Hello, goodbye...See you soon!

Hi Friends, it's been years since I last posted and so much has changed....  Let's start by bringing you up to speed and then we'll talk about where we go from here.  Beginning with some sad news, my father passed away several days before Thanksgiving in 2011.  Here's a photo of my father walking me down the isle on my wedding day, twelve years ago.  We celebrated what would have been his 71st birthday yesterday.

Second, I've changed companies twice since 2011 and I think that made me a very popular search on LinkedIn.  I swear I am usually a very steady person, the last company was just not the right fit for me.

I founded Max & Bean, a tween girl clothing company late last year and just launched my online store last weekend!

Finally back to FOOD, the main reason I started this blog in 2010.  I return to food because it gives me comfort and joy to cook, to share, to eat, and talk about food!  

Peter gave me a much-coveted, stove top cast iron grill for our 12th year anniversary, I know he's so self-less and beyond a romantic...Pictured here, teriyaki chicken with sauté snow peas and shiitake mushrooms.  The key to getting a crispy skin on the meat is patting it dry and flattening it with a mallet for even cooking on the surface area.

                            
I may not post again for quite some time on this blog but I would love it if you can follow me on Instagram: @realfoodrookie and @maxnbean.  Thanks for reading, see you soon! 
xxoo Real Food Rookie

  

Happy Happy Happy 2011

I'm not sure how fair it is to eat like THIS within a twenty-four hour period, better yet, I didn't cook.

It all began with our friend Dario's delicious tri-tip, marinated over night.  If he entered this in a contest, he would win, BIG!

Perrrrfect....I generally like the well-done ends, there's more surface area for seasonings and the extra 'crunch' is appealing.

Surf 'n' Turf....need I say more...?! As Peter likes to say, "this poor lobster never had a chance!"  Side dishes by lovely Inger:  braised brussel sprouts and potatoes au gratin topped with corn flakes.  Inger is from Oklahoma and has the ultimate mid-western American recipes who's secret contents she guards with her life.  Believe me, those recipes are gold.

Thanking the Lord for the abundance with our wonderful and generous hosts...

...and of course, our combined Monkeys.   The kids have been friends since birth, TFF.

 

My pregnant baby-sister (who I helped 

raise by the way) and her husband.

Gourmet Leftover:  Lobster rolls.  Alright, so I did contribute a little.  The best lobster rolls I've ever had are from Maine but these are a strong contender for second place.  The secret is toasting the hot dog buns with butter in a frying pan.  Use only large chunks of lobster and good mayo, crisp romaine adds a nice crunch to each bite.  My mouth is watering just writing this.

And while most of the country was hit with severe snow storms, we in Los Angeles, California welcomed the New Year in 80 degree weather and golden sunshine.  Happy New Year! xxooooo's RFR

Life With Shroomy...posted with Bean

For Halloween this year, Ruby (a.k.a-Bean) dressed up as a Poisonous Mushroom, inspired by Fantasia.

Pikachu Pokemon and an anonymous Halloween friend.

Let me introduce you to my daughter, Ruby: A fun-loving Vietnamese/Lithuanian hybrid crafty little girl in the 4th grade.  Bean loves Japanese animation, science, gymnastics, her brother Biebs, sushi, and cooking.  Naturally her first Post:  Crab Stuffed Mushrooms.  Yum, need I say more?! 

Like most days, her dad lends her a hand.  Peter wrote down a rough recipe as they went along.  Enjoy the rest of the post:  By Bean.

You will need: The Biggest White "Stuffing" mushrooms you can find a your supermarket, Onion, Fresh Garlic, a Shallot, some good Lump Crab meat (1/4 lb), 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs,a shot of sherry, a shot of Worcestershire sauce, Salt and Pepper and Paprika and chives, and some shredded Parmesan cheese.

 

FIRST, Pre-Heat your oven to 415 degrees.  Then, start your chopping.  This goes together pretty fast.  I am Pretty good at chopping, better than dad I think. I chop the onions, the garlic, and the shallot.  Then,  I chop up the stems to add to the stuffing.

