Its been a while...

Yes, It has been a while since I posted last time. A lot of things happened since then.
Because of the Hurricane Sandy which hit East Coast, our house was flooded and we lost lots of stuff...

I knew the Hurricane is supposed to be a big one but I never thought it will change our life like this.

Well, good thing is we are alive and healthy.

We can not go back to our house and who knows how long it will take to everything go back to normal.

It was heartbreaking to see our house and our city destroyed like that. I cried. I miss my city, my house and my neighbors and friends.

But life has to go on and we have to move forward. We found a new apartment and we are moving in very soon. It will be a bit away from where we used to live but it is not too far away so I can visit our friends sometimes.

It was a very difficult time for us but at the same time, we received so many support from our friends and family. Everybody is trying to help each other and it is heartwarming to see this.

So, that was why I hadn't updated my blog for a while.

Don't worry, after I moved to a new place and settled in a little bit, I will start cooking a lot and posting more pictures.

One thing I am so excited about is that I finally bought Le Creuset Dutch Oven!! It is Oval and 6.75qt.
(I know, I shouldn't be buying these things when I don't even have a place to live but it was such a great deal and I couldn't pass it. Plus, I wanted to have this for a long long time anyways so I guess it is a early Christmas gift for me!)

Anyways, I am looking forward to cooking more stuff with this Dutch Oven. I hope I can update my blog sometime soon with new dish I made :-)

Ellie Krieger's (again??) New Classic Meatlof

I know. I have been cooking from this book very often and quite obsessively but I think this post will be the last one from this book at least for a little while.

This time, I made meatloaf from her book. This meatloaf if a healthier version of regular meatloaf and it has lots of veggies and some oats.

Click here for her recipe. 

It was good but was not great. I think the reason why I didn't love it was because I used 98% fat free ground beef. The recipe called for 90% and higher and I chose to use 98% fat free to be extra healthy.

However, I think this decision backfired me. Since there was not much fat in it, it came out little dry.

It tasted really good and I love the fact that it had lots of vegetables in it so if I used 90% fat free meat, it should have been juicier and better.

The sauce was quite rich and yummy.

Even though I didn't love this meatloaf, my son loved it and he ate at lot of them. He ate it with pasta and also with rice.

This is a great way for kids to eat vegetable without even knowing.

For the side, I made roasted potatoes. Just simple potatoes with salt, pepper and olive oil.

I don't make meatloaf too often but next time I make it, I will use meat with more fat. That was the lesson I learned.

Anyways, I am running out of food pictures to post. My camera is in repair right now. It has been more than two weeks but has not been fixed yet.

These photos are from few weeks ago and I have been cooking some fantastic stuff since then but I don't have a camera to capture those fantastic food :-)

I hope we will get our camera back soon because we are having Halloween party with all my mom friends and also also I am going to take my son for trick or treat on the day of halloween.

I need my CAMERA!!!

The book I used for this meatloaf is this.

Ellie Kreger's Autumn Vegetable Curry

So, I have been cooking from this Ellie Kreger's cookbook lately and this is another recipe from her. This is called Autumn Vegetable Curry. This has tons of vegetable in it and healthy yet tasty.

Well, it has some curry power and coconut milk. In the recipe, it required only 1 cup of light coconut milk but since I love coconut milk, I just used the whole can. (plus, it was not light) so I think mine is little bit richer than her original recipe.

Here is the link for her Autumn Vegetable Curry recipe. 

My husband and my son loved it and I was also very happy with it. I cook my son's separately and made it less spicy for him. I was not sure if he would like all these vegetables but since it is cooked well and soft, he didn't mind eating all these vegetables. He even liked chick peas!

I think this is a great way for you and your family to eat more vegetables. I think when I make something with curry, I and my husband always like it. We love curries!

I also made another dessert from her cookbook. This time, Peanut butter cookies!

This one has some whole wheat flour so they are little bit healthier than regular peanut butter cookies. We don't give much sweet to my son yet (also not yet peanut butter) so he didn't eat these but my husband loved them. For some reason, I didn't expect him to love it so much so I was a bit surprised.

