Review - Joy grill & Sushi

Hers - Shrimp and Veggies Tempura

His - Beef Gyoza

His - Chicken Teriyaki

Hers - Unagi & Avocado Bowl



His first try using the chopstick


And he did it! Bravo Baby! Although that only lasted like 2-3 min. He opted to use the fork for the rest of his meal or else we would have to spend 3 hours in the restaurant! lol.

We actually didnt plan to eat out that day but after having a bad experience at the self-service carwash and feeling angry, decided to just eat out and try this place. Actually it was the word grill that caught my eyes. You see, the only Japanese style food that Michael would eat is the teppanyaki style so it is really not easy for me to just walk into a Japanese restaurant.

So we decided to give this place a try. Upon checking the menu, I decided on having shrimp and veggie tempura as an appetiser and unagi & avocado bowl while he, went for the beef gyoza and chicken teriyaki. He said he would share the gyoza with me but I guess they were so good that he forgot about me and finished off all by himself! :P Not that I mind anyway since I know we'l be going back to this place. Yay!

Anyways, the tempura was good and so is the unagi although they are rather small in portion. Iv never had a combination of unagi with avocado before but they worked! Michael on the other hand, seemed to enjoyed his gyoza more than the chicken teriyaki. All in all, Im giving this place 2 thumbs up. The foods were good and they are pretty cheap too compared to other places. For all 4 dishes and 2 sodas, the bill only came up to around $32.

Joy Sushi

16482 Bolsa Chica St

Huntington Beach

CA 92649

Tel : (714) 840-0030

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Roti Pratha with Egg and Spicy Thai Chili Tuna

I dont like tuna mayo or tuna in oil but I do love spicy tuna and Im glad Bumble Bee has a version that is pretty close to what Im used to. Usually I would just eat it with toast but sometimes I would go the extra mile and eat it with roti pratha with egg. You can find the frozen roti pratha from the Indian or Pakistani stores. My favourite brand is 'Kawan' but lately they dont seem to sell it anymore.

These are so easy to make. Take a piece of the frozen roti pratha (do not defrost) and put it on a flat pan with medium low heat. Once the top part is not frozen anymore (you can see the color changes), break an egg on top and try to keep the egg to stay on the roti. When the egg is half done, slowly flip the roti and cook the other side. Make sure the pan is not too hot or you'll get a burned roti on the outside and not so cooked inside. Keep flipping it for one or two more times until the roti and the egg is done.

As for the chili tuna, well, its all ready to eat. All you've gotta do is open the can and scoop some onto the roti pratha with egg and enjoy. ;)

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Spicy Fried Noodle (Mee Goreng Pedas)

As much as I like steak and wings, I cant have them everyday. Or even every other day. Once a week is fine and after that Id be craving for some good asian dishes. When I want something asian-y and spicy, there are 2 options for me. It will be either fried rice (nasi goreng) or fried noodle (mee goreng) and last night I opted for fried noodle.

A

A bag of mee pancit (you can get these from the asian supermarket) or other kind of noodle

Beef - thinly sliced

Chicken - thinly sliced

Frozen mixed veggies

4 eggs

1 onion, sliced

4 tbsp cooking oil

B

4 shallots

2 garlic

5-6 thai chili (or more if you like it really hot) ;)

C

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp sweet soy sauce

3 tbsp lime juice

salt & sugar to taste

1. Pound ingredients B in mortar and pestle and boil the noodle according to the packet. Set aside.

2. In a wok, heat oil on medium high and sauteed the pounded ingredients until fragrant.

3. Add chicken, meat and frozen veggies and stir. 1 min.

4. Break the eggs, stir. 1 min.

5. Add in the noodle and sliced onion, stir.

6. Add ingredients C and continue stirring. Taste and add any ingredients according to your liking.

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Crazy About BBQ

Fat, juicy steak

It might take longer to start but the food always taste better. I so love our charcoal bbq grill! Iv been nagging him to get a charcoal bbq for as long as I can remember but living in a apartment complex before, we cant use one since its the same as open fire or something like that. So when we moved to our new place, thats among the 1st thing that we try to get. We went from Home Depot to Lowes and most of them are the small round ones which would have made me happy but there's a man in the house too and him being a man, must have a bigger bbq grill! :P

Thanks to our new charcoal grill!

