Working Eater Series: Taiwanese Oyster Omelet

Eggs are one of the easiest and quickest working eater foods out in the market today. There are no preservatives, no microwaves, and no can openers to deal with. Plus, kids generally like eggs too! You can't go wrong with them.

With that in mind, I want to share a newly-discovered working eater recipe for Taiwanese oyster omelets! (I learned how to make this for my beau, who loves oysters and Taiwanese food.) I was inspired to write up a recipe for this dish for the working eater series because of Elmo Monster's post on a Taiwanese restaurant that served this seafood omelet. It literally takes minutes to make, thus making for a wonderful main dish for a working eater.

Taiwanese Oyster Omelet
10 oz jar of refrigerated shucked oysters, drained and roughly chopped
1/4 cup powdered sweet potato starch
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp sweet chili sauce (can substitute 1 tbsp of sriracha thoroughly mixed with 1 tbsp of ketchup)
3 large eggs, scrambled
2 tbsp of vegetable oil (divided)
1 cup of cooked chrysanthemum greens, stir-fried with 2 cloves of chopped garlic (can substitute mustard greens or spinach for the chrysanthemum greens)

Combine the sweet potato starch, water, and oysters until thoroughly blended. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a wok or large skillet until shimmering, and pour the starch batter in the skillet and allow it to cook and set until it begins to turn translucent. Flip the sweet potato starch pancake until it becomes translucent throughout. (You may have to break the sticky pancake up into more manageable patches, and individually flip each patch.) The pancake should have a gluey texture, almost like mochi. Now, take the cooked pancake off the heat, and reserve.

Using the same pan (first, make sure that the surface is clean and unblemished with leftover potato starch bits), add the remaining tbsp of oil, and heat until shimmering. Swirl the scrambled egg mixture into the heated pan. Being careful not to break the egg omelet, heat it until it is set, and carefully flip it, using a wide-brimmed spatula if necessary.

There are two ways to serve the omelet. You can either spread the bed of greens and cooked potato starch mixture on one-half of the omelet (while it is still in the pan) and flip it onto a plate, or put the greens and potato starch mixture directly on the plate, and put the full, circular omelet on top. Either way, spread the hot sauce on the surface of the scrambled omelet, and enjoy!

The fluffy egg omelet is a perfect companion to the crunchy and wilted wisps of chrysanthemum greens, the sweet pungency of the fiery pepper sauce, the sticky potato starch pancake, and the tender and chewy morsels of oyster.

Oh, Those Summer Days!

Although it doesn't feel like it, we are already half-finished with the summer! (I dread the terrible feeling I have in the bottom of my stomach every time I think how summer is almost over.) But, unfortunately, it is true. School is starting again in a few weeks (they've already put back-to-school merchandise up in some of the local department stores), and the fruits and vegetables in season are just beginning to dwindle slightly in their plentiful numbers.

Now that summer is midway through, I want to share a way to extend it with two dishes that are very anti-fall and anti-winter because they celebrate the bounty and wealth that the summer has to bring.

The first dish is very easy. Just enjoy a simple (but lovely) bowl overflowing with seasonal summer fruit. One of my summer favorites are lychees, the delicious and juicy orbs that explode in your mouth with flavor and fragrance.

When I think of summer-time, I think of the brown paper bags that our family would distribute as seed-spitoons for the gnawed melon rinds, stone-fruit pits, stringy cherry stems, and limp spirals of multi-colored fruit peels. Lychees are the perfect example of what we used the seed spitoon for. You'll generate a lot of material for the compost pile when eating lychees. First, you must use your thumbs to peel off the scaly pink rind to reach the juicy, ivory-toned fruit flesh inside. Second, don't bite too hard, because you'll encounter another obstacle, the solid and onyx-colored pit.

The second dish is very easy: chilled, dill salmon. This is what I like to do: although you must first cloak the salmon in a blanket of fresh dill and bake it in the oven at 400 degrees, during the summer, the salmon must not be eaten when it is directly out of the oven, but must first be cooled at room temperature and then refrigerated overnight. After the chilling is over, then bring out the salmon.