When I was watching her show on FoodNetwork, I didn't find any recipes which I wanted to try so I am quite surprised to find so many recipes which I wanted to try and liked from her cookbook.

When I borrowed it from the library, I had no expectations but it sure was a great cookbook. I tried many new things from this book.

Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing

Our friend from California came to visit us on Sunday and I made this cake which I found in a baking book I borrowed from library.

The cake is called Maple Pecan Chiffon Cake with Brown Butter Icing.

And the book is called "Vintage Cakes" by Julie Richardson

I tried to make Chiffon cake before and it did not come out as I hoped so I was a bit nervous about making this cake but this one cake out wonderful.

The cake has maple syrup and toasted chopped pecan and icing have browned butter and vanilla.

In Japan, cake normally have whipped cream instead of icing or frosting and when I first move to the U.S., I didn't like icing or frosting but after living here for 15 years, I started to like icing and frosting.

This icing is very rich and tasty and goes great with maple pecan flavor.

This is how the cake looked before icing.

This is how it looks when you cut it.

This is a slice.

Our friend liked the cake and so did I and my husband. i am glad it came out well.

This book has many recipes which I would like to try. It also explains some history behind those cakes and it is very interesting to just read those little stories.

Since it is getting cooler now, I would love to bake more cakes but if I keep baking those huge cakes and keep eating, my weight will definitely increase. This cake was also very big so I shared some with my neighbor. It is great to have neighbors who like sweets :-)

By the way, I am carrying a pedometer with me lately wherever I go. It is quite popular device in Japan. I always had this pedometer but I just started to use it recently. In Japan, we say that recommended steps a day is 10,000. However average steps a day is not eve near 10,000.

I read that an average Japanese woman take 6,000 steps a day. I am not even take 6,000 a day. I need to walk more.

Anyways, my yoga class started again for the fall season and I am enjoying my yoga class.

Sometimes, I do my yoga posed at home to release some tension and my 20 months old son try to copy me and do some yoga poses with me. It is super cute!

Well, I would love to be a better baker but I am also afraid that practicing baking skills make me gain weight. I guess our neighbors has to eat lots of cakes for me :-)

Tofu and Chicken Hamburg

There is this popular cookbook in Japan which is published by a company called Tanita. Tanita is a company who sell weight scale which can also measure your body fat. This scale from Tanita is very popular in Japan and I actually have one myself.

And this company has a cafeteria which offer healthy lunch for its employees since their goal as a company is to promote healthy life style and maintain healthy weight and body fat and they wanted to start promoting this starting with their own employees.

This cafeteria became popular and they decided to publish a cookbook to promote healthy food for the public and this cookbook became one of the best selling cookbook in Japan last year.

I was very curious about this book so when my sister came to visit me last year, I asked her to bring one copy for me.

To be honest, I haven't used this book at all till now. Partly because many of the ingredients are not easy to obtain from my local supermarket.

However I found one recipe which I can make from what I have and what I can get from regular supermarket so I decided to give it a try after more than a year of looking at this book.

The dish I tried is Tofu Hamburg. Hamburg is a very popular dish in Japan. It is with onion and ground beef normally but this one is with Tofu and ground chicken. It is also have this seaweed called Hijiki.

The sauce is with ginger and sugar and soy sauce and some other stuff. I think I measured sugar wrong since it was really sweet but it tasted good.

My husband and my son loved it. My son had it without any sauce but he loved it.

The rice is half white and half brown. I thought my son wouldn't like it but actually he didn't mind at all. Sometimes, we think that children don't like certain things but they might surprised you by liking it. So I decided to let my son try things even when I think he wouldn't like it.

Anyways. this is a great healthy meal and I am sure I will be making this again. Hijiki is not something which you can get from a regular American supermarket but this is dried seaweed so I buy them when I go to Japanese store and I keep them in my pantry. It is very healthy food and I like it.

