It's been quite some time since I've posted to this blog but I haven't forgotten about it! I had about 3/4 lb. of frozen raw shrimp in the freezer and thought I might make some of it in a butter and wine sauce with fettuccine that I had on hand. After looking at the back of the pasta box, I noticed it had a couple of interesting recipes using shrimp and the fettuccine and this is the one I decided to prepare tonight:
Fettuccine with Shrimp and Basil Cream
1 lb. package Fettuccine, uncooked
4 Tbsp. butter
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped or 3 tsp. garlic powder
1 lb. shrimp, deveined
1 cup fresh basil leaves, packed or 1 Tbsp. dried basil
Salt to taste
1-1/2 cups heavy cream
Cook pasta according to package directions (I did 12 minutes), drain. Meanwhile, in a large skillet, melt butter over medium heat. Add garlic and saute until lightly browned. Add shrimp cooking 4 minutes or until shrimp is pink (not quite done). Stir in basil, salt and cream. Let simmer 5 minutes. Pour sauce over pasta and serve immediately.
One thing I noticed was with using sweet cream unsalted butter, I had to add slightly over a tsp. of salt to the cream. Another thing to remember about sauces with pasta is that extra salt is often necessary as once the sauce is added to the pasta, it may not be salty enough. I added an additional 1/4 tsp. to make up for this and once poured and mixed into the pasta, it turned out just right.
I slightly modified the recipe by chopping about 1/4 of a small white onion and adding to the butter along with the garlic. I used dried basil as I can't justify the price of fresh basil at almost $2. While the sauce was simmering, I added about 4 tsp. of dry Chinese Michiu rice wine a couple of minutes before it was done and 1/8 tsp. white pepper just before pouring the basil cream sauce over the pasta. I thought it turned out pretty good to have come off the back of a Walmart Great Value brand pasta box! Even my wife said it was good instead of just okay which is her usual response to my cooking. Feel free to play around with this, you might come up with something even better. Fear no food!
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Restaurant Review: Golden Dragon Chinese Buffet & Hibachi Grill
Golden Dragon Chinese Buffet & Hibachi Grill
2404 Memorial Blvd.
Kingsport, TN 37664
phone 423-765-9588
fax 423-765-9589
I apologize to my readers for the lack of recent posts. I've got a couple of other restaurants to review besides this one that I hope to post soon. Back to the Golden Dragon: this in no way is related to the venerable Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant that was in Kingsport for many years at the corner of E. Sevier St. and N. Wilcox Dr. It appears from their advertisements to be part of a chain. The building they're in is directly behind the Ft. Henry Mall/Kingsport Town Center in the former Ryan's Steakhouse/Red Apple Chinese Buffet that's in front of Ross N. Robinson Middle School.
We went there this Friday evening (7/8/11) with my wife, daughter and her boyfriend. As I had only a light late breakfast about 10 AM, I was ready to try as many things as my appetite could handle! The first thing that you notice when entering this fairly large restaurant is the large number of well-lighted steam table buffet stations. In addition to these it has a couple of cold stations as well as a "Hibachi Grill" where dishes can be fixed to your choosing in a giant wok from meats, vegetables and sauces of your selection. This is a feature that my friends Emily & Daniel Wong first featured in Kingsport as a "Mongolian Grill" at their nearby Ming Garden restaurant that's currently celebrating their twentieth anniversary.
After being seated by our friendly hostess (who knew our son), we were attended to by our cordial but basically non-English speaking waitress and placed our drink orders. This went somewhat awkwardly due the language issues as my daughter asked if they had Mr. Pibb which she didn't quite comprehend. After she gave us the list of available drinks (I requested ice water with lemon which ended up coming without lemon), we placed our orders and everyone proceeded to hit the buffet. We did have problems with our waitress keeping up with our drink refills and waiting for our cheque. I suspect she's not been long off the boat with her poor English comprehension.
As my daughter and her boyfriend had eaten her a couple of weeks earlier and told me about some of the offerings that were unique from other local Chinese buffets, I started on one side and quickly had a look around. One of the first things that caught my eye were oysters on the half-shell complete with a plate of lemon slices next to it. I selected three large good-looking oysters and a cold green mussel topped in a sweet-hot chili sauce. On a hot table I selected three green mussels with cheese sauce which seems to be pretty common at Chinese buffets at least locally. I also went to the sushi/sashimi table next to the hibachi grill and selected about six different sushi selections that surprisingly included Ahi tuna and salmon amongst several other types. We are so far from the coast and oysters are so expensive that I had a brief moment of nirvana enjoying them drizzled with lemon juice and salt. If only they'd had some Tabasco sauce to put on them! They were quite tasty and I could've easily eaten a coupe of dozen but wanted to have room to try the other offerings. If you notice my obituary in the paper in the next day or two, you'll know the oysters are what did me in as they are a bit risky! The mussels with cheese were okay but China Star's are definitely better. The sushi was quite good as I like Nori seaweed in a lot of things but the Ahi tuna was wonderful with just a bit of soy sauce without having to swish in a wasabi/soy combination. I also tried one of the fried dumplings with sauce that was pretty good. My daughter said their fried cheese wontons weren't too good but I didn't get the chance to try them. Another intersting dish on a cold table was the whole baby octopus in a sweet and slightly spicy sauce. They were quite tasty but frightened a couple of people at our table! I would really love to have hot squid dishes available at a buffet like this. There's much more to squid than just calamari, trust me. The Chinese have come up with some amazing dishes made from these critters!
Other notable items sampled were the roast duck. It was basically roast duck, skin on, chopped into various pieces and a plate of orange slices and a bowl of a fairly tasty soy/five spice sauce to ladle over it. I'm a big fan of duck and really miss the old Peking Restaurant that used to be in Johnson City, TN. They had a fabulous roast duck that sets the standard for any I've tried since. This duck was cooked pretty well, you just had to be selective about the pieces unless you like picking duck ribs which results in little meat but a whole lot of ribs and fatty skin. By and large I was pleasantly surprised by their roast duck. Another poultry dish I tried at the boyfriend's suggestion was the Hong Kong Chicken. It was chunks of boneless chicken in a somewhat orange, sweet and seasoned glaze that was pretty tasty.
Another dish I love is frog legs and Golden Dragon's didn't disappoint. They were complete hind leg sections cooked in a light seasoned batter coating and were pretty tasty with a lot of meat. If you've never had the nerve to try frog legs, let me tell you that they are quite delicious. If you like chicken, you'll be okay with frog. Same with turtle but that's for a different time. Many Chinese buffets around here at least offer snow crab legs on their dinner buffets especially on weekends. Surprisingly, these weren't available but instead they had basically chopped up sections of blue crab, also with a light seasoned batter. While these looked good and the batter was interesting, there was almost no crab meat left to pick in these sections. As you may know, blue crabs have almost no meat in their legs like their larger cousins the snow and king crabs. Unfortunately, these had almost no meat even in the claws which was a big surprise and a bit disappointing. They also had cooked whole crayfish which were okay, it's just peeling crawdads is such a pain for the small amount of meat in their tails. They did have a number of shrimp dishes and the couple I tried were good. They also have several boiled and fried fish dishes. Another surprise was the small steamed clams. I'm not sure what type they were but looked a lot like Manila clams and were definitely not Cherrystone's. Unfortunately as I rummaged through them, there were a lot of pretty open shells but only a couple that had the clam inside. I don't know if people had picked the clam out and left the shells or what. It was pretty strange and I passed them over.
As I was rapidly getting full from the aforementioned selections, I wanted to try some dessert to round out the meal. They have the usual selection of odd cakes and such but also a large selection of cold fruits like watermelon, grapes and so on. Some I wasn't expecting were there and that I really like including loquats and lychee. Loquats are unique to Asia and have a round orange fruit about the size of an apricot that contains a single large seed. Canners peel the fruit and remove the seed leaving the fruit with a single noticeable hole in each fruit. They taste something like a peach and apricot combination and are very expensive if you ever find them available. Lychees are also an Asian tree fruit that has a somewhat hard red armored exterior and are about the size of a large grape. Canners remove the shell and the single large seed leaving a round white fruit also with a single hole and they taste something like a grape and strawberry cross. Either of these should be tried if you ever encounter them. They also had slices of kiwi fruit on the bar which you don't see too often. On the hot table where they keep the soups, they have the sesame bean balls. I'm not sure what the proper name of these are but they are round, about the size of a quarter, covered in sesame seeds and consist of a pastry that's filled with slightly-sweet adzuki bean paste. This is an old-time dessert as the Chinese until recent years didn't eat very much really sweet things like we've done in the West for way too many years. This particular dessert in pretty much an authentic flavor from the past and are somewhat chewy and I like them!
The biggest problem with the Golden Dragon is that they have so many selections that you would have to make at least a half dozen visits to sample most of their offerings! While I've stated in a previous post that I'm not a big fan of Chinese buffets due to the food almost never being as good as individually prepared dishes, this one does have mostly okay food from what I've tried and nothing was really hideous as has occurred at a few other local Chinese buffets. They do offer a number of American items so that surely everyone in your party can find something they'll find acceptable. For the adventurous eater, I think you may be pleasantly surprised! I'm going to give them a 3 out of 5 stars rating based upon what I've tried thus far and the fact that it's a buffet which is an automatic one star deduction by my methodology. I'd recommend you give them a try and come up with your own opinion that I'd be interested in hearing. Fear No Food!
2404 Memorial Blvd.
Kingsport, TN 37664
phone 423-765-9588
fax 423-765-9589
I apologize to my readers for the lack of recent posts. I've got a couple of other restaurants to review besides this one that I hope to post soon. Back to the Golden Dragon: this in no way is related to the venerable Golden Dragon Chinese Restaurant that was in Kingsport for many years at the corner of E. Sevier St. and N. Wilcox Dr. It appears from their advertisements to be part of a chain. The building they're in is directly behind the Ft. Henry Mall/Kingsport Town Center in the former Ryan's Steakhouse/Red Apple Chinese Buffet that's in front of Ross N. Robinson Middle School.
We went there this Friday evening (7/8/11) with my wife, daughter and her boyfriend. As I had only a light late breakfast about 10 AM, I was ready to try as many things as my appetite could handle! The first thing that you notice when entering this fairly large restaurant is the large number of well-lighted steam table buffet stations. In addition to these it has a couple of cold stations as well as a "Hibachi Grill" where dishes can be fixed to your choosing in a giant wok from meats, vegetables and sauces of your selection. This is a feature that my friends Emily & Daniel Wong first featured in Kingsport as a "Mongolian Grill" at their nearby Ming Garden restaurant that's currently celebrating their twentieth anniversary.
