Short Blog

So, yesterday was my best friend's (Hyeong) sister's 21st birthday....and I was fortunate enough to be invited to the wonderful event. We had dinner at a place called 44 1/2 in Hell's Kitchen between 44th and 45th street and 10th avenue. It was delicious!!!!

* This is a NY strip steak sitting on top of garlic-y broccolini with onion rings and potato crisps.

It was very delicious and made me very excited to be a part of this event. I wanted to order an appetizer, but this place was very pricey...and nobody else would order two dishes, and I didn't want to feel like a fat ass....

Anyways, sorry for the short post...but there'll definitely be more longer ones in the future!

Lemon Garlic Pork Chops

Today is the weekend, which means I get to cook...for 2 weekends in a row! Yippeeee. It's sooo exciting; there's something very fulfilling and fun about cooking your own meal (s). So, if ya'll can't tell, I've been kinda on a chicken bender these past few months. Therefore, I decided that I should change it up with my protein...and cook some PORK CHOPS. *Gasp* Say it ain't so....

But I didn't venture that far off in the end, because while the meat is different, I'm cooking the dish the same way I cooked my chicken last week: Lemon Garlic Style!!!

Ingredients: 

From left to right: Oregano, Italian-Styled Bread Crumbs, GAAARLIC, lemon, pork chops, and eggs

1) First, you want to crack two eggs in a bowl along with the juice of HALF a lemon. Not a whole lemon...just a half. This'll give the dish a nice lemony taste :)

2) Beat the shit out of the egg/lemon liquid.

* notice how the liquid has become a solid yellow color. You want to strive for that....

3) Now, soak the pork chops really well in the mixture....if this process is not messy, you're not doing it correctly.

* I don't know why, but I find this picture very beautiful. Like a work of art by Leonardo DaVinci.

4) Meanwhile, in a separate container, mix 3/4 cup of the Italian-Styled Bread Crumbs with 1/2 a teaspoon of oregano.

5) Now comes the tricky part. You want to take your eggy pork chops and bread both sides of them thoroughly. This is tricky because after the first pork chop has been breaded, the bread crumb/oregano concoction becomes moist with the egg mixture from the pork chop. Therefore, when you bread the rest of your pork chops, you'll want to shake the pork chops around to really dig in and scoop up all that crumb-y goodness!

6) Now let the Pork Chops stand for 5-10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. As well, grab 3 garlic cloves and chop them in half!

7) After those 5-10 minutes have passed, pan fry the these pork chops with olive oil and those chopped garlic cloves until you achieve a light brown color on both sides...not black, just brown...because I'm racist....jkjk

8) After that's done, transfer the pork chops to an oven rack. Then place them in the oven for 35 minutes. The recipe calls for only 25 minutes, but I'm a rebel..a badass...and I think my pork chops were fatter than the ones in the recipe. Oh well, more meat = happy evan.

* After they've been browned...(not blackened)

* pork chops in the oven

9) Once the 35 minutes have elapsed, you're done! Here's the beautiful finished product:

VERDICT: I should've breaded the chicken some more...aka I should've made more breading. And I would've used way more garlic than I did today. But besides that, the dish is amazingly delicious and lemon-y. Aaaand, I've found out that I really enjoy Italian-style Breading...whatever that consists of.

Roasted Chicken Quarters With Garlic and Herbs

It's been such a long time since I've had ample time to cook on the weekend...so I was suuuuper excited when I woke up this morning and realized that from 5-7, I would be able to cook! And that's what I did. I decided to try out a new recipe:
Roasted Chicken Quarters with Garlic and Herbs!!!!  (as you can tell, there's a theme to all of the food I cook....)

Ingredients:  

From right to left: Chicken quarters, Cajun seasoning, Thyme, Garlic, 2 Lemons, and Parsley

1) Heat oven to 375°F.

2) Add lemon juice from the 2 lemons, 1/3 cup of olive oil, 1 teaspoon of parsley, thyme, and cajun seasoning, and 6 chopped garlic  cloves into a mixing bowl. Use your dextrous wrist (right or left, doesn't matter) to mix the ingredients together to form a homogenous mix.

3) Add salt and pepper to the chicken quarters. Then, toss each chicken individually in the mixture and allow the chicken to soak up this sexy marinade :P.

