Yum, pizza.

New York City pizza. Pretty self explanatory. It is delicious. I may do some explaining tomorrow anyway, along with some more photos. But not tonight. I've had a rough past week and today was no exception. I'm going to go dream about this nice slice of cheese pizza now:


Yum. Good night.

X-cellent food in NYC! (aka "x" is an annoying letter in the English language)

I think I will have to again scribe a fairly concise blog entry tonight. My nerves are all strained from Cisco and just having to wait on incidents that could decide a decent part of my immediate future is causing me to yo-yo from wound up high anxiety to extreme exhaustion. Today my supervisor and three other people in my area (though those three are on a different budget than I am) learned that they were being let go at the end of the month. However, nothing whatsoever has been said to any of my four coworkers or me. We are silently going crazy and would really like to just hear anything tomorrow, be it good or bad, just simply to know what's going on. Once we learn we are naturally going to eat out to celebrate either the miraculous last minute save of our jobs (for another 3 months or so) or our triumphant escape from Cisco to move on to better and brighter opportunities.

Until that happens, it is time for more NYC meals.

Moving right along to my dinner on April 22nd, I was finally able to meet with my cousin Ann who lives in Manhattan and works at the New York Public Library as a legal assistant. I'll dig up a photo of her later as the best ones were all taken on her camera and are hidden somewhere in my e-mail. My next culinary experience was to be a Japanese restaurant by the name of Katsu-hama, a restaurant that specializes in one of my favorite dishes; they served all sorts of Katsu, or Japanese cutlets.


Ah...tabetai (I want to eat it). While this restaurant was probably not run by Japanese owners, this was still easily some of the best tonkatsu (pork cutlet) I have ever had either in the US or in Japan and it wasn't that expensive either. The restaurant was small, but neatly arranged, and I felt that how they arranged the meal was also a nice, Japanesque touch. They brought out beautiful plates like this one, but also served our sake in a small box filled with water and flower petals, and had us crush fresh sesame seeds for our sauce. While katsu is fried and my stomach had been feeling queasy all throughout my time in NYC, this was a fantastic meal where both my taste buds and stomach went home happy.

Or rather I should say, they both were so thrilled that they decided I needed to continue on my journey to attempt to completely satisfy them, as well as fulfill another pilgrimage of my family's culinary traditions in NYC, and like Katz's Delicatessen, easily one of my favorite places on the face of the earth as I have experienced it so far. So my cousin and I moved on to this mysterious place in the East Village...

I love bakeries. Real bakeries, not the supermarket or Little Debbie's kind. The traditional family owned kind where all baked goods are made day of (or are sold at a significant discount) and there is no use of sodium benzoate, artificial flavors or colors, or, god forbid, dough conditioners of any kind. I find this kind of bakery to be very rare in the US, because they are difficult to run as a business, minimally appreciated outside of the cities, and then probably hurt even more by the recession as they are considered more of a luxury item than the much cheaper mass market products at the nearby grocery store. However, despite all of that Veniero's Pasticceria & Caffé has managed to survive since 1894. There are many other very good bakeries in NYC (the Chelsea Market from a previous post contains some), but Veniero's, which focuses primarily but not exclusively on Italian style desserts, has become a family favorite. I literally dream about their pies and cookies and I have no pictures except for this one because I ate everything else so fast.

I'll have to find the exact name for it but this berry and apricot tart was out of this world amazing. Paired with some light coffee, it was the perfect dessert to end a good day in NYC. I already want to go back there to eat more...

Reflecting Part 1

After yesterday's very personal blog entry, I decided I wanted to dedicate this next series of entries to my coworkers at Cisco, my godmother in NYC, and others who have kept me sane and well fed over the past couple of months. I may not have time to finish this particular part until later this afternoon as I believe some current and former coworkers and I are going out to lunch again today.

These first parts will catalog my eating excursions (besides Bocce ball) with my coworkers. Fortunately for me, most of my coworkers are as interested in global cuisine as I am, so I have eaten at a good variety of places since arriving at Cisco - some expensive and fancy, some very cheap and casual. Very shortly after I was hired, I was invited to a holiday gift swap with my female coworkers which took place at the nearby Pasta Pomodoro. http://www.pastapomodoro.com/ They are a chain native to California that serves Italian and seafood dishes.

Penne with tomato sauce and cheese and stuff. It was okay. Kind of overpriced for basic pasta - I can probably make it better and for a lot less than the restaurant price.