Add all the onions and garlic and shallots to the butter after you chop em Sautee til they are kind of clear and your mouth is watering!! ..I love butter! (just so you know..)

MIX EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND HEAT IT UP!!  SMELLS SO GOOD!

Spoon in all the ingredients after you heat the mix.  top with salt and pepper and paprika for color...I think I put a little too much paprika!  THEN, Pop it in the Oven for 18-20 minutes!!

THE FINISHED PRODUCT!!  Rich and Delicious !!!   It was really fun making the stuffed mushrooms! My family, friends, and I all thought they were delicious and  made well. A lot of people love my mushrooms!


Food Rookie Note: Drop us a comment if you want the recipe.  Wise words from Ruby (who felt a tremendous amount of pressure on her first post):   Although I kind of don't really like getting food messed up. It doesn't have to be perfect!!!!!!!!!!  

The Food of Your People

There is proof that chicken soup has medicinal properties so I made a large pot of it and have been eating it all week at work.  I am trying to fight off a bug because truth be told, I cannot miss a day of work.  Not right now, my new boss is bi-coastal and she's here this week and the next.  Not a good time to call in sick, even if you are....welcome to the corporate side of Fashion.  "It's a tough business" is what I tell the kids at school.  As an alumni I am currently involved in the mentoring program at Otis.  I look around at all the tired but eager faces of students in Fashion Design and think...I can't let them down by giving them a dose of reality, I need to put on a chirpy face and have a positive attitude!   I also think it's possible I might have bit off more than I can chew, which when it comes to food that never happens but in LIFE, it happens more often than I am comfortable with.  Hence, I've been trying to fight off this bug for the past two weeks...unfortunately it's as relentless as I am.

Home made chicken soup, a good one starts out with chicken stock from scratch, but really any chicken stock will suffice.

To add assortment to my comfort foods, sometimes curry is a tasty alternative to chicken soup when I'm 'beat down' (my husband's favorite term for fatigue), not sure about the 'healing' properties though.  This is a Vietnamese curry.  There are three popular curries in America:  Indian, Japanese/Korean, and Thai.  Indian and Japanese curry is thicker in consistency and served as a sauce or a ragu. Vietnamese and Thai curries are similar,  both are more of a soup base, and like most Asian soups you can add rice or noodles.  Because of the French influence in Vietnamese culture, I tend to serve chicken curry with rice AND a fresh baguette slathered with butter.

And....there's the classic won ton soup:  pork and shrimp filling.

Won ton soup with daikon radish, baby bok choi and carrots.  Reminds me of Mom's cooking.

Food Rookie Note:  For the chicken soup I bake or sear the chicken meat first to add depth of flavor to the chicken broth.  A trick my mother taught me is to add caramelized shallots at the end for richer color and finish.  It's a finish I tend to use on clear broth soups.

TGIF

What a week.  My new boss started on Wednesday and today was my first real work session with her.  My design team and I went over our Holiday '11 collection and at first glance, she wants us to redesign EVERYTHING.  The good news: my new boss seems nice and critiques the line with a general understanding we've all worked under a different direction for the last ten months....still there are more edits and revisions to come next week...

What a good husband, Peter made seafood pasta:  mussels, clams, shrimp, and crab legs in red sauce.  Served over linguine pasta with garlic bread and a simple mixed salad with balsamic vinegar and oil dressing.  What a way to end the week, coming home to a meal like this is like receiving a compensation hug for each hard moment I experienced these past five days. 

Food Rookie Note:  marry someone who loves to eat and cook as much as you do.

Short Cuts

I Am BEAT!

I met my new boss this week, my 4^th boss this year!  Fighting a bug and/or just plain RUN DOWN.   Peter's been working quite a bit (hooray!) which leaves me tired tending to Monkeys, morning, afternoon and night and lately without my partner-in-crime.  So this is a meal full of short cuts, I am beat down and it’s 90 degrees in Los Angeles.  The thought of cooking in this weather simultaneous to the way I feel  right now makes no sense.  Thank Jesus (!) Bean decided she would rather have pot stickers for dinner her first option was Teriyaki salmon, which would have required me to turn the oven on and cook the house as well as our meal.

