Memebug

Happy New Year! Apparently, my best friend and I did not feel like we did enough cooking during the holidays. My family always does something special for New Year's so I thought I'd go with tradition and make some more soba. For this, we had to make some pasta from scratch. So, while I started up the broth (made with a nice fat hen, some pork, shiitake mushrooms, ginger, raisins, and some other stuff) my best friend started kneading the pasta dough.

Fresh pasta!

The dough has to be left to rest preferably in the fridge so the magic pastifying ingredients can get to work. When it comes out of repose (maybe 20 min.) it's ready to be rolled into flat long pieces with the pasta machine. Once that is done, it's ready to be cut (see pic. above) and cooked. We make our pasta like tagliatelle (not as thick as fettuccine but wider).

I put together more mushrooms, some fried fish cake, green onions, and the delicious bbq pork we bought to use as "toppings". Since last time I talked about it I didn't provide any visuals, here it is now:

Time to eat!

It was pretty tasty, if I may say so myself...

Posted by DK at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My cousin and I drove down to see my family this year for the holidays. We spent the better part of Xmas eve making some Okinawan soba since it's somewhat of a family tradition. Whenever we have some sort of celebration, we make noodles... It's like some sort of pact my ancestors made back in Japan, I don't know, don't look at me.

In addition, my mom had prepared a ton of food for us to eat. It was enough to feed a small army.

The drive down to the desert was LONG. It's supposed to take about seven and a half hours but it took us a little over ten. Traffic on hwy. 5 was slow and as we approached 210 (LA area) it got even worse. The drive back was better, the roads were not as crowded. We stayed with my brother and sister-in-law who have recently bought a house. Two more of my cousins and their spouses came over as well and we all had a lot of fun.

One of those nights, my sister-in-law made these delicious lava cakes. They were wonderfully moist and melty chocolate came pouring out when you put your fork into them. Yummmm.

I really need to learn how to make these.

Posted by DK at 06:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yummy Turrón de Doña PepaWhen I was a kid we always had turrón around the month of October. It's a tradition. This year I didn't get to have my turrón... yes very sad, I know. Turrón de Doña Pepa is different from other turrones you might have heard about or tried. This turrón is very, very sweet. It's sticky and it gets everywhere, but it's oh so good. I never cared much for the big candies ontop but I do like the little tiny ones. They add a nice crunchy texture to the torrents of sugar coating the turrón (the one in the picture seems to have an extra heavy amount of it). The actual "cookie" part has a touch of anise in it and it has that warm taste that bumps up the yum factor. I found a nice website "The Art of Peruvian Cuisine" featuring all kinds of tasty things, all gourmet-ified of course. I haven't tried any of their recipes yet, but I soon will. They also include a small paragraph on the origins of some of the dishes, which I think is very interesting. The photography is very pretty as well.

Posted by DK at 11:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)