Sakura of DOOM

I am in LA! I managed to not lose my luggage at the airport or have the flight be delayed for too long (it was delayed for an hour, so I spent the extra time in the airport spamming everyone on LJ, as you all probably noticed).

And then rachelmanija picked me up, and we had dinner at Furaibo, a Japanese izakaya, which is a very casual type of restaurant where you gather with friends after work and drink beer. We didn't have beer, because there was a small table ad for sparkling sake, which didn't taste bad, but wasn't spectaclarly wonderful either. But it was worth trying, just for the novelty.

We got sweet potato croquettes, which Rachel informed me that most people don't get. I completely don't understand this -- they were absolutely delicious and smooth and slightly sweet, with the panko deep-fried outside. We also had garlic greens and pork, which were in a wonderful buttery lemon sauce, and I discovered that garlic greens are very much like very dense green onions, cut into inch-long pieces and sauteed until tender with a whole lot of bacon. So good. I snuck a lot while Rachel was out reparking.

Then there was the beef tataki, which were slightly seared strips of beef, enough so that the insides were still rare and wonderfully tender, with bonito flakes and mashed turnips on top, saba shioyaki (mackerel broiled with salt), which is one of my favorite things, because the skin turns crispy, and it's salty, then you squeeze lemon all over it, and it's got that darker strip of meat next to the skin that tastes wonderfully fishy and oceany, and it's delicate and juicy and the salt and the lemon makes your lips sting.

We also had yaki onigiri, which are just grilled rice balls with soy sauce. It sounds incredibly plain, and yet, it was delicious, crispy and slightly burnt on the outside, with chewy, plump rice, and the slight saltiness of the soy sauce to set it all off. Then there were the chicken wings, which is apparently the specialty of the place. They were delicious as well, fried enough so that the skin was crispy, but not so fried that it was falling off the meat. I love the thin, crispy, salty, slightly sweet skin, and the meat was tender and juicy as well.

I licked my fingers a lot during the meal, and Rachel and I agreed that we would both eat like barbarians.

Then I ogled over all the bookshelves and her pictures of India, and then we mutually ogled over Salty Dog IV and the brain-stopping potential of Hakkai and an orange.

Tomorrow, off for dim sum!

Yesterday we went to a trendy Vietnamese-inspired fusion restaurant. Thankfully, it was less trendy than the last place, which meant the noise levels were conducive to actual conversation. Since I had to wait for a table and since my dad apparently likes perusing the wine lists even more than perusing the menus, I got to order for the entire table.

( Vietnamese fusion! )

( Farmer's market! )

( Fancy restaurant and wine! )

I got to go to an industry conference in the city for work, so it felt a lot like getting Friday off. I mean, it could have been tedious, but the conference was incredibly fun and reminded me of why I love my job in the first place and want to keep doing what I'm doing. Sadly, that feeling has been lacking a little in the past couple of weeks, so this was perfectly timed.

And since I was in the city already, as was rilina, we extended the dinner+night of hanging out to two nights!

( Assorted details, book loot, fooding, and randomness )

( Random blathering on Saiyuki 5 and Kinokuniya )

I have decided to chronicle fancy restaurant food porn, largely because I discovered, to my great dismay, that I cannot actually remember every single fancy restaurant meal I have had. This puts me at a disadvantage during family conversations, which can often revolve around "Do you remember Such-and-such restaurant and how good the such-and-such special was?" Then I feel sad because it was probably an amazing meal, and really, I would very much like to remember and savor the memory.

( In which my dad takes us to a fancy restaurant )

And then, my sister and I cooked up a storm today, after many encounters with Murphy at the supermarket(s). My sister was dead set on making tiramisu, since it now seems to be her signature dessert (I'm not complaining! She feeds it to me whenever I visit!). Alas, Andronico's did not have the brand of marscapone that she normally uses, and she judged the ladyfingers as slightly too expensive.

By the way, I have just completely fallen in love with Andronico's grain aisle. Grains! In bins! Semolina flour! Brown rice! Corn meal! Orzo! And.... new things that I am trying to learn how to cook, like quinoa and bulgar and wheat germ and all that fun stuff! My sister stared at me rather strangely because she did not quite understand my excitement about grains. But... quinoa!! It just sounds nifty, doesn't it? Sadly, there were no steel-cut oats in bins, though they had rolled oats, so minus a few points for that.