I baked broccoli in the oven for the side dish. Lately, I am trying to eat more vegetables since I feel like I don't eat enough vegetables.

Ellie Krieger's Sesame Chicken & Mini Cheese Cake

Using this book again, I made Sesame Chicken and Mini Cheese Cake! Sesame Chicken is my husbands' favorite dish when we order in Chinese food. Normally, it is battered and fried and coated with sweet and sour sauce with lots of sesame. This Ellie Krieger's version is not deep fried but more like stir fried which makes this dish little bit healthier and lighter.

I cooked broccoli too long so the color of broccoli is not great but this sesame chicken was great. It is not exactly like the sesame chicken we order from Chinese restaurant but this one is good substitute when you make it at home. You don't have to deep fry your chicken and it was quite tasty. The sauce has quite strong taste so I end up eating lots of rice....

I like it with lots of sesame and lots of green onions. 

 Also, I tried making this mini cheese cake. It is cupcake size and perfect for little dessert. 

However, when I dissolved gelatine powder, I guess I didn't dissolve it well so when we ate the cheesecake, there were chunks of gelatine in it. It was not pleasant texture and we couldn't eat it. 

It tasted pretty good so if you follow the recipe well and if you dissolve gelatine well, the result must have been much much better. Oh well, I will be more careful next time.....

Even though it did not come out well I think it is a great idea to have such a small cupcake size mini cheese cakes. It looked really cute. I think I should try this again.....

Ellie Krieger's Broiled Buffalo Wings & Broccoli Cheddar Soup

I borrowed another cookbook from the library and made these two dishes from the book I borrowed.

The book is called "Comfort Food Fix" by Ellie Krieger

She used to have a show on Food Network. She always cook something healthy and good for you. I think she is a nutritionist and have a few cook book published. 

I normally don't look at cook books which are focused on healthy food but this one is called Comfort Food Fix and she tried to recreate all the comfort food in a healthier way. I was interested so I borrowed it and I found quite a few things which I wanted to try out. 

One of them was Broiled Buffalo Wings. I love Buffalo chicken flavor but I don't normally make Buffalo wings at home since I don't want to fry them. But this is broiled and you don't have to fry them. I was a bit skeptical but wanted to give it a try. 

First, she ask you to boil the chicken. I liked this idea. Actually, one of my friend did this for BBQ and I really liked the idea of boiling chicken (especially skin on and bone in ) before broiling them. It will take some of the excess fat and also you don't have to worry about the chicken being undercooked inside. 

Anyway, then broil the chicken in broiler until crisp and brown. 

I liked this and my husband also liked this. It is not greasy since it is just broiled and still very tasty. I also made Blue Cheese Dip from the book. I need Blue Cheese Dip when I eat Buffalo Chicken! 

Since I wanted to eat some vegetables also. I made Broccoli Cheddar Soup from the book. 

This was also great. In the recipe, it asked to use low-fat milk but I didn't have low-fat milk at home so I just used regular milk. Also I didn't have enough Cheddar Cheese so I used a lot less Cheddar Cheese than the recipe required but it came out great! 

I pour this Broccoli Cheddar Soup over rice and gave it to my son and he loved it also. I think he eats a lot more Broccoli this way. 

If you are interested in cooking healthier but still want to eat those comfort foods, this is a book to go. I was quite impressed how she made them very tasty yet more healthy. I am planning to try her Sesame Chicken recipe tonight. I will let you guys know how it turned out! 

Grilled Salmon Salad with Quinoa and Yogurt sauce

It has been quite nice temperature here in NY lately. I can definitely feel the fall approaching but not too cold to wear short sleeves. This weather reminds me of areas in California where I used to live.

I loved the weather in California. It was dry and warm all year around but one thing I realized after I moved to NY is that you appreciate summer more and also you can actually enjoy four different seasons in a year. I like warm weather and I don't like cold weather but at the same time, I kind of enjoy   a little bit cold fall night when I feel like baking or cooking something hearty.

Anyhow, I always buy salmon from Costco and this is also from Costco salmon. I froze half of it and used the other half for this salad. This is definitely a summer dish. I made this dish on Sunday.