So when we were at Big Lots and looking at the grills, he saw this unit on display and its the only one there. It has no price tag nor the stock number. We asked the staff there to check on the price and even they were not sure. After like 30min, they decided to sell it to us for $65 incl tax. Well, actually I wasnt there when he bought it. I was at the other side of the store looking for other things but at $65, it is really a bargain since the small round ones cost between $45-$55.

Now, I dont use the oven anymore for grilling. Last weekend we had another round of bbq steak and Honey BBQ Wings which Im telling you, tasted so much better on the charcoal grill that Michael had 2nd serving. I tweaked it even more by adding some chili powder for that umph taste. Please do apologise that I didnt have picture of the chicken wings since they were gone pretty quickly. I promise that the next time we had them, Id post the picture.

For the steak however, I didn use much seasoning. I marinate them with Adobo seasoning overnight and lather some bbq sauce only when they're on the grill. We both like our steak done without any blood running. Im still ok with medium well but he only takes his well done. His younger brother would take his steak basically when its still running! well, you know waht I mean. 30 sec on the grill each side. Definitely not for us. Now how do you like your steak?

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A Little Bit of Spanish

2 years of living in California and I have only had paella once. Of off the restaurants in OC, I had to have it at this bar-restaurant at The Block called Cafe Tutu Tango. Im no expert on paella but what was served to me was definitely NOT it. It was soupy and if I can remember it correctly, is white. Well, that will be the last time I ordered paella there. :P

As I was still craving for a good or at least a decent paella but yet not confident enough to make it myself from scratch, I cheated. ;) I got myself this ready-made paella in a box Vigo brand. It has everything including a can of seafood to make the paella myself. I knew the canned seafood wasnt enough so I bought some New Zealand mussels, clams and scallops to add to it.

The result was pretty damn good. My craving has somewhat been fulfilled though mind you, the box is a family size box and enough to feed 4-5 adults. If you want to prepare something quick and yummy, you should give it a try. Just dont forget to add more seafoods of your choice. A lot of them! ;)

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Goodies From Foodbuzz

My first ever gift from Foodbuzz is the grocery bag and Salt & Turmeric badge which I received a couple of days before we moved, thus I didn blog about it sooner. And a week later, I received the moo minicards. Aint it cute? Actually I wanted to do ala-Mochachocolata-Rita here but Im a bit shy not to mention tired. This pic was taken after doing groceries shopping at the asian supermarket and the regular supermarket! 1 thing for sure, the food price has gone UP.

Anyways, thank you foodbuzz! Keep them comin ay? ;)

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Battle of the Chili Sauce

I think by now, most of my readers would know how fanatic I am with chili sauce and sweet soy sauce. My favourite chili sauce brand is of course, Lingham while for sweet soy sauce, its got to be Habhal cap kipas udang. (shrimp fan?) The problem is that I live far away from home that I cant just walk into any supermarket and grab them off the shelves. The truth is, ever since I moved to the US, iv yet to find anybody selling Habhal brand sweet soy sauce. Not in PA, not in CA. :(

Lingham on the other hand, is easier to find. I used to get them from the World Market. Notice that I used the word "used"? Thats because on my last visit, I found out that they have stopped selling Lingham chili sauce. Cruel! Anyways, I was told that Mae Ploy (product of Thailand) sweet chili sauce is similar so I got myself some when I went to the World Market nearby. That's when I found this 'Malaysian Sweet Coconut Sauce' a product from Thailand. I know quite a variety of sauces in Malaysia but to tell you the truth, Iv never heard or seen a sweet coconut sauce before. Im very very curious but have yet to taste the sauce. Has anyone heard or tried this kinda sauce before?

