Plant Breeding + Grapefruit Orange Jello

Plants breeding takes many trials and experiments. But it
is through these great experiment that the best traits of similar plant species come together; thus giving us such tasty and unqiue fruits and veggies varieties.

Well, I simply don't have that much time at home to cross two of my favorite citruses together especially when I only get a couple hours after work, therefore, I will take a shortcut.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...grapefruit + orange...Orapefruit!

The picture quality of this slice of "Orapefruit" is not very good here, but if you look closely, you can see orange and white grapefruit pulps!

Egg and Ham Sandwich Maki

Just felt like making something cute today. I present you, egg and ham sandwich maki! Maki means rolls in Japanese by the way.
Basic and hearty ingredients: lettuce, egg, canadian bacon, tomato, and very thinly sliced bread (low carb is the way to go in this maki!) Of course, tuna, roast beef, veggie pattys are rollable too!
This roll actually contains a lot of rolls. Ingredients all wrapped up in soy wrappers.

Rolling rolling rolling. I'm going to cut the roll with a bread knife. Bread knifes are those with small ridges. I use bread knifes to cut a lot of things...fruits, bread, sushi, and almost every soft food with it. I love it because it's good with soft or fragile things so the food can retain its shape.

Viola! Oh yeah, they make good bento box snacks.

Mini Meal and Food Are Cute! + Mini Vanilla Cupcakes & Green Tea Cupcake

The other night I made some mini vanilla cupcakes and green tea cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting and green tea buttercream frosting. I love mini food figures and models, same for real food of course! They are too cute!

The green of the cupcake so matches the pink cupcake paper haha.

Vanilla Cupcake Recipe (makes 12 mini cupcakes)

1/4 cup softened butter

1/2 cup graduated sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 cup all purpose flour, sifted

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp salt

1/3 cup cold milk

1. preheat oven to 350 degree F, and line cupcake tins with cupcake liners.

2. Beat butter and sugar with mixer until creamy.

3. Add egg and vanilla.

4. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, and salt.

5. Mix in the dry mixture to the butter one.

6. Stir in milk.

7. Pour batter into liners about 3/4 full.

8. Bake for 18-24 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

9. Cool cupcakes completely and frost them.

Basic Vanilla Buttercream (makes 2 cups)

6 oz unsalted butter, softened

1/2 lb confectioners' sugar, sifted

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Beat butter with mixer on high speed until pale and creamy.

2. Reduce speed to medium. Add sugar a little at a time.

3. Add vanilla and beat until smooth.

4. Use immediately or cover and refrigerate. Bring to room temperature before use.

Salad Soy Wrappers

I felt inspired to make a bunch of hors d'oeuvres the other day after thinking about how the holiday is coming soon, and how much I want to host a mini party consists of only cocktails and finger food.

I then started to think beyond my wildest dreams about how I can convert every kind of food into finger food...all I have to do is just shrink them and make them portable and easy to eat!

The first thing that came to my mind about a meal is appetizer and salad. While appetizer is quite easy to make into hors d'oeuvres, salad is the challenging part. I then remember Vietnamese Summer Roll usually consists of lettuce in it, so does Chinese chop suey...which lead me to think of salad in a wrapper!!


Chopping everything as small as possible is the key...this includes the lettuce. In this salad, I used pretty simple and healthy ingredients: romaine lettuce, mozzarella cheese, canadian bacon, tomato and hard boiled egg white.

I would eat it out of a small bowl, but that's not the purpose right now.
Salad in a sesame flavored soy wrapper.

Salad in a spinach flavor soy wrapper.

Finished product sealed with green onion--Salad Soy Wrappers

Weekend Getaway + Mori Sushi

Last weekend, my friends and I went to Southern California for a food trip. (Oh yes, according to that website, gemini's like to eat too!) Anyhow, we went to couple restaurant, almost all of them are quite pricey but so worth it because the food taste so good! These includes Mori Sushi, Royal/T Cafe, Daikokuya Ramen, Mikawaya, Sasabune, Pinkberry, Yakitori Koshiji, Harajuku Crepe, Din Tai Fung, Crumbs Bakery, and Phoenix Dessert.

I took pictures of ALL of the food I ate, but I will only post some here, otherwise I'll be spamming the page. I will definitely post some other ones another time later.

Mori Sushi
11500 W Pico Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90064
http://www.morisushi.org/

My friends and I each had the omakase, which is a set menu with appetitizers and sushi that the chef recommended that night. It was about 5 appetitzers and 15 sushi made from fishes imported from places like Santa Barbara as well as Japan, and dessert. It was $150/person with tax and tips, but my gosh, it was so good! Here are some of the memorable dishes:

Mori's homemade silk tofu with a bit of freshly grind fresh wasabi from Japan.

Grilled eggplants (one with yellow miso and one with red miso), marinated shitaki mushroom and monk fish liver salad.

Tempura abalone and tempura jalapenos. I never like abalone, but my gosh, this one was really good. It's not hard or super hard to chew on. The batter was light and doesn't feel oily at all! So for this one, you take a piece of abalone and you lightly touch it on the sea salt before you eat. So good!

Sweet shirmp salad with shiso, ikura and dash of tangerine zest.

Seared Saba and fig salad.

Bluefin tuna nigiri. The best tuna nigiri I ever had so far. I usually don't even like eating tuna unless it's in a spicy sauce!

Uni from Japan (left) and Santa Barbara (right).

Tamago! Simple Japanese egg omelette but hard to make right. Left is the not so tradition kind, and the right one is more tradition one and bit more savory comparatively.

There are more sushi, but yes, I don't want to overload on photos here. Oh yes, I must emphasize that Mori Sushi is the only sushi place I'd been to so far that uses fresh
Japan imported wasabi! They grate it at the spot! I never like wasabi, but oh my gosh, fresh ones is actually spicy yet sweet! I love it!

And the wonderful meal at Mori ended with homemade black sesame ice cream.

A tip for eating at Sushi places is that try to get bar seat. Not only will you able to see how your sushi chef prepare the meal, you can also interact with them.

I am going to end this entry with one of my favorite part of a meal...it's not complete without them! Dessert!!!

Mikawaya's mochi-lato, gelato in a mochi! I ordered a chocolate hazelnut one, and omg, I was in mochi heaven! Definitely need to try to make some myself sometime soon.

Harajuku Crepe's green tea crepe with banana, nutella and green tea ice cream. It's a pretty typical crepe but the crepe itself is green tea flavor also! The combination is yummy!

Crumbs' red velvet cupcake. It's definitely a heavier type of cupcake. The cream cheese was overwhelming but the cake itself was light and moist, and I can definitely taste the chocolate.

Phoenix's pudding was definitely innovative. I usually see the mango, coconut and the red bean ones at dim sum restaurant but here, they have black sesame, purple rice, green tea, cappucino, and taro also.

My weekend was super relaxing and satisfying. I can't wait to go back to So Cal!