Grilled Salmon Salad with quinoa and yogurt sauce!

The salad itself is very simple with romain lettuce, cucumber and corn with some store bought Caesar dressing.

On top of that, I added some quinoa with cilantro, raisons, pine nuts and garlic. This is something my friends told me about and I made it once before. The recipe is from Food Network. Here is the link for the recipe if you are interested. 

For salmon, I just sprinkle salt and pepper then sautéed with olive oil in a pan 6 mins each side.

Then, I made this yogurt sauce which is with greek yogurt, chopped cilantro, grated garlic and lime juice plus salt and pepper.

My husband absolutely loved this salad and especially the yogurt sauce. He was so impressed how I came up with this sauce but I have seen yogurt sauce with salmon in many places and I don't think it is nothing new but he was quite happy. Normally, yogurt sauce for salmon has dill but I only had cilantro so I used cilantro for both quinoa and yogurt sauce. For someone like us who love cilantro, this was great.

This is a great light dinner for hot night. It is super easy and healthy and delicious.

Enjoy!

Perfect for Summer Time "Lemon Chicken"

This is something I made before I go on a trip but it was really delicious so I wanted to post it before I forget.

I used a recipe from one of the blog which I love. The blog is called "Simply Recipes" and this blog has so many amazing recipes and photos. I tried some of the recipe from this blog and everything tasted wonderful. If you are interested in the blog and this lemon chicken recipe, click here to go to "Simply Recipes". 

This is oven baked lemon chicken recipe. It was very juicy and tasty. This recipe uses skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs. I like using chicken thigh for my cooking because it is much cheaper than chicken breast and it normally comes out very juicy.

My husband loves lemon or lime so I tend to look for lemony recipe especially in summer. This was perfect chicken dish for summer. Using oven was a challenge for me (since it was very hot that day and I normally try not to have AC on) but it was worth.

My husband and my son loved it. This is something I would love to make over and over.

It was nice and sunny that day so we ate outside. I love eating outside. In summer if the weather is nice, we normally eat dinner outside.

However there is one problem. This summer there were so many mosquito around and I always got bitten at least 5 times during dinner. One time, I was outside for 5mins and I got 8 mosquito bites. I always get lots of mosquito bite but this summer was just out of control. I had mosquito repellent band on my both wrist and both ankles but those didn't work.

Maybe it is my blood type which attract mosquito but my husband doesn't get mosquito bite like I do.

My son get them sometimes but a few days ago, he got mosquito bite right on his eye lid and it got swollen so badly it made him look like a beaten up boxer. I felt so bad but it seemed like it was not bothering him too much. Thankfully, it went away after one day but it did not look good.

I would love for my son to play outside and I don't want to spray mosquito repellent on him but at the same time, I don't want him to get too many mosquito bite.... Oh well, let's hope it is not going to be bad next year.

Meanwhile, if you know any natural way to repel mosquito, let me know!

Germany and Croatia Trip

Hello! It has been a while since my last post. We had a family vacation and went to Germany and Croatia. Germany is where my husband is from so we went to visit his parents and his grandmother (my son's grandparents and great grandmother.) Croatia was where my friends had their wedding so we went there to attend the wedding.

There are not so many food pictures from this trip which I realized after I came back. We ate great food while we are on vacation but we are taking many pictures of our son and forgot to take food pictures.... But there are some so I would like to post them here.

First stop was in Germany to see my husband's grandmother (my son's great grandmother). She is 90 years old and very strong and eats well and drink well. She used to own a restaurant so she is a great cook.

She loves my son and was very happy to see him. She played soccer with my son in her garden. My son loved her garden. He ate grapes and tomatoes from her garden and picked some flowers and run around.

And this is oma's famous Schnitzel. She makes this dish for us every time we are there because we love oma's Schnitzel so much. It always accompanied by pan roasted potatoes.

We also had some tomatoes from her garden. Sweet and delicious!