After being seated by our friendly hostess (who knew our son), we were attended to by our cordial but basically non-English speaking waitress and placed our drink orders. This went somewhat awkwardly due the language issues as my daughter asked if they had Mr. Pibb which she didn't quite comprehend. After she gave us the list of available drinks (I requested ice water with lemon which ended up coming without lemon), we placed our orders and everyone proceeded to hit the buffet. We did have problems with our waitress keeping up with our drink refills and waiting for our cheque. I suspect she's not been long off the boat with her poor English comprehension.
As my daughter and her boyfriend had eaten her a couple of weeks earlier and told me about some of the offerings that were unique from other local Chinese buffets, I started on one side and quickly had a look around. One of the first things that caught my eye were oysters on the half-shell complete with a plate of lemon slices next to it. I selected three large good-looking oysters and a cold green mussel topped in a sweet-hot chili sauce. On a hot table I selected three green mussels with cheese sauce which seems to be pretty common at Chinese buffets at least locally. I also went to the sushi/sashimi table next to the hibachi grill and selected about six different sushi selections that surprisingly included Ahi tuna and salmon amongst several other types. We are so far from the coast and oysters are so expensive that I had a brief moment of nirvana enjoying them drizzled with lemon juice and salt. If only they'd had some Tabasco sauce to put on them! They were quite tasty and I could've easily eaten a coupe of dozen but wanted to have room to try the other offerings. If you notice my obituary in the paper in the next day or two, you'll know the oysters are what did me in as they are a bit risky! The mussels with cheese were okay but China Star's are definitely better. The sushi was quite good as I like Nori seaweed in a lot of things but the Ahi tuna was wonderful with just a bit of soy sauce without having to swish in a wasabi/soy combination. I also tried one of the fried dumplings with sauce that was pretty good. My daughter said their fried cheese wontons weren't too good but I didn't get the chance to try them. Another intersting dish on a cold table was the whole baby octopus in a sweet and slightly spicy sauce. They were quite tasty but frightened a couple of people at our table! I would really love to have hot squid dishes available at a buffet like this. There's much more to squid than just calamari, trust me. The Chinese have come up with some amazing dishes made from these critters!
Other notable items sampled were the roast duck. It was basically roast duck, skin on, chopped into various pieces and a plate of orange slices and a bowl of a fairly tasty soy/five spice sauce to ladle over it. I'm a big fan of duck and really miss the old Peking Restaurant that used to be in Johnson City, TN. They had a fabulous roast duck that sets the standard for any I've tried since. This duck was cooked pretty well, you just had to be selective about the pieces unless you like picking duck ribs which results in little meat but a whole lot of ribs and fatty skin. By and large I was pleasantly surprised by their roast duck. Another poultry dish I tried at the boyfriend's suggestion was the Hong Kong Chicken. It was chunks of boneless chicken in a somewhat orange, sweet and seasoned glaze that was pretty tasty.
Another dish I love is frog legs and Golden Dragon's didn't disappoint. They were complete hind leg sections cooked in a light seasoned batter coating and were pretty tasty with a lot of meat. If you've never had the nerve to try frog legs, let me tell you that they are quite delicious. If you like chicken, you'll be okay with frog. Same with turtle but that's for a different time. Many Chinese buffets around here at least offer snow crab legs on their dinner buffets especially on weekends. Surprisingly, these weren't available but instead they had basically chopped up sections of blue crab, also with a light seasoned batter. While these looked good and the batter was interesting, there was almost no crab meat left to pick in these sections. As you may know, blue crabs have almost no meat in their legs like their larger cousins the snow and king crabs. Unfortunately, these had almost no meat even in the claws which was a big surprise and a bit disappointing. They also had cooked whole crayfish which were okay, it's just peeling crawdads is such a pain for the small amount of meat in their tails. They did have a number of shrimp dishes and the couple I tried were good. They also have several boiled and fried fish dishes. Another surprise was the small steamed clams. I'm not sure what type they were but looked a lot like Manila clams and were definitely not Cherrystone's. Unfortunately as I rummaged through them, there were a lot of pretty open shells but only a couple that had the clam inside. I don't know if people had picked the clam out and left the shells or what. It was pretty strange and I passed them over.
As I was rapidly getting full from the aforementioned selections, I wanted to try some dessert to round out the meal. They have the usual selection of odd cakes and such but also a large selection of cold fruits like watermelon, grapes and so on. Some I wasn't expecting were there and that I really like including loquats and lychee. Loquats are unique to Asia and have a round orange fruit about the size of an apricot that contains a single large seed. Canners peel the fruit and remove the seed leaving the fruit with a single noticeable hole in each fruit. They taste something like a peach and apricot combination and are very expensive if you ever find them available. Lychees are also an Asian tree fruit that has a somewhat hard red armored exterior and are about the size of a large grape. Canners remove the shell and the single large seed leaving a round white fruit also with a single hole and they taste something like a grape and strawberry cross. Either of these should be tried if you ever encounter them. They also had slices of kiwi fruit on the bar which you don't see too often. On the hot table where they keep the soups, they have the sesame bean balls. I'm not sure what the proper name of these are but they are round, about the size of a quarter, covered in sesame seeds and consist of a pastry that's filled with slightly-sweet adzuki bean paste. This is an old-time dessert as the Chinese until recent years didn't eat very much really sweet things like we've done in the West for way too many years. This particular dessert in pretty much an authentic flavor from the past and are somewhat chewy and I like them!
The biggest problem with the Golden Dragon is that they have so many selections that you would have to make at least a half dozen visits to sample most of their offerings! While I've stated in a previous post that I'm not a big fan of Chinese buffets due to the food almost never being as good as individually prepared dishes, this one does have mostly okay food from what I've tried and nothing was really hideous as has occurred at a few other local Chinese buffets. They do offer a number of American items so that surely everyone in your party can find something they'll find acceptable. For the adventurous eater, I think you may be pleasantly surprised! I'm going to give them a 3 out of 5 stars rating based upon what I've tried thus far and the fact that it's a buffet which is an automatic one star deduction by my methodology. I'd recommend you give them a try and come up with your own opinion that I'd be interested in hearing. Fear No Food!
Monday, May 16, 2011
China Star Review 5/13/11
China Star Buffet
2400 W Stone Dr # 7
Kingsport, TN 37660-2388
(423) 247-8883
China Star is a large buffet restaurant located in the Jennings Farm Shopping Center on the west side of Kingsport, TN. The shopping center is located between the Walmart and the new Lowe's right off W. Stone Drive/Hwy 11-W at Deneen Ln. This fairly large buffet restaurant was one of the first tenants in the shopping center and has been fairly popular for several years being the first Chinese restaurant on the west side of town.
This restaurant has apparently changed management or ownership within the past year or so as it seems to have a completely new front of house staff. This restaurant has had one of the largest Chinese buffet offerings in Kingsport until recently.
The restaurant has three quite long two-sided steam tables and a large chilled table that support a large variety of Chinese food items. In the past year or so they've added a few sushi items to the chilled section and also have an ice cream freezer with at least eight flavors for those that might possibly have room for a dessert after sampling the rest of their offerings. From the time this restaurant first opened about five years ago, they were fairly consistent in their food items under the previous management as the food tasted pretty similar from day to day.
Let me tell you straight away that I am not a fan of Chinese buffet restaurants in general. From my own training in Chinese restaurants, chefs are taught to produce one dish at a time in the classical Chinese restaurant environment. The only items that are produced en masse are such things as egg rolls, fried rice and soups. To turn out a particular item in a large quantity as is required for a buffet, which is normally six to eight servings, is extremely hard to do with any consistency or quality. Much of this has to do with the wok that most foods are cooked in as well as the chef preparing it. The typical restaurant wok works best preparing no more than two servings of an item at a time. Beyond that it requires a much larger wok that has different requirements in temperature control much less the fine tuning of the many ingredients that often comprise a particular dish. The sauces that are an integral part of many dishes are not a premix in most instances. The ingredients are added one at a time to build the item's flavor profile. All of these things contribute to why most foods on a buffet are not as good as a single dish ordered off a menu in a quality Chinese restaurant.
Back to the China Star: this restaurant has several good items that aren't normally seen on many Chinese buffets. Their broiled green mussels with a cheese sauce is a very tasty item if not very authentic to Chinese cuisine. They also have a coconut chicken that's also very tasty. It's battered chunks of chicken deep fried with a thick, sweet coconut sauce. I suspect the sauce is derived from cream of coconut like Coco Lopez which is used to make a real Piña Colada drink. Authentic Chinese or not, it's tasty. Another is their peanut chicken which is pounded thin boneless chicken breasts coated in Panko crumbs, deep fried, sliced into strips and coated with an Indonesian-style peanut butter-based Satay sauce. Quite tasty if not Chinese. They have a tasty green bean dish which consists of very skinny young green beans (all green, no bean) that have been stir fried with garlic and other seasonings. Besides stir fried potatoes, this is one of the few vegetable offerings on the buffet if you exclude rice and noodle dishes.
Our Friday the 13th dinner was not very lucky nor one of the better meals I've had at this restaurant. On weekends, besides the wonderful cheese mussels, they have snow crab legs. Unfortunately, there were nothing but scrap pieces on the steam table from when we arrived at approximately 7 PM until we left an hour later when they finally put some more out. I was looking forward to them even if they use no seasonings and often overcook them. One thing that does bother me about many of these buffets is that at least 75% of their dishes are made from chicken. I grew up with Chinese restaurants that had such wonderful dishes as sweet and sour pork which I've found on very few buffets over the years. Sweet and sour chicken ala China Star is just not the same. In fact, I found no pork items on the buffet, even in their version of hot and sour soup. They do offer Mongolian beef and pepper steak. They had one fish item which was a slab of broiled salmon which I've had before and it was pretty much tasteless with a dusting of paprika to make it appear seasoned. They did have a couple of shrimp items such as typical breaded fried shrimp but they'd been on the buffet for way too long. It seems like none of the items are cleared away from being out too long rather they're only replaced with fresh when the bins are mostly emptied.