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Cheese Omelette

An ideal breakfast to me would be cekodok or nasi lemak or nasi goreng (fried rice) or roti canai/pratha or even mee goreng (fried noodle). Sometimes it would be instant noodle. Whatever it is, its just gotta be heavy. Sometimes I would just take cereal or waffle but I will get hungry again in an hour so that doesnt help. Michael on the other hand doesnt understand the concept of heavy breakfast. So for him, Id usually make cekodok or omelette or grilled cheese or just peanut butter sandwich.

For today, I made him cheese omelette. I used to have 'accidents' everytime I made this for him. The first 4-5 times, without fail it'l get burned on 1 side but he would still eat them. I only managed to not get it burned the last few times including today. I must say that actually today's is the prettiest omelette iv ever made. ;) Im not really sure why but maybe its got something to do with the fact that we'r now using gas stove rather than electric.

Cheese Omelette

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

1 tbsp butter

1 slice cheese

1. In a small pan (8" diameter), heat the butter on low heat.

2. Beat the egg well and add milk. Continue beating until well mixed.

3. Pour into the heated pan. About 4-5min.

4. Put the cheese in the middle and slowly fold the egg into crescent shape.

5. Slowly press the edges so they stick to each other and to avoid the cheese from oozing out. 30sec.

6. Slowly flipped it over for another 30sec.

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Banana Bread Recipe

After 1 miserable attempt at making banana bread, I almost gave up. My 1st attempt was so bad it was flat and hard and my heart sank with it. But I keep telling myself, "hey, everybody experiences failure at least once especially in the baking section". And so I got more flour and banana and gave it another shot.

Im gonna let you enjoy the picture and will come back for the recipe tomorrow when I have a better internet connection ok?

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After checking out Rasa Malaysia and Retno of Dapur Hamburg, I changed the recipe that I used the 1st time (tht gave me the disaster) and am very happy with the result. Here is the recipe.

Banana Bread

2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4-1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups mashed overripe bananas (i used 1.5 lb)

Preheat oven to 350F

1. Lightly grease loafpan

2. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking soda and powder & salt

3. In a separate bowl, cream butter & brown sugar. Slowly add eggs, mashed bananas and vanilla extract. Continue mixing until well blended.

4. Stir banana mixture into the flour mixture.

5. Pour batter into the loafpan.

6. Bake for 1hr or until toothpick clean.

7. Let bread cool in pan for 10min before taking it out.

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Happy 4th of July

Its a long weekend and Im wishing everybody Happy 4th of July!

It also means that we'r moving to the new apartment. Which will be without home phone and internet AND cable! Yup, we were too busy with other things that we forgot to apply for them. It sure doesnt help that att is not available there. So we are going to have a new email address and phone no hopefully by next Friday, the earliest date that they can come. I wonder if there'll be any 'free' internet access that i can use while waiting for ours to be installed. ;)

Till then, have a great long weekend. Dont drink and drive!

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Easy Homemade Meatball Recipe

Another one of Michael's favourite. Simply because it's ground meat base. What else is new, huh? lol. I like making this because it's just so easy and simple and using the ingredients that I would normally have in the kitchen. I try not to make anything that requires me to buy something that can only be used for certain things. When I buy something, it has to be practical or else it would probably ends up in the rubbish bin after only being used once. I try not to waste any food. ;)

1lb ground beef
1 egg
2 tablespoon water
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1/4 cup minced onion
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Preheat oven at 350F

2. Combined all the ingredients with the ground beef last.

3. Shape into balls about 2-2.5in in diameter. You should get around 24 balls.

4. Lined them on a cooking sheet with about 1in space between them.

5. Baked for 30min.

You can either make your own sauce or do what I do, used the canned spaghetti sauce. ;) Put 1 cup of sauce in a small pot and reheat for about 5min. Add the meatballs into the sauce and stir until all the meatballs are covered with sauce.

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