Simple Tomato Salsa for Tortilla Chips

Tomorrow is Independence day so many people have a day off today. It is a beginning of three days weekend! I think some people also took a day off yesterday to make it even longer. One of my neighbour also took a day off yesterday so they invited me over for a drink and snacks. 

I brought this simple tomato salsa and tortilla chips. I make this salsa all the time. This is great for a party also. My friend in California taught me this about 10 years ago and I have been making this ever since. It is so simple and so fresh. It is just tomato, cilantro and onion. Maybe some salt. That's it. I can eat a bowl full of this salsa! 

At my neighbor, we had mozzarella cheese and prosciutto which were really good. And also, I had two things I never had before. One was a drink called "Bloody Beer". You mix beer and tomato juice or bloody Mary mix and ice. 

When they told me about this drink, I was not sure about it but when I tried it, I really liked it. I was surprised. They told me that their friend from Texas told them about this drink. This might be my summer drink for this year:-)

Other thing I tried for the first time was what they called "Taralles". I did not take a picture so I don't know how to explain this but it is kind of like Italian pretzel. The one I had was a small bite size ring shaped snack which has consistency of cookie but not sweet. I had plain one and fennel one. They were so good! I could not stop eating this. 

I had a great time and was glad that they introduce me to those new drink and snack! 

So the dinner last night was something also easy to make. I used some leftover chi ken from yesterday and also leftover Ratatouille from the day before and added to some Rigatoni Pasta and sprinkle cheese over. It came out pretty good and I was able to use those leftovers. 

Anyhow, I wish everybody a happy Independence weekend!!!

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Chicken & Egg Rice Bowl (Oyako Don)

Last night, I made Chicken & Egg Rice bowl. In  Japan, they call this "Oyako-Don" "Oya" means parent and "ko" means child and "Don" means bowl. Chicken is parent and egg is child so it is Oyako don. I also added some onions. This is a easy dish but I think it is also difficult because you don't want to cook the egg to long and you have to stop at the perfect timing. I don't have that perfect timing so mine does not look so good. I need more practice on this. 

First of all, I burned onion when I was sautéing them. And my sauce mixture was too dense which made the egg darker than it should. I think I should add some water in the sauce so it will be more saucy and the color of the egg will look brighter yellow. 

It should have more sauce so the rice will be covered with sauce. Mine was rater dry. Well, I need more practice on this one. I guess... 

I also would like to add some more ingredients in it. I think the original recipe require just chicken, egg and onion but I wonder if I can add some other vegetables. Such as Shiitake Mushroom. I love mushrooms in general but my husband is not too keen on mushrooms so I did not add it this time. But I use mushroom in my cooking all the time. Mushroom pasta, mushroom risotto etc.... (Of course, my husband does not have a choice but eat them :-) I love all different kind of mushrooms. 

Earlier this year, my mother in law introduce me to this mushroom called "Morel". It was dried morel and I really liked it. It had quite strong taste. I am happy that she cooked morel for me because otherwise, I did not even know about this Mushroom! I would love to try fresh morel sometimes. 

Anyway, I also went to a farmer's market again yesterday. I bought cilantro, dill and onions. Since it is 4th of July weekend, I am thinking about making fresh salsa with cilantro to go with some BBQ. I still don't know what I am going to use the dill for. When I think about dill, I think about Swedish food. It seems like they like to use dill a lot for their food, don't you think? Only thing I can think of now with dill is Smoked Salmon with cream cheese and dill. Yum! Maybe I should run to get some Smoke Salmon for this weekend! 

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Tyler's Ultimate Ratatouille

Hello! Welcome to 7th Kitchen! 

Yesterday, I made Ratatouille with Eggplants, zucchinis, cherry tomatoes and onions. I know it does not look too appealing but it taste really good. For me, this is a perfect summer dish because you can use different kind of fresh summer vegetables and you can also eat them cold. 

I made quite a lot so I will be eating this quite often this week. You can eat this with bread, couscous or pasta. It could also be a side dish. 

I used Tyler Florence's recipe for this one. He is one of my favorite celebrity chef. I have one of his cookbook called "Tyler's Ultimate". He also has a show on Food Network called exactly same for this book is from all the recipes he shared on the show. This recipe is on Food Network'd website. You can check it out from here if you like  Tyler's Ultimate Ratatouille . 

But I love the book because the pictures are very pretty. I love collecting cookbooks in general. I just love looking at all the wonderful pictures of food! I like Tyler's because I tried a couple of his recipe and it always come out very good. If you are interested in, here is the link for his book to buy from Amazon. 

  

I have so many cookbooks. I would like to introduce some of them in this blog sometimes. 

What is your favorite cookbooks? It would be great if you can leave some comments about your favorite cookbook!  

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