Anyhow, we ventured on to Trader Joe's, who was just out of marscapone, and then to Safeway, at which we found marscapone (still the wrong brand, but by that time, we had about given up). Then we couldn't find ladyfingers, so we ended up substituting with pound cake. I personally thought it tasted ok, though the sister was rather irritated about the marscapone not settling correctly and the very faint butter flavor to the tiramisu. I just don't think the stars were aligned for tiramisu, or something.

( Menu )

And tomorrow, sushi! Whoo!

Well, actually it was quite fun. I suppose it was Black Friday for my wallet? Maybe more of a pink or pretty blue Friday for me!

So I managed to drag myself out of bed at the early hour of 11:30 (shhhh... my claim is that I'm still on West Coast time) in order to meet up with coffeeandink. Coffee was had (but not ink, which is probably a good thing), along with drinking water. I somehow managed to pick the plastic cup that leaked too, but luckily didn't trip over Mely or greet her with anything stupid, like, "Wow! You are not blue!"

After we were both properly caffeinated, we headed off to the Strand!

** B (my sister's roommate) wants to write now: Things I've learned this weekend...
- Did you know that when animals smile it is typically an act of agression?
- Did you know that one of Ning's friends is looking for a boyfriend who brushes with Crest bubble gum tooth paste and another one of Ning's friends is looking for a boyfriend who doesn't breathe when he sleeps?
- Did you know that Vladamor in Harry Potter is a very bad guy?
- Did you know that they store the balloons for the Macy's day parade in New Jersey...I suppose that isn't a big surprise...
B is now done hijacking my entry (even though she got Voldemort's name wrong!!)**

I will list all the loot later. Suffice to say that about one hour into it, I had a really hard time lugging my basket around, and this was before we had gotten through all of the first floor and the basement. By the way, the Strand is ginormous! I mostly just sort of stood around and ogled at all the books and promptly forgot what I was looking for. (I need a palm pilot like Mely so I can keep track of everything!) oracne and geekturnedvamp showed up about halfway through the first floor, and they proved to be much better at resisting the lure of many discounted books than either me or Mely. Mmmmmmm, booooooks.

Also, I sadly had to put away about half the things that Mely recced to me (embarrassingly, I just misspelled that as "wrecked," which in no way says anything about the quality of the books). So, um, yes, Mely, you should email me or comment with the rest!

Then we headed off to Veselka, which is a very tasty Ukranian restaurant (first time I've had Ukranian, yay!). It was near a Tibetan restaurant too, and I sort of ogled at the menu because I've also never had Tibetan. They had six different types of pierogies for the regular pierogie dish and two or three more beyond that. I like pierogies. Especially when they're deep fried and crunchy with sauteed onions and applesauce. I stole several bites of Mely's vegetarian stuffed cabbage too, which was really, really, really tasty (must get some other time). I think I had potato, sweet potato, beef and something, cheese, mushroom, and.... some other kind of pierogie.

Dessert was skipped because we then headed over to Chikalicious, sans oracne, who was abandoning us for Persian meat on a stick and ice cream with rosewater sauce.

Chikalicious is wonderful. It's got a discreet little entrance, all glass panels. But since it was very cold outside, the glass was mostly fogged on the inside so we couldn't see in, and once we got in, it was lovely and white and clean, only it managed to be so in a way that was calm and peaceful instead of sterile and sci-fi-like. If you sat at the counter, you could see them preparing the desserts, but we opted instead for back support and cushions. Mely got brown sugar panna cotta with grapefruit sorbet and a champagne topping, and oh, it was good. I wish I could describe these things better. But the panna cotta was smooth and sweet and creamy, while the grapefruit sorbet was light and sharp, and there was just a hint of bubbles from the champagne. Also, it came in a lovely square pink bowl with high sides. geekturnedvamp got the quince pudding (more a bread pudding type thing) topped with Asian pear salad and tea sauce, and it was homey and slightly like apple but also quince, possibly because it had less of the normal appley-cinnamon spices and more mellow tea flavor. I was greedy and got the chocolate tart with pink peppercorn ice cream and wine sauce. It was good. It was really, really, really good. The chocolate tart was a little crunchy on the outside (the crust), with a warm and gooey chocolate center, and the peppercorn ice cream isn't weird at all, but cuts through the thickness, and then the wine sauce is rich and plummy and tangily fruity, and it all just works.

