Cooking Mode

I've been naughty and neglected my kitchen...No love for my cooking tools...

I think it's time for me to hang out in my kitchen again...

Here are previous cooking adventures...

 I had leftover salad & tomato rice from my previous meal I whipped up. Didn't want the sides to go to waste....what to make?

Ever since I dined at Tan Ba Le, I was itching to make their 'Bo Ne' with no baguette deal. 

mmmmmmmmmmMMMM

 

my wanna be Bo Ne

 
 
 


Semi-homemade cooking : Korean Instant Ramen Noodle with kim chi, Pork, egg strips

 

 I love my green cooking tools~

 

Lime.Garlic.Salt.Pepper.Pinenuts.Basil.OliveOil.Parmesean
 

Chicken Pesto

 

 

add the coco soda~

 I had left over frozen chicken wings. I seriously didn't want to leave my house. Whipped up some random chicken dish..and amazingly it was delicious! I guess you can say its like a thit kho dish?

 Sear & Sizzle~

Random Ga Kho

 
 

 I was craving the 'My Fit Foods' Turkey & Rice dish. I googled on line for mimics. Surprisingly I found a few. Hhaha I felt like I was on the Food Network TV Show 'Chopped' with the 3 ingredients.
 
I ended up making 3 courses with the artichoke.
Artichoke Petals with my Rice
Stuffed Artichoke
Artichoke beverage


Turkey & Rice wanna be my fit foods

 


stuffed artichoke

 


One of my favorite beverage my mother made

 That's a wrap...i'm too lazy to upload my banh mi flings...BRB >_<

Go TEXANS!
-bmg
 

Thanh Noi

Thanh Noi Sandwich located in the hear of Diho Shopping Center...
along with 2 other banh mi joints (B10 and Don's Cafe) For more info on Thanh Noi Click Me

I wanted some banh mi for lunch and Thanh Noi was the only one with a open spot in the parking lot for me to rush in and rush out. As a kid, I don't recall my family taking me here to eat. I think I been to TN once or twice like 10 years ago..TN also serves noodle and rice plates.. The place is old, but looks clean compare to the other hole in walls. The pre-packaaged plates also looks fresh..Not sure if it was made by Thanh Noi or resale.

I believe there was 4-5 ppl dining in and I was the only take out at the moment. I was surprised it wasn't that busy for lunch time. I wanted to check the place out and see what kind of sandwiches they were serving..plus I read on reviews on the Ga-chicken....too bad, I ended up with Thit Nuong. I felt like I was suckered in to ordering Thit Nuong. Not because the lady was suggesting me to buy it..I guess seeing the fresh grilled batch of Thit Nuong she was putting out caught my attention. Majority of the times, all the other banh mi joints the bbq would be reheated in the microwave.

Clear is good-Homer Simpson

Service: Not so rude or too friendly. Cash Only. Was in and out in 5-6 minutes $3.90 for a banh mi & can of tea

Bread Quality: Not baked fresh in store, Bread was over baked and uber crispy

Meat Filling: nice and fresh from the grill, very generous on the Thit Nuong, but was quite bland. no green onion oil topping

Veggie Filling: grated carrots, chopped cilantro, chunky halves of jalapenos, decent cut of cucumber

Spread: even spread of Butter(no taste)

Presentation: Sloppy from the grease & veggies.

As you can see the banh mi looks very brown...extremely crispy. Since I didn't see any bread for sale, its obviously bought. My jaws weren't in that much pain compared to my last bite I had last time with Parisian Bakery.