Their spring rolls were smaller in diameter than my fingers and were more wrapper than the unidentifiable tasteless filling they contained. Their Mongolian beef was definitely not as good as I'd had in previous visits and totally lacked that almost barbecued flavor that stir frying it in very hot oil produces. I made a huge mistake in trying their seafood casserole which consists of surimi seafood with tiny shrimp in a cheesy sauce. It's normally as okay as anything made with surimi can be but not this time. Evidently, some of the surimi or shrimp had spoiled and in the words of my son, "it tastes like death." That was not an understatement and after spitting out my first bite, I took a napkin to scrape my tongue hoping that it wouldn't kill me in a few hours. I can't remember ever putting anything in my mouth that tasted so vile. By that point my appetite had waned considerably and I thought I might try a few fruit items from the cold table to repair my taste buds. Their so-called sushi looked nice but contained no raw items and was disappointing. Wrapping sushi rice with nori around a piece of surimi and cream cheese leaves much to be desired. Even the wasabi was sub-standard as it was so mild and/or adulterated. I expect wasabi mixed with a little soy to clear my sinuses in about fifteen seconds after taking a bite of sushi I've swished through it. No such luck that night and barely any taste. I tried the Mandarin orange segments and I suspect they'd been on the buffet for several days as they were limp and sour in a fermented kind of way. My wife did like the raspberry-lime sherbet but I'm not convinced that a bowl of murky water is the best place to keep the communal ice cream dippers between customers. The honeydew melon was okay but the cantaloupe was pretty bad but that didn't surprise me since it's so early in the season. I though I'd try the cherry cobbler but found that it was only extremely thick cherry pie filling that must've been on the buffet since lunch and no pastry was evident. They used to have such things as sesame seed covered adzuki bean-filled steamed balls which were tasty if you caught them fresh but they don't seem to be available anymore.
My verdict is that this restaurant that was once as good as a typical Chinese buffet can be, has slipped considerably in several critical areas. Food quality needs major improvement including replacing items that have been out on the buffet too long. Allowing a seafood dish such as the seafood casserole to be served shows that no one in the kitchen is sampling before they serve it. Not regularly refilling popular items such as the the crab legs on a night they're featured is another mistake. The staff quality seems to have slipped a bit too as we were already seated with our first plates of food before our drink orders were delivered. Based upon our party of three's experiences Friday night, I can't in good conscience recommend China Star Buffet.
2400 W Stone Dr # 7
Kingsport, TN 37660-2388
(423) 247-8883
China Star is a large buffet restaurant located in the Jennings Farm Shopping Center on the west side of Kingsport, TN. The shopping center is located between the Walmart and the new Lowe's right off W. Stone Drive/Hwy 11-W at Deneen Ln. This fairly large buffet restaurant was one of the first tenants in the shopping center and has been fairly popular for several years being the first Chinese restaurant on the west side of town.
This restaurant has apparently changed management or ownership within the past year or so as it seems to have a completely new front of house staff. This restaurant has had one of the largest Chinese buffet offerings in Kingsport until recently.
The restaurant has three quite long two-sided steam tables and a large chilled table that support a large variety of Chinese food items. In the past year or so they've added a few sushi items to the chilled section and also have an ice cream freezer with at least eight flavors for those that might possibly have room for a dessert after sampling the rest of their offerings. From the time this restaurant first opened about five years ago, they were fairly consistent in their food items under the previous management as the food tasted pretty similar from day to day.
Let me tell you straight away that I am not a fan of Chinese buffet restaurants in general. From my own training in Chinese restaurants, chefs are taught to produce one dish at a time in the classical Chinese restaurant environment. The only items that are produced en masse are such things as egg rolls, fried rice and soups. To turn out a particular item in a large quantity as is required for a buffet, which is normally six to eight servings, is extremely hard to do with any consistency or quality. Much of this has to do with the wok that most foods are cooked in as well as the chef preparing it. The typical restaurant wok works best preparing no more than two servings of an item at a time. Beyond that it requires a much larger wok that has different requirements in temperature control much less the fine tuning of the many ingredients that often comprise a particular dish. The sauces that are an integral part of many dishes are not a premix in most instances. The ingredients are added one at a time to build the item's flavor profile. All of these things contribute to why most foods on a buffet are not as good as a single dish ordered off a menu in a quality Chinese restaurant.
Back to the China Star: this restaurant has several good items that aren't normally seen on many Chinese buffets. Their broiled green mussels with a cheese sauce is a very tasty item if not very authentic to Chinese cuisine. They also have a coconut chicken that's also very tasty. It's battered chunks of chicken deep fried with a thick, sweet coconut sauce. I suspect the sauce is derived from cream of coconut like Coco Lopez which is used to make a real Piña Colada drink. Authentic Chinese or not, it's tasty. Another is their peanut chicken which is pounded thin boneless chicken breasts coated in Panko crumbs, deep fried, sliced into strips and coated with an Indonesian-style peanut butter-based Satay sauce. Quite tasty if not Chinese. They have a tasty green bean dish which consists of very skinny young green beans (all green, no bean) that have been stir fried with garlic and other seasonings. Besides stir fried potatoes, this is one of the few vegetable offerings on the buffet if you exclude rice and noodle dishes.
Our Friday the 13th dinner was not very lucky nor one of the better meals I've had at this restaurant. On weekends, besides the wonderful cheese mussels, they have snow crab legs. Unfortunately, there were nothing but scrap pieces on the steam table from when we arrived at approximately 7 PM until we left an hour later when they finally put some more out. I was looking forward to them even if they use no seasonings and often overcook them. One thing that does bother me about many of these buffets is that at least 75% of their dishes are made from chicken. I grew up with Chinese restaurants that had such wonderful dishes as sweet and sour pork which I've found on very few buffets over the years. Sweet and sour chicken ala China Star is just not the same. In fact, I found no pork items on the buffet, even in their version of hot and sour soup. They do offer Mongolian beef and pepper steak. They had one fish item which was a slab of broiled salmon which I've had before and it was pretty much tasteless with a dusting of paprika to make it appear seasoned. They did have a couple of shrimp items such as typical breaded fried shrimp but they'd been on the buffet for way too long. It seems like none of the items are cleared away from being out too long rather they're only replaced with fresh when the bins are mostly emptied.
Their spring rolls were smaller in diameter than my fingers and were more wrapper than the unidentifiable tasteless filling they contained. Their Mongolian beef was definitely not as good as I'd had in previous visits and totally lacked that almost barbecued flavor that stir frying it in very hot oil produces. I made a huge mistake in trying their seafood casserole which consists of surimi seafood with tiny shrimp in a cheesy sauce. It's normally as okay as anything made with surimi can be but not this time. Evidently, some of the surimi or shrimp had spoiled and in the words of my son, "it tastes like death." That was not an understatement and after spitting out my first bite, I took a napkin to scrape my tongue hoping that it wouldn't kill me in a few hours. I can't remember ever putting anything in my mouth that tasted so vile. By that point my appetite had waned considerably and I thought I might try a few fruit items from the cold table to repair my taste buds. Their so-called sushi looked nice but contained no raw items and was disappointing. Wrapping sushi rice with nori around a piece of surimi and cream cheese leaves much to be desired. Even the wasabi was sub-standard as it was so mild and/or adulterated. I expect wasabi mixed with a little soy to clear my sinuses in about fifteen seconds after taking a bite of sushi I've swished through it. No such luck that night and barely any taste. I tried the Mandarin orange segments and I suspect they'd been on the buffet for several days as they were limp and sour in a fermented kind of way. My wife did like the raspberry-lime sherbet but I'm not convinced that a bowl of murky water is the best place to keep the communal ice cream dippers between customers. The honeydew melon was okay but the cantaloupe was pretty bad but that didn't surprise me since it's so early in the season. I though I'd try the cherry cobbler but found that it was only extremely thick cherry pie filling that must've been on the buffet since lunch and no pastry was evident. They used to have such things as sesame seed covered adzuki bean-filled steamed balls which were tasty if you caught them fresh but they don't seem to be available anymore.
My verdict is that this restaurant that was once as good as a typical Chinese buffet can be, has slipped considerably in several critical areas. Food quality needs major improvement including replacing items that have been out on the buffet too long. Allowing a seafood dish such as the seafood casserole to be served shows that no one in the kitchen is sampling before they serve it. Not regularly refilling popular items such as the the crab legs on a night they're featured is another mistake. The staff quality seems to have slipped a bit too as we were already seated with our first plates of food before our drink orders were delivered. Based upon our party of three's experiences Friday night, I can't in good conscience recommend China Star Buffet.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
My New Love
I guess I might as well announce it here as anywhere: I've fallen in love again. My wife's probably going to be a bit upset over that four letter word but I can't help myself. You might be thinking I've succumbed to the proverbial mid-life crisis but you'll be wrong as I've fallen in love with a Sunbeam. To be specific: a Sunbeam Cooker-Fryer Model CF that was made in the USA in 1952. Even today, it's considered by many to be the finest and most heavy duty non-commercial deep fryer/cooker ever produced. They are now collectors items selling as usable versions for $160 and up all the way to over $285 for one in mint condition. My darling that I inherited from my late aunt Mae might not be considered cosmetically to be mint but still looks good with no dents and has the original fryer basket with handle, the cooker's lid and power cord. This deep fryer would make a Fry Daddy leave town under cover of darkness!
I first came across this cooker/fryer in 2002 when doing an inventory of my late Aunt and Uncle's house after their deaths. I knew about deep frying as any respectable Chinese restaurant and almost every American restaurant has one. I'd not done any deep frying at home and most of what I knew outside of a restaurant was mostly limited to what my mother might do in her electric skillet while growing up. I knew of some college friends that owned various versions of a Fry Daddy but I quickly determined that they were good for cooking up a big handful of french fries and not much else. When I discovered my Sunbeam, I thought it looked pretty old and quaint and relegated it to spending it's remaining years in an under counter cabinet's shelf or so I thought.
About six months ago I thought I might attempt to do a batch of french fries or perhaps some fried chicken in it and brought it out and gave it a decent cleaning. One thing I noticed was that it was not only a sizeable deep fryer that could hold a gallon of oil but it was also capable of producing things like beef stew, roasts and many other things. It has a big metal plate on it's front that lists many things that can be cooked in it along with the proper cooking temperature. Unlike many similar appliances, it has a rotary dial where the temperature can be set from a simmer to over 400°F and remains backlit until it achieves the desired temperature. It has a substantial aluminum cooking body liner that helps it to maintain temperature along with an integral bracket for placing the fryer basket to drain. In other words, this was a well thought out appliance easily in the class of such things as a KitchenAid stand mixer and it's currently 59 years old!