Gaaaaah. Am now extremely envious of sister, who lives in NYC and can go more than once a year.

After which, we decided to really go for it and get ... more dessert! This time to an Italian dessert place, in which I got a fruit tart (it was giant! loads of berries and pineapple on top of custard and crust, and the wonderful bit was that there was a little layer of raspberry jam between the crust and the custard) and geekturnedvamp got mini raspberry tarts and mini eclairs (I want eclairs now too).

And then.... me and Mely decided to go for more books! B&N ahoy ^_^. And! I got book one of Nana by Yazawa Ai which is now out and everyone must get it and read it because it is my favorite thing ever! And books one and two of Fushigi Yuugi Genbu Kaiden, for which I shall lay blame at Mely and Rachel's feet, as well as Pretties by Scott Westerfeld, because my addiction must be fed. Ooo, I also had a pretzel stuffed with cheese at B&N, at which point I think Mely must have been looking at me funny for how much I was still eating (I have somewhat of a bottomless stomach).

Then I went home and camped out outside my sister's door for an hour because Rent had a longer running time than usual, but that's ok, because it meant I got to dig into my books immediately, and I'm already almost done with Pretties, and it is good!

By the time I got in, I decided I wanted something salty again, so I munched on leftover dumplings (I love leftovers!) and then had some more tiramisu and pumpkin pie, courtesy of yesterday's feast. And now we are all watching Mansfield Park and eating grapes and chips, and I am happy and full and have tons of books and finally got to meet Mely and oracne!

(I finally figured out how I can still be eating after all this -- I forgot to have lunch! My stomach doesn't do well skipping meals, and it must be compensating. Ahhhhhhh, food, how I love you.)

Have not been posting much lately because have been having too much fun with rachelmanija, who is apparently one of my Sekrit Twins. She is also evil because she will actually encourage me to talk about food for hours and hours. In fact, we had one very long conversation solely about tropical fruit (I have discovered that "mangosteen" is the correct English name for one of the best fruits ever), one on assorted Jewish and Chinese food holiday traditions, and an ongoing one about food we like. If it were up to me, I could probably talk about food for forever.

So. Yesterday we headed up to SF to meet up with literaticat and browsed Borderlands (aka the sci-fi/fantasy/horror bookstore with the hairless cat). They had a centaur teddy bear, which I wanted but was too expensive, a magazine titled Cthulu Sex, which looked incredibly disturbing, and no copy of Tamora Pierce's The Will of the Empress, which made me very sad. However, I did learn that Tamora Pierce will be signing at Burlingame on Wed., so hopefully I will get it there!

Book loot report to come. rachelmanija is very evil and keeps loading me up with things.

There was also a little Cthulu plushie in the window that I really wanted but wasn't on sale! Sadness. I seem to be attempting to amass a monstrous plushie collection, since I currently have the Beast (the killer rabbit from Monty Python) and now want to acquire a Cthulu, a Godzilla plushie, a stuffed Bun-Bun from Sluggy and a centaur bear. Hrm.

Then we went to the pirate store on the street, which is really cool and has a wall of crooked, wavy shelves with drawers of things like "Beard," "Rat Tail,s" and etc. I very much wanted a big floppy pirate hat with a swishy feather.

And then... Ethiopian! (although now every time I go there I will be reminded that alexctelander has said that the flatbread looks like the skin of the hairless cat. Wah.) I had kitfo! Kitfo is extremely good! It's raw beef, very, very briefly sauteed so that only bits and pieces of it are browned, and then mixed with warm butter and assorted herbs and/or spices. It is so good. It's just soft and buttery and feels like it will melt in your mouth, and I stuffed myself. The mushroom/tomato bit and chicken and hard-boiled egg in some sauce were also really good, but the kitfo was wonderful. Must go have more sometime.

Then it was off to Yaoi-con, where we first went to one hotel (where the con was officially at) and then had to hike across a parking lot to another (where the registration was, for some odd reason), got extremely baffled in the registration line and saw various people in ninja headbands and wings (usually separately, though it wouldn't surprise me if there were a winged ninja floating about somewhere), and finally met up with telophase. I got prints. Haha!