Some of my coworkers then. Everyone but Eve (far left) is still here...for now. I didn't even know anyone's name for a while...I am so bad with names. Next to Eve is Bing, then Valentina, then Olga, and on the very right side is Lia.

For my gift swap Olga and I wound up having each others names, and I received a very nice wine set (bottle opener and 4 stoppers) while I gave her some Christmas cookie baking sets and a puzzle, which wound up working very well because she was planning on visiting and baking with her young nieces later that day. I still have and use the wine set.

I guess I will feature one restaurant/event/day so this will be in more parts than I originally planned, but I guess this gives each one its own time to shine and me a way to update more regularly and efficiently. Until tomorrow then...

Oops?

Sometimes I really don't care much for real life. Particularly that horrible truth that just about everyone seems to run into eventually - if I don't have a job, I don't have enough money to do all the things I want to do. But if I get a job, and I do earn the money, then I don't have enough time for those things anymore. And I definitely don't have enough money for everything. But if I get a better job with more money, than I have even less time...the circle of real life would continue. Ugh.

That was basically just a long winded excuse as to why I haven't updated my blog in a month...I was doing it at work (my computer and internet speed are both faster there), but now that I have been there a couple of months, they have discovered that I am decently competent and have started assigning me more work and training me for different work. Work that requires actual thought, instead of just mindlessly organizing data. So I haven't had time there like I used to. And the rest of life was already busy.

However, during the past busy month, I obviously still found time to eat and eat well. That is one thing I refuse to give up. I don't care much for instant and fast food, so I have been compromising on other things I would normally do to make time to cook full meals or eat at delicious restaurants.

Or, in the case of today, to go well out of town in the hope of finding something delicious to eat or drink and somewhere fun to explore. Today Matt and I went with his parents to Napa Valley to celebrate the birthday of one of their long time family friends. I had met these family friends over last Thanksgiving dinner, so they were nice enough to invite me as well. We all got up early this morning to take one of those wine tour charter buses all the way up past Napa onto Calistoga and finally stopped to tour and eat at a winery called "Castello di Amorosa."

I've only ever been to a few standard wineries before, but if you can guess from the first Italian word in the name, this one was very different from a normal winery in California. Very, very different.


That's the entrance.



There's one of its towers. And even a moat.

According to our energetic tour guides, this winery was built by an very successful Italian American winemaker to replicate, as closely as possible with modern California building codes still kept in mind, an Italian castle from the 13th century. I have yet to go to an authentic Italian castle, so I cannot say if I felt if he succeeded or not, but this still made for one heck of a unique experience. I did not expect to find a Renaissance style castle in Napa Valley, California, let alone one used for a vineyard, storage and bottling facility.

I took so many photos, but since this is a food blog and not a castle blog, I will just include a few more of them before getting to the main course.



View from the castle.

Main dining hall. We didn't eat here, but I guess the Governator and some other famous politicans have.

17th century replica of an Iron Maiden in the castle dungeon.

Okay, here is the room we ate in for lunch. Long tables, gigantic wooden chairs, and lots of Renaissance era styled art. The food was served as main course buffet style, and after a dessert, and of course, with however much red or white wine from their two chosen estate wines that you wanted. The wine, as hoped, was really good. I don't have any photos of it specifically because I was much too busy drinking it. While none of our party of four (Matt, myself, and his parents) bought any of the red or white served with dinner, we did spring for some of the delicious dessert wine we had sampled during a wine tasting earlier as part of the tour.

This food looks delicious right? Well, actually it was kind of a disappointment, considering how accommodating everything had been up to this point. All of the food was cold. Really, really cold. I guess it was for effect and to be gourmet, but as the room was already rather cold from a lack of utilities (the builder was going for authenticity remember) I found this aspect of the food less than appealing. Add that to my personal preference for most of my meat (aside from certain fish and tapas) to be warm, and also the opinion that I thought a lot of the dishes tried to be overly gourmet by loading on the variety of seasonings, and I wound up mostly eating the rolls and drinking wine.

I guess next time I want a really good meal in Napa or Calistoga I should go to a restaurant instead of a winery, but as this was all prearranged for the birthday party and also completely paid for, I probably shouldn't complain too much. The food wasn't bad; I was just expecting better.



Dessert by contrast was absolutely delicious. Chocolate and hazelnut cake from a local bakery and small but exquisite fruit tarts.