In the past few weeks I've used it to produce french fries as good any restaurant could and on a whim tonight ran off a batch of fried chicken that not only turned out flavorful but also moist inside without being pressure fried. Later on tonight I turned out a batch of corn tortilla chips from fresh corn tortillas cut into 1/8ths along with a couple of flour tortilla chimichangas that were also memorable. I've got a feeling that this love affair is going to last! Stay tuned for pictures of our honeymoon.
I first came across this cooker/fryer in 2002 when doing an inventory of my late Aunt and Uncle's house after their deaths. I knew about deep frying as any respectable Chinese restaurant and almost every American restaurant has one. I'd not done any deep frying at home and most of what I knew outside of a restaurant was mostly limited to what my mother might do in her electric skillet while growing up. I knew of some college friends that owned various versions of a Fry Daddy but I quickly determined that they were good for cooking up a big handful of french fries and not much else. When I discovered my Sunbeam, I thought it looked pretty old and quaint and relegated it to spending it's remaining years in an under counter cabinet's shelf or so I thought.
About six months ago I thought I might attempt to do a batch of french fries or perhaps some fried chicken in it and brought it out and gave it a decent cleaning. One thing I noticed was that it was not only a sizeable deep fryer that could hold a gallon of oil but it was also capable of producing things like beef stew, roasts and many other things. It has a big metal plate on it's front that lists many things that can be cooked in it along with the proper cooking temperature. Unlike many similar appliances, it has a rotary dial where the temperature can be set from a simmer to over 400°F and remains backlit until it achieves the desired temperature. It has a substantial aluminum cooking body liner that helps it to maintain temperature along with an integral bracket for placing the fryer basket to drain. In other words, this was a well thought out appliance easily in the class of such things as a KitchenAid stand mixer and it's currently 59 years old!
In the past few weeks I've used it to produce french fries as good any restaurant could and on a whim tonight ran off a batch of fried chicken that not only turned out flavorful but also moist inside without being pressure fried. Later on tonight I turned out a batch of corn tortilla chips from fresh corn tortillas cut into 1/8ths along with a couple of flour tortilla chimichangas that were also memorable. I've got a feeling that this love affair is going to last! Stay tuned for pictures of our honeymoon.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Praise Allah: Tiger Seasoning!
Before everyone that knows me thinks I've somehow been abducted by aliens or Islamists, this is not a religious rant! This is simply an expose about one of the best seasoning ingredients that I've come across in my lifetime.
About the blog title: the incredible seasoning now known as Tiger Seasoning was originally called Praise Allah Seasoning and was originally made in Knoxville, TN. I found about about this magical seasoning from my younger brother who was attending UT at the time in the latter half of the 1970s. It came in a decent sized plastic shaker can and the label bore the name, "Praise Allah Seasoning" and had a picture of the Taj Mahal against a purple background on the label. This was just before the insanity happened in Iran with the American Embassy hostage crisis so that things Persian/Middle Eastern were considered exotic or at worst benign. Unfortunately, this was not to last. Basically this wonderful locally-produced product that is somewhat reminiscent of a Puerto Rican Adobo seasoning was pretty unique, especially in the spice-deprived Upper South of the 1960s. Mind you, adobo seasoning from Puerto Rico is nothing like the adobo sauce of Mexico nor the adobo vinegar meat stews of the Philippines. Even now, very few non-Puerto Ricans know what adobo seasoning is and Praise Allah was a much more balanced combination of flavors than the typical adobo. It basically consists of a combination of salt, dextrose, garlic, oregano, white pepper and MSG and was and still is an incredible seasoning for everything from steaks, hamburgers, pizza, stews, eggs, you name it. When my brother brought my mother home a shaker can of it home one weekend back then we were entranced by it. At that time, most folks at least in this area's idea of seasoning consisted of just salt and pepper. Garlic was an almost unkown ingredient and along with oregano was something those somewhat scary Italians were known to use. I hope you're getting the picture as to how culinarily and culturally deprived most of us were back then.
Chinese and Mexican cooking were almost unknown around here then and Italian cooking had made some slight inroads but it was mostly limited to pizza of a dubious quality that was rarely made by real Italians. I have to thank Pizza Hut and their advertising campaigns that made pizza a legitimate food in the Upper South or otherwise we would've probably had to wait another ten years for it to become so popular among the everyman. Fortunately, a Sicilian family came to our area about 35 years ago and showed us how pizza and other common Italian foods were supposed to taste. Chef Boyardee was no longer held in good standing here!
Back to Praise Allah Seasoning: this product had been around Knoxville for many years, even going back to about 1960 when it was considered quite exotic and made by a company called Davis Manufacturing Co. This product was nationally advertised in specialty food magazines at the time and was at least locally well known over the years. It could even be bought at a couple of local grocery store chains in the 1970s. Then came the problems in Iran with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the imprisonment of the American Embassy personnel. I wouldn't doubt that the FBI probably tracked some who bought the product especially in the Knoxville, TN area which had a goodly number of students from Iran going to UT during this time. By this time, anything Middle Eastern was almost a cussword for many Americans and Praise Allah Seasoning almost disappeared.
We're going to take a trip around the mountain for a bit that I hope you'll appreciate but I won't get offended if you skip to the next paragraph. I vividly recall the problems many foreign students at UT from the Middle East or South Asia encountered during this time. I wasn't really aware of how bad things had become until the fateful evening of July 4, 1979. I was living temporarily with my brother and his flatmate in a quite nice suites-type apartment building in Sequoyah Hills while in training with my Knoxville-based employer. We found out that night that we had students from Iran living in our building that we'd never met previously. We first met them that evening after we began firing off volleys of quite large stick rockets down the hill toward the neighboring apartment complex which was in a friendly pyrotechnic competiton with our building. One of our first rockets misfired and went down onto our pool deck instead of to the neighbors several hundred feet downhill. Unknown to us at the time, a young Persian woman, her sister and brother in-law were in our pool area. When this rocket exploded (it wasn't a little bottle rocket either), it like to have scared those folks to death and they all started screaming and dove into the pool. Needless to say, we didn't know they were there as it was almost dark. They thought they were being attacked by American terrorists for being from Iran! After they quit screaming, we quickly diffused the situation after assuring them that we meant no harm and they then joined us in the festivities of sending down close to a hundred big rockets down on the neighbors. Of course the neighbors were firing back but we had gravity on our side and their's rarely made it up to our building. These Persians had been pretty scared of the political situation for some time and had been keeping a very low profile and only came down to the pool late in the evening when no one else was around. This incident is how my brother's roomate, the late Brent Potts, met his Persian girlfriend Mitra L. They were a couple for quite some time. Mitra, her older sister and brother in-law were great people that hated Khomeini early on for a number of reasons and especially since he kept their professional parents from sending them money. They almost starved for a time as almost no employers would give them jobs after they found out they were from Iran and all eventually found minimum wage employment after a few months. I moved to NC after a few months and lost touch with them but hope they have done well. Unfortunately, Brent Potts, who was an experienced scuba diver and the only person I've ever known to own a Lancia, died in a cave diving accident in Florida in August 1990. Now, back to our topic.
The TryMe brand owned by Reily Foods Co. of New Orleans then assumed ownership of the brand but distribution was still somewhat local. This company owned the Luzianne brand which previously was well known for their coffee with chicory blend and teas. They changed the product's name to Tiger Seasoning but kept the TryMe brand and off it went to be marketed nationwide which is where it's at today. Reily/Luzianne had previously bought the Knoxville-based JFG Coffee Company in 1965 and was familiar with the area prior to the Praise Allah acquisition. Interestingly, there are quite a few recipes online that call for Praise Allah Seasoning and many folks in East Tennessee still call it that, me included if I don't think very hard about it. I've known it as Praise Allah far longer than Tiger Seasoning. In any case, it's a fabulous seasoning that should be in every kitchen. Locally, Food City and Kroger carry it and it's available online from several sources. A great use that's on the label is to blend it with melted butter and brush it on steaks about a minute before they're done. We regularly use it when cooking fresh frozen peas by adding it along with butter after draining them and also in beef stew or on hamburgers. We also sprinkle it on popcorn. It's wonderful!
About the blog title: the incredible seasoning now known as Tiger Seasoning was originally called Praise Allah Seasoning and was originally made in Knoxville, TN. I found about about this magical seasoning from my younger brother who was attending UT at the time in the latter half of the 1970s. It came in a decent sized plastic shaker can and the label bore the name, "Praise Allah Seasoning" and had a picture of the Taj Mahal against a purple background on the label. This was just before the insanity happened in Iran with the American Embassy hostage crisis so that things Persian/Middle Eastern were considered exotic or at worst benign. Unfortunately, this was not to last. Basically this wonderful locally-produced product that is somewhat reminiscent of a Puerto Rican Adobo seasoning was pretty unique, especially in the spice-deprived Upper South of the 1960s. Mind you, adobo seasoning from Puerto Rico is nothing like the adobo sauce of Mexico nor the adobo vinegar meat stews of the Philippines. Even now, very few non-Puerto Ricans know what adobo seasoning is and Praise Allah was a much more balanced combination of flavors than the typical adobo. It basically consists of a combination of salt, dextrose, garlic, oregano, white pepper and MSG and was and still is an incredible seasoning for everything from steaks, hamburgers, pizza, stews, eggs, you name it. When my brother brought my mother home a shaker can of it home one weekend back then we were entranced by it. At that time, most folks at least in this area's idea of seasoning consisted of just salt and pepper. Garlic was an almost unkown ingredient and along with oregano was something those somewhat scary Italians were known to use. I hope you're getting the picture as to how culinarily and culturally deprived most of us were back then.
Chinese and Mexican cooking were almost unknown around here then and Italian cooking had made some slight inroads but it was mostly limited to pizza of a dubious quality that was rarely made by real Italians. I have to thank Pizza Hut and their advertising campaigns that made pizza a legitimate food in the Upper South or otherwise we would've probably had to wait another ten years for it to become so popular among the everyman. Fortunately, a Sicilian family came to our area about 35 years ago and showed us how pizza and other common Italian foods were supposed to taste. Chef Boyardee was no longer held in good standing here!
