Chicken Goujons with Noodles

I usually get home at 5:30 and turn out dinner by 6:00 pm. I am quite lit-er-ally (insert Rob Lowe’s Park and Rec character voice) on the 30 min. meal plan. Jamie Oliver said that this meal would take 4 minutes and 41 seconds to make. To that I say “Sign-me-up-Señor Oliver”

This meal was outrageously delicious considering how simple it was to put together. I think the secret is the onions and honey together, asian dishes are so good at balancing savory and sweet. As a bonus I had all the ingredients in house. No shopping necessary.

Party time. Excellent.

Let’s go.

Chicken Goujons with Noodles

Adapted from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook “Jamie’s Dinners”

Ingredients for 2 servings: 8 oz egg noodles (use what you like, I used DanDan Noodles because I keep them on hand), 2 Tbs oil, chicken thighs (throw in as much as you want to eat, a typical portion is 4 oz. per person), 1 small piece of ginger, peeled and sliced, 1 fresh red chile (sub red chile flakes if you don’t have them), 1 tsp five-spice powder, 3 green onions (sliced-I used way more than three because I am an unrepentant onion lover), splash of soy sauce, 1 Tbs of Honey, cilantro and lemon

Cook the noodles. While they are cooking heat up oil then add the chicken thighs (cut in smaller pieces) ginger and chile. Toss together then add the five-spice powder. Once the chicken is browned, add the green onions, soy sauce and honey. Drain the noodles then add them to the pan along with the cilantro. Squeeze with lemon if you like. Sit down on the couch and eat greedily with someone you love, or the TV. Either will do.

I‘m making noodles once a week until the end of 2012. Have a recipe I should try? Send me the link! 

Everything on the Big Eat List (so far) has been good, but some items are revelatory. They are so good, you have to talk out your feelings after eating it for days. Scream sorbet is like that, it’s a game changer.

#31-Seasonal Flavors at Scream Sorbet

We found Scream Sorbet at the Ferry Building Farmers Market. All my life I’ve thought of sorbet as the cheap second I have to consume since I don’t digest dairy well. It’s possible that I might even hold an illogical grudge against sorbet. Why can’t I just have ice cream? It’s all your fault sorbet!

Scream sorbet has mended the fences and then some.

After a short sampling my posse decided the only logical course of action was to order all six flavors. The next 20 minutes were spent eating, moaning and generally falling in love with sorbet. There were three fruit flavors and three nut/chocolate flavors. They all changed my life.

Scream Sorbet is special because it’s made in a Paco Jet which can micro-puree anything. The guy at the stand told us he could put a chair in and make chair sorbet with a paco jet. I’m not interested in chair sorbet, but hazelnuts micro-pureed into the most amazing dairy-free treat I’ve ever tasted are welcome any day.

Verdict: It’s called Scream Sorbet for a reason. Go get yours.

This winter has been very strange weather-wise which is how my son ended-up barefoot at a Lake Tahoe beach marveling at a river of frozen ice. 10 points if you know the title reference.

Happy Birthday to Me!

For my birthday last fall my friends took me to the city to Big Eat for a day. We thought it would be a kind of leisurely day. We’d eat, wander around see some stuff and eat some more. We totally followed that plan, if you cut out everything but the eating.

#28-Apple Fritter at Bob’s Donuts

In a nod to normal eating patterns we thought we’d start with pastries. Bob’s donuts is a small hole in the wall on a street that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before which is weird seeing as I grew up around these parts. At first bite the apple fritter was relatively unremarkable, but as we kept sampling it something weird happened. It got better? Perhaps it made the list because it has magic properties of persuasion?

Verdict: It was good, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.

Donuts at Bob's Donuts

#29-Egg Custard Tart at Golden Gate Bakery

Big Pastry Box-Little Door

Golden Gate Bakery is an institution and it’s Egg Tarts are legendary. So much so that you will buy a dozen of them for 5 people and ignore the cranky Chinese ladies behind the counter when they throw a Cantonese hissy fit cause you didn’t see the “Don’t take pictures sign”.  The lingering shouts of “Respect the sign. Don’t take pictures” will fade into the distance as you bliss out in egg tart heaven. The crust is incredibly light, you can practically feel the individual layers, while the custard somehow tastes like egg without being off-putting. I am not a huge egg fan but I had to stop myself from hoarding all 12 for myself.

