A Very Lazy Man’s Oyakodon

Bonus: this post comes complete with blurry pictures!

It’s been so long since I’ve cooked for myself. It’s been even longer since I’ve had some homestyle Japanese food. Rice bowls, or don, are really easy to make, consisting of huge dollops of rice and toppings/sauce that only require a few key ingredients. My favorite dish to make at home is oyakodon, which is composed of chicken, eggs, and onions in a slightly sweet sauce. As a side note, oyako means “mother and child.” Kinda disturbing, huh? But I’m the type of person who would get hungry after dissecting cadavers for a couple hours. This dish is right up my screwed up alley.

Anywho…I was feeling especially lazy tonight, so instead of cutting up some dark chicken meat, I decided to use ground turkey right out of the package. The sauce is made from dashi stock, soy sauce, sweet rice wine (mirin), and sugar.

The taste was spot on, but the texture of the ground meat just didn’t feel right. I don’t even think I can call it an oyakodon–it’s more like a bastardized version of the dish. Next time, I’ll try to not be so lazy and actually cut up some chicken thighs for the dish. Or maybe I’ll use canned chicken breast! Ha!

Restaurant Week – Jackson’s

The post should’ve been titled “Restaurant Week – Fido’s,” but Fido’s had closed their kitchen at 6pm for the night on the first night of Restaurant Week. It’s not really the way a restaurant would want to start the week, but I guess something bad happened. Or there was really bad planning on Fido’s part. At least there were multiple restaurants on 21st Ave that were participating in Restaurant Week. And because it was there, and partly because I had been told that Jackson’s dinner was different, we decided to get dinner at Jackson’s.

The ongoing deal for the week was $20.08 for a prix fixe meal at all restaurants participating in Restaurant Week. From what I recall, other cities’ restaurant weeks involved special menus and dishes created just for the occassion to showcase the chef’s, and restaurant’s, razzle dazzle. Jackson’s special menu was just a “you pick one of our regular appetizers, one regular entree, and one regular dessert” for $20.08. It didn’t dazzle. But at least I could see how much the special saved me: six dollars. Then again, I don’t think I’d ever buy that much food in one sitting at dinner for just myself.

Now, since the actual dinner was two weeks ago, and my brain has been sufficiently stuffed with medical knowledge, my ability to recall the names of dishes will probably subpar, but I can still describe the dishes. They just won’t sound as eloquent.

I chose shrimp and corn puffs, or hushpuppies, with a sweet chili thai dip as my appetizer. It was mostly puff, a couple kernels of corn, and maybe the essence of shrimp. No real pieces of shrimp really. My friends ordered other dishes so we could get a nice sampling going: beer-cheese dip with bread and chips, grilled chicken quesadillas, and buffalo feathers (fried pieces of shredded chicken). Out of all the dishes, the beer dip was probably the best, mostly because I could actually taste the beer. And since I’m a man now, I grow facial hair, have a deep voice, and love the taste of beer. The quesadillas were a little messy; a product of overstuffage. And the chicken was just another form of fried chicken. It’s all the same to me.

For my entree, I chose barbecued meatloaf with mashed caulliflower and cheese. I didn’t really know what to expect since barbecue and meatloaf seem so opposite to me. What I got was something that looked like mushy spam with grill marks, covered with ketchup. The meatloaf had none of the complexities of its multiple ingredients, but rather tasted like meat. I couldn’t really describe it, but it was very basic. The ketchup had more complexity than the spam meatloaf. The mashed caulliflower was more like mashed potatoes. I couldn’t really taste the cheese, so there wasn’t much incentive to finish this off. The mashed caulliflower at Amerigo is far superior. Besides, at this point, I was getting stuffed.

Dessert was the real reason for coming to Jackson’s for dinner; my friend recommended their cookie dough egg rolls. I was really interested giving it the good ol’ try. It was just too bad that my stomach wasn’t as willing. Fortunately, I was able to force some cookie dough and ice cream down the food tube. It was good, but then again, I never found a problem with cookie dough and ice cream. I don’t know why they decided to fry the cookie dough in an actual wonton skin and not just a log of cookie dough by itself. Fried wonton skins had no place in that dish, and by that time in the meal, no place in my stomach. Much like the pizzookie at BJ’s, it’s good, but I, too, can go to the store and buy ice cream and another baked good and slap them together at home. Then I won’t have to pay 6 dollars. And then I can tell girls I cook!

Also of note: my friend’s $5 milkshake tasted like low-fat milk with syrup. Go to Ben and Jerry’s instead.

Another note: maybe Jackson’s would taste better if there weren’t so many people smoking on the patio.