Short cut:  store bought dumplings.

A potpourri of pot stickers: shumai, gyoza and dumplings served with spinach and shiitake mushroom salad, garnish with green onions.  For the dipping sauce I mix soy sauce, rice vinegar, and mirin for a touch of sweetness.

Food Rookie Note:  They don’t call them ‘pot stickers’ for nothing.  In my various attempts to not have a scorched pan that requires a brillo pad to scrape the metal off while I scrub the pot clean, I find copper pans work best for even heat distribution and it’s easy to clean.  Isn’t that what it's all about when you’re Married with Monkeys and work a full-time job?

They Colonized Us

Southeast Asians are mutts.  From Cambodia to the Philippines we as a race are a blended bunch.  My grandfather on my mother's side was a French professor before the French War.  He was born and raised in North Viet Nam and spoke/taught French with a Vietnamese accent.  Growing up in Salt Lake City, Utah (in the 80's) I never questioned the practicality of taking French as a 3rd language.   And after 4 years of French classes, I eventually dropped out once I stopped denying that I really was not that good at it, really it's not practical if no one around you speaks it fluently.  I can read french menus okay and can fake a good accent but conjugating verbs was not my forte.

My cooking style is often 'blended".  Tonight's meal:  Braised pork chops with shiitake mushrooms. "This is exactly what it would have tasted like, the New World wanting to also capture tastes of the Old World that they just conquered... " Peter said about the flavor of this dish.  Franco-Vietnamese:  Vietnamese spices, prepared with European cooking tools techniques.

I start by searing the meat in a heavy pan, I like using an enamel cast iron pan for braising because it can go from stove top and into the oven.  Remove, then add the onions and mushrooms to caramelize.  Throw the meat back in, add some stock, and braise at low heat in the oven for a couple of hours. 



I use one of the chops for stock and any vegetable works, tonight it'sa chayote squash.  Garnish with scallions, cilantro, and fresh ground black pepper.


Vietnamese people tend to serve a simple, clear-broth soup at almost every meal. To cleanse the palate, help with digestion, and simply because it's an economical way to stretch out a meal when meat is scarce in the Old Country.  We honor the tradition because it tastes great, and sometimes when my pork chops comes out a little on the dry side, the soup is necessary.

Food Rookie Note:  To spoil my kids further, I slice the meat before serving.  Also, after dinner clean-up goes a lot faster.  You've never seen the way my Monkeys spread their food around when they cut their own meat...we are talking rice on the table, in their laps, in their hair, on the chair, and sticky on the ground.  No joke.  When that does happen, I wait until the next morning after the rice has dried and hardened over the night to wipe/sweep it up, otherwise you're making glue by smearing the rice around while it's wet.  I promise I was never this type of person, my Monkeys have modified me and I've become a little 'slobby', for practical reasons of survival.

About A Boy

We call him Biebs, my 11-year-old boy.  He weighs more than I do now and will soon surpass me in height.  My son is large and tall like his dad.  My husband is 6'5" I am a striking 5'1" (and 3/4", yes it counts!).  Long gone are the days I picked him up, now he gives me piggy-back rides to show off in front of friends and family members. 

Cooking started out as a chore for me around 8 years old. After a few years, it became an experiment and my siblings were happy to be my taste testers/guinea pigs.  We didn't have a lot of food in the house so most experiments started out with flour, sugar, and food coloring.  My motivation back then: satisfy a strong desire to sample what 'White American people' ate and to duplicate restaurant food that tasted really good for the few times we ate out.  We eventually called my experiments "Creations".  Some were bad and salty, some were edible, and some made our stool green for days (probably not Kosher to mention the two in one sentence).