Verdict: Don’t take pics. Just bring cash and your appetite.

Egg Custard Tarts from Golden Gate Bakery

#30-Hamburguesa at Don Pisto’s

From Golden Gate in Chinatown it’s a short walk over to Don Pisto’s in Little Italy. We were planning our first “meal” of the day to be brunch at Don Pisto’s which is kind of a hipster Mexican place. Everything there was good. We should know because we tried about half the menu.

Breakfast Delights at Don Pisto's

The crowning glory however was the Hamburguesa, a burger that is marinated in bacon and onion. Yeah, you heard me right, marinated in bacon. When it arrived at the table it seemed unassuming compared to the chilaquiles and tacos and other fancier food we had just eaten. Upon reflection I believe that it’s humble appearance is all part of the hamburguesas devious plan to charm you. The second you get close to that thing the intoxicating pull of bacon hits you in the face. The smell is crazy town and I mean that in the best possible way.

I would show you pictures of  us eating hamburguesa but our facial expressions are indeecent.

Verdict: Hamburguesa, where have you been all my life?

Hamburguesa at Don Pisto's

Did that seem like a lot of food? Probably, but we haven’t even scratched the surface. This is a FIVE part series. :)

Every week this year for the rest of the year I’m going to be cooking up: asian noodles!

My love for noodles is probably unhealthy and unnatural. Whenever TV characters are eating chow mein takeout I feel irrationally jealous and sometimes I page thorugh the my cookbooks just to gaze longingly at the noodle recipes. Strangely these procliviites have never really translated into actually cooking noodles.

2012 is going to put an end to that foolishness. No more longingly watching the Big Bang Theory gang dig their takeout cartons. This year I am making pad thai, pancit and dan dan noodles with wild abandon. To get started I went through all my cookbooks and flagged every single noodle recipe. You can help me too! Do you have  a favorite noodle recipe I should try? Is there a blog post you saw somewhere that you are drooling over and I should be the guinea pig? Let me know! Like the Bayless recipe I commit to being truthful about the ups and downs and because I won’t be pulling recipes exclusivley from one source I’ll feel better about posting the actual recipes more often. I’m excited about starting another project and something about the Year of the Dragon feels right. Let’s go!

   @Rick_Bayless

 Besides sharing a name,Emily Bayless & I share having made evry recipe n Mexican Everyday (n 1 yr)!Check out her recap: ow.ly/8vwLR

Too bad my poor punctuation gave him the false impression that my name is Emily Bayless. I feel bummed about that because Rick and his colleagues are so nice. Not only did he tout my project, he also dm’d me congratulations directly at the midpoint of the project… and both the producer of his television show and one of the photographers/testers who worked on the cookbook e-mailed congrats through the blog.

Can you believe that? These are immensely talented people and they were so kind to take the time. After spending a year in that cookbook I have so much respect for everybody involved in making that TV show and those books. Now that I know how much it takes just to cook all the recipes (and simple ones at that!) I cannot even imagine the effort it is to produce a quality cookbook and to get social media pats on the back from the people who made it all happen? It felt awesome.

So once again, I must thank you guys! Thank you for all the encouragement. Thank you for the tips and advice. Thank you to my friend Dahlia who helped me to do some food styling when I couldn’t stomache taking one more crappy picture of the delicious food I was turning out. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! On Monday I’m launching a new food project. If it turns out half as fun as this one, it’ll still be a raging success.

Sere Prince Halverson’s first novel opens with the sudden death of the protagonists husband. At first glance I thought this novel would be about the journey of grief, but death is just the beginning of a crisis that isn’t always what it seems. This book is about the truths that lie beneath the surface.