Back to Praise Allah Seasoning: this product had been around Knoxville for many years, even going back to about 1960 when it was considered quite exotic and made by a company called Davis Manufacturing Co. This product was nationally advertised in specialty food magazines at the time and was at least locally well known over the years. It could even be bought at a couple of local grocery store chains in the 1970s. Then came the problems in Iran with the overthrow of the Shah of Iran and the imprisonment of the American Embassy personnel. I wouldn't doubt that the FBI probably tracked some who bought the product especially in the Knoxville, TN area which had a goodly number of students from Iran going to UT during this time. By this time, anything Middle Eastern was almost a cussword for many Americans and Praise Allah Seasoning almost disappeared.
We're going to take a trip around the mountain for a bit that I hope you'll appreciate but I won't get offended if you skip to the next paragraph. I vividly recall the problems many foreign students at UT from the Middle East or South Asia encountered during this time. I wasn't really aware of how bad things had become until the fateful evening of July 4, 1979. I was living temporarily with my brother and his flatmate in a quite nice suites-type apartment building in Sequoyah Hills while in training with my Knoxville-based employer. We found out that night that we had students from Iran living in our building that we'd never met previously. We first met them that evening after we began firing off volleys of quite large stick rockets down the hill toward the neighboring apartment complex which was in a friendly pyrotechnic competiton with our building. One of our first rockets misfired and went down onto our pool deck instead of to the neighbors several hundred feet downhill. Unknown to us at the time, a young Persian woman, her sister and brother in-law were in our pool area. When this rocket exploded (it wasn't a little bottle rocket either), it like to have scared those folks to death and they all started screaming and dove into the pool. Needless to say, we didn't know they were there as it was almost dark. They thought they were being attacked by American terrorists for being from Iran! After they quit screaming, we quickly diffused the situation after assuring them that we meant no harm and they then joined us in the festivities of sending down close to a hundred big rockets down on the neighbors. Of course the neighbors were firing back but we had gravity on our side and their's rarely made it up to our building. These Persians had been pretty scared of the political situation for some time and had been keeping a very low profile and only came down to the pool late in the evening when no one else was around. This incident is how my brother's roomate, the late Brent Potts, met his Persian girlfriend Mitra L. They were a couple for quite some time. Mitra, her older sister and brother in-law were great people that hated Khomeini early on for a number of reasons and especially since he kept their professional parents from sending them money. They almost starved for a time as almost no employers would give them jobs after they found out they were from Iran and all eventually found minimum wage employment after a few months. I moved to NC after a few months and lost touch with them but hope they have done well. Unfortunately, Brent Potts, who was an experienced scuba diver and the only person I've ever known to own a Lancia, died in a cave diving accident in Florida in August 1990. Now, back to our topic.
The TryMe brand owned by Reily Foods Co. of New Orleans then assumed ownership of the brand but distribution was still somewhat local. This company owned the Luzianne brand which previously was well known for their coffee with chicory blend and teas. They changed the product's name to Tiger Seasoning but kept the TryMe brand and off it went to be marketed nationwide which is where it's at today. Reily/Luzianne had previously bought the Knoxville-based JFG Coffee Company in 1965 and was familiar with the area prior to the Praise Allah acquisition. Interestingly, there are quite a few recipes online that call for Praise Allah Seasoning and many folks in East Tennessee still call it that, me included if I don't think very hard about it. I've known it as Praise Allah far longer than Tiger Seasoning. In any case, it's a fabulous seasoning that should be in every kitchen. Locally, Food City and Kroger carry it and it's available online from several sources. A great use that's on the label is to blend it with melted butter and brush it on steaks about a minute before they're done. We regularly use it when cooking fresh frozen peas by adding it along with butter after draining them and also in beef stew or on hamburgers. We also sprinkle it on popcorn. It's wonderful!
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Crawdad Linguine
The family was over today expecting Sunday lunch and I decided to make my Linguine with Crawfish, Butter, Garlic and Wine sauce. I know there are many people in this area that would pay $20 for a lobster tail but you couldn't pay them to eat crawdads. To that all I can say is you don't know what you're missing. Just think of them as very small freshwater lobsters and you won't be far off the mark. When I was growing up, we used to play in the creeks and try to find crawdads under the rocks. I never knew they were edible until after I was grown and learned about Cajun cooking.
This is a fairly inexpensive dish considering it has shellfish in it. Fortunately for us, Walmart now carries frozen Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat in a 12 oz. package. It's less than $7 for the package and is probably at least the equivalent yield of one of the big five pound bags of frozen whole crawdads. It's aleady cooked, peeled and deveined so all you have to do is thaw it and incorporate it into your dish. Boudreaux's tails are small so consider them more like popcorn crawdads rather than mini-lobster tails. The package does include the fat so they're more flavorful. They come from China but are good quality and I've been using these for awhile. To quickly thaw the tailmeat, I just place the frozen pack into a larger bowl and cover with cool water. I place an empty coffee cup on it to keep it submerged. You'll need to change the water and flip over the package after about fifteen minutes. After about 30 minutes it should be thawed enough to use. I usually do this while I'm preparing the rest of the dish. This dish is also easily adapted to use shrimp or scallops instead of crayfish. I didn't take any pics this time as everyone was really hungry but the crawfish adds a vibrant red color which makes the finished dish attractive.
Here's my recipe for those interested:
Linguine with Crawfish, Butter, Garlic and Wine Sauce
Ingredients:
2 lbs. Linguine dry pasta
1 pack, Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat 12 oz., thawed
1-1/2 sticks Butter or margarine
5-6 cloves Garlic, smashed, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbsp. dry White Wine such as sherry or rice wine
2 tsp. Salt (only 1 tsp. if using salted butter)
1/4 tsp. Sweet Basil, dried
1/4 tsp. Oregano, dried
Black Pepper, fresh ground (lightly dust on plated serving)
Directions:
In a large stockpot bring at least one gallon of salted water to a boil and prepare linguine per package directions. While the water is coming to a boil, in a medium-sized sauce pan melt the butter or margarine and add the garlic. Bring to a gentle simmer and then add the salt, sweet basil and oregano. Stir and let this simmer for at least fifteen minutes. About five minutes before the pasta is ready, stir in the wine and add the crawfish to the sauce, gently separating the tails from the block. As the tails are already cooked, don't raise the heat, just let them get warmed through in the sauce.
When the pasta is done, drain in a colander and run water over it to stop the cooking process. You only need to do this for maybe thirty seconds and it will also help keep the pasta from sticking to itself. Put half the drained pasta back into the stock pot and add half of the sauce with crawfish and mix in thoroughly. The repeat with the rest of the pasta and sauce. This way the meat and sauce will be more evenly distributed within the pasta and it doesn't give the pasta a chance to stick together. Break out the plates and serve with garlic cheese bread and perhaps a small salad and you've got a big meal for four or five hungry folks. Enjoy!
This is a fairly inexpensive dish considering it has shellfish in it. Fortunately for us, Walmart now carries frozen Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat in a 12 oz. package. It's less than $7 for the package and is probably at least the equivalent yield of one of the big five pound bags of frozen whole crawdads. It's aleady cooked, peeled and deveined so all you have to do is thaw it and incorporate it into your dish. Boudreaux's tails are small so consider them more like popcorn crawdads rather than mini-lobster tails. The package does include the fat so they're more flavorful. They come from China but are good quality and I've been using these for awhile. To quickly thaw the tailmeat, I just place the frozen pack into a larger bowl and cover with cool water. I place an empty coffee cup on it to keep it submerged. You'll need to change the water and flip over the package after about fifteen minutes. After about 30 minutes it should be thawed enough to use. I usually do this while I'm preparing the rest of the dish. This dish is also easily adapted to use shrimp or scallops instead of crayfish. I didn't take any pics this time as everyone was really hungry but the crawfish adds a vibrant red color which makes the finished dish attractive.
Here's my recipe for those interested:
Linguine with Crawfish, Butter, Garlic and Wine Sauce
Ingredients:
2 lbs. Linguine dry pasta
1 pack, Boudreaux's Brand Crawfish Tailmeat 12 oz., thawed
1-1/2 sticks Butter or margarine
5-6 cloves Garlic, smashed, peeled and finely chopped
2 Tbsp. dry White Wine such as sherry or rice wine
2 tsp. Salt (only 1 tsp. if using salted butter)
1/4 tsp. Sweet Basil, dried
1/4 tsp. Oregano, dried
Black Pepper, fresh ground (lightly dust on plated serving)
Directions:
In a large stockpot bring at least one gallon of salted water to a boil and prepare linguine per package directions. While the water is coming to a boil, in a medium-sized sauce pan melt the butter or margarine and add the garlic. Bring to a gentle simmer and then add the salt, sweet basil and oregano. Stir and let this simmer for at least fifteen minutes. About five minutes before the pasta is ready, stir in the wine and add the crawfish to the sauce, gently separating the tails from the block. As the tails are already cooked, don't raise the heat, just let them get warmed through in the sauce.
When the pasta is done, drain in a colander and run water over it to stop the cooking process. You only need to do this for maybe thirty seconds and it will also help keep the pasta from sticking to itself. Put half the drained pasta back into the stock pot and add half of the sauce with crawfish and mix in thoroughly. The repeat with the rest of the pasta and sauce. This way the meat and sauce will be more evenly distributed within the pasta and it doesn't give the pasta a chance to stick together. Break out the plates and serve with garlic cheese bread and perhaps a small salad and you've got a big meal for four or five hungry folks. Enjoy!
Monday, March 21, 2011
Not So Common Ramen
About everyone younger than eighty knows what ramen instant noodle soups are. They are the salvation of hungry but destitute college students and touring metal bands. They have to be without a doubt the most inexpensive meal available in the world today and are commonly available here for less than $0.20 per packet. I don't know how they can make them so cheaply in the USA when a pack of chewing gum costs over three times as much. Even in times of crisis like is happening in Japan today, they are a quick and easy belly-filling meal that only requires the addition of water and heat to prepare. If they have a nutritional downside, it is that their seasoning packets contain quite a lot of sodium.
While ramen instant noodle soup is of Japanese origin being invented by the founder of Nissin Foods in 1958, they are being made all around the globe now. The basic pre-fried wheat noodle remains somewhat consistent in most countries but the seasoning packets reflect regional flavors. In the USA you see flavors such as chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and "oriental". In other countries that produce them, you see flavors such as curry, crab, dashi (fish), Vietnamese Pho, Thai Tom Yum (spicy lemongrass shrimp), Korean kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage) and many more. I've noticed Walmart is beginning to import some of the foreign varieties and they can be found in their Asian foods section. I particularly like the Tom Yum Shrimp flavored made by Mama in Thailand but be forewarned, it's very spicy. They all bear the basic characteristics of being fairly inexpensive, and easy and quick to prepare.
