lanai burned down last night!!!! Total shocker to everyone. Apparently, at one in the morning there was short circuit or some sort of electrical problem at Zansibar, a bar next door, which triggered the fire. The fire had no effect on Zansibar, but it completely burned down Lanai. The only thing that survived was the kitchen. We feel terrible for Renee and the people who work there. It makes me even more sad when I remembered that Renee and her friend wanted to save enough money to start a new business, and now they have to rebuild the restaurant. I hope they recover quickly.

Ox Tail Soup

Last night while Wid's mom had her arisan (gathering of her housewive friends) at the house, we ran off to the local restaurant near our house for some yummy ox tail soup. When we asked Wid's dad if he wanted any of the soup, he thought for a second and replied yes even though he already had his dinner. The first time I had Indonesian ox tail soup or sop buntu was here a couple years ago during my first visit to Bali. To this day the soup from this small restaurant is still my favorite. The soup has been slow cooked with chopped up ox tail, various spices coloring the soup orange, shallots, and some sort of green leaves (mint or celantro?). It's been cooked for so long that the soup is actually thickened and the meat falls off the bones so easily. To eat the dish, you squeeze a bit of lime juice and add a bit of chili sambal, and then spoon some of the soup over a bowl of rice. Normally we also get the Indonesian salad called gado-gado, but since I'm not very hungry, Wid just ordered a side of fried tofu. Each of us also ordered a nice glass of hot red tea to warm the throat and wash down the food. It's not as awesome as the Kintamani wood stove tea, but it was still nice.

In the end we saved the bones for the doggies (and take a new order of the soup home for Wid's dad). :3

Eat and Sleep

We went to Kintamani to do ceremonies because Tuesday was Hungry Ghost Day, which is a Chinese holiday during which families made offerings of food and prayer for their ancestors and also for ghosts who do not have family to pray for them. There's really not much to do in Kintamani except eat and sleep and look at all the cute dogs running all over the place so we did a good amount of all three.

Since I haven't really talked much of Balinese/Indonesian foods in this blog so far , I'll just mention some note-worthy stuff. For dinner Wid and fam got some nasi ayam (chicken rice) from Nasi Ayam Kedewalan from Ubud, which is on the way to Kintamani. I normally would eat this dish (very authentic and delicious) but my stomach wasn't feeling well that day. Instead of the rice dish, I found these snacks consisted of peanuts and flour, all fried together forming these little round, salty crackers. I was actually expecting sweet, but if it was sweet, then it wouldn't have been Balinese anymore. Hehe.

The rest of Monday night dinner was the usual Balinese dishes (fried eggs, sambal, rice, fried fish, etc.), but what turned out to be my favorite dish was the stir-fried vegetable. This was the first time me trying this vegetable, called paku in Balinese, and it was very delicious. For some reason it reminded me of spinach and kung-kong (空心菜), but people eat mostly the stalks. Wid told me that this is peasant food because it is grown everywhere and people often just pick it from the side of the road and cook it. They could only eat this vegetable in the village because it's not popular to be sold in the area we live. Another food that can't be found anywhere else is the pork sausage with it's large chunks of fat and stuff. It's crunchy on the outside and soft and fatty in the inside. Sausages can be made easily at home, but what make this sausage special is that it's been smoked over the wooden stove to give it its distinctive taste. This particular batch was extra delicious because it was smoked for five days instead of the usual four days. The smoke from the wooden stove also gives other things a nice flavor, one of them being tea. The red tea prepared the usual way, but the smoke gives the tea a richer flavor and aroma. It's always nice to have a glass of tea to warm the body up.

The ceremony is like the usual with the typical Chinese/Indo-Chinese food offerings. Lots of pork, tofu, vegetables, fruits, tea, and alcohol. It's not very exciting to me because I've seen it so many times, but may be I'll talk about ceremonies some other time.

New York Style Cheesecake Experiment

Wow, this week we've been eating out way too much. I can't remember when's the last time we had dinner at home (Tuesday?!). Yesterday we met up with our friends at a beachside cafe called Lanai in Semiyak. I'll try to post a review another day along with other interesting food stuff from the week.

