I Have A Problem.

I’m lazy.

LAZY.

In college, I remember telling the pre-med advisors my one weakness was my laziness. They laughed. At my UCSD interview, I told them I was not good at keeping myself motivated (euphemism for “I’m lazy”). I didn’t get accepted.

And now, I’m getting too lazy to cook. I tried to make oyako-don this past week, and instead of using chicken, I used tofu. Cutting up and de-fatting chicken is too much work. Washing and chopping vegetables are also too much work for me. I stopped after slicing up an onion. I added in frozen peas to build up my cooking ego (more ingredients + more color = automatically better cook, right?).

I just don’t have anything to write now. It’s not writer’s block, it’s because I’m filled to the brim with sloth and gluttony (but that’s a separate issue). I’d like to elaborate on the intrinsic problems that accompany laziness and a goal of becoming a surgeon, but…I want to take a nap right now. Well, at least vegetarians would be pleased that I’m eating veggie-centric dishes. Except I killed at least 4 chick embryos to kick up the protein content of the dish. Woops.

The Lazy Man’s Semi-Vegetarian Oyakodon

Add onions, tofu, peas, soy sauce, sugar, rice wine, hon dashi, chicken broth, and water in a wok. Season everything to taste. Add eggs. Cook rice. Poof–you’ve accomplished cooking food while being lazy. Hooray?

My Life Was So Different A Week Ago

What I do now:

Study, Eat, Poop, Sleep

What I did last week (including really quick reviews!):

Went to Jason’s Deli because they are delicious, make (fake) po’boys, and remind of Sweet Tomatoes (my favorite!).

The next morning I went to Noshville for brunch with Yash. Surprisingly, lox and scrambled eggs is a tasty combo. If the creative juices were really flowing, I would’ve put the eggs, lox, latkes, and cream cheese on the bagel, and had a bagel that could’ve easily obtained ultimate-status. Note to self: do that next time.

Went to Goten for Zack’s birthday dinner. Goten is a sorry excuse for a teppanyaki restaurant; even the ones in Fresno (particularly Edo-ya) are leagues ahead in terms of show, taste, and value.

Salt water and mushrooms = soup? No, it = fail.

Hooray for volcanoes!

This chicken contains pineapple. Pineapples are filler for what could’ve been more chicken. I want meat, dammit! Also of note, the dipping sauces are ketchup and terriyaki sauce. KETCHUP. Let that sink in. I’ll remind you that this is a Japanese establishment. Ok. Time to move on. TIME FOR PICTURES OF MAH FRENZ!

They were dressed the same.

This is a cute accessory.

How can you not love this face?

The birthday boy and his pinata. It was a one-shot decapitation; this is the strength that comes with going to the gym. Weight room!

I sorta stopped remembering things at this point. Or wait…it might’ve been the liquid cocaines. Yeeah, I probably stopped remembering stuff after having four of them. I might not be able to return to Hollywood Disco–not because I could’ve been banned, but because if I go I’ll be tempted to get more liquid cocaines. And frankly, after that weekend, I need to grow up.

And so, I’ve adopted this grown-up schedule: study, eat, poop, sleep.

It feels good to be a mature adult.

Los Angeles Day 2: One Ramen To Rule Them All

I woke up Saturday with a glimmer in my eye. I knew it was going to be a great day because lunch was going to be at Santouka, which is widely known as one of the best places–if not THE BEST place–for ramen on this side of the globe. Santouka isn’t really a restaurant per se; it’s more of a stall tucked away in the corner of a food court inside of Mitsuwa, a Japanese supermarket. My fall break’s success relied largely in part on slurping ramen from Santouka; it was a ramen pilgrimage–after flying from Nashville, driving across town to West LA, navigating the supermarket’s overcrowded parking lot, and creeping for an empty seat in the food court, I was finally able to sit down and drink from a broth that was nothing short of incredible. In fact, I ordered two bowls of ramen. Who knows when I’ll visit next?

My first bowl was a large order of shio ramen. While shio means salt in Japanese, to call this soup a salt broth is a gross injustice; the flavor of the soup is an intermingling of salt, meat, and seafood, which creates one of the most complex assortment of molecules to ever elicit tastes on my tongue. I had to let the soup sit in my mouth for a moment to determine everything I was tasting. Salty, meaty, seafoody, umami, and even sweet. This is a bowl of noodles that needs no accessories. The pieces of fatty pork, fishcake, seaweed, and scallions were all an afterthought. As for the noodles: some would describe them as al dente, others would say they were Q (or QQ). As long as they weren’t soggy, it was fine for me.

Even though my stomach was bursting to me, I decided to ignore my body and order another bowl of ramen. My next visit might not be for another couple of years. So I ordered a bowl of shoyu ramen, which had a soy sauce base. The soup was also delicious, just not delicious to the max like the shio ramen. After eating, I only had two options for afternoon activities: have my stomach pumped so I wouldn’t throw up, or go take a nap. So we went to the beach and took a nap.

Traffic was at a standstill because of a large hillside brushfire. It sucked because we were stuck for a good 30 minutes, but we at least able to see helicopters dump water on the fire. Seeing it in person is way more exciting than watching on TV.

For dinner, we went to Father’s Office 2.0 in Culver City. The space accommodates a lot more than the first Father’s Office, but there are still a bunch of people there, so it’s still difficult to find a place to sit. Like at the Mitsuwa food court, we had to creep around a bit before finding a table.

Father’s Office is known for having one of the nation’s best burgers. There aren’t any gimmicks like wagyu or kobe beef, or truffles, or foie gras, or gold flakes; it’s aged beef, caramelized onions, arugula, and bleu cheese. Each ingredient added a different dimension of taste to the palate. In short: get in my belly.