I guarantee that there is something immensely appealling about eating chilled (oven-baked) salmon to cool off from the sweltering summer-time heat.

Now hurry! Go enjoy the summer (and sunshine-yellow watermelon) while it lasts!

Crazy Lazy Daze (and Days)

In celebration of me finishing my language course at the Adult School, I am going to post on the blog!

Disturbing Story of the Week: My friend and I were walking along one of the piers on the Embarcadero this afternoon, and we decided to walk to this little "immigrant fishing corner" that is hidden about a block away from the Ferry Building. As we walked by the immigrant fishermen and their catch, we saw medium-sized fishes that were about a foot in length and that looked pretty interesting with these weird psychadelic colors on their scales. (I don't know whether those colors had to do with the "super-fund" pollutants and toxic seepage in the Bay or what.) These fish were just plopped and strewn about on the sidewalk. They weren't even stored in a bucket or an insulated cooler. Just "splatted" on the bare concrete sidewalk.

My friend and I were looking at all the fish as we were strolling down the pier, when suddenly, we saw this tremendous sea creature the size of an adult leg. It was moving its jaw around slowly and had these huge bloody gashes in the sides of its spotted pale gray skin. My friend and I squealed in horror, and my friend asked the fisherman what kind of fish it was. As we were shuddering and shrieking like little girls, the elderly Chinese fisherman-guy grimaced at us like we were mental ward escapees and said, "Shark." He then jerked his hand around as if to tell us to get the heck outta there and quit bothering him.

I guess it's not that big of a deal, but I am just amazed that someone could catch a shark on all by their lonesome and not be worried of death or injury. Plus, the shark was in bad shape, and I felt sad for it. What compelled this guy to keep this battered and abused shark and not throw in back in the water, the world will never know.

Pretty disturbing. But, actually, it wasn't the most disturbing thing I saw that day. I also watched an Indie film (that was depressing to the point that it made me want commit suicide afterwards) and some random guy shooting a gun in the air. Freakin' creepy. I love San Francisco...

I know, I've been a lazy piece of crap lately in terms of updating my blog, but I've honestly been working on two posts that spiraled out of hand--I have five pages worth of text now that needs to be cut down. Till I cut those posts down to size, feast your eyes of some grainy cell phone shots of "oil sticks," or Chinese donut fried-fritters, a warm bowl of beef noodle soup, and chicken curry.

I miss everyone, and hope to be posting again soon!

Happy Hour Hurricane

The local CBS channel up here in San Francisco has this early-evening program called Eye on the Bay. One recurring Eye on the Bay theme is "Cheap Eats," where the hosts point to places to find inexpensive, yet tasty food in the Bay Area. In each "Cheap Eats" episode they air, they dedicate airtime to "Happy Hour Deals" in the Bay Area. It is mildly pitiful (but also spellbinding) to watch the middle-aged hosts trek out in search of free or dirt-cheap food or drinks.

Two weeks ago, I decided to "one-up" the guys from Eye on the Bay, and do some Happy Hour exploration myself. All signs pointed to the Tonga Room and Hurricane Bar in San Francisco's luxurious Fairmont Hotel. My best friend and I hit the town with our purses in hand and one male companion in tow to celebrate her birthday.

The Tonga Room has its share of tacky "island" props. Timed thunder sporadically plays from the muffled 80's era speakers and little spurts of water rain down from a crooked sprinkler pipe into the milky-green indoor pool. (They call that a "tropical monsoon rainstorm.") The Tonga Room definitely features tropical kitsch in its purest, cheesiest, and most unadulterated form, but like the motto of McDonald's, "I'm lovin it."

I love that washed-out bands play live music on the island stage that is situated in the middle of the indoor pool. I love the bamboo stands and dried palm tree fans that adorn the walls and ceiling. Most of all, I love the sugary alcoholic drinks, made "purely" of sugar and alcohol.