4) Now, once you've successfully coated all the chicken quarters, place them on a baking sheet and place it in the oven. Careful, because the oven will be super hot, and I wouldn't want you to burn yourself...

* what the chickens look like after they've been dressed up. hehe it's like they were naked, but now they're covered up...except for their legs. my chickens are skanky

* in the oven...super cozy

5) Allow the chicken to cook for about one and a half hours. Half way through the cooking time, flip the chicken onto its other side.

6) YOU'RE DONE! A delicious aroma will infiltrate your nostrils, which is how you'll know your dish is finished!

The chicken is super delicious. I'm really glad I love garlic and herbs. I will make this for my homies in the future.

Mommy visit!

My mommy came to visit me this weekend, so of course, I went to many restaurants! It was great to see her, and I really enjoyed my time I spent with her.

On Friday, we invited my girlfriend's family out to dinner at New Asian Jewels Restaurant in Flushing, New York! It was sooo delicious. It was awesome in that each dish we ordered was presented to us...and then they would take it to the back and individually serve it to each diner! I'd definitely recommend this place to anybody who's a lover of delicious food!

 * This is the fish we got. His name is Mr. Slick, and he's a red snapper. He was very cute; I was sad he had to die!

 * Scallops in an awesome Clam shell.This was a very delicious dish. And very pretty.

 * lettuce wraps with Peking Duck meat! Plus, like my previous sentence said, it contained lettuce, so it's also HEALTHY! lotsa fiber!

 * delicious soup with delicious ingredients. I have no idea what was in it...but it was delicious!

 * Goose foot, abalone, and chinese vegetables!!! It looks weird, but trust me, the weirder something looks, the more succulent it actually is.

 

* The Red Snapper. So fresh, so meaty. And there's a lot of "cong cong" on it. "Cong cong" is basically chinese for scallions and cilantro.

 

* Lobster fried noodle. Yummy for my tummy. 

 * Crab Fried Rice. It's hard to believe that I used to be scared of crab...*chomp chomp* (those are crab claws)

 * Delicious Chicken

* Dessert

On Sunday, my mom and I ate at a delicious Italian restaurant:

* Unfortunately, this is a very classy restaurant, so when my mother and I arrived, we dressed in our casual clothes (jeans, henley, sweaters...), while everybody else was in their Sunday finest. Ugh...how embarrassing.

* This was my dinner: Lamb Shank with garlic mashed potatoes and roasted vegetables. It was delicious! I'd really recommend this restaurant to anybody!

Yay for mommy coming to visit me...and yay for delicious food that is accompanied with her visits :D

John Thomas!!!

I went to Ithaca this past weekend to visit my alma mater, Cornell, with my best brosky, David Ho! So of course, I had to go to my favorite digs: JOHN THOMAS STEAKHOUSE. And yes, I went with my gf, Angela, and David! Boy did I forget how much I missed this place...as you will soon see:

* This was the appetizer. The dish with a plethora of onions is a smoked trout with onions and capers. To the right is Calamari with a Chipotle Aoli.

I must say, that smoked trout was FUCKING DELICIOUS...especially with all those onions. It was an orgasm in my mouth. And I hafta say that the calamari was one of the best I've ever had...I actually used the dipping sauce for once...if that says anything....

* This was our dinner. To the left is the Porterhouse "Lover's Special" for 2 (40 oz.), and the dish on the left is a big, juicy T-Bone steak (27 oz.)

Angela and I shared the Porterhouse Lover's Special! It was soooo fucking delicious...but it was a lot in that both Angela and I did not finish the dish. We left two pieces...but it's ok because I devoured those remaining pieces later in the evening. David also fared as poorly, in that he devoured one half of his steak before you could count to 10, but he couldn't finish the other half. In fact, I don't think he even touched it.

Our side dish of Garlic Mashed Potatoes was sooo yummy as well. You could actually taste the garlic...and I think it's one of the best garlic mashed potato dish I've ever had.

* Oh. my. god! This chocolate cake was delicious. A little powdery, but still delicious...a true testament to the master skills of the master chef!


So all in all, after eating here, I've decided that John Thomas is my 2nd favorite steakhouse in the world...only after Casa De Mama Lee. But yea, who would've thought that a steakhouse in Ithaca, New York would beat out all the fancy schmancy steakhouses in Texas???

Wooord