Jackson’s Bar and Bistro

1800 21st Ave S

Nashville, TN

(615) 385-9968‎

NY Times: Taiwanese Food

The New York Times posted an article this past week on eating in Taiwan, and it made my stomach melt and my heart melt. I can’t emphasize enough how delicious food in Taiwan is. There are so many dishes and so many flavors, found in all sorts of places–from alleys to the high-rises–yet each dish I’ve had there has been ingrained into my memory; and just reading this article made my mouth salivate. Perhaps the part that made me most happy is when the author says this:

…for food is one arena where Taipei — the world’s most underrated capital city, according to Monocle magazine — blows Beijing away. Its food incorporates more influences, spans street food to haute cuisine with greater aplomb and is out and out more delicious than that of its mainland counterpart. Not to mention that its people are perhaps the most comestible-crazed Asians outside of Singapore — no excursion is complete without, say, a bag of stewed duck tongues at journey’s end.

It’s just as my dad has been telling me for years, and as I have been telling others for years: Food in Taiwan = BEST IN WORLD. I’m not even going to bother saying that it’s better than food in China because that’s a given (Chinese restaurant food gave me terrible runs for days, but Taiwanese street food has never done my stomach any harm. but I won’t delve into that). But yes, food in Taiwan is just that great! It’s tasty! It’s delicious! It’s chock full of MSG (sometimes) and savory goodness! I have tons of pictures and commentary from previous trips to Taiwan, and will post them in the future to support these claims.

The article finishes off with this definition of Taiwanese food:

Two days later, I returned to C’est Bon to ask Ms. Chuang the question I’d asked everyone in Taipei: What exactly is Taiwanese food? In response, she told me about lu rou fan. It is, perhaps, the simplest dish ever: ground pork, stewed in soy sauce and served over rice. Yet there are infinite permutations. (I once ate it three times in a single day; the best was at San Yuen Hao.)

In essence, what food boils down to is this–lu rou fan–or rather street food. How so? Street food is accessible to everyone, so now the realm of good food is not just limited to the rich who can afford $100 meals. Good food can be bought for less than a dollar. And everyone has his or her opinion on where to get the best street food. And as much as I’d like to go on and on about Taiwan, I have a test to study for. So until I have more time, here are some of my pictures from Taiwan.

Restaurant Week 2008 Wrap Up

Restaurant week is over for my friends and me. Now I can focus on studying. And eating at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and the Hospital Cafeteria for the next 10 days. All in all, I felt a little unimpressed, but I wasn’t expecting too much, but I did find a winner. My new favorite restaurant in Nashville? Acorn. They took a risk with their menu and ingredients, and kicked my taste buds in their tiny nerve endings with diverse mixes of flavors. Now if only I could find a way to make it out onto their second floor patio for dinner…

Other restaurants I visited this week included Jackson’s and Germantown Cafe. A full write up of all these restaurants will be posted after the test, but I do have to say that I was surprised (good and bad) by dinner at Jackson’s and Germantown Cafe.

Dirty Dogs, A Taste Of USC

That’s not grease glistening–it’s something heavenly. It’s the perfect nightcap to a raucous night with friends in Hollywood. It’s what warms your soul and body inside and out on a cold 60 degree night in Los Angeles. And around USC, it’s the taste of football on Saturdays before games and the victory dance after trouncing (or destroying) teams like Ohio State.

In preparation for the game, I decided to make dirty dogs to bring a taste of LA to Nashville. Oftentimes, when I’m homesick, or just sick of Southern food, I think of what I could be eating in LA; and what defines Los Angeles seems to be burgers, tacos, and DIRTY DOGS. It’s an amalgamation of American hot dogs and Mexican ingenuity. It’s loved by the populous and hated by the government. It’s something out of a book, really. The dirty dog is so simple to make–hot dog, bacon, onions, peppers–yet no one makes it at home. It belongs in the domain of street food, to be eaten moments after the scents of bacon waft into your nasal passage.

I tried the best I could–and while they were good–they were no match to the LA original. Maybe it was the lack of danger and dirt that comes from illegal immigrants cooking bacon-wrapped hotdogs on makeshift and unsanitary carts with only their bare hands. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe I wasn’t drunk enough to fully enjoy the flavors of pigs cooking in their own flesh. It does take a certain amount of nerve and inebriation to willingly pay 3 dollars for something most people would run away from while sober. I think the extra oomph in flavor comes from not knowing how I’ll fare after eating a street dog. Will I be ok or will I be on the toilet for half of the next day? That surge of adrenaline from taking the risk with street food is only inducible in that setting. Needless to say, eating these made me wish I was back in Los Angeles tailgating along Trousdale with the Trojan faithful. But until then, I’ll have to settle for this.

Nashville Restaurant Week 2008 Gallery of Calories

I’m not going to count how many calories I ingest this week, but I know it’s not a good thing when I can feel them inside my stomach after a meal.

Note: I apologize for the crappy quality of these pictures. Dining at night doesn’t offer the ideal conditions for taking pictures. I tried the best I could with whatever basic editting tools I had at my disposal, but alas, arrrgghhh.