So to circle back to Biebs, what started out as a chore from putting away the groceries, to washing the vegetables, and helping us chop ingredients for meals he actually enjoys cooking now.  Biebs comes from a long tradition of male role models who love to spend their time cooking so it's not a stretch for him, particularly because he loves to eat. 

Photos of sausages are one of the hardest to take if you want the food to look appealing....


After home work on a school night Biebs made this dish, mostly by himself with my supervision.  What a good son.  One of Bieb's favorites:  Sausages and bell peppers.  We caramelize the onions along with the red, yellow, and orange bell peppers.  The original recipe is from La Cucina Italiana, one of my favorite food magazines.  For a balanced meal I added succotash as a side, not the best to go with pasta but veggies are good for you, so there you have it.

Turkey Chili served over white rice, garnished with scallions and tomatoes...have I mentioned we serve almost every meal with white rice.

Biebs also inspired me to enter this dish for his school's Annual Queen Esther's Chili Cook Off.  We call it Bieb's Totally Rockin' Turkey Chili. This was an experimental recipe that I have modified throughout the last seven years.  I have a hard time with remembering to measure the ingredients but I have a rough idea of what goes in the chili.  I didn't grow up using measuring cups or other cooking tools ('ha! no need' my mom would say).  My mom didn't believe in spending money on a 'Measuring Cup' while measuring spoons were just plain spoons we used to eat with.  My mothers' cooking implement was usually a pair of chop sticks, yes even for soups!  However rare, I actually had to publish the ingredients in a Word document to legitimize my participation in the contest.  If you want the recipe, write me and I'll dig it up.

Not joking, my trophy is the stove back-splash...

I placed 3rd at the Chili Cook Off, the only turkey chili against all beef and brisket recipes.  This trophy sits above my stove and acts as a back splash.  People who first come over tend to think it's a joke.....until they taste my turkey chili and discover: YUM!

Food Rookie Note:  I make a large pot of chili the day before serving, which adds depth of flavor.  I also freeze extra portions to serve later in the month during school week, thermos lunches, and weekend chili dogs( Nathan's are the best!).

Strange Weather & Bloody Elbows

Just getting over the record breaking heat wave from last week which resulted in tropic-like rain showers, thunder and lightning in 103 F temperature.  Stranger still in conjunction with the 'earthquake weather', we experienced a full moon and the Equinox which all coincided with one of the most stressful deadlines at work resulting in  A LOT of weirdness and hurt feelings at home AND work, where generally I tend not to cross the lines but this time...ACK!...

Is Jesus coming?????  View of the sunset from the intersection of Melrose and La Brea on my way home from work.

Peter had an early call time at work so I reheated last night's supper for my daughters' lunch:  aka 'Bloody Elbows' nick-named by Bean herself.  BTW, a fitting name for my kid who often times get scrapes, cuts, bruises, fat lips, and black eyes living with us and playing as hard as two boys on a sugar and caffeine high.  I am surprised no one has called us out at school for our parenting skills...

Bean's beloved 'bloody elbows': home made ragu and ground sirloin, Peter calls this 'American Chop Suey'.

Food Rookie Note:  Basic ragu consists of chopped (all equal parts, approximately 1 C.) onions, carrots, celery, eggplant (if you have it, it's quite okay if you don't).  Saute in the same sequence 5 minutes in between allows the ingredients to caramelize and reach a sweet, depth of flavor.  Finish with minced garlic, tomato paste (for thickness), and chopped tomatoes with their sauce...yum...  Not clear if I am predisposed to loving Italian food but man it's as comfortable as rice and soy sauce.

P.S.  When you get the chance, check out Valentino, Paul Smith, and Sonia Rykiel Spring '11 cat walk on Style.com.

Bieber & Fever

The latest members to our home Beiber and Fever...my husband Peter says that if you position fighting fish so that they can see each other it's better for their health.  Their fins spread and they stay alert....

Bean looks at them frequently to make sure they are "not dead".  We are in the middle of renaming the fish, Biebs is not happy with their names.


