Happ New Year!

Happy New Year to my friends, who are the only people who actually occasionally read this blog. Haha. Oops, I haven't updated this blog for over two months. Hopefully I'll post more in 2008. I was in US for Thanksgiving and I still have a couple of restaurant reviews (fancy Chinese restaurant and a crab cake place) to write up from the trip.

Thanksgiving wasn't as awesome as it could have been because of family emergency, but it was still great spending time with my immediate family and eat my mom's cooking. We were supposed to have a big dinner with the entire extended family but because of the emergency, we stayed home and my mom improvised to provide a feast with stuff in the fridge. One of the dishes she made was salmon sushi and we also ordered a Peking duck from our favorite Chinese restaurant Golden City. The sushi and duck combo was actually a bit of an inside joke because our cousin's fiance and his mom were supposed to join the entire clan for Thanksgiving and the fiance (not Asian) freaked out his mom by telling her that Chinese people eat sushi and Peking duck for Thanksgiving. I think they ended up bringing a Cajun-style deep-fried turkey, but we didn't see it because we weren't there.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to my friends and family in US!

I do miss Thanksgiving with my family and eat my mom's food. This year my dad's side of the family is going to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. Maybe my aunt would bring the awesome (the best) Italian pastries from Lucibello. When I called my parents over the weekend, Mom already started her food preparation.

Bon Odori

On Saturday (10/7) Widhy, his family, and I went to Bon Odori that was sponsored by the Japan Club Bali. I'm assuming it's the Japanese version of Mid Autumn Festival. Normally, they have the festival outside by the beach, but because of the second Bali bombing (one of the targets was Jimbaran which is the beach), the organizers decided to have the festival at the Westin in Nusa Dua. The place was super packed with people. Lots of Japanese and surprisingly many locals. Many, many people wore kimono or yukata. I even saw two or three Muslim women wearing their head covering and yukata. Interesting thing was that most of the Japanese who married local were woman, unlike the rest of the island where the white guys are the ones who married local women. The place was packed with people, and I think the convention hall was too small to fit all these people. In the center of the hall was a dance stage where people were dancing traditional dances. Along the walls were game stations and food/drink stalls.

Many of the local Japanese restaurants were selling foods. We did get a bunch of stuff, like pannacotta (custard-like dessert that has a hint of almond and cheese flavor with a bit of strawberry sauce as topping), croquettes with some sort of stirred fried vegetables with lots of ginger taste (it was already cold), Korean style pancakes (it was cold but still tasted good), zaru soba, takoyaki, and okonomiyaki (??). Widhy wanted sushi, but because the lines were too long, he gave up. Eventually we did eat some sushi, which were bought by Wid's parents. The sushi from Take were quite good, but Hana still makes the better sushi (tuna~). When we had about 4 coupons left, Wid gave them to me to find something to use up the remaining coupons. I was going to get ice cream from the Papaya stall, but the lines were too long. I then looked down at the table, and I found "American dogs" (corn dogs) each costing 2 coupons. I snatched up two sticks and headed back. It was surprisingly good and warm. The sweetness of the fried batter complimented the salty hot dog. The best foods we tried were the zaru soba from Yakiniku Sama-sama(?) and okonomiyaki from Kai/Hai(?). I wanted candy apples but we didn't get the chance to try that. Overall we ended up a lot more stuffed that we thought we were.

The dancing was amusing to watch, but eventually they repeated the dancing and the songs that accompanied the dances. I think there were about three songs/dances. The drumming part was quite fun to watch too. We met one of Wid's parents' friend whose wife is a Japanese who makes and exports kimonos for 30,000 to 50,000 USD.

Overall, the event was pretty fun even if it was a bit clausterphobic. It was a lot like the cultural festival that Wid, Yanwen, and I went to back at University of Michigan a few years ago. What's good is that it got Wid's parents to think about going to Japan next year. We convinced them to see the cherry blossoms. :D

Full Moon and Pura's Birthday

On Saturday (10/7), according to the Balinese lunar calendar, was full moon. For some reason this meant that it's an extra auspicious day. It was also the pura's birthday so we had a big ceremony for it. From what I gathered, the ceremony was a lot like our wedding ceremony, but the chants and the offerings were different. I couldn't participate this time, so I ended up taking pictures of Wid's newphew and niece.