While most people eat them as just a noodle soup seasoned with the packet that comes with them, you can jazz them up quite a bit to make a more flavorful and nutritious meal. Additions of fresh vegetables can make a big difference when making these soups. Next time you make some try this: when the water comes to a boil, put in the noodles but also add some of any or all of the following: cabbage, Chinese cabbage (Nappa), carrot sices, broccoli or snow peas. They will cook sufficiently in the three minutes the noodles take to get done. Drain off the excess water and along with the seasoning packet try adding a shot of Sriracha Hot Chili Garlic Sauce or a bit of Thai Red Curry paste. Give it a glug of Thai Fish Sauce. Adding a can of mixed, diced vegetables will also fill it out. You can bring it up a notch further by adding bits of deli meats or leftovers such as ham, roast beef, turkey or even surimi seafood (artificial crab). Top with a couple of slices of hard boiled egg when it's ready to serve. Try experimenting by adding combinations of vegetables, meats and seasonings. You may be surprised about how wonderful your finished soup has become. What would've been just a simple soup has now become a tasty and nutritious meal. Enjoy!
While ramen instant noodle soup is of Japanese origin being invented by the founder of Nissin Foods in 1958, they are being made all around the globe now. The basic pre-fried wheat noodle remains somewhat consistent in most countries but the seasoning packets reflect regional flavors. In the USA you see flavors such as chicken, beef, pork, shrimp and "oriental". In other countries that produce them, you see flavors such as curry, crab, dashi (fish), Vietnamese Pho, Thai Tom Yum (spicy lemongrass shrimp), Korean kimchi (fermented spicy cabbage) and many more. I've noticed Walmart is beginning to import some of the foreign varieties and they can be found in their Asian foods section. I particularly like the Tom Yum Shrimp flavored made by Mama in Thailand but be forewarned, it's very spicy. They all bear the basic characteristics of being fairly inexpensive, and easy and quick to prepare.
While most people eat them as just a noodle soup seasoned with the packet that comes with them, you can jazz them up quite a bit to make a more flavorful and nutritious meal. Additions of fresh vegetables can make a big difference when making these soups. Next time you make some try this: when the water comes to a boil, put in the noodles but also add some of any or all of the following: cabbage, Chinese cabbage (Nappa), carrot sices, broccoli or snow peas. They will cook sufficiently in the three minutes the noodles take to get done. Drain off the excess water and along with the seasoning packet try adding a shot of Sriracha Hot Chili Garlic Sauce or a bit of Thai Red Curry paste. Give it a glug of Thai Fish Sauce. Adding a can of mixed, diced vegetables will also fill it out. You can bring it up a notch further by adding bits of deli meats or leftovers such as ham, roast beef, turkey or even surimi seafood (artificial crab). Top with a couple of slices of hard boiled egg when it's ready to serve. Try experimenting by adding combinations of vegetables, meats and seasonings. You may be surprised about how wonderful your finished soup has become. What would've been just a simple soup has now become a tasty and nutritious meal. Enjoy!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
1st Review: China One
Before I go into my very first restaurant review, I need to let you know that I'm not just a casual eater of Chinese and Asian cuisines. If you'll allow me to puff up my chest feathers a bit, I'll give you some background of my experiences. After first trying and then learning to enjoy mostly Cantonese varieties of Chinese foods that were shall we put it, "Americanized" at places like Joe Gongs back in the late 1970s, I decided to delve a bit deeper.
In the latter part of the 1980s, I took a series of Chinese cooking classes being taught by Karen Yau through Kingsport Adult Education at D-B. Karen, her Eastman engineer husband Cheuk and her father owned and operated the China House Restaurant in the Greenacres Shopping Center in Kingsport. After thoroughly enjoying the classes and expressing enthusiasm, Karen allowed me to take it a step further and employed me to learn real restaurant-style Chinese cooking at her restaurant. This was a most eye-opening experience where I learned a great deal. Her father was about seventy at the time and spoke almost no English. When Karen wasn't available to translate, he taught by example and he was quite a teacher. Just learning to operate the typical Chinese restaurant gas stove was quite an experience. You may not realize this but the stove is also a sink! Quckly cutting up 10 lbs. of onions, making two gallons of fried rice on a wok almost three feet across or beating eggs with two chopsticks was educational. The family meals, down home Chinese-style at the end of the evenings were most enjoyable and I quickly learned that instead of lots of the meat with a bit of rice like we eat it, they make it a bit of meat with lots of rice. I guess that's how they stay so trim! I shall forever be in Karen, Cheuk and her father's debt for these experiences.
--------
China One
4334 West Stone Drive
Kingsport, TN 37660-7253
(423) 247-5777
Tucked away in the Allandale Shopping Center is one of the area's best Chinese restaurants. Many people even on the West side of Kingsport don't realize it's there but should make the effort to find it. The couple that own it produce excellent cuisine at reasonable prices. I've been eating there for several years and it just keeps getting better all the time. The lady that takes your order's English also has improved considerably. The restaurant does primarily a take-out business but has a medium-sized dining room that currently seats 38 people in booths and tables. It could seat a lot more if they put in more furniture.
My daughter and I had a late lunch there today. If you go between 11AM and 3PM, they have a long list of lunch specials that average $5. You get a large entree along with a big mound of some of the best pork and vegetable fried rice that I've eaten in a long time.
I had the Hunan Twin Delights (L18: $5) which consists of tender beef and chicken with vegetables in a very flavorful, slightly sweet and not too spicy brown sauce. Vegetables included snow peas, bamboo shoots, a couple of water chestnut slices, broccoli, Chinese cabbage and bell pepper slices. It was wonderful and well deserving of it's name.
My daughter had the Chicken with Broccoli (L7: $5). Once again, lots of tasty tender chicken chunks with fresh broccoli florets and some sliced carrots in a brown sauce that was somewhat different from my Hunan dish. Very tasty and is also available with beef or pork along with the broccoli. She had to ask for a take out box as it was more than she could eat at the time.
My daughter ordered the Wonton Soup as an appetizer and I'll have to say this about China One: at most Chinese restaurants, when you order wonton soup, you get a whole lot of soup and if you're lucky maybe one or two wontons. At China One, you get at least three large, filled wontons topped with fresh sliced green onions. Very tasty and not bland like many as they use white pepper to season it with. They accompany their soups with a saucer of freshly fried wonton noodle strips. So many restaurants have a tendency to serve these soup accompaniments that are hardly fresh. Nothing says "bleh" to me like getting a bowl of rancid fried noodle strips with my soup. It makes me wonder about the freshness of the rest of what they serve. This is not an issue at China One. Their ingredients always seem to be quite fresh and I applaud them for staying on top of things.
This restaurant also is on top of their noodle dishes. Their Singapore Chow Mai Fun (#46: $5.50/$8.75) is one of the best examples of this dish that's also known elsewhere as Singapore Mei Fun. Spicy and yellow from hot curry seasoning, loaded with meats, shrimp and vegetables along with fine Mei Fun rice noodles, even the small-sized dish will feed two if they're not famished. They are also one of the few restaurants around that still offer Shrimp Toast (#11: $3.75/4). This exquisitely tasty and somewhat greasy appetizer dish consists of seasoned shrimp ground into a paste that's placed between two pieces of bread and deep fried as toast points. The old Golden Dragon at Wilcox/E. Sevier introduced me to this guilty pleasure. Also, you should try their Egg Foo Young dishes. For the unfamiliar, this is basically a meat and vegetable egg omelet done Chinese-style with a brown gravy over it. It's more yummy than you can imagine and China One does a great job with this dish. I had the Chicken Egg Foo Young (#49: $6.50) a few days ago and it was three saucer-sized pieces covered with their flavorful brown gravy along with a goodly portion of white steamed rice. Don't be afraid to try new things: fear no food!
China One also has a Japanese menu I assume was their response to the wave of pseudo-Japanese hibatchi restaurants that have popped up in the area in recent years. While I can't vouch for these, I've been there when people placed take out orders so they must be acceptable. They are some of their most expensive menu items. I would recommend sticking with what they do best: excellent Chinese dishes. One good result from this diversification is that you can ask for Shrimp Sauce, which is what my daughter puts on her fried rice there. She says it's good. I say it's blasphemy! :)
Take it from me, do your tastebuds a favor and visit China One soon. You and your wallet will not be disappointed. It's a real family restaurant and don't be surprised if their cute little daughter offer's drink refills. These are real hard-working folks, not a corporation and deserve the fruits of the American dream from their talent and hard work.
In the latter part of the 1980s, I took a series of Chinese cooking classes being taught by Karen Yau through Kingsport Adult Education at D-B. Karen, her Eastman engineer husband Cheuk and her father owned and operated the China House Restaurant in the Greenacres Shopping Center in Kingsport. After thoroughly enjoying the classes and expressing enthusiasm, Karen allowed me to take it a step further and employed me to learn real restaurant-style Chinese cooking at her restaurant. This was a most eye-opening experience where I learned a great deal. Her father was about seventy at the time and spoke almost no English. When Karen wasn't available to translate, he taught by example and he was quite a teacher. Just learning to operate the typical Chinese restaurant gas stove was quite an experience. You may not realize this but the stove is also a sink! Quckly cutting up 10 lbs. of onions, making two gallons of fried rice on a wok almost three feet across or beating eggs with two chopsticks was educational. The family meals, down home Chinese-style at the end of the evenings were most enjoyable and I quickly learned that instead of lots of the meat with a bit of rice like we eat it, they make it a bit of meat with lots of rice. I guess that's how they stay so trim! I shall forever be in Karen, Cheuk and her father's debt for these experiences.
--------
China One
4334 West Stone Drive
Kingsport, TN 37660-7253
(423) 247-5777
Tucked away in the Allandale Shopping Center is one of the area's best Chinese restaurants. Many people even on the West side of Kingsport don't realize it's there but should make the effort to find it. The couple that own it produce excellent cuisine at reasonable prices. I've been eating there for several years and it just keeps getting better all the time. The lady that takes your order's English also has improved considerably. The restaurant does primarily a take-out business but has a medium-sized dining room that currently seats 38 people in booths and tables. It could seat a lot more if they put in more furniture.
My daughter and I had a late lunch there today. If you go between 11AM and 3PM, they have a long list of lunch specials that average $5. You get a large entree along with a big mound of some of the best pork and vegetable fried rice that I've eaten in a long time.