The sweet potato fries, like all sweet potato fries, were crunchy morsels of sweet, starchy goodness. You can never go wrong ordering sweet potato fries. The beer was also good. I’m not a beer connesseur–I don’t know how to order anything other than a Blue Moon–so seeing the selection of over 100 beers was a quite intimidating. My friends ordered the beers, and I drank them. That’s how I usually order alcohol. How have I made it this far without getting roofied? It’s probably because I’m not a very noteworthy conquest.

Spam Musubi

Dear Hawaii, how can I ever thank you enough? You’ve given so much to the mainland; you gave us Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Magnum P.I., surfing, sea turtles, hula girls, plate lunches, and spam musubis, with extra emphasis on the last two items. In fact, I want to emphasize Hawaiian food in general. It’s the greatest cuisine to ever grace the West Coast, and hopefully it makes its way east. How do you qualify a cuisine that’s richly influenced by Japanese, Chinese, and Korean cuisine, emphasizes meat in all its glorious forms–fried, barbecued, roasted–and considers a complete meal (called the plate lunch) to be comprised of a large portion of meat, a scoop of rice, and a salad that’s really macaroni salad (no fibrous, leafy vegetable matter at all!)? Words can’t describe it, but if I were to compare it to something we know here, it would be to Southern cuisine, where complete meals are also composed of meat, potatoes, and biscuits. No need for any vegetable. Maybe there will be a fruit pie for dessert, but that won’t yield very many nutrients.

I miss plate lunches, and all the choices of meat I can get. However, I can make spam musubis in my own apartment, and conjure up my own little taste of Hawaii. Spam musubis are ridiculously easy to make if you’ve ever cooked Asian food before. Actually, if you’ve even made rice before, then you’ve already made half the dish! TOTALLY RADICAL! All you need is Spam, rice, nori (seaweed) sheets, furikake (optional rice seasoning), sugar, and soy sauce.

Slice up some spam and fry it in a pan. After a minute or two, add the sugar and soy sauce mix and let the meat soak up the juices. After the meat’s done cooking, take it off the stove, and in the meantime, take some rice and mold it into a rectangular bed for the spam slice. Add some rice seasoning to the top, and then place a slice of spam on top of it all. Wrap the entire thing in seaweed, and SHABAM! You have a handful of meaty and ricey goodness, that’s found all over Hawaii. Eat it on the go, or at home, or eat it like I do: while reading food blogs. Yes, I like to maximize my grastronomic exposure.

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!

Alpha Bakery

It was a gut feeling. Or it was hunger. But I knew that I was getting closer to something tasty. As I drove west from Nashville, Music City USA, the skyscrapers of downtown disappeared and were replaced by lush, green hills. The weather was humid. And, what do you know, there were vendors selling fruit from their trucks on the side of the road! It was a scene straight out of Taiwan, also known as the land of deliciousness.

Far from the country music, the barbecue, the fried chicken, Alpha Bakery resides in the middle of a vast expense of strip malls. Underneath its off-white and slightly worn exterior is a bakery that serves some of the finest baked goodies I’ve had in Nashville (besides biscuits from Loveless). While many of the items are European in origin, there is a considerable Japanese influence. It’s apparent when you first open the door and a sweet odor fills your airways, when you see the Japanese magazines by the door, and when you see the Japanese candies and drinks by the register, but it’s not so apparent when you look at the goodies they offer. This only becomes apparent after taking the first soft and chewy bite of any of their buns; it’s sweet, but not too sweet–a hallmark of Asian-European pastries. I don’t really know why there’s an Asian bakery in the middle of Tennessee, but I’d rather eat now and ask questions later.

It takes a bit of driving to get to Alpha Bakery, so it’s best to stock up when you go. I came away with enough bread for a week or two, given that it doesn’t mold too fast: a loaf of glazed alpha fan, two curry pans, a melon pan, a cream pan, and a slice of cheesecake.

The alpha fan I bought was glazed with a light apricot sauce. I couldn’t really taste it, but it’s probably because I loaded up each toasted slice with honey-sweet peach preserves from Loveless. The outside has the flaky texture of a croissant, and its insides are equally croissant-y and airy, but are also dense enough to support spreads. Not quite the Asian-style toast I’m used to, but it’s a solid purchase that won’t disappoint. 

The melon pan is aptly named because it looks like a melon, not because it tastes like one. The outside crust is a bit crispy–from both the baking process and some sugar granules–but the inside is doughy and a little sweet. Microwaving it for 10 seconds to make it soft and warm may make my belly even happier. 

The cream bun is soft and has the same soft and doughy texture, but is filled with a thick egg-tasting cream. It reminds me of Chinese or Portuguese egg tart filling in a bun. Also quite good if microwaved. 

The curry pan is covered in what I think is panko flakes and filled with a curried beef mixture. The filling doesn’t quite taste like Japanese curry, which usually has some touches of sweetness from honey or fruit; it actually tastes like curry-spiced meat. The outside is also extremely greasy for something that looked baked. It’s good, but the prospect of eating something that looks more oily than fried chicken, but not as tasty, is just a tad disturbing. 

The cheesecake was overpriced for such a small price. I think it was supposed to be New York cheesecake, but I don’t like the stiffness in New York style cheesecakes. It also wasn’t as sweet as I expected to be but that can be good or bad, depending on your preference. This left me with a “Meh.” 

It’s getting to that time in the school year when I gotta move back into the library so I won’t be able to visit Alpha Bakery as often, but that just means that I’ll have to stock up even more when I do get the opportunity to visit.

Alpha Bakery

7120 Highway 70 S

Nashville, TN 

(615) 673-8168