More aimless weekend wandering………
Juanita’s Tamales:
The Missus sent me on a mission early on a recent weekend, She had been craving Barbacoa from La Nortenita. Unfortunately, suffering from some "vapor-lock" I arrived and parked on Imperial Avenue at 8am…..the restaurant opens at 830! So with some time on my hands, I went for a very hot and sweaty stroll. And on my way back, I decided to grab some tamales from the Tamale cart that always occupies the corner of 25th and Imperial.
I ended up buying 2 pork and 2 chicken($1.25/ea) from the funny Lady who laughed at my pronunciation of "Pollo"……
The Missus is the Tamale eater in the family, and She had a Chicken to start:
Her verdict? Nice flavor, decent amount of chicken, but way too dry……
Coming soon to San Diego:
We were driving down Clairemont Mesa Boulevard when a "coming soon" sign caught my eye. I immediately turned into the parking lot of the strip mall that Thai Cafe is located in, and this is what I saw:
It seems that the Hot Pot fad that had hit the San Gabriel Valley is making its way to San Diego. I know it is much too hot to think about Hot Pot right now, but I’m looking forward to this restaurant. From the sign, it looks to be an outlet of Little (Fat) Sheep, a Hot Pot chain. Hot Pot is kinda going out of style in LA, the Hacienda Heights location of Little Sheep closed down a few months ago. You can read about Little Sheep on Professor Salt’s blog here. So let’s see it took 4 years(after moving from LA) for us to get good Sichuan, 6 years for Marukai, maybe by 2010 we’ll see some Hunan food?
From the "making it’s way to San Diego" department……
Some fads hit quicker than others. Remember the post on the San Gabriel "foot fetish"? Well guess what I saw today?
I guess some fads don’t take very long to get here…..might come in handy if you do a lot of Barefoot Running!
From the "What been cooking" department:
This past weekend the Missus wanted me to grill some Hot Dogs, and joy of joys, She even let me know a day beforehand! Since we’d be grilling, I went and picked up a few "goodies" for me. I went to Zion Market and picked up some thick cut Short Ribs for Kalbi:
I decided to do something I hadn’t done in years…many, many years. That would be to butterfly my short ribs. Back home in Hawaii, my friends and I used to call this "Korean-style" Kalbi, mainly because in most of the good Korean Restaurants didn’t serve cross-cut ribs, but butterflied thick cut ribs.
You separate the ribs into sections…"riblets" if you will.
Making sure that one end has a decent thickness of meat on it, you position the rib bone side down and cut across right above the bone, making sure to NOT cut all the way through. You fold that portion over and continue making 2-3 "flaps".
One thing I quickly noticed, I haven’t done this in a verrrrry long time, and am severely out of practice. So basically my cuts sucked….
Still with my usual Kalbi marinade, it tasted pretty good.
Making the most of my grilling opportunity, I went looking for some chicken…but for some reason, I couldn’t find anything satisfactory, so I modified my "half-cup" chicken marinade, and bought a Tri-tip from Seisel’s. Usually, it’s a half cup of Creamy Peanut Butter, Soy sauce, Sugar, Beer, and Miso, with some garlic and ginger. This time a doubled the sugar and miso, and added this:
And some Red Pepper Flakes for zip. The Sichuan Peppercorns I added having tasted Professor Salt’s fantastic Tri-tip.
Turned out much better than I thought it would……..though next time I’m adding even more Sichuan Peppercorns!
Photo of the week:
If this pooch could talk….
He/She’d be saying, "are we there yet???"