The birthday girl and I started with their two-person lava bowl drink. From the menu, that drink sounded the most interesting.

Unfortunately, the lava bowl was saturated with so much booze concentrate that the evaporating chemical fumes stung and irritated my rapidly-watering eyes. The drink was comparable to a pleasant medley of rubbing alcohol + iodine + bleach + ammonia. One taste of the liquid lava juice and my tongue instantly recoiled from the acidic sting. Even the resident ex-bartender seated at our table remarked that the drink was "a little on the strong side."

Thankfully, the mai tais and tropical daquiris that we later ordered were pretty tame, and tasted like artful fruit juice mixes.

More amazing than the high levels of alcohol and sugar in the drinks, were the were minors freely roaming about in the bar. I ain't talkin' about Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton-aged teenie-boppers, I am talkin' about real minors. You know, "young people." I saw a five-year old boy prancing and skipping around in his swim clothes around the bar! That boy sure as heck didn't look like he was of drinking age.

Enough about the drinks and the people, let me get to the most important part of the evening, the food. The Tonga Room offers a $7.00 all-you-can-eat-appetizer-buffet during their Happy Hour. You'd be surprised how easily you can get your fill, but you'll have to make repeated visits to the buffet line to load up the tiny saucer-sized plates.

We dined on sugary slices of cool summer melon; "crispedy-crunchedy" deep-fried wontons and egg rolls; spongy, steamed Chinese buns filled with deep-red barbequed pork; and sticky pork ribs that had been basted in a sweetened soy sauce-based marinade. $7.00 for all-you-can-eat? Yea baby! The food was cheaper than the drinks!

Although we left the Tonga Room the moment Happy Hour ended, we continued to celebrate my friend's birthday throughout the night. We later made a pitstop at Marrakech Moroccan Restaurant where we ordered some drinks with wise-@$$ names (like "Camel's Ride" and "Morroccan Magic"), watched some belly dancing, and smoked a fruity-flavored hookah. But even with the engaging and entertaining atmosphere there, I couldn't get the peaceful island images of the Tonga Room out of my head. I admit, the faded carpeting and the weathered wood-carved tiki statues were in dire need of basic maintenance (or at least an update), but I was made truly "happy" by the Happy Hour at the Tonga Room. I can't explain, but the combination of dyed-tissue paper and toothpick umbrellas, slender plastic straws, and marashino cherries really satisfies.

Update: I thought my Happy Hour discovery was under wraps, but I this morning (August 3, 2006), I just found a recipe for the Tonga Room's mai tai on Food Network! I guess those guys from Food Network beat me to the punch, the spiked punch that is.

Being a Busy Bee

Wow, this past week has been really busy, but I'll get back into the posting groove soon. Let me just give you a quick glimpse of what is going on in my life: an acting lesson here, foreign language classes at the local adult school (and homework) there, and cooking weekly meals with church everywhere!

Cooking for church has been a lot more challenging than I originally anticipated. Get this, the budget is $50-$80 for 80-100 people! When I first heard the budget, I was floored into a stupor! I've been cooking for a few weeks now, and let me tell ya: I ain't very innovative. Fried rice and macaroni and Velveeta. But, I've made the budget twice, and cooked double the food than usual! And I'm proud of that!

I haven't taken many pictures of my cooking escapades, but here are some pictures of cheap potato dishes: curry potatoes and cheesy au gratin potatoes!

Spare the Stinking Air

These past two weeks the Bay Area has had Spare the Air for three business days in a row!!

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept of "Spare the Air," it is a Bay Area program funded by the federal government where all public transportation is provided for free, in an effort to curb the release of noxious vehicle emissions at a time when the ground-level ozone (smog) in the atmosphere reaches unsafe and unhealthy levels.

Last Thursday, Friday, and this Monday were all "Spare the Air" days, so my best friend and I rushed to take advantage of the free public transportation with a culinary tour through North Beach (San Francisco's equivalent of "Little Italy") and Chinatown.

