Tag Archive | Italian Food

Mixed Plate Friday

Happy August! Oh my, is it already August? This is crazy. I feel like summer just started and here we are again. I love summer traffic so much, I need to appreciate the next few weeks until all the schools start up again! Sniff…

Sing Cheong Yuan Bakery | Assorted Dim Sum Items

Baked Char Siu Manapua | Winnah’s (big competition to U-Choice In)
Custard Tart | Just okay (not the flaky pastry crust I like)
Char Siu Su | I didn’t even get to try this. Ugh, too much food for the past few weeks so I let it go bad. My chinese self is kicking herself!
Custard Bun | Okay, this was GOOD. It’s the pineapple bun with custard inside, so so good. Even better than the dim sum restaurants!

Fresh Peach Burrata Salad

In line with the season, I saw this fresh peach salad on TikTok. It’s fresh peaches, burrata cheese, prosciutto over arugula greens. It’s topped with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. If anyone asks, I can post the recipe. Super easy but the ingredients can get pricey. Chan loves arugula so he liked this salad!

Wea da noodles?

Inside joke with V. I made this really refreshing soba salad the other week to eat with Chan. It includes yuzu kosho dressing mixed with perilla oil and is topped with fresh cilantro. So good and refreshing, get noodles in there some place. Simple recipe, maybe I’ll post it one day. 🙂

Adela’s Country Eatery – Kaneohe, HI

Chan and I were in Kaneohe and decided to grab some lunch from Adela’s Country Eatery – I’ve heard about this place for many years but never got to try it. They make their noodles fresh and have different varieties like ulu/breadfruit, kalamungi/moringa, kalo/taro, ube/okinawan sweet potato, etc.! It was a super hot day and I really didn’t know what to expect. I put our order in with the incredibly sweet woman at the front, she then asked me for my phone number so she could call me when the order was ready. Hmm…I usually stick around for take-out orders but their space is very small. It was so hot that we returned to the car to sit in the AC. I decided to look them up and then read that since every dish is cooked fresh to order, it takes 40-50 minutes. Aiya! No wonder there were so many phone orders, we know better for future! All in all, I think our order took about 40 minutes.

Ube (Noodles) Special | $27.98
with lechon (pork belly) & local stirfry style

Chan loves lechon so this dish was definitely winners. The pork belly is deep fried and served up with a thickened vinegar sauce. The noodles are also nicely seasoned but this is definitely a very rich dish.

Garlic Ulu (Noodles) Portabello | $25.98
with portabello mushroom

We got the two pastas to share but this is the one I wanted mostly. The noodles just taste like regular noodles, I don’t know what I was expecting but man the noodles were so buttery and garlicky. They were seasoned so well (a lot like the garlic noodles at Paradise Poke)! The mushrooms were surprisingly bland – definitely need to get noodles in the same bite as the mushrooms to get the full garlic butter taste.

Would I try this place again? I think so, Chan enjoyed it too! I would probably try another pasta dish. My friend told me that their braised short ribs on the moringa noodles are good. I guess this just means I have to return! This time I just know to order it through the phone an hour ahead of time. Pricey but gotta support local small business. Also, their parking lot is a crap show. You have been warned lol.

Spam Musubi Rating:

Mixed Plate Friday – Trader Joe’s Edition

Peanut Udon Noodle Salad

Meh. Just okay, not great.

Lemon Basil Pasta Salad

Not good.

Truffle Mousse Pate

Yes. A million times yes. This one is made with chicken. Since Chan was not feeling well, I ate this entire thing over the course of the trip. Yeah. I did. Ate it with some golden round crackers (think Ritz Crackers). No regrets here. Chan told me probably get this kine in Hawaii but I haven’t tried it locally yet. IT WAS GOOD AND A GOOD PRICE AND I LOVED IT.

Mixed Plate Friday

Just wanted to share a picture of a beautiful sunset when I had dinner at the Kahala Hotel & Resort. I ran out onto the beach to grab some shots before the sun went down.

Spaghetti Aglio e Olio

This is one of my favorite all time pasta dishes. Very simple dish with minimal ingredients; buttload of garlic sliced thin, dried red peppers (we used red pepper flakes), fresh parsley and of course a lot of olive oil. Such a good dish…Chan and I enjoyed it! Thank you for making it lol.

Sushi Robot | Breakfast Bento | $6.00

I talked about Sushi Robot in previous posts, but this was the most recent one. It used to be $5 and I was surprised when the cashier told me $6.00 last week lol. They don’t put prices up or anything but I’ll just have to guess that inflation and egg prices got to them. Still a good deal!

Mixed Plate Friday

Sunday Breakfast

This is me trying to take a bougie picture of breakfast I made for Chan one Sunday morning. I made this pesto tomato mozzarella salad that I served up with toasted french bread. I put a bit of olive oil on the bread and put it in the air fryer to toast. I then rubbed raw garlic onto the toasted bread immediately while it was still warm so the garlic would melt into the bread. Smart yeah? I also fried up two eggs for each of us (in this economy??) and it was good. Well I don’t know the dosage of his salt grinder so I went a bit too heavy handed – he didn’t say anything but mine was salty lol. Good breakfast!

