Soy Milk or Yogurt

You know that feeling. You wake up and all you want is a nice crunchy bowl of cereal and some refreshing cold milk (soy milk in my case). Well I always give my carton of soy milk a nice shake before pouring, but this morning the shake was a little different. So decided to pour a little down the drain to see what was up.

Now granted, this particular carton of soy milk was opened and then in the back of the fridge for over a week, and the label on this Kirkland Organic Soy Milk does say that it should be consumed within 7 days of opening. I just didn't know it would turn into yogurt (soygurt?). I wonder at what point I would get tofu.

I Pity the Poodle?

I came across this awesome picture of a dog dressed as Mr. T. It was on a wine gift bag at Cost Plus World Market.

Nothing to pity here, this us sheer awesome.

Le Cheval's Back

For those of you that haven't heard, the beloved Vietnamese restaurant, Le Cheval in Oakland, has moved back to it's old location.

In November 2010, I reported the Le Cheval was shuttering it's doors because of a tenant-landlord dispute. They relocated to the other corner of the block where they had originally planned to open a wine bar called LCX. The timing worked out, in that the wine bar concept was overhauled and they brought in most of the old Le Cheval menu though in a significantly smaller space.

Fast forward 16 months, Le Cheval secured a new lease at their old 1007 Clay Street location, where they had resided for two decades before getting evicted in 2010. New building owners, a slightly altered restaurant ownership structure, but the same great menu in the same great venue. The layout is largely the same, big round tables on the right side, and several diagonally situated square tables in the other two-thirds of the restaurant. They fixed it up a bit, but still feels like Le Cheval.

Claypot Rice Lunch Special at the new old Le Cheval.

As for the LCX restaurant space, they scrapped the wine bar concept and made it a noodle house with a simple menu consisting of classic Pho and other noodle soups.

Read more about Le Cheval's new lease on life in the East Bay Express.

Cupcake Crazy

Smores cupcake from More Cupcakes in Chicago

Maybe it's just me (Ray) that doesn't get this whole cupcake craze. Sure it's cute that you get creative with the flavors, design, and gobs of artery clogging frosting. But let's be honest, it's like 3 bites of cake for $3, $4, even $5.

And there are so many of them now coming out of the woodwork and invading strip malls, mall malls, trucks, and stands. And then there are TV shows dedicated to this cupcake phenomenon showing how bush league some of these cupcakeries are operated.

Call me old fashioned, but I want some real cake. Multiple layers of cake.

I don't want a tiramisu cupcake*—I want some real rum and espresso soaked lady fingers with marscapone tiramisu dusted with cocoa powder.


* I did have a CupKates' tiramisu cupcake from a work celebration earlier in the week. And damn it, it was delicious.

Sumie Nouvelle - Japanese Fine Dining in Taipei

Our third day in Taipei, we were a little tired of Chinese banquet dinners (we had two 10-course meals with family the two previous nights. So after a day of checking out the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall and shopping in Ximen Ding, we decided to have dinner at the nice Japanese restaurant inside our hotel, San Want Hotel, called Sumie Nouvelle Cuisine Japonaise.

We went for the chef's tasting menu, a seven course dinner.

First course was this beautfully plated guava, crab, soy gelee, cucumber, and tomato salad with miso dressing.

 Second up was Sashimi on the Rocks—snapper, hamachi, salmon, grilled white fish, and blanched shrimp. It was served with a white-fish ceviche.

The sashimi was very fresh and tasty, and the ceviche knocked it out of the park. The only thing that really didn't work for me was the shrimp. Anytime I've had shrimp with sashimi it's been fully cooked. This one was was reddish, but still translucent, and the texture in the mouth reflected that. But I manned up and swallowed it.

Third course was a play on tempura. Puffed rice crusted prawn, fried kabocha squash, fried fish.

Fourth course was a filet that was still cooking on a bed of hot rocks. Mine was delicious, but ended up a bit more done then I would've preferred. But that's the price I pay for taking too long to snap photos of all the food.

Steak is really expensive in Taiwan, because there isn't much that is locally raised on the island. So it must be imported from Japan, Australia, or the U.S.

Fifth course was a small collection of sushi (not pictured) and an amuse-bouche of hamachi.

Sixth course was a ginger lobster soup. The soup was extra gingery but delicious because it stayed piping hot the entire time. The soup was served in a bowl but lined with a water-resistant paper; inside the bowl, underneath the paper was a hot tile of granite to keep the soup hot.

Finally, for dessert we had mochi and cantaloupe. But this was no ordinary mochi, for inside this beautifully shaped mochi pillow topped with cocoa powder was a tiramisu filling. A wonderful little surprise to end the night.

In fact we were so inspired by the tiramisu mochi, that when we came back to the states, we had a holiday party where we took part in a dessert competition. We took the idea, and made a pumpkin pie mochi, which wasn't as beautiful (my first time making mochi), but a winning dessert none-the-less.