Also, she made something called "Dumpf Noodle"(I am not sure about the spelling). This is Pan fried bread with sweet vanilla sauce dip. My husband loves this dish. I also love the combination of somewhat salty bread with sweet vanilla sauce.

We met up with my husband's cousin and his wife for dinner also. We went to this Italian restaurant which we always go when we visit them. This is my favorite Italian restaurant in Germany!

First, we had some appetizer. My favorite is grilled octopus!

My dish was scampi curry cream sauce pasta. I think this curry cream sauce is quite popular in Germany. I see them often in many restaurants. I love it!

My husband ordered rolled lasagna. I love the idea. It was also really good.

After having great days with Oma and relatives, we flew to Croatia to attend my friends wedding.
Both of us had never been to Croatia before. It is always exciting to visit a new country.

First, we were going to pick up a rental car at the airport but the car was not ready so we had to wait for a few hours at the airport. Finally, the car was ready and we start driving then realized that we didn't have the navigation system which we ordered so we went back to the airport and got the navigation system.

When we went back there, we met two other friends who are also attending the wedding. It was funny to see them there. They were also renting a car and trying to get to their hotel. We talked a bit and off we went to hit the road.

The problem was that the navigation system kept telling lie to us. It took us to completely different place first. We reset the navigation system and tried again. Seemed like it was working this time. To get to where we were staying, it took us about two hours and the navigation system took us to a mountain road. Our son got sick and threw up in the car. We changed him and clean and rest a little bit but we still had to drive a bit more. I felt bad for my son and fortunately he went to sleep after that.

We stayed in a town called Gradac. It was a touristic town by the beach. Everyone was walking along the beach at night having fun. It was very nice small town.

The wedding was great. I stay up till 4:00am and partied. It has been a while since I partied.

In Croatia, we had some meat and seafood. Our favorite was Cevapcici. It is finger size grilled ground meat with some spices. It was so good that we ate this almost every day while we were there. Unfortunately I didn't take picture of this dish....

We stayed in a hotel called "Marco Polo". It was a nice small hotel and we had a dinner at this restaurant last night of our stay.

For appetizer, we had tomato risotto and squid ink risotto. I loved squid ink risotto.

For main course, I had a fish plate. It was more like for two people but the fish were fresh and tasted really good. Also the shrimp was sweet and excellent!!

My husband had something like shrimp rolled fish with Champaign cream sauce. It was good but the Champaign sauce was quite strong. If it was strong for me, I can not imagine how it felt for my husband since he doesn't drink :-)

Anyway, the dinner was great and the service was also great. My son played with some stones in a flower pot.

After Croatia, we went to visit my husband's parents for about 10 days.  They were so happy to see us and their grandson. It was very nice to see how they play with my son and how they talk to him.

We met up with some friends also and had a great time. The weather was great and we enjoy our stay there.

The night before we left, my uncle and aunt came to Germany from Japan to attend a tour of Germany. It was perfect timing because we were still there. So we met up with them for dinner.

My husband's parents have met them in Japan also so they knew each other.

It was just for a few hours but it was great to see them in Germany. They also love my son and played nicely with him. It is like my son have three sets of grandparents. He is a lucky guy :-)

Oh, this is what my mother in law made for us. It is with raspberry, blueberry and blackberry with vanilla ice cream and whipped cream. This is easy but taste so good! I learned how to make it so I will post the recipe when I make it. Like always, my mother in law is great at presentation. Look how beautiful this dish is!!

So, now we are back to NY settling down again. I missed NY and my neighbor and friends. Everybody was so happy to see us back. It was very nice. So, I am going to start cooking again. Looking forward to try some new things which I learned in Germany :-)

Lemon Pound Cake Again!

Pound Cake has a special place in my heart. My mom always made pound cake so when I eat pound cake, my memories of childhood come back to me. Well actually, when I smell pound cake in the oven, I alway feel at home filled with happiness with my family.

Anyways, if you are interested in my mom's pound cake recipe, click here. It is super easy recipe and always delicious.