I have a deep fondness for 'trough food' as Peter likes to call it.  Strip Mall restaurants are my vice:  large portions and consistent flavors.  I never said I was a food snob.  In fact, because I grew up poor and hungry, I am obsessed with large portions at chain restaurants in particular.  Peter does not like to admit this but sometimes on Date Night we actually go to The Grove for Italian trough food.

Chicken Fettuccine with green and red bell peppers, garnished with fresh cilantro.

For dinner, still in the middle of the heat wave:  Chicken and peppers with a light tequila and lime cream sauce.  This is one of my family's favorite meals, inspired by a similar pasta dish from CPK.  Because the flavors are sweet from the caramelize onions, peppers, and slightly tart from lime it's a perfect summer dish for supper.  I started testing this recipe last summer and shared it with our friends The Nicks' and tend to think of our time in Carpinteria together.   Finally, I think I have it right.

Food Rookie Note:  Making a light cream sauce starts with a lot of butter (6 Tbsp), don't burn it, simmer on low.  Cream (3/4-1 C) should be added at the end again over low heat just enough for the sauce to bubble but not boil.   Lime always at the end stir and shut off the heat.  Again, try your best to garnish.

Gourmet Trailer-Trash Tacos

Our friend Joe Sib says he likes to starve all day if he knows he's coming over for dinner.  The Sibs are vegetarians, we are are omnivores.  I bought a vegetarian cook book years ago and never tried any of the recipes (the meals didn't seam substantial) so I have no real experience in cooking with 'meat substitutions'.  My daughter Bean tried to be a vegetarian over the summer, it lasted one evening.  Generally if I make a vegetarian dish, it just has no meat and tofu is just 'tofu'.



Okay note to Self:  check out more photos of food and learn from the pros, this is not a very good composition...

 

Fortunately my sister turned me onto the best (and only) 'meatless ground' for tonight's meal.  Through out the cooking process Peter and Biebs were assured that  the 'real meat' is for "us, right?!"  So there you have it tonight's dinner with our dear friends:  veggie tacos for The Sibs and sirloin-turkey tacos for 'us'.  I mixed in frozen succotash for flavor into the ground meat/meatless and it's another way of getting vegetables into my family's diet.

Tonight's dessert was inspired by the triple digit (102 F on Miracle Mile!) heat wave.  We are took advantage of the warm whether and celebrated the last days of Summer: Strawberry Shortcake.    

We had store bought taco shells and ground meat for a festive and glamorous version of "loose meat" tacos (...my husband hates those words).  More shortcuts: store bought salsa and re-fried beans, I 'doctor' the beans with garlic and olive oil. I also combine sirloin and turkey ground meat because I think it's a little bit healthier. 

Food Rookie Note:  Make it easy and fun for a casual dinner with friends and have your guests pitch in with dessert, everyone feels helpful if they can contribute.  I have the Monkeys (my kids) help assemble the dessert: store bought angel food cake, vanilla bean ice-cream, fresh glazed strawberries, fresh blueberries, and whipped cream (spray can or home made is fine).  The Sibs brought all the dessert fixings (and drinks!) for tonight's meal.  Love breaking bread with friends.

It's Not All Fun and Food

Life is stressful right now, my dad is fighting Cancer.  I went down to OC last Sunday morning to commemorate my Grandmother's (Dad side) passing (more than 2 decades ago) as part of my daughterly duties to honor the old customs.  My dad is going through another round of chemo therapy and the side affects were obvious. 

I am a third-generation control freak and it's painful to know there is not much I can do...but wait, cook and pray and wait, cook and pray and wait, cook and pray..............

...and over the weekend I made my dad his favorite soup.  I call it V8 Minestrone Soup:  inspired by the Olive Garden  which opened near our house in glamorous Buena Park, Orange County when I was in High School.    Nutritious and palatable for someone going through chemo therapy.  I packed up three containers so my mom can keep the freezer stocked.  The last time I made this was before I left home for art school over 15 years ago.

We took my parents to the coast of Maine this summer...my dad relaxing in the Atlantic Ocean.  Ahh.......