Sausage, Egg & Cheese English Muffin

Seasoned Potatoes

Did you know Wendy’s served breakfast? I didn’t! I saw it on one of Chan’s YouTuber videos and the guy was trying all the fast food breakfast joints. I decided to pick some up for us for a weekend breakfast. The sausage english muffin was just alright. Not great, I prefer McDonald’s. The seasoned potatoes were good! Not what you would expect from the name of it, and they look like potato wedges but they are actually sliced quite thin length wise. They were good!

Recipe: School Kine Pizza

Do you folks remember the school kine lunch pizza? I sure did. The rectangular slices of pizza that had a super soft and bready crust with the pizza sauce, cubed pepperoni and cheese on top? Simplicity at its best! Well I am WELL out of school age but still think about this from time to time. Apparentely I am not the only one since there are many recipes out there. I went crazy and bought all the ingredients to try to make this at home. The recipe calls for a “pourable” crust, I’m intrigued. So how did it go?

Dry Ingredients! It didn’t call for sifting but I did it anyway.

Grease your pan and add a thin layer of cornmeal.

Yup, it’s a pourable crust. Here it is! Let it rest in the pan for 20 minutes before baking.

I made this recipe twice, the first time – the crust was not enough so for the second time, I made 1.5 of the crust recipe and I think that did the trick in terms of thickness of the crust. The first time it was much too thin and burned at the edges.

Spices for your homemade pizza sauce!

Oh my gosh, this pizza sauce recipe was so easy to make. Who knew?? It was mainly a can of tomato paste but you have to buy a bunch of seasonings including marjoram which I never used before. But boy was it easy to make…

I went a little hog wild with the toppings, I wanted pepperoni and italian sausage for the second round but they don’t sell the italian sauage little balls in stores! You know? Like the ones you get when you order pizza?? So I had to buy a tray of the italian sausage myself and then ball them and fry them up before using them. Ugh. But here is the meats and sauce on top of the pre-baked crust…

So. Much. Cheese. You use a lot of cheese for this recipe. You actually add a bit of cheese to the pizza sauce too and then the rest goes on top. How much did I use? Well the big two pack shredded mozzarella cheese from Sam’s, I used a full bag.

Voila! All baked and ready to eat. What was the verdict? Mixed. I didn’t care for it myself because the crust isn’t what I liked or remembered, wasn’t soft. This crust is kind of hard and super bready/doughy. The brothers, devoured it. My coworker, she liked it! Chan? I think he just thought it was just ok. So yeah, not much of a winner. Perhaps I could just buy the Pilsbury pizza crust in the can and just make the pizza sauce myself next time. I’m glad I tried it to finally simmer down my interest but I don’t think this recipe matches what I had in school.

School Lunch Pizza

Pourable Pizza Crust
Ingredients

  • ½ teaspoon (7 g) Active Dry Yeast
  • 1 â…” C (375 ml) Warm Water (110 °F)
  • 2 ½ C (320 g) All-purpose flour
  • ¾ C (55 g) Instant, non-fat dry milk
  • 2 T (25 g) Sugar
  • ¼ t Salt
  • 1 ½ t Vegetable Oil (or more, enough to grease pan)
  • 1 ½ T (15 g) Cornmeal

Revised Crust Recipe (1.5 size measurements)

  • 10.5 g Active Dry Yeast
  • 2.4 C (562.5 ml) Warm Water (110 °F)
  • 480 g All-purpose flour
  • 82.5 g Instant, non-fat dry milk
  • 35 g Sugar
  • ½ t Salt
  • 2 ¼ t Vegetable Oil (or more, enough to grease pan)
  • 22.5 g Cornmeal

Directions

For best results, have all ingredients and utensils at room temperature.

  1. Dissolve dry yeast in warm water. Let stand 4-5 minutes.
  2. Place flour, milk, sugar, and salt in mixer bowl. Using a whip, blend on low speed for 4 minutes.
  3. Add dissolved yeast and oil. Blend on medium speed for 10 minutes. Batter will be lumpy.
  4. Coat sheet pan with oil and sprinkle cornmeal on pan evenly.
  5. Pour batter into pan. Let stand for 20 minutes.
  6. Prebake until crust is set: Conventional oven: 475 °F for 10 minutes. Convection oven: 425 °F for 7 minutes.
  7. Top each prebaked crust with desired topping or use Pizza With Ground Beef Topping recipe (see D-31), or Pizza With Cheese Topping recipe (see D-30).
  8. Bake until heated through and cheese is melted: Conventional oven: 475 °F for 10-15 minutes. Convection oven: 425 °F for 5 minutes.
  9. Portion by cutting each sheet pan 4×5 (20 pieces per pan).

Recipe Credit: Tasting History with Max Miller

Mixed Plate Friday

Marron & Tiramisu Cream Bread

Were you folks into the Culinary Class Wars craze when the show first premiered? Chan and I was, it was a great show! I am so excited for season 2. I liked Edward Lee but I was actually happy Napoli Matfia won – though I wonder how he would have fared if he had to take part in the tofu challenge. Sorry, are these spoilers? You should have watched it already!