But lately, I am making lemon pound cake more. One of the reason is lemon flavor is more refreshing in summer. Other reasons are my husband and my new bundt pan. (my husband loves lemon and I like making lemon glazing for my bundt cake.)

For this lemon pound cake, I use this recipe. Click here for the recipe from Land O Lake website.

This time, glaze was better and it looks prettier. Actually, my husband drizzle the glaze this time.

Last time, the glaze was bit too loose and it didn't come out as pretty as this time. If you are interested in how it looked my last lemon pound cake, click here.  You will find the picture of lemon pound cake almost at the end of the post.

This time it looked better and the cake was moist and very good. Since this is a huge cake, we gave some to our neighbor and my husband also brought some to his office.

It is quite hot right now in NY so I don't bake too much lately but if I am baking something, I tend to bake something with lemon or lime which is very refreshing in how summer weather!

Easy and Delicious Japanese Beef Bowl

This dish is something I make when I don't have much in my fridge or when I don't have desire to cook something complicated. This is super easy yet very delicious dish which my husband and my son love.

When I go to Japanese grocery store, I usually buy one or two package of very thinly sliced beef and freeze them for later use. I find it difficult to get this kind of thin sliced beef in the U.S. sometimes. But, I have seen them in Trader Joe's and some other place. I think if you go to Korean grocery store, they have these also. It is like beef for Philly Cheese Stake. The one I normally buy has some fat on them and I think this is the key for great beef bowl.

Anyways, it is super easy and I just make this without measuring anything but I thought maybe someone will be interested for this recipe so here I go.

Japanese Beef Bowl (For 3~4 people)
Thinly Sliced Beef   about 0.8 pound
Onions                      2
Ginger                      about 1~2 table spoons (Chopped or julienned)
Vegetable Oil          1 Table Spoon
Soy Sauce               2 Table Spoons
Sake                        2 Table Spoons
Mirin                       2 Table Spoons
Sugar                      1~2 tea spoons
Cooked Rice          about 3 cups (before cooking)
Picked red ginger   (optional)

1, First of all, slice onions and chopp or julienne ginger)

2, Add oil into the pan and fry onion. When it is softened, add ginger and fry little more.

3. Then, add meat and Sake.

4. When the meat is cooked through, add soy sauce, mirin and sugar. Bring to a boil and turn the heat off.

5. Add rice into a bowl and transfer some of the meat and sauce.

6, Add picked red ginger on top and serve.

My husband and I love ginger so I normally add lots of them in and also add picked ginger on top but if you don't like ginger, you can just add a little bit.

This is a super easy dish which taste really good. This is kind of a Japanese fast food. You will find some beef bowl fast food chains in Japan. They are cheap and good!

If you can find thinly sliced fatty beef, you should try this dish!

Ricotta Cheesecake

It has been quite hot these last few days in NY but how is everybody doing? Mausi family is doing great. Enjoying summer!!

Anyway, the other day we went to this Italian deli/pizzeria close to our place. This place has really good pizza and they also make fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheese.

We had small pizza (which is big) with mushroom and onion. What I love about this pizza is the crust is thin. I like thin crust pizza!

At deli section, they have different kind of fresh meat and cheese. One of my neighbor told me that their Mozzarella cheese and Ricotta cheese are really good so I bought those cheese.

I didn't take pictures of these cheese but we had Mozzarella for salad. Ricotta cheese was creamy and sweet and I could just eat it as is but since we had lots of them, I decided to make ricotta cheesecake.

This cake is not too sweet and have lots of ricotta and egg with little bit of flour.

The recipe I used was the one I found in All Recipes. Click here if you would like to jump to the recipe. 

It said Sicilian ricotta cheesecake so the recipe muse be from Sicily. This is very different from American cheesecake. It was light and bit dry. My husband loved it. I liked it but I think I prefer something little bit sweeter and creamer.

It was very easy to make and tasted great. Maybe I will add little bit more sugar next time ;-)

It was really hot when I baked this cake so we couldn't stay in the house. My son and I played in front of the house while the cake is baked.

