I also got an e-mail about Learn Cooking, a British website that teaches you how to make basic stuff. I took a look at it, and I found it quite useful. I use the Joy of Cooking for basic information about how to cook new stuff, but, truth be told, I do prefer online sources.
Page 103 of 162
Just got an e-mail about another site for San Francisco restaurant reviews. It’s Foodnut.com and it focuses on the city and the Peninsula. It provides lots of pictures of the establishment and the dishes, as well as prices and photos of the menus. You can browse restaurants by type and price.
I hadn’t been to Daimo for several years, because I was disappointed in the food during my last foray there. So when Lola came to visit a few days ago, I thought we might give Daimo another chance. The results were quite mixed.
We went to Daimo for lunch, and partook of their lunch specials which include a dish of your choice (for their list), soup, salad and rice for $7 – a pretty good deal given how huge the portions are. I also ordered an appetizer of a green onion bread (I forgot what they call it) for $4 – this was a large, flaky, pancake, reminiscent texture-wise of a Malaysian roti canai – sprinkled with green onions. It was pretty good by itself, but it would have been great with some kind of dipping sauce.
Lola had the beef with tofu, and she was quite happy with the dish. It included large chunks of tofu, and very tender slices of meat in a nice, balanced sauce. She enjoyed the dish at the restaurant, and Mika enjoyed the leftovers.
I had one of the worse versions of sesame chicken I’ve ever had the displeasure to eat. There was very little chicken under the thick breading, and what was was there was more akin to chicken fat than flesh. The thick, glutinous sauce wasn’t too sweet, but had nothing going for it either. The portion was large, but I barely ate any of it. Sesame chicken is such an easy dish, that I can’t understand why they couldn’t make a more palatable version.
I had a coke, Lola had water, and lunch came to $25, including tip.
I won’t be hurrying back.
Daimo
1456 E. 14th Ave
San Leandro, Ca
510-351-8131
Open daily 11 am to 12 am
Original Review
San Leandro Restaurant Reviews
This week, I’ve made a couple of more dishes from my bible, epicurious.com. I did my usual “I have this ingredient, now let’s find a recipe that uses it”. In this case it was star anise, which I’ve had for a time, and have now used in three recipes in a week 🙂
Monday night I made Vietnamese lemongrass pork. This was a dish similar to the grilled pork served at Vietnamese restaurants. It was quite good, though not really restaurant quality. I think what was missing for me was the grill flavors – I used my George foreman instead. The pork had a subtle lemongrass taste, and the accompanying sauce was very good – but perhaps had one too many tablespoons of fish sauce. I don’t feel compel to make this dish again, but then again, I seldom make a dish more than once.
Last night I had Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise. Often times recipes are the result of evolution, cooks take a dish passed on by others, modify it somewhat, until with each modification it becomes something else. This lamb dish, however, seems to be the sort of dish that has to be specially created and experimented on by a very creative cook. It uses elements from different cuisines to come up with something original.
It was also quite good. The flavors were really different, the pepper and the fennel stood out, but were mollified by the other spices. I wouldn’t say that I was in love with it, and like the dish above, I probably won’t make it again, but I was definitely glad I made it and ate it, and do look forward to the leftovers. Mika, my 6.5 yo, liked the meat as well.
I served the lamb with an Israeli couscous/orzo/babychickpea mixture from Trader Joe’s, and I think the two went very well together.
Neither Mike nor I have been drinking much wine lately, so it was very deliberately that I opened this bottle of pinot noir to accompany dinner last night. We have the wine, we should be drinking it.
I don’t know how I obtained this bottle in the first place, but I’m definitely glad I did. Drinking it by itself, before dinner, this pinot noir was close to a perfect sipping wine. It had the right proportion of fruitiness to oak, a medium body that did not leave you looking for more, and a smooth finish. It tasted very balanced, with a limited amount of acidity. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for other bottles. This may very well be the first wine I have from Monterey county – yet another area I had dismissed as marginal to the California wine world – but I’ll definitely try to visit the winery if I’m ever in the area.
All this said, the wine didn’t go well with dinner. I made Braised Lamb Shanks with Coriander, Fennel, and Star Anise, an unusual tasting dish with bold pepper & fennel flavors, and this wine lost its smoothness, edge and oakiness in the face of such spice. I’m also not sure it’d stand up to other strong flavors. I think it’d be great with a chicken stew, some milanesas or fetuccini alfredo.
Last night I cooked one of the recipes I’d learned at my Southeast Asian cooking class the day before: beef kurmah. I thought the dish had been good, though not great, but I also wanted to give it a try – and I thought the kids might actually enjoy the mild flavors. Indeed they did, Mika even pronounced it very good, (and if Mika likes something, Camila will be willing to eat it as well), which made me quite happy.
This kurmah is interesting as the spicing is similar to those of Indian dishes, but the base is very southeast asian – and it’s based on coconut milk rather than ghee or yogurt. It’s fairly easy to make and requires no unusual ingredients, save for the star anise, which you can find in many an Asian store. Or you could skip it and add some anise or fennel seeds instead. Our teacher used a small pyramid shaped red chili, but she said she had quite a difficulty finding it. I substituted with a jalapeño. If you want it spicy use a few more.