For North Beach, we planned on eating ridged waffle cones filled with thick, chilled, creamy, and viscous strawberry gelato and the small amaretto liqueur candies cloaked with a powdery desiccated coconut--you know, the kinds that are like a gourmet-version of a soft Tootsie Roll? Also, there are Greek places hidden in San Francisco's Little Italy, where you can get honkin' Greek pitas stuffed with grilled lamb and dressed with a fresh and cooling tzatziki (a yogurt, cucumber, and mint sauce).

At San Francisco's famed Chinatown, we planned on scarfing down crispy Portuguese-style egg tarts at the best place to have egg custards outside of Portugal (and Taiwan), a hole in the wall in San Francisco's Chinatown. There, we relished the buttered, flaky crust and the warm and soft custard centers--smooth centers that are silkier than freshly whipped cream, but with enough resistance to provide a snappy gelatinous bite. "San Francisco's Chinatown is a tourist trap," you might say. However, I disagree. Take a jaunt a mere block to the parallel streets, and you'll find where the locals hang and eat.

The main object of this post, was our dinner stop for our tour: the notoriously delicious restaurant, The Stinking Rose.

We started with the pillowy-soft garlic focaccia rolls, which we broke open and smothered with "garlic rose relish," a simple pesto made with olive oil, crushed cloves of garlic, minced parsley, and tart vinegar (vinegar which brings out the hefty, meaty, and pungent flavors of the garlic). Every three seconds, I would open the transparent plastic lid to the relish jar, repeatedly dunk the serving spoon, and retrieve heaping ladles-full of the garlic + olive oil concoction so that I could smear it over the bread.

We also dined on a monstrous mountain of creamy mashed potatoes, potatoes that were colored with a garlicky pesto that had been mixed and folded into the thickened mash.

The entreé of the evening was the sizzling iron skillet of shell-on shrimp with blackened edges, iridescent shelled mussels, and golden roasted garlic cloves. The skillet was served with an elegant drizzling of a soy sauce blend and a dipping tin teeming with melted butter. The open mussel shells beckoned my greedy fingers, and the shells acted as little bowl repositories that held pools of melted butter and briny seafood liqueur. After cracking open and slurping up all of the shellfish in the seafood skillet, my mouth emitted the most noxious emissions known to man: garlic seafood breath.

As I saw the green fumes emanating from my open mouth, I realized that in my gourmet quest, I had inadvertently defeated the purpose of "Spare the Air" day.

My Thoughts Exactly

Visit Rick James's website for an excellent post on "blogging fatigue." I love that the fatigue has set in so bad, that I don't even write my own posts anymore, but just direct you to another blog, with a post written better than I could have done.

Simply put, I feel exactly like this.

Salivating at Wedding Bells

A lot has happened since my last substantive post, the most eventful being my beautiful friend's wedding in the Alta Mira in Sausalito, California. The weather was perfect, the bride was stunning (and gorgeous and breathtaking), and most of all, the meal was decadent and absolutely irresistible. At parties and weddings, I try to pay particular attention to the meal that is being served--so that I may steal the entertaining ideas!

Now don't get me wrong, I am not getting married anytime in the remote future, but I love "borrowing" entertaining methods from the best entertainers available--wedding hosts.

I loved everything about everything, but there were two particular details that I found to be worthy of passing on:

Wedding / Entertaining Tip #1: Serve at least some portions of your meal "family-style."

In addition to the hors d'oeuvres that were continuously circulating through the crowds, the wedding guests dined on a luxurious Italian-themed dinner. We started with two sides: risotto milanese, which had been slowly simmered in a saffron-infused cheese sauce and penne alla putanesca, both served family-style. The beady caper buds and the olive tapenade in the putanesca provided a briny contrast to the powerful saffron flavor in the risotto.

I loved that only a few elements of the dinner were served family-style. It definitely started the meal on a more intimate note and it helped to break the ice between the strangers sitting at each of the individual tables.

The family-style sides were followed by an insalate caprina made of mixed greens, cubes of diced roma tomatoes, and rounds of goat cheese that were encrusted with walnut crumbles. The entire salad was delicately dressed by an artistic drizzling of light balsamic vinaigrette. It was very interesting that the chilled salad followed the hot and savory sides.