Anyway, one of the dishes Napolia Matfia won was for his chestnut tiramisu recipe where he utilized ingredients from a convenience store. Korea is so smart, they were able to turn it around and create the dishes for sale in their stores real quick. Of course it was always sold out. I never found the tiramisu dessert but found the bread and had to try it!

How was it? Eh, just alright. It’s a very rich and dense chestnut cream in soggy bread. Not great. I wonder if I would have liked the actual tiramisu dessert if I found it. Maybe I should have just tried the cheetos ice cream (lol).

Fred Pizza

This was our last dinner before our trek out to Busan/Jinju/Hamyang! Food delivery of course and we went for Fred Pizza. Korean interpretations of American food can vary in success as you saw with our BHC chicken experience. Here is what we got to try!

Half Mega Deluxe | Half Garlic Shrimp Flex Pizza

Garlic shrimp sounds good right? No can lose right? Can lose. I mean it wasn’t awful, but don’t expect a garlic scampi like topping. I don’t know what kind of sauce they used but yes, it was sweet. Not as sweet as the BHC chicken but it just didn’t taste great. I ate it but I definitely wouldn’t order it again. The Mega Deluxe is basically a supreme pizza so that was good.

Smoked Chicken

This was a very good side dish! Imagine huli huli chicken, nice and moist with great smokey flavor!

Bacon Cream Spaghetti (Rose Sauce)

Yum. Usually creamy dishes would send me running (to the bathroom) but this was good! A nice little zing of spice (okay maybe not so little zing for me). Very good! We said we should order from this place again (spoiler: we did). Good dinner before our travel day!

Olive Garden – Ala Moana, HI

It was the labor day holiday and I decided to take all three brothers out to Olive Garden because they have the special Never Ending Pasta Bowl promotion going on. I mean, this is the way to go when you have three ravenous teenage boys (soon to be all men – cry face). It’s a great deal, you get never ending salad, soup, bread sticks and of course pasta! Well I got full super fast so it was wasted on me but at least one of my brothers went ham so it was worth it. It was laborious to get there (joke intended) but I hope they enjoyed.

House Salad

Bros ate this up! We got two servings. I went for the soup.

Zuppa Toscana
spicy italian sausage, kale and potatoes in a creamy broth

First soup up! First time trying this. Not creamy, I mean it looks creamy but it’s very thin. Not full on the fillings either, but I guess it’s meant to be a lighter soup. Tasted ok.

Chicken & Gnocchi
a creamy soup made with roasted chicken, italian dumplings and spinach

Got this just to try it. It wasn’t that good and was salty. I didn’t even finish it cause I had to make room for the pasta!

Fettuccine Alfredo

Creamy Mushroom Angel Hair

My pasta. Super good but super rich and I got full fast. Foolish mistake! And since angel hair is so thin, they give you more! Wasted tummy space!

Creamy Mushroom Angel Hair with Crispy Chicken Fritta

Meat Sauce Rigatoni with Meatballs

So there are two different deals with the bowl, you either get the pasta with no toppings (proteins) for $19.99 or you can choose to have toppings with your pasta for $27.48. Here are your choices when creating your pasta bowls:

Pasta:
Spaghetti
Rigatoni
Angel Hair
Gluten-Free Rotini

Sauce:
Traditional Marinara
Five Cheese Marinara
Creamy Mushroom
Meat Sauce

Toppings (extra $7.49 and not the full topping menu):
Meatballs (3)
Italian Sausage
Crispy Chicken Fritta

I’m perplexed why grilled chicken is not a choice but the crispy chicken comes with it. Weird. Also, the first plate of pasta is a full portion. After that, you basically get half orders which I don’t mind. You can order to your heart’s content. Also! They allow you to take home the leftovers…and! They don’t limit it to all or nothing, so only two brothers got toppings while me and another brother got the plain pasta. But honestly, you can probably sneak meat off the other person if they don’t mind I guess. It’s easy to make reservations because they are on Open Table. If you can eat plenty, go check them out!

Mixed Plate Friday

Costco Take-home Combo Pizza | $16.99

Would this be a flat bread pizza? Maybe? It’s a rectangular shape and I never saw it before so I got it to try! Sorry I forgot to take a picture of the pizza when I baked it. The brothers ate it up so it was good. I enjoyed it. I miss their combo pizza from the food court but this will have to do.

H Mart Freshwater Prawns (frozen) | $29.99

I love prawns. And I mean the super big prawns like you see above. It’s hard to find fresh. I used to drive out to Romy’s in the North Shore just to eat their prawns (which they were almost always sold out of). Now that they moved off their shrimp farm, no sense in driving out there. I was super excited that H Mart sells it in their freezer section! Too bad no more eggs on these prawns but shoot, I’ll take it. How do I describe these prawns? Sweet and luscious meat with the big head full of miso. So good. I think if you asked me what my final meal would be, it would include big prawns. $30 seems pricey but you get quite a bit so I think it’s very much worth the cost.

I made some butter with garlic and onions as a sauce and of course gotta have the lemon wedges on the side. This was a heavenly meal.