I had the Hunan Twin Delights (L18: $5) which consists of tender beef and chicken with vegetables in a very flavorful, slightly sweet and not too spicy brown sauce. Vegetables included snow peas, bamboo shoots, a couple of water chestnut slices, broccoli, Chinese cabbage and bell pepper slices. It was wonderful and well deserving of it's name.
My daughter had the Chicken with Broccoli (L7: $5). Once again, lots of tasty tender chicken chunks with fresh broccoli florets and some sliced carrots in a brown sauce that was somewhat different from my Hunan dish. Very tasty and is also available with beef or pork along with the broccoli. She had to ask for a take out box as it was more than she could eat at the time.
My daughter ordered the Wonton Soup as an appetizer and I'll have to say this about China One: at most Chinese restaurants, when you order wonton soup, you get a whole lot of soup and if you're lucky maybe one or two wontons. At China One, you get at least three large, filled wontons topped with fresh sliced green onions. Very tasty and not bland like many as they use white pepper to season it with. They accompany their soups with a saucer of freshly fried wonton noodle strips. So many restaurants have a tendency to serve these soup accompaniments that are hardly fresh. Nothing says "bleh" to me like getting a bowl of rancid fried noodle strips with my soup. It makes me wonder about the freshness of the rest of what they serve. This is not an issue at China One. Their ingredients always seem to be quite fresh and I applaud them for staying on top of things.
This restaurant also is on top of their noodle dishes. Their Singapore Chow Mai Fun (#46: $5.50/$8.75) is one of the best examples of this dish that's also known elsewhere as Singapore Mei Fun. Spicy and yellow from hot curry seasoning, loaded with meats, shrimp and vegetables along with fine Mei Fun rice noodles, even the small-sized dish will feed two if they're not famished. They are also one of the few restaurants around that still offer Shrimp Toast (#11: $3.75/4). This exquisitely tasty and somewhat greasy appetizer dish consists of seasoned shrimp ground into a paste that's placed between two pieces of bread and deep fried as toast points. The old Golden Dragon at Wilcox/E. Sevier introduced me to this guilty pleasure. Also, you should try their Egg Foo Young dishes. For the unfamiliar, this is basically a meat and vegetable egg omelet done Chinese-style with a brown gravy over it. It's more yummy than you can imagine and China One does a great job with this dish. I had the Chicken Egg Foo Young (#49: $6.50) a few days ago and it was three saucer-sized pieces covered with their flavorful brown gravy along with a goodly portion of white steamed rice. Don't be afraid to try new things: fear no food!
China One also has a Japanese menu I assume was their response to the wave of pseudo-Japanese hibatchi restaurants that have popped up in the area in recent years. While I can't vouch for these, I've been there when people placed take out orders so they must be acceptable. They are some of their most expensive menu items. I would recommend sticking with what they do best: excellent Chinese dishes. One good result from this diversification is that you can ask for Shrimp Sauce, which is what my daughter puts on her fried rice there. She says it's good. I say it's blasphemy! :)
Take it from me, do your tastebuds a favor and visit China One soon. You and your wallet will not be disappointed. It's a real family restaurant and don't be surprised if their cute little daughter offer's drink refills. These are real hard-working folks, not a corporation and deserve the fruits of the American dream from their talent and hard work.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Paczkis!
You ask what the heck is a Paczki? Well, to start with it's pronounced closer to "punch-key". It's a special version of a filled doughnut from Poland. A pre-Lenten treat, it's something like a big, powdered sugar coated, fruit/jelly-filled doughnut. It's Poland's version of the German Berliner or Bismarck and the Austrian Krapfen. They were developed in the theme of giving up rich things for the forty days fast of Lent, primarily sugar, sweets and shortening. Traditionally, they were made on Fat Tuesday (Ostatki) the day before Ash Wednesday.
Unlike what we that have lived on during the Krispy-Kreme era, the Paczki has a different texture and color than the traditional fried doughnut. They look pretty similar on the outside but the inside is noticeably yellow from the extra eggs used. The texture is also different as they are more dense and less cake-like than the yeasty fried treats were are familiar with.
The bottom line is that Paczkis are a delicious treat only available for a limited time and amazingly available at of all places Walmart! They've been carrying them this time of the year for at least four years now. Years ago they were more ball-like but now are bigger but flatter like their European cousins. They're located in their Deli-Bakery area and come in a box of six, usually with a raspberry filling for $4.00. For aficionados of fried dough treats, you really need to get a move on to be able to try these as they are only available for a few weeks prior to Lent. For folks in more cosmopolitan areas that have a Polish population like Cincinnati and more northern bergs, many bakeries will have these available with a likewise varience in styles. Get a move on before you have to wait another year to try them!
Paczkis!
Unlike what we that have lived on during the Krispy-Kreme era, the Paczki has a different texture and color than the traditional fried doughnut. They look pretty similar on the outside but the inside is noticeably yellow from the extra eggs used. The texture is also different as they are more dense and less cake-like than the yeasty fried treats were are familiar with.
The bottom line is that Paczkis are a delicious treat only available for a limited time and amazingly available at of all places Walmart! They've been carrying them this time of the year for at least four years now. Years ago they were more ball-like but now are bigger but flatter like their European cousins. They're located in their Deli-Bakery area and come in a box of six, usually with a raspberry filling for $4.00. For aficionados of fried dough treats, you really need to get a move on to be able to try these as they are only available for a few weeks prior to Lent. For folks in more cosmopolitan areas that have a Polish population like Cincinnati and more northern bergs, many bakeries will have these available with a likewise varience in styles. Get a move on before you have to wait another year to try them!
Paczkis!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Shrimp Fettucine Alfredo
We eat a fair amount of pasta at our house, usually spaghetti-type noodles with meat sauce but occasionally change it up. Tonight I decided to make fettucine with homemade alfredo sauce and shrimp. I cheated slightly by buying frozen pre-cooked headless, peeled and deveined shrimp from Walmart. They were farm-raised from Thailand but 14 oz. of medium shrimp ready to go for $5 is pretty hard to pass up when you've got hungry folks waiting to eat. I know you can also cheat a bit by buying jarred alfredo sauce cheaper than you can make it but I choose to make mine from scratch. If anyone's interested, here's my alfredo sauce recipe as I made it tonight:
1 pint heavy whipping cream (canned evaporated milk will also work well in a pinch)
1 stick unsalted butter
5 cloves garlic - mashed, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp. Michiu Chinese rice wine (sherry's fine)
1 ea. 5 oz. tub Frigo shredded parmesan cheese
1-1/2 tsp. salt
2 lbs. fettucine pasta, cooked in salted water and drained
I use a medium sauce pan and on low heat slowly melt the butter and add the garlic and stir. Once the butter's melted good and just starting to slightly bubble around the edge of the pot, I add in the heavy whipping cream and slowly raise the heat to low-medium continuing to stir constantly. When the cream starts to look slighty puffy and the butter begins to separate out, I add the salt and the wine and iimmediately start adding the parmesan a little at a time stirring until it all appears to be melting into the cream/butter mixture. Continuous stirring with this sauce is very important or the cheese will settle out on the pan bottom and you'll end up with globs of cheese that will stick to your spoon. I use a large plastic-tipped spoon that is flat on the end so you can get good contact with the pan bottom. Once the sauce mixture begins to actually cook a bit, the sauce is ready to go. If you keep it on the heat too long, the cheese will try to reconstitute itself making for globs. For tonight, when the sauce appeared done, I added in the thawed shrimp while stirring to heat them through. As they were pre-cooked, this only took about two minutes. I then folded in the shrimp and sauce into the just finished fettucine pasta ready for serving. I also like to dust the dish with fresh-ground black pepper once it's in the bowl. The family liked it tonight so that makes it all worthwhile. Buon appetito from our house!
1 pint heavy whipping cream (canned evaporated milk will also work well in a pinch)
1 stick unsalted butter
5 cloves garlic - mashed, peeled and chopped
1 Tbsp. Michiu Chinese rice wine (sherry's fine)
1 ea. 5 oz. tub Frigo shredded parmesan cheese
1-1/2 tsp. salt
2 lbs. fettucine pasta, cooked in salted water and drained
I use a medium sauce pan and on low heat slowly melt the butter and add the garlic and stir. Once the butter's melted good and just starting to slightly bubble around the edge of the pot, I add in the heavy whipping cream and slowly raise the heat to low-medium continuing to stir constantly. When the cream starts to look slighty puffy and the butter begins to separate out, I add the salt and the wine and iimmediately start adding the parmesan a little at a time stirring until it all appears to be melting into the cream/butter mixture. Continuous stirring with this sauce is very important or the cheese will settle out on the pan bottom and you'll end up with globs of cheese that will stick to your spoon. I use a large plastic-tipped spoon that is flat on the end so you can get good contact with the pan bottom. Once the sauce mixture begins to actually cook a bit, the sauce is ready to go. If you keep it on the heat too long, the cheese will try to reconstitute itself making for globs. For tonight, when the sauce appeared done, I added in the thawed shrimp while stirring to heat them through. As they were pre-cooked, this only took about two minutes. I then folded in the shrimp and sauce into the just finished fettucine pasta ready for serving. I also like to dust the dish with fresh-ground black pepper once it's in the bowl. The family liked it tonight so that makes it all worthwhile. Buon appetito from our house!
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Hawaiian Loco Moco
What a funny name for such great food that anyone can make at home. The Loco Moco is simple: a fried hamburger patty on a bed of white rice, topped with an over-easy fried egg (or two) and covered with brown gravy. Sounds odd but don't knock it 'til you've tried it. It's good for any meal of the day, even that fourth meal one fastfood chain keeps pushing on us while ringing their darn bell.
The loco moco is an interesting cultural mix of foods that came together in that great cultural melting pot of Hawaii in 1949. It belongs to their great food tradition they call "Plate Lunch". Sort of like our Southern meat-and-three, it's a meat often with macaroni salad and two scoops of white rice as the sides. Hawaiian-style foods are comfort foods that have origins in Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese cultures as these peoples make up the majority living in Hawaii. Go to a McDonald's for breakfast in Hawaii and you can have Portuguese sausage or fried Spam with your eggs and rice on a breakfast platter. It sounds odd to us but is really tasty. There's a chain that started in Hawaii that I like that's rapidly expanding on the mainland called L&L Hawaiian Barbecue where many of us can now experience these flavors. Aloha!