For the main entree, the non-vegetarian guests dined on chicken roulade or pollo valdostana made of a boneless chicken breast fillet which was rolled over a thinly-sliced ham and fontina cheese filling, coated in bread crumbs, and finished with a demiglace made of trebbiano wine, fried sage leaves, and dijon mustard. Baby carrots with steamed with their decorative tops, slender branches of broccollini, and roasted and herbed potatoes rounded out the main course.

The meal was both hearty and satisfying, but the dessert of the evening really "took the cake," and motivated my Tip Number Two.

Wedding / Entertaining Tip #2: Couple traditional party elements with non-traditional elements. That way, you can both impress your guests and simultaneously make them feel warm on their insides because of the familiarity of the dish--essentially, you've helped them to revisit memory lane, and that, in and of itself is very meaningful.

Here, the wedding hosts perfected the "something old, something new" wedding theme in their cake. If you think of the classic cake used at weddings, you'll immediately conjure up images of a simple white cake with the universal caulk-like frosting--it's probably the same cake at each of the weddings you've been to in the past. True, sometimes, the cake may be yellow or chocolate cake, but that runs the gamut. One thing that was delightful about this wedding, was that the cake was the non-traditional tiramisu! The tiramisu was a refreshing conclusion to the entire meal. Not that I wouldn't have enjoyed the plain white cake, but the tiramisu provided me with spunk and a little bit of caffeine to get me through the action-packed evening.

Sometimes, when something is unexpected, it makes you appreciate the original and the innovativeness of the new even more. That is exactly what happened here, and thus I thought it was worth a mention as a great wedding / entertaining tip!

I hope you'll apply these tips at one of your entertaining parties!

Here We Are Now, Entertain Us (with Themed Dinners)

To steal a concept from my blogging friend Elmo Monster, this post is going to be a photo extravaganza! I have an abundance of backlogged photos (there are five more unfinished posts in the pipeline) and am currently experiencing writer's block, so I'll be a woman of limited words.

This is going to be another one of those "motivator" posts about easy entertaining. I know you've heard me lauding the innumerable merits of "entertaining potlucks." This post is a continuation of that theme. Specifically, I want to focus on how to bring friends together in a way that everyone can contribute: the "themed potluck." The "themed potluck" provides a outlet for each of your guests to explore and share their own unique culinary style and ingenuity. However, the "theme" provides enough guidance to restrain your guests from going too crazy. This post is for "inspiration" purposes, as it offers two successful "themed potlucks" as examples to illustrate the variety of options available for a working entertainer.

Two weeks ago, my beau and I threw a "themed potluck" party for our respective families.

Are you familiar with the age-old adage that the best way to bring warring factions together is through weeks of voracious feasting? Even though our families are on peaceful terms, bringing the two tribes together would require food (and large amounts of it) to quell our hungry appetites.

With the family of the significant other, you don't want a party to be an everyday affair. We cumulatively decided to spice the potluck up with a "lemon" theme. We were inspired to take a simple, bare ingredient, to create masterpieces worthy of an Iron Chef.

Members of my beau's family are gourmet-inclined individuals, so I was excited with what the night would bring.

I never strayed from the familiar, tried-and-true repertoire of meals that I usually make. Thus, I brought tabbouleh, again. However, I also tried my hand at making calamari (thank you Unemployed Cook for the recipe)!

Generally, prepping seafood entails chipping, snapping, cracking, or peeling away multiple layers of the protective and calcified armor get the sweet and succulent flesh within. However, squid meat is, "in the flesh" so to speak. No extensive treasure hunting required. The meat is right there, right in front of you. However, because we bought the extra large version of squid, we had to clean the beast, by removing the teeth-rimmed suction pads on the tentacles, clipping off the sharp and pointy beak, and squeezing out juicy little orbs known as "squid eyeballs." The viscous fluid that excreted itself from the squid flesh left an itchy hive or rash-like sensation on the skin of our hands, comparable to the way one's skin wrinkles up from being soaked with salted sea water after deveining or peeling shrimp.