Notice the big chunk of jalapeno? Boy, did I sure taste that heat! It was quite overwhelming with the jalapeno, to where my mouth went slightly numb. I think if they had the butter spread ed on the top of the veggies, instead of under the hot fresh bbq would've been better. My banh mi was just leaking grease from the melted butter. The carrots were grated and wasn't quite the pickled-crispy texture. So not a fan of chopped up cilantro. Since my bf doesn't like Cilantro, I have been neglecting that in my food lately. That's one powerful herb, and chops of cilantrot over powered my banh mi. If you were to ask me how was my banh mi...I can't even describe anything except the hot jalapeno & cilantro.
Debating if I want to go back and try the chicken.

and another one off my list...
I have so much more blogging to do...no joke...haha my family & friends were looking through my camera the other day..they said I should be a food junkie instead of banh mi with all the foodie pictures I took. I do not qualify myself as a food critic lol...I have the most random taste buds and picky with a few things I eat.. Food entertains me rather than fashion or beauty. Fashion, I feel is a recycle of style/trends or new look. You like it today and its replaced with something else the next. As for beauty...as I get older I'm leaning towards more to natural than cosmetic..Don't get me wrong, I have my moments to play dress up and be pretty..but just for a moment. With food, its art to me. People can be so creative with the ingredients and materials they use to create something OMFG-so effin delicious-melts in your mouth- that feeling that will have you talking or thinking for days! Cooking by yourself or with someone can be fun. Food is something we need in our system. Too bad the unhealthy food sucks for me...i supppose everyone else too. It satisfy my taste buds, but makes me fluffy. Dieting isn't on my to do list, but eating clean is. I'm learning to use natural spices rather than salt(baths..KIDDING) bake or steam, rather than frying. Going Organic...umm I'm not a baller so I'll be ok with unorganic stuff.

Oh yea..GUESS WHAT??!? I was able to squeezed in TWO banh mi flings in NEWYORK!
I will try to turn my blog back into my banhmi related...if not something about food blog...haha since my emo random rants are getting boooorrrrinnnggggg! hey, its a free therapy session for me...don't hate... ^_^

That's all for now folks,
later gators,
bmg

Jawbreaker

Ouch! Feels like I got sucker punched!

Got so much on my mind at the moment that i forgot I had a quickie the other day. I picked up a banh mi at Parisian Bakery (wilcrest & beechnut)
It was about 6:30, staff was getting ready to close up.

I ordered the banh mi ga (chicken) with carrots only and no pate.
The bread was hard, it looked like it was sitting in the warmer for awhile. Chicken was shredded, I guess it's like pulled pork, except very dry. My chicken was heated up in a microwave. I wished the lady spread out the butter. She put a slab on there, where I would get eat a glob of butter or none. My banh mi was ok, I had better. Not sure if it was because I came during closing hours, and got bad quality or something.

I was so hungry, I took a bite while walking to my car. My 15 minute ride home was quite painful. Each bite I took, I can feel my jaw muscles working. A friend of mine told me he wasn't a fan of banh mi, because of the texture. How his jaws hurts everytime he eats one. Now I understand what he means.

There was a lot of food sitting around Parisian. I saw a cup of Bo Kho just sitting out for sale...is that safe?
Now I'm curious to know how fresh are those pastries/dishes left sitting out. Or what's the life shelf?

I'm going to have to go back & review Parisian again. Lesson learned, don't come 30 minutes till closing time!

Anti banh mi...for now...

Later gators,
Bmg

a feast for mother's day

cooking for a party of 25 ain't no joke!

Since my family is quite big, we normally just cook at home, instead of dining out. Its more chilled, and quality time to eat at home.

This year I volunteered to cook the feast...so exhausting! Decided to give it a twist & have Korean for dinner. Had the Galbi, Bossam, Kim Chi jjigae, Bulgogi, but no bon chons (side dishes) I think I would have cracked if I made the side dishes.

The other day my boyfriend's sis-n-law made some Bossam. OMG it was my first time eating it and I'm freaking in LOVE. Like the sweet pork belly wrapped up in pickled cabbage..mm yum yum yum. And that's how I came up with my dinner menu for mother's day. We had a crawfish boil the previous week, tired of eating the same ol stuff we normally eat. I wanted to change it up and try to bring out my korean skills...haha jk. Bossam is a simple dish to cook, its like the Vietnamese version of goi cuon (spring rolls) with out any carbs. 