My one problem with this curry was that by the time the beef was done, after 30 minutes, it was still very liquid. I solved this by boiling off the liquid, stirring occasionally, on high heat.
Beef Kurmah
- 8 small shallots or 4-5 big ones, chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1 Tbsp ginger, sliced
- 1 stalk lemongrass, sliced
- 1 red chili, sliced.
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 1/2 lb flank steak, cut into 1 1/2″ chunks
- 1 Tbsp. ground coriander
- 1 Tbsp. ground cumin
- 2 star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick, broken in two
- 4 cloves
- 1 can coconut milk
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 1/2 cup peanuts, ground
- salt to taste
Preparation
Put shallots, garlic, ginger, lemongrass and chili in a blender or food processor. Add water. Blend until it becomes a smooth paste. Set it aside.
Heat a wok until very hot and add the oil. Stir fry the beef in batches until brown on all sides. Remove.
Add the shallot paste and fry until most of the water is boiled off, stirring often. Add the coriander, the cumin, the anise, the cinnamon and the cloves. Cook, stirring, for another minute or two.
Return beef to the wok and add the coconut milk and broth. Mix well and cook, covered, for about 30 minutes. Uncover and boil off some of the liquid. Add the peanuts and cook, stirring, until the curry is the consistency you like. Season with salt to taste. Serve with rice.
Hawaiian restaurants do not seem to last long in San Leandro – probably because at one time there were too many of them for this market – but Alohana Hawaiian Grill has the fortune of being located near Target in the Bayfair Mall. Given how atrocious the food at Target is, I’d imagine that hungry people shopping there would not mind stopping at Alohana for some food.
We went there a couple of weeks ago, after watching a movie at Cinemark Theaters, and it was a good experience. The food was good – just as good as our Hawaiian restaurant of choice, Ono – and the portions were very generous. I can’t say much more than that, and that I’d definitely come back if I was hungry while shopping there.
Now, don’t get there expecting any kind of ambiance. The dining room is very small, this was definitely planned as a take-out place, but it’s serviceable.
Alohana Hawaiian Grill
1555 E. 14th Suite 319
San Leandro, CA
510-481-8888
http://www.alohanahawaiiangrill.com/
There will be 3 South East Asian cooking classes at San Leandro Adult School in the spring semester. They will have Vegetarian Indian/Chinese/Malaysian cooking on March 21st, Thai cooking on April 25th and Malaysian Cooking on May 9th. If there is enough interest, they could also add another class. Classes are on Saturdays from 9 AM to 1 PM, and they cost $35 each.
I’ve taken several, and I’ve enjoyed them.
A couple of weeks ago, I took a class on Sauces at the Castro Valley Adult School. We learned how to make 3 sauces, a strawberry sauce (which was just a matter of putting fresh strawberries and a bit of water in a blender and adding a little bit of sugar – what I don’t remember is if we cooked the strawberries first), a white sauce and a brown sauce. None of them were particularly difficult to make. I’d never made a brown sauce before, but I think I’d be able to do it again – if I had a recipe. I’ve made bechamel sauces in the past, and the one here – which we turned into a cheese sauce – wasn’t that different from the ones I made. In all, it was an interesting class but I don’t feel it expanded my culinary horizons too much. That said, it’d be particularly useful for beginning cooks. Personally, I’d prefer to learn how to make more complicated sauces, like aiolis, hollandaise and bearnaise. Perhaps in the next class.
Just yesterday, I took a class on South East Asian cuisine at the San Leandro Adult School. This is the third such class I take, I took a class on Malaysian cooking and another one on Southeast Asian cooking with the same teacher before.
This time we cooked Beef Kurmah from Malaysia, Singaporean Fried Noodles and Bamboo shoots with chicken from Thailand. In addition to the dishes, I also learned a couple of techniques.
One is that chopsticks are very useful for turning meat when you are browning it. It’s always a bit clumsy to do it with tongs or a fork, so I will try this method. Another hint is that the pan/oil needs to be *very* hot when you add the meat, let this cook through.
Malaysian food is often based on a paste of shallots, garlic, ginger, lemon grass and chilis. One thing I learned (that is often not in the recipes) is to add a little bit of water when you make the paste in a blender of food processor. I usually use the latter, but the teacher used the former and I wonder if it’s better. I’ll try it.
I had a pretty unsuccessful experience cooking with lemongrass a week or two ago, so now I learned to take out the tough layers of the lemongrass and then slice the rest horizontally before processing.
Finally, the teacher used a knife that looked like a cleaver. I’m thinking of looking for one to see if it works better than the knives I have (which, after a year, seem to be getting dull).
I just got this message as a response to my review of Pomegranate, a Middle Eastern restaurant in Berkeley. I haven’t been there since my review, so I’m happy to hear it’s still good 🙂
“My husband and I went to the Pomegranate restaurant last night based upon your review (that we found by googling restaurant reviews in Berkeley) and it was every bit as good as you said it was. Thanks so much for the tip. We will definitely go back (and Jerry, our waitperson, was awesome).”
Cindy and Fred
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