My beau handled the nasty stuff, whereas I just coated the squid tentacles in a dry mix of coarsely ground pepper, regular table salt, and powdery-fine cornstarch. I heated a stainless steel pot of bubbling vegetable oil and slipped in the breaded squid bits one at a time until they were deep-fried to perfection.

The other dishes of the night defied expectation--and my expectations were high. The first included angel-hair pasta teeming with lightly sautéed roma tomatoes, pink curls of shrimp, and wilted leaves of basil. The entire pasta dish was showered with multiple squeezes from a juicy lemon.

Also at the table was a chilled wide-noodle pasta dish, with thick ribbons of pappardelle cooked al dente, doused with a creamy cheese sauce, and accompanied with a heavy serving of fava beans and purple chive blossoms (lil' flowers that packed a pungent punch).

Another of my beau's relatives brought thinly-sliced rare "USDA Choice" tri-tip steak, which had been charbroiled on the surface and sinfully rare within. Smoky flavors penetrated through the meat, as if the meat had been prepared in an outdoor smoker. Again, this dish too was accompanied by the abundant and flowing juices of a lemon.

As dessert, we enjoyed a rich citrus cake with crystallized lemon frosting, and a tropical Caribbean (and also African) fruit salad with squares of syrupy papaya, pineapple, mango, of course dressed in a tart lemon dressing.

Also, I won't forget to mention the fabulous version of crispy-skinned lemon chicken (that was a definite improvement from the last time). The chicken was juicy and tender, with a paper-crisp skin delicately encompassing the chicken meat. The subtle lemon essence permeated the entire roast chicken, so that the meat was fragrant, moist, and heavenly.

We heartily chowed down on each of the "lemon-icious" dishes, helping ourselves to multiple servings at each round. The lemon flavors were fresh, bright, and naturally invited the feeling of spring-time. It was a delightfully wonderful follow-up to our April Sunshine Party, because we ushered out the rain and winter and welcomed in the spring and summer.

A few weeks later, my beau's relatives invited us to their home for a "ginger" themed potluck. The hosts took care of the majority of the dishes, and they were outstanding. We started with chicken drumsticks that had been cooked in a ginger-flavored Asian sauce, and a simple, yet refreshing clam and ginger soup.

The rest of the dishes were just as varied and delicious as our "lemon" themed potluck. They included: Marinated shitake mushrooms with shredded scallions and ginger;

A wilted spinach salad with a ginger-infused dressing;

Chilled tofu garnished with shredded carrots, scallion strings, and a cold ginger dressing;

Grilled salmon with a sweet honeyed ginger reduction;

Baked ginger sea bass;

A peach, fresh fruit, and ginger cobbler with a crumbly buttered crust;

and a moist brown cake heavily flavored with ginger and darkened by a rich molasses;

The variety of different dishes and bright and beautiful fragrances and flavors from the common ingredients (lemon and ginger) united all the dishes and the people for both of the parties. Although it may seem expensive and stressful to throw a party, a "themed potluck" is a viable alternative that substantially lessens the expense and the stress.

I hope that this post sold you on "themed potlucks!" You don't have to base the theme on a specific food like "ginger" or "lemon," but you can also have a "Thai" or "Mexican" themed party or fiesta, the possibilities are endless. Furthermore, finding recipes are easy. For instance, when I remarked at how delicious the ginger dishes were, our host told us, "I got all of these from just entering 'ginger' in the Epicurious!"

Good luck in planning your own "themed potluck," as you can see, it is fun and will always be success.

I'm Baaack!!

I just got back from a refreshing week-long vacation! I've been eating out a lot and also dining at plenty of fast food joints. Stay tuned for updated posts (and comments to your blogs) that will be coming soon (or later, depending on when I catch up with work). Till then, please enjoy these pictures of a fried fish sandwich from Oakland International Airport!