For more info on Bossam click me

Marinating overnight

Make sure to get the Pork Belly with out the skin. That part is tough and a pain in the butt to slice off. After marinating overnight, I boiled it for about an hr. Sadly, I over boiled mine and the fat belly got kinda smushy.

boil with lots of onion and few cloves of garlic

 

Next step was to pickle your Napa Cabbage. This process took me about 7 hours! It was worth it! FYI a lot of water will be used to pickle the cabbage. A few pages I checked out, some people eat Bossam with kim chi, red lettuce, or sesame leaf.

7 hours later....pickled cababge

I present you bossam-pork belly & pickled cabbage.

While I had my troops help me set up the tables, did some multi-tasking. For starters, I made some Korean Pancakes. What is Korean Pancakes? Click ME  The zucchini pancake is my favorite. Not a fan of the seafood, and haven't tried the kim chi yet. Very simple dish, Only if I can find the ones with direction in ENGLISH!

yum yum yum

Korean Short Ribs

Vietnamese Pork Belly- Thit Heo Nunog

Making Vietnamese Mayo

 I had to squeeze in a bmg creation~ I made a Bossam banh mi. Along with some other mixed of meats my cousin put together.

My cousin made a batch of his own korean bbq recipe. It was delicious!
We each pretty much created our own banh mi sandwich.

Ko-BAM! banh mi lol

Kim Chi & Jalapenos, the two ingredients I can't live without.
Just kidding....too deadly, but oh so good~





As you can see, I don't have many pictures for the other dishes I made....because we were all being pigs and couldn't help but eat! Cheers to good eats!

later gators,
bmg

Thim Hing

Quick review for my quickie...

Woo Hoo! I was able to squeeze in a banh mi fling before preparing for Mother's Day Feast~

Thim Hing is definitely a mom & pop's joint. If you can by pass a few things like the old run down joint, the rude daughters, old men smoking & drinking cafe sua da in front of the store, the banh mi will have you comin back.

Usually, I order bbq, chicken, or xiu mai because I like my meat fillings to be warm. The other day, I was at my moms and ate half of her Thap Cam from TH...it sure got me wanting more.

So this time I ordered the Thap Cam which is the usual cold cuts except TH adds Xiu Mai (meatballs) drizzled with the sauce. All that for $2.50! All the small banh mis are $2.50 and Large $3.50. The small was pretty filling to me, not sure how big is the large.

Growing up in Alief, TH was one of my favorite banh mi joints..still is...not because of the cheap banh mi, its their baguette. Its light, airy, soft & crispy, not too wide & round like other bakeries. Where you can taste all the ingredients in each bite. We also order loaves of baguettes, sadly they are not nice & warm. TH doesn't have the loaves displayed in the front store like other bakeries do. All the baguettes comes from the back kitchen, normally you would see the bread toasted in the front of the store, not at TH. I believe they have them in the freezer, who knows because its behind the wall. The loaf is quite flimsy and they bag it in a plastic sleeve from the Styrofoam cups..but once you toast it up, the baguette comes back to life! I believe its $1.50 for a loaf.

For more reviews on Thim Hing Click me

Service: It depends who's the cashier, if its the daughters beware for the attitude, this time she was nice to me. You get your banh mi within 5 mins max

Bread Quality: Baked fresh in store, warm light & crispy. thin & long

Meat Filling: 2 slices of each cut, they make their own pate, that's not a spread, cut into a strip.

Veggie Filling: thinly grated carrots, i got half of piece of jalapeno that was on one end of the bread, I think there was more cilantro than the carrots

Spread: Butter was yummy, wish they gave a little more.

Presentation: kinda sloppy.

Its been awhile since I've been to TH. I can't remember what the other sandwiches taste like..I guess I'll have to come back ^_^

Check it out if you're ever in bellaire area... BTW $CASH$ ONLY~

later gators,

bmg