While I was worried this would be an awkward event considering I had met the hosts only once, it is always amazing how social people can become after the wine starts flowing...but even without that I actually had a really good time. I definitely want to go back to Napa and Calistoga in the future, and maybe even go on more winery tours, though I wonder if any of them can live up to the experience that was the Castello di Amorosa.

(oh, and if anyone was wondering about that last random post of a photo of a cat...seems my cat, Anna, got a hold of my phone/the phone became possessed and was posting stuff to Blogger via one of the applications I have installed. I did not eat her, will not be eating her ever, and hopefully that will not happen again)

Nina Plays Bocce Ball?

As my friend Zachary pointed out to me today, lately I haven't had time to cook as much, so my food photos trend largely towards meals eaten in restaurants or even that last post about the food my boyfriend made. Sadly, that is the reality of the working life. Although I actually have quite a bit of free time at work (case in point now, as I blog at my desk), I usually don't get home until 6pm or later, and as I am someone who is used to an early supper, by that time I am famished. I don't like cooking anything complicated when I'm really tired and hungry as I find I tend to rush the process and make mistakes or have accidents. I know plenty of people who do cook elaborate meals after a long hard day of work and find that to be very therapeutic, but until I get used to having a full time job I just don't think that's for me. So, probably not too many photos of my actual home cooked food until the weekend or a vacation break or something. Although, I did make homemade mapo tofu sauce yesterday! But as indicated by today's title, mapo tofu is clearly not the main topic for today's entry.

Work may have detracted a bit from my cooking experience, but I do not believe it caused any compromises in the quality of my eating experiences. In fact, last week my temp agency, Buxton Consulting, paid for all of my group to eat an entire Italian buffet at this restaurant and bocce ball place, Campo Di Bocce of Los Gatos, for a "team building experience." I hope they do this again - it was great.


First course - appetizer (whatever it is in Italian, I forget) - breaded calamari.

Main course - buffet style, but it was a personal buffet set out only for our group, so it was fresh, warm, and delicious. Bread accompanying salmon, beef, fettuccine alfredo, spaghetti with meat sauce...they were nothing especially gourmet, but well done, satisfying dishes nevertheless.

Third course - dessert- Cannoli! After stuffing myself during the buffet part and drinking lots of red wine (also paid for by Buxton), I am not entirely sure how I had room for dessert, but this cannoli was excellent and I managed somehow.

Finally, after eating and drinking and bonding over the food and wine, my coworkers and I were split up into teams to attempt to play Bocce ball. While I am not going to write out all the rules for this traditional Italian game (here is the wikipedia link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bocce_ball), the basic idea is you want to bowl a bigger ball as close to the smaller ball as you can, and you want to get as many balls closer to it than the other team has.

This is at close as I made it that entire night, which I thought was pretty good (though it got knocked away by the other team during their next turn).

Watching the court.

"Passionately discussing" which team got it closer. They even provided tape measures, because sometimes the human brain is not so good at judging really similar distances.

Anyway, stories of homemade mapo tofu sauce are going to have to wait until later as I want to get out of the office before 6; I just thought I would share my culinary adventures that my company actually paid for. And yes, I also got paid as well. What a life.

Eating Out

These past couple of days it seems we have been eating out a lot, whether it be for a social reason or simply one of convenience. I really do enjoy cooking, but sometimes, especially after that frustrating time from my last post, sometimes it is nice to take a break and enjoy a different meal or snack that, unlike a planned homemade meal, may be a completely spontaneous choice.

The first meal from this series was simple, but satisfying. Matt's mother Carol took me to walk around downtown Los Gatos late morning Friday, September 25. We found that most of the restaurants in the area she wanted to visit, Old Town, were too expensive, especially for lunch, so we wound up eating at a "Le Boulanger". It is just a sandwich place, nothing really fancy, but they don't seem to have any locations outside of the Bay Area (I checked) so it was different for me anyway.

Besides, I really really liked this sandwich. It consisted of chicken with hoisin sauce (a Chinese sauce), cucumbers, monterey jack cheese, and cilantro on sourdough bread. It was delicious and unique enough that I think I may try and recreate it at home. My usual sandwiches are pretty bland because I won't eat most normal sandwich condiments (mayonnaise, pickles, mustard, etc).