One of the major themes of the book is the breaking of unhealthy family patterns and Halverson manages it masterfully. The principal plot point is a heart wrenching custody battle in which everybody is right and everybody is wrong. As the novel progresses Halverson uncovers slowly the motivations and anxieties of each character, showing us the tragedies that shaped them and the desperate, dysfunctional and disparate ways they are fighting not to repeat their own histories. Despite its heavy subject matter, this is essentially a hopeful novel. By the end you are cheering the characters on, urging them to be brave enough to trust each other and make things right.

A second principal theme is the question of what it means to be a good mother. As an adoptive mother myself it’s a question I’ve wrestled with myself quite often and I appreciate that the book brings up topics such as postpartum depression, psychosis, step-parenting and adoption in a way that is evenhanded and fair. There is so much talk about “bad mothers” it is nice to see a work that explores the different ways to be a good mother.

This book is not perfect, I found some of the dialogue to sound a bit unnatural but overall I enjoyed it immensely and I’ve found myself thinking about the themes even after I finished. The sure sign it’s a worthy investment of your reading time.

To learn more about the Underside of Joy and join in on the BlogHer bookclub. Click here.

Can I share a pet peeve? It pisses me off when bad food is served at work conferences. I know from experience that conference food is expensive and I’m filled with indignant rage when I am sequestered into eating crappy-yet-surely-high-cost food. This goes double when I’m in a city where delicious inexpensive culinary delights abound. I ran into this recently in San Francisco. SAN FRANCISCO. Land of delicious food. It was ten kinds of wrong.

Is bad food a serious problem in the scheme of life? Absolutely not. Is it solveable? Heck yeah! When confronted with the steam tables of wilting vegetables, dry chicken and goopy salad dressing I had to say “Enough! I will get fat on good food, not mediocre food“. I dramatically(in my head) unpinned my nametag and set off for the nearest Big Eat locale. There were two within walking distance: one was a gigantic alcoholic drink at a nearby bar. That sounded fun and extremely inappropriate. Instead I chose to head down the street for some Soul Food.

#27-Po’Boy at Brenda’s French Soul Food

Black-eyed Peas and Brenda's Soul Food

Brenda’s is a small shot gun of a restaurant that’s decorated in a sort of modern nod to New Orleans. I like modern stuff and NOLA so Brenda’s and I got off on the right foot. Also right away they brought me a dish of toasted Black-Eyed Peas. Yum!

Watermelon Iced Tea and Brenda's Soul Food

At this point I was really in a pleasant mood. With a full-time job and a small child I don’t get to spend a lot of time by myself and yet here I was in the middle of the day. In San Francisco! And it was sunny! And there were toasted black-eyed peas! I was euphoric, so I decided to splurge on watermelon iced tea. A good choice, it was just sweet enough. I patted myself on the back and left with nothing else to do began to grin at random in an annoying manner at all the other patrons. When the waiter came I assaulted him with my good mood and ordered the po’boy triumphantly and gleefully. PO’boy! Yay!

Shrimp Po'Boy at Brenda's Soul Food

I really have no idea what a po’boy is supposed to taste like but I liked this one, the bread was very squishy and soft, the shrimp were crisp and there was a mayonnaisey, slightly spicy sauce. I like bread, mayonnaise, shrimp and spice, so there’s really nothing going wrong there for me.

The sandwich was also served with pickled watermelon rinds (strange but good), cole slaw (nice and crisp) and french fries ( a win every time). I ate it all with satisfaction.

Verdict: Go to Brenda’s. Enjoy a po-boy. Call me in the morning.

Last year Arnold and I committed to go out on a date once a month. Thanks to our kind and generous circle of friends we were able to make that happen! It was hard at first to leave our little guy at home but once we got over our separation anxiety we had a great time. When it was just the two of us we took for granted our endless hours of freedom but now that “dates” are a limited commodity we take them seriously. It was a veritable sushi, froyo, musical, movie explosion

This year I hope to continue our monthly dates but I’d also like to add some quality time “playdates” with the other special guy in my life. I’m not thinking of elaborate activities, just setting aside an afternoon a month that is just devoted to us spending time together, counting the blue cars and perhaps eating some ice cream.  Two monthly dates might be more to balance, but I now get how the happy times together help you get through the rough days. And besides, with a face like his, how could I not?