With all the eating out and stuff, I did manage to do a bit of baking. On Thursday when we met up with friends from Singapore, we were in persuit of the best cheescake in Bali. Unfortunately, the villa cafe no longer had this cheesecake because the chef left. Boo. It got me even more motivated to try out this New York style cheesecake recipe that I found on the net. This was my very first time trying to make a proper cheesecake, and it turned out ok despite all the physical flaws (mostly the cracks on the top and sight over browning of the crust) and the trouble I went through with the actual assembling (grating my thumb by accident of course, borked oven with NO temperature control, running out of sugar in the middle of assembling, and misbehaving electric hand mixer). I let the cake sat overnight in the fridge after it was done baking and cooled sufficently in the oven and then on the counter.

I ate a piece of it this morning for breakfast. The taste is surprising light with a nice citrus flavor (the trouble with grating of lemon and orange was worth the taste). The crust at the bottom of the cake and most of the sides turned out fine with a nice golden brown color. The taste was quite good too, i.e. not burnt. I still need to figure out how to make the cheesecake more fluffy. I wonder if the slow cooling in the oven helped. Overall, not too bad for my first try...

Totally off topic, but on our way to Ubud, we saw a pink pig that was as large as a cow!! It had balls as big as grapefruits too. Then, in Ubud we met a very friendly golden retreiver. We whistled at him for a bit, and a few minutes later, he approached us and plopped himself down at our feet demanding to be petted. Now we know where our favorite dog Dilgo (half local/half golden retriever) got his personality.

Fun with Croquettes

Last night I tried to make Japanese style croquettes for the very first time. The recipe is from my favorite Japanese cook book, and I've been eyeing that recipe ever since I got the book a few years back. I was hoping that Hana would have some croquettes, but because they didn't have any to satisfy our craving, I decided to try to make it myself. The croquette consisted of mashed potato (made from steamed potato so there's less water), ground beef, frozen mixed veggies, chopped onion, and a bit of salt and pepper for flavor. When I was cooking the ground beef and onions, I was soooo tempted to add soy sauce, but luckily I stopped that impulse or else it was going to turn into some sort of Chinese stir fry. While I was making the paddies, the smell of the beef combined with the potato was so good. After the suckers were deep fried, Wid and I immediately attack one of them. Burning hotness.

Here are some pics. Click on the image to see larger version.


I noticed that our current favorite food show (Kuitan/喰いタン) has a recipe for croquettes too. I should try that one too.

Hana in Seminyak

We tried Hana (花) in Seminyak last night. Our friends recommended this Japanese restaurant with the note that their sushi is quite good. Apparently the tonkatsu is good too, but we didn't order it this time. The place is two-storey. The place is tiny and tastfully decorated with flowers and flower motifs to reflect the name of the place. The waitresses were wearing traditional Indonesian dress.

For appetizer, we had gyoza filled with pork and leek, slices of seared tuna with scallots, lemon, and celantro, goma-ai (spinach with sesame dressing) and pan fried egg plant in sauce. Gyoza itself was not bad but the dipping sauce was too salty for my taste. The seared tuna was quite good but it's really not Japanese; more like fusion food with the addition of scallots and celantro. The taste is light and not fishy. The sesame dressing is too sweet for our taste (like eating dessert instead of salad), but we liked the idea of it being chilled. The egg plant has a hint a sweetness with complemented with the sauce (looked and tasted like dipping sauce for tempura or agadashi tofu except with addition of chopped scallions and ginger) nicely.

Dinner consisted of sushi plate with extra orders of tamago, tuna, and siro (white marlin), some sort of stirred fried pork, and tempura udon. The pork didn't have as much flavor as I hoped. The tempura udon tasted like the usual dish that we get at the other places. I noticed the tempura batter is too brittle. I think the restaurant uses all corn starch instead of soft flour or tempura flour. The best part of the dinner is the sushi. The plate has a nice selection of sushi like shrimp, tuna, siro, tamago, squid (?), and another white fish, but for the four of us, it was definitely a good idea that we ordered the extra sushi. The best one was the tuna and in the end I ordered another 2 portions (4 pieces total). The fish itself didn't taste or smell fishy at all, and I can easily bite into the fish. The rice has a hint of sweetness that complemented the fish. The sushi is smaller than most restaurants' but it looked well crafted and quite tasty.

In the end the price came to around 100,000 rupiah per person, more pricey than our favorite Japanese restaurant. I would go there again for the sushi which is definitely a step better than most places. As for other dishes, I think other places has about the same quality food at a cheaper price. The menu is smaller than most places. I was surprised that they didn't even have croquettes. At least there are a few more unusual dishes along with the rather standard affair.