And, apparently there is a convention for the Church of God and some football people going on at the same time, in the same two hotels as Yaoi-con, which I find very funny. I wonder if the Yaoi-con people are secretly slashing the football players.

I actually didn't see much of the con at all, seeing as how there was pretty much nothing going on. But! Me and telophase and rachelmanija hightailed our way out of there (after a bit of confusion with the parking lot lady, who had also previously made faces at me while I tried to find parking) and made our way to a Chinese seafood restaurant.

I had much food. There was roasted squab (I think squab is pigeon?), which had been quartered, with thin, brown, perfectly crispy skin, and lovely juicy, fat meat that was very difficult to get off the bones without resorting to ripping into the thing with one's teeth like a cannibal, which I did. I love dark meat on birds. It was so tasty and rich and duck-like, but even juicier and cripier. And some Chinese veggies, which I ate most of, a pound of fish (mang fish? not sure what it is in English), steamed with soy sauce, oil, ginger and scallions, which was also very good (I loved Chinese style steamed fish), and I was extremely nice and gave the cheeks to telophase and rachelmanija, since neither of them had had fish cheek before (it's the best part of the fish, I swear! unless maybe it's the jaw on bigger fish, but that's a different story).

And then, sesame mwaji things for dessert! Mwaji (manju in Japanese) are these little balls made of glutinous rice so that they're very chewy and soft. These were hot from wherever and however they were cooked, with black sesame paste inside of them, and some sugar/peanut flour mixture on top. And the heat was wonderful, because it meant they were the exact right degree of chewiness and softness, and the black sesame paste was wonderful. So we ended up getting seconds. I think the waiter thought we were strange for getting more of them. I have no idea why, they were really, incredibly good.

Then, drinks back at the con hotel with another of Rachel's friends (I got myself a virgin pina colada, which prompted the waiter to card the whole table, for some reason). And now, to bed. More fooding today. My tummy is so happy right now.

I ate so much! We had hamburgers from the Creamery the first night, and I swear, they have the best hamburgers in the world. Ok, maybe not all the world, but it's close. Also, the mint oreo shake was not bad ;). Pizza the next day (thin crust... I am not a deep dish fan). Dim sum the day after, in which I ordered way too much. Heh. But! Fresh shrimp, just caught out of the tank right by the door! Ginormous fresh shrimp, just lightly steamed with only a little soy sauce with scallions and ginger for dipping so that you could still properly taste how creamy and tender and nicely textured fresh shrimp can be.

Although the giant buggy heads may have scared off fannishly, oops. And I finally got jook (rice porridge) with preserved eggs and pork, which is very much comfort food (my mom's is still better though), BBQ pork pastries, taro dumpling things with crispy outsides, crispy other things with pork in it (I didn't get to try this, boo), the rice noodle outside of long shrimp rolls rolled together and stir fried, with the sauce from Peking duck on the side (I really liked these! Never had them before!), green tea sesame bun things, egg tarts, shrimp wrapped around sugar cane, sticky rice in lotus leaves, and Chinese broccoli in hoisin sauce. Yum.

And there were peas at the farmers' market still! Although these peas were from another vendor! My other vendor's peas seem to be not so sweet any more (the last batch was definitely very starchy), but these were still so good that you could just take bites out of the pod, which both me and rachelmanija were doing when we were shelling them and watching Firefly (it seems rather appropriate to shell peas and watch Firefly, for some reason).

So I finally got to sic peas on someone who is not fannishly!

There was also much playing with the fuzzbutts, both of whom probably enjoyed the attention immensely and let it get to their little ratty heads.

( Pictures! )

I also have more book loot!

( Loot! )

Me and a few coworkers went to a restaurant today called Nola's for dinner. I feel sort of guilty for not being able to donate large sums of money for the Hurricane Katrina thing, but I ordered a Hurricane at the restaurant, and they are donating $3 for every Hurricane sold there for the relief efforts.