L&L Hawaiian Barbecue Menu
The loco moco is an interesting cultural mix of foods that came together in that great cultural melting pot of Hawaii in 1949. It belongs to their great food tradition they call "Plate Lunch". Sort of like our Southern meat-and-three, it's a meat often with macaroni salad and two scoops of white rice as the sides. Hawaiian-style foods are comfort foods that have origins in Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino and Portuguese cultures as these peoples make up the majority living in Hawaii. Go to a McDonald's for breakfast in Hawaii and you can have Portuguese sausage or fried Spam with your eggs and rice on a breakfast platter. It sounds odd to us but is really tasty. There's a chain that started in Hawaii that I like that's rapidly expanding on the mainland called L&L Hawaiian Barbecue where many of us can now experience these flavors. Aloha!
L&L Hawaiian Barbecue Menu
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Manning's Maple Leaf Creme Cookies
While I wasn't born a Downeaster in New England, I've learned to appreciate the taste of maple syrup. The real thing is quite expensive and very thin to the point of pouring like water over your favorite pancakes. There's a lot of work involved to bring it to your table. I've got a sugar maple tree in my yard that might produce enough sap to make syrup for one short stack.
It's almost farcical that most commercial pancake syrups tend to use the term maple-flavored rather loosely when describing their syrups. Most consist of corn-based high fructose syrups with lots of artificial ingredients including maple flavor. Most don't contain any of the real thing. I was well into adulthood before I ever had real maple syrup that while tasting wonderful, it ran very quickly off my pancakes.
I came across a real maple-flavored product awhile back that caught my attention at of all places Dollar Tree. It's a cookie called Manning's Cookie Shop Maple Leaf Creme Cookies. They're made in Canada by Commercial Bakeries Corp. in Toronto and seemingly only available in The States at Dollar Tree. They come in a tray of 16 cookies in a 15.4 oz. package and actually contain "pure maple syrup" as an ingredient. The cookies are quite large and also very tasty. While sixteen cookies doesn't seem like many when compared to a pack of Oreos, they are a big cookie and wonderful with a cup of black coffee. While most of us Yanks haven't had much exposure to the flavor of real maple, these are a sweet tasty treat worth trying. At $1.00 per package, what have you got to lose?
It's almost farcical that most commercial pancake syrups tend to use the term maple-flavored rather loosely when describing their syrups. Most consist of corn-based high fructose syrups with lots of artificial ingredients including maple flavor. Most don't contain any of the real thing. I was well into adulthood before I ever had real maple syrup that while tasting wonderful, it ran very quickly off my pancakes.
I came across a real maple-flavored product awhile back that caught my attention at of all places Dollar Tree. It's a cookie called Manning's Cookie Shop Maple Leaf Creme Cookies. They're made in Canada by Commercial Bakeries Corp. in Toronto and seemingly only available in The States at Dollar Tree. They come in a tray of 16 cookies in a 15.4 oz. package and actually contain "pure maple syrup" as an ingredient. The cookies are quite large and also very tasty. While sixteen cookies doesn't seem like many when compared to a pack of Oreos, they are a big cookie and wonderful with a cup of black coffee. While most of us Yanks haven't had much exposure to the flavor of real maple, these are a sweet tasty treat worth trying. At $1.00 per package, what have you got to lose?
Monday, March 7, 2011
Olive Garden Goes Chinese
No, your eyes aren't playing tricks on you. Tonight was my first experience with Kingsport's Olive Garden. I've been to the one in Johnson City several times in the past and the one in Asheville, NC some years ago. I guess they're trying for the rustic dining experience in Kingsport's as I was expecting the armchairs with casters to move around at the table like Johnson City's had/does. Kingsport's is definitely a rustic interior with the straight back chairs that somewhat remind me of what my granddad's house in Pumpkin Valley had. Not uncomfortable but just not what I was expecting. What I was expecting was somewhat traditional Italian cuisine as I remember it.
Our server Austin P. was quite up to the task and did a great job taking care of us. While I had intially wanted Chinese for dinner unlike the rest of my family before we landed here, I didn't end up disappointed. I ended up selecting Chicken Marsala, a fairly benign chicken dish with mushrooms in a Marsala wine sauce which I've had many times before all around the country. The last time I had it was at Amato's which I miss and they did as good a job as anyone with it. Olive Garden's Chicken Marsala comes with either a soup or a salad and I chose the Chicken and Gnocchi soup which was very tasty. I could've easily made it into a meal with a bigger bowl. Server Austin described it as Italian Chicken and Dumplings and he wasn't far off as gnocchi are a type of Italian dumpling about the size of a quarter.
In short order our entrees were served and I immediately noticed that my Chicken Marsala didn't put out the distinctive aroma that I was expecting and didn't see any capers in the sauce. I've been having some issues with my sinuses but food smells usually make it to my brain unimpeded. The dish looked wonderful: three small flattened chicken breasts in a brown sauce topped with mushrooms and what they call Tuscan potatoes (home fried potatoes) with roasted red and green bell peppers that were dusted in some sort of grated cheese. So far, so good. As everyone else dug in, I sliced off a piece of the chicken to savor. Much to my surprise, it tasted like a typical Chinese restaurant's brown sauce complete with hints of ginger! Not quite believing my taste buds, I tried some more of it. My tongue was communicating truthfully with my brain. I even gave a slice of it to my wife that also confirmed my thoughts: Chinese brown sauce. Albeit a bit surprised I tucked into it along with the potatoes and peppers, which were also quite tasty, and it was a goodly portion of each. Server Austin came by pouring drink refills and inquiring if everything was alright and I mentioned my observations about the dish tasting like chicken in a Chinese brown sauce. Surprisingly, he said he'd had other customers say the same thing. He said they have a Stuffed Chicken Marsala on the menu that I'd considered that he said tastes much more traditional while being stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, topped with mushrooms and covered in a Marsala wine sauce. I suspect I'll try it the next time since there's more Chinese restaurants in this area than Italian.
I guess the sum total of the story is that I managed to have a melange of Italian and Chinese tastes all on the same plate. I really couldn't complain as I left well fed and not really missing the Chinese buffet I initially was looking forward to. Buon appetito!
Our server Austin P. was quite up to the task and did a great job taking care of us. While I had intially wanted Chinese for dinner unlike the rest of my family before we landed here, I didn't end up disappointed. I ended up selecting Chicken Marsala, a fairly benign chicken dish with mushrooms in a Marsala wine sauce which I've had many times before all around the country. The last time I had it was at Amato's which I miss and they did as good a job as anyone with it. Olive Garden's Chicken Marsala comes with either a soup or a salad and I chose the Chicken and Gnocchi soup which was very tasty. I could've easily made it into a meal with a bigger bowl. Server Austin described it as Italian Chicken and Dumplings and he wasn't far off as gnocchi are a type of Italian dumpling about the size of a quarter.
In short order our entrees were served and I immediately noticed that my Chicken Marsala didn't put out the distinctive aroma that I was expecting and didn't see any capers in the sauce. I've been having some issues with my sinuses but food smells usually make it to my brain unimpeded. The dish looked wonderful: three small flattened chicken breasts in a brown sauce topped with mushrooms and what they call Tuscan potatoes (home fried potatoes) with roasted red and green bell peppers that were dusted in some sort of grated cheese. So far, so good. As everyone else dug in, I sliced off a piece of the chicken to savor. Much to my surprise, it tasted like a typical Chinese restaurant's brown sauce complete with hints of ginger! Not quite believing my taste buds, I tried some more of it. My tongue was communicating truthfully with my brain. I even gave a slice of it to my wife that also confirmed my thoughts: Chinese brown sauce. Albeit a bit surprised I tucked into it along with the potatoes and peppers, which were also quite tasty, and it was a goodly portion of each. Server Austin came by pouring drink refills and inquiring if everything was alright and I mentioned my observations about the dish tasting like chicken in a Chinese brown sauce. Surprisingly, he said he'd had other customers say the same thing. He said they have a Stuffed Chicken Marsala on the menu that I'd considered that he said tastes much more traditional while being stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, topped with mushrooms and covered in a Marsala wine sauce. I suspect I'll try it the next time since there's more Chinese restaurants in this area than Italian.
I guess the sum total of the story is that I managed to have a melange of Italian and Chinese tastes all on the same plate. I really couldn't complain as I left well fed and not really missing the Chinese buffet I initially was looking forward to. Buon appetito!
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Hongry!
Hongry is a term that many outside of the South won't recognize. It's a state of being, often late at night when you're so hungry that things you wouldn't ordinarily eat become quite appetizing. It also happens to many pregnant women somewhere along their journey to motherhood but they prefer to call it "cravings". To the fellow caveman however, it's amost an experiment to see what food will go with another improbable choice but yet work out with the hope that indigestion will not be the end result.
While not totally hongry, I was pretty hungry about an hour ago. Here's the improbable combination I came up with: Chinese Char Siu pork leftover from my soup a couple of days ago, two fried eggs medium well with Sriracha Hot Chili Garlic Sauce along with a couple of sliced Roma tomatoes liberally salted and dusted with black pepper. A Little Debbie Cherry Pie was for dessert. Okay, maybe I was a little hongry!
While not totally hongry, I was pretty hungry about an hour ago. Here's the improbable combination I came up with: Chinese Char Siu pork leftover from my soup a couple of days ago, two fried eggs medium well with Sriracha Hot Chili Garlic Sauce along with a couple of sliced Roma tomatoes liberally salted and dusted with black pepper. A Little Debbie Cherry Pie was for dessert. Okay, maybe I was a little hongry!
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Mom's Cinnamon Rolls
Kitchenaid Stand Mixer Instructions and Recipes
Here We Go...
This my first attempt at a blog so I hope y'all will be kind and not expect too much to start with. I hope the ride won't be too bumpy but I do hope you'll come along with me as I explore the world from my kitchen. I chose the title of my blog, "Fear No Food!", because of experiences talking to a factory rep that stopped by my office regularly. He was one of those people that are somewhat fearful of trying new foods. While I was happy experimenting with Chinese (Mandarin & Cantonese), Indian, Thai and others, he was content with maybe trying another style of BBQ. While discussing foods with him and my boss one day about ten years ago, in a moment of rare inspiration I declared to him, "I fear no food!". That thought has stuck with me over the years and I'm still willing to try new cuisines from around the world and to try cooking those that interest me as well as just becoming a good 'ole Southern country cook. This is the foundation of this blog: a willingness to explore and learn.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)