After the ceremony, we had suckling pig (babi guling) for lunch. Too bad this time they didn't bring the whole pig so I didn't get a nice picture of it. According to Anthony Bourdain (on the Indonesia episode of No Reservations), the Balinese makes THE best roasted pig in he world. If I remember correctly, the meat inside of the pig is taken out and cooked separately and flavored with lots of spices. Then, the meat is shoved back into the pig, and the pig is roasted slowly over a fire for hours. The pig is bathed with coconut water regularly. The end result is super crispy skin and the meat is soft and flavorful.

中秋節 and 月餅!!!

Happy Mid-Autum Festival!!! Today is the 15th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar, and people are supposed to go out tonight to look at the full moon and eat moon cakes. I already had my share of moon cakes (月餅) when I was in US. Ma made some really good moon cakes. Unfortunately, because of the dough and the fillings were a bit too soft, the cakes didn't look as good as usual (Ma said so), but it was still very tasty and much healthier than the ones found in stores. Whenever I tell my friends my mom can make moon cakes, they're all very impressed. Heck, I'm impressed by her skills too. This time she made two different types of mooncakes. One is a flaky crusted version filled with mung bean paste and a bit of 肉鬆 ("rho-song" which is dried meat floss). Another type is the Cantonese style. This version the shape of the cake comes from a mold. My mom uses the really cute one of a bunny pounding rice with a mortar and pestal. One version she made was filled with pineapple paste, and another version was filled with red bean paste and a piece of water chestnut in each cake. I'm glad she didn't make the lotus paste version because I find that one too sticky and sweet for my taste. Good times.

I can give you the whole history and the folktales/myths behind this holiday, but I won't.

Spring Roll (潤餅/春捲)

The last weekend I was at home in PA, Ma made some Taiwanese egg rolls (潤餅/春捲) for us. I actually like it a lot more than fried egg rolls because it has a bit of sweetness and it's fairly rare to get this treat. Restaurants everywhere sell fried egg rolls but if we want this other kind of egg roll, we have to wait for my mom to make it.

Ma actually made the skin for the egg roll from scratch. Traditionally, the skin is made with a thick, gooey dough, and the way you apply the dough onto the pan is to hold the glob of dough in hand and in a circular motion, you wipe pan with the dough. You can see this if you watched the film Eat Drink Man Woman. Ma modified the recipe so it's easier to apply the dough onto the pan. It's still very tasty and impressive though. She started by mixing a watery batter with a blender and then let it sit for a while. To make the skin, she brushed the batter onto a lightly oiled hot pan. Because the sheets were so thin, they cooked really fast. As soon as the sides started to pull off, she flipped it over and let the other side cook.

She toasted peanuts in the oven, and then Ba grounded the peanuts and added some sugar to make the sweeten peanut powder. While Ba was dealing with the peanuts and I was separating and folding the cooled skins, he told me that in my mom's hometown there's a shop that made the spring rolls and the staff there could work really, really quickly while cooking the sheets on multiple pans. I would love to see that and eat the product. For the filling, Ma prepared many different dishes so we can customize our own egg rolls. There were boiled bean sprouts, shredded carrots, stired fried eggs, celary, shredded chicken, etc. Instead of just using hoisin sauce straight out of the jar, she cooked the sauce a bit.

Each of us got to roll our own spring roll. Ba, sis, and bro were making ones that were so big that the filling burst out of the paper thin skins. Ma, bro's girlfriend, and Ma made smaller ones that didn't spill out as soon as we bit into it. Ba and I of course used lots peanut powder because it's so good. I don't think I'll be able to make this on my own because the skins are so delicate and I don't have the skills to do that.