Anyway, despite having a normal simple dinner at home, we both decided to go out to eat again later with some of Matt's friends. As we were still pretty full by that time, Matt and I just snacked on the bread and had one drink each. As some at our side of the table had predicted would happen, appearing here are some pictures from Friday night at "Romano's Macaroni Grill Italian Restaurant".


Matt enjoying his "White Peach Sangria Martini" (at least, that's what I think it was, and it is in a martini glass). I had a "Leaning Bellini" in a silly glass that didn't photograph very well.



Ryan and Eileen with their delicious looking "Seafood Linguine" which I will definitely be ordering next time I go to this place and am actually hungry.

Finally, to conclude this post, here are some photos from Ikea which we went to on Saturday to look for a nightstand solve the crisis of Matt's alarm clock either being on my side of the bed (really disliked that) or on the floor on his side (also not a good idea). On the way out we decided since we have now gone to Ikea at least 3 times in the past month, it was high time to buy their dessert (we'd already had lunch there on another trip).

Matt had frozen yogurt.

I had their cinnamon roll. Delicious.

Okay, that's a long enough post from me tonight. Until I find or make more food to photograph or some more good food photos to reminisce about, I think I'd better get some sleep so I can continue to try make safe, fully concious decisions in the kitchen. As much as a kitchen catastrophe might be interesting to blog about, I usually prefer my food to not be completely scorched.

Beginning - a real one this time

All right, this time I am determined to keep up with this blog on a more regular basis. As it already has a long formal introduction from my last post, I would just like to add something simple before I begin blogging about the good stuff. This blog is EDIT: Initially but not exclusively END EDIT dedicated to all my friends from NCC, especially those who lived in or regularly visited the room in Ward my junior year of college and who cooked for me, taught me to cook, or even bravely allowed me to cook for them . That includes, but is not limited to, Yusuke, Valeria, Peggy, Matt R., Tsuyoshi, Megan E., Jislaine, Jun, Michico O., Kimberly, Jack, Megan O., and so many more wonderful friends from International Club and elsewhere who really helped expand my knowledge and appreciation of really good food.

This blog will not be a pure recipe blog but simply feature all and any good food that I ate, be it at home, or restaurant. However, I decided my first feature meal will be one that I did indeed cook, because it was recent and I was particularly proud of it. It is so American (I am American after all) and not that complicated or gourmet, but still delicious.





This was thinly cut T-Bone Steak broiled with an Apricot Teriyaki Glaze (my first time broiling meat without setting an oven mitt on fire), twice baked potatos which I found seem to be a midwest staple but unheard of here in California, and a vegetable medley with brown rice. I don't think I need to include a recipe for broiling beef (I like medium rare) or for steaming the brown rice, but here is what I used for the potatos and vegetables:

Twice Baked Potatos (one variation anyway)
Cook potatos in oven or microwave until soft. Cut potatos in half. Scoop out the insides and put them into a mixing bowl. Mix with butter salt, pepper, shredded cheddar cheese, and nutmeg. Replace the potato insides and bake until slightly brown on top.

Italian Peppers and Tomatoes (using all fresh vegetables/fruits)
Heat olive oil in a skillet at medium heat. Dice garlic. Cut peppers and tomatos as desired. Add the pepper and tomatoes to the oil, as well as garlic, salt, pepper, and fresh basil. Serve over the rice.

Drink pairing - definitely a good red wine. We had French table wine, but a good merlot from any country should work well too.

Finally, as much as I talk about food, I would like to bring attention to the reason I gave this blog the title of "World Cafe" and not simply "World Food." The word "cafe" evokes the image of unique setting that one does not go to out of a necessity to consume food, but rather for the ambiance and often even the company of friends or loved ones. While some people may indeed to prefer to eat by themselves, in many of the cultures I am familiar with, eating is all about the event, sometimes even more than the food itself. This is basically my convenient excuse to post photos of things other than food, as each picture of food has a story that I would like to share behind it anyway. Besides, narrating my own story through food clearly should not be very difficult for me. Such is my life.

As for the story behind this food and why I was so proud of it? This was my first time cooking more than just dessert or a snack for my boyfriend's parents. I was very nervous and trying out some new things at the same time, so I was just happy it turned out well in the end.

My boyfriend Matt P. and his parents, Marc & Carol, in our dining room area in our apartment, San Jose, CA


The next entry will feature some restaurant food as that is what I would really like to talk more about, (the food is usually more photogenic than my food) but at least I have now written an actual blog entry!