And there was good calamari and frites with sweet potato (gaaaaah I love sweet potato fries. Whoever invented them rocks). There was also crawfish and alligator dumplings (very good). Seriously! How could I not get something with crawfish and alligator? Although I admit, I was highly tempted by the gumbo and the crab cakes and about half a dozen other items, but I figured I wasn't going to be able to get crawfish and alligator dumplings anytime in the near future. Not that I eat crab cakes every day either, but potentially I could, were it not for that pesky budget thing.

Alas, I couldn't taste the alligator and the crawfish had a texture somewhat like crab cakes, but it was really good.

Then I got beignets for the first time ever! I am so, so full. I ate all three beignets. They were doughy and crispy, with tons of powdered sugar and chocolate sauce. I think my new motto shall be: You can never go wrong with fried dough! Witness: beignets, doughnuts (admittedly, I don't actually like doughnuts, but I keep trying them in hopes that I'll change my mind. I have a rather flat learning curve sometimes), Indian fry bread, funnel cake, and assorted other goodies. Mmmmmmm.

I wish I had had the chance to go to New Orleans before to have beignets and gumbo and jambalaya and Cajun. But I haven't given up hope that I'll still have the chance to sit on a street corner there and munch on beignets and wonder that it was flooded a decade ago or somesuch. (ehhh, I hope that didn't sound too horribly cold... I know it will take much, much work and money and sweat to rebuild, but one must hope)

I am embarrassed. I have lived here for over two years now, and today was the first time I managed to venture down to the local farmers' market. And now that I have experienced its wonders, I realize that I've missed months and months of good foodage! The tragedy!

Oh well, must remedy by going weekly now.

I am very, very happy. So many fruits and vegetables! So many stone fruits! I bought white peaches and pluots and blackberries and even more peaches and nectarines, and I feel like I should remember the varieties and all, but I don't. It's ok! I got to sample everything, and mmmmmmm. I need to look up recipes next time, because there were heirloom tomatoes, and I keep feeling like I should try them. I think I've only had supermarket tomatoes before, and everyone keeps saying that they really don't compare. Or maybe I'll just get some heirlooms and some mozarella and basil and have them raw.

And new potatoes! I want to get all the cute new potatoes and broil them with rosemary! And oh, I didn't even get a close look at all the greens, because I still am not quite sure what to do with them, but they just look so good. I was getting so weighed down with all the fruits that I didn't even manage to get corn (I saw white corn and bicolored corn, which I must try next time), and I didn't even begin to look at the flowers and the already-made things like preserves and jams and bread. Although I did get two strawberry-rhubarb pies, yay! Next time I must go and get those people's meat and potato pasties as well for lunches! And I saw these plum-prune things, which were so good, but I passed.

And! The best thing of all, I got English peas! I don't even know if they are in season or not, but they were fresh peas, still in the pod! I think I have only had fresh peas once in my life, and they are a completely different specimen from the soggy frozen peas, fresh and sweet and firm, and I'm dying to try them again. Alton Brown says that they start converting the sugar to starch within a day, so I shall try making do and sweating them or something, even though I don't have any onion or shallots or whatnot to go with them, le sigh. I am so hoping that they even somewhat live up to the peas in my memory.

Also, sophia_helix, thanks for the tip on holding the melon syrup in green tea frappucinos! Now they taste proper and green-tea-like instead of too sweet.

( Yesterday's fancy restaurant foodage )

The good:

• My auntie took me out to eat Japanese food. Mmmm, sushi. Man, I have not had sushi for so long. Also, fried oyster uramaki are really, really good. And the roe was a light yellow instead of orange. I don't know if it tasted any different, but it was all pretty and summery with the green lettuce on some of the sushi, and this makes me happy.


• Said auntie was also wonderfully nice and got me a gift certificate to a local yarn store after trying to buy me a needle set and them not having it! I am so touched! I can't believe she remembered I wanted a needle set! And a non-random gift! It was just so sweet that she remembered and everything!

The bad:

• Fitz-rat is making the bad clucky chest noise again, despite having been on antibiotics only a short while ago. Sigh.


• My computer has crashed. I am having a "bad sum CMOS error" or something, and since I have had three hard drive crashes over three years of having my current laptop, I am afraid. Of course I was stupid and my last hard drive backup was a year ago, so there is a good amount of data to lose. Mostly I'm scared of losing my book tracking Excel spreadsheet and my rat pictures. At least for those, I already posted the best of them online.