I think cheesecake is great for summer because you can eat it cool!

Well, if you like light cheesecake, try this one!

Tyler Florence's Chicken Francese

It had been really hot here in NY for the past few days and it had been quite difficult to motivate myself to cook in this heat. It is nice and cool today so I think my motivation for cooking is back.

Anyway, so I had been trying to cook something which require less cooking time on stove or oven. I made this chicken francese which doesn't require standing in front of the stove for a long time.

This is quite an easy yet delicious dish using chicken breast. You just dredge chicken in flour and egg and fry them. Then, cook lemon with wine and put the chicken back to the lemon sauce. I added mushroom since I had mushroom at home but the recipe did not require mushroom.

Lately, I get lots of cooking ideas from Pinterest. I love looking at food pictures on pinterest. Pinterest is something like a online scrapbook which you can pin your favorite pics and organize them by categories. If you haven't try it and are interested in, click here to go to pinterest site.

Anyways, this is one of the dish I found in pinterest. I went to the original site of the pic and found out that the recipe was originally from Tyler Florence who is my favorite! So here, I link to Food Network site for his Chicken Fracese recipe. Click here for the recipe. 

I also found out that there are some people out there who pinned some pictures from my site to their pinterest board because they liked it! I was so happy to find out that there are some people who like it enough to pin my photos to their board. So, if any of you who like any of my picture on my site, you are more than welcomed to pin it to the pinterest board!!! Thank you for those who did already :-)

Well, back to Chicken Francese. The recipe asks you to pound the chicken to make it thinner. This resulted in the huge Chicken Francese as you can see in my pic.

I think you can easily feed three people with two chicken breast. Anyway, my husband loved this dish since he loves anything lemon. This is a great summer dish because of the fresh lemon sauce!

If you like lemon, it is worth trying this dish! Enjoy :-)

Tostones with chicken & Tres Leche Cake

About a month ago, we had another cooking playdate. This time, I asked one of the moms who is from Columbia to make this tostones with chicken which she made once and brought them to us last Thanksgiving. I loved it and I always wanted to learn how she made it :-)

As you might remember from the post in 2009, I took a Cuban cooking class once with my husband and learned how to make Tostones. (Click here for that post of Cuban cooking class)

Tostones is double fried plantain. My husband and I love them so after we took the class, we invited our landlord and made those things we learned in the class for them. (Click here for that post)

So we know how to make Tostones. But last Thanksgiving, my friend brought this Tostones with chicken on it and it was amazing. This is the Tostones with chicken.

First, we peeled Plantain and cut them into pieces.

Then we fry plantains.

Once they are cooked, take them out and let it cool a little bit then smash them to make them flat. My friend had a special tool for this so it was easy to do this job. Last time when my husband and I made this at home, we used meat pounder...

Then, we soak plantain in garlic salt water for a second. Then fry them again.

Meanwhile, cut onions and cook them.

Toss tomato sauce in.

Then add shredded cooked chicken. My friend told me she normally cook the chicken herself but I was too lazy so I bought a whole roasted chicken and shredded. Of corse I used skin and bones to make homemade chicken broth. (Click here for how to make homemade chicken stock)

On fried Tostones, place some chicken mixture and cover with cheese. We used parmesan cheese and Mozzarella cheese. Then throw them in the oven for about 10mins until the cheese melt. (Well, the below picture doesn't have cheese because I forgot to take pic with the cheese before I put in the oven. )

This is how it came out. Yummy!!!!

All the moms loved it including me. This is great dish to bring for potluck or as an appetizer when you have a party. It is quite a work but it definitely worth the effort.

For dessert, one of the moms brought Tres Leche Cake. This was also so good! She learned how to make this from her relatives in Venezuela. I have never had this before but it was so good!

It is especially good when you drizzle lots of these milky syrup on the cake. It is moist and Yummy!!!

I need this make this myself also! There are so many thing I would love to try making!

Once again, our cooking playdate was a great success!!! I love having these Yummy Playdates!!!