Valentine's Day Dinner 2012

Well, It has been a while already since Valentine's day but I would like to share with you guys what we had for this year's Valentine's dinner.

Since we have a baby and he goes to bed around 8:00pm every night. It is quite difficult for us to eat out at night. So the year's Valentine's day, I made a special dinner for two.

The dinner part went quite well but the dessert was not so much of a success. Well, it tasted good.

For dinner, I made Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Apricot glaze.

Pork Tenderloin is something I always wanted to try but never really had so I thought it will be a perfect dish to make. I found this recipe on All Recipe web site. Here is the recipe from All Recipe web site.

It tasted really really good. I thought roasting pork tenderloin will be a lot of work but it was not too difficult so I know I will be making this again! This recipe is spicy and sweet. You rub pork with dried spices before and then glaze with apricot glaze and roast.

Well, actually, in the recipe, they grill the pork and then glaze. But I didn't want to grill so I just add half of the glaze and roasted in the oven. Also, the recipe called 1 table spoon of cilantro but my husband and I love cilantro so I added like one cup of cilantro. It was great!

This is how it looked before putting in the oven. Well, this picture has only a little bit of glaze but I added a lot more before putting it in the oven.

Then, this was how it looked after roasting.

For side dish, I made green chili rice and boiled broccoli.
Here is the green chili rice.

Broccoli is just boiled.

Pork tenderloin is little bit pricy but it normally has plenty in one package so we can have at least two meals out of this one packet.

Well, so for the dessert, I made chocolate dipped strawberries. This is something I made last Valentine's Day and my husband loved it so I decided to make it again this year. This year, I decided to have a prettier decoration on it but that was a mistake....

This is how it came out.

Well, it looks OK from far away but if you look at them closely. You can see that those drizzled chocolate decoration is not really a drizzle but more like dollops.

Oh well, I tried. My husband liked them anyway.

I also bought nice flower for the table.

My son was so curious about this flower. He wanted to touch it so I let him touch. In the beginning, he was touching them very gently but after a while, he started to tear them apart and start eating them so I had to take them away from him. It is amazing to see how he develop. He is very curious about different touch. And now, he is walking all by himself! I feel like he is not a baby anymore. It is great that he is growing up but at the same time it is little bit sad that he is growing up so fast. I am really enjoying every moment with him right now. Ever day, there is something new and he brings lots of joy to our life. He is a miracle!

Guy Fieri's Hong Kong Noodle

I made this dish using one of the cookbooks which I borrowed from the library the other day.
This is called Hong Kong Noodle.

The book I used for this dish was Guy Fieri's cookbook. This one.

He is a very popular chef on FoodNetwork. He won a show called "The Next Foodnetwork star" and start having his own cooking show. He also start hosting this show called "Diners, Drive-in and Dives".

His food always looked good in the show but I never actually used his recipe before so this was my first time trying his recipe. 

In this cook book, there are some dishes which was Asian inspired dish and this one called "Hong Kong Noodle" looked really good to me so I tried this one. 

It came out really good! I loved it. It took a while for me to prepare everything but the result was well worth the effort. 

You can look at this recipe from FoodNetwork's website. Click here for Guy Fieri's Hong Kong Noodle recipe. 

I followed the recipe and I guess it was for 4~6 people so when it was finished, I ended up with huge plate of Hong Kong Noodle. It was a bit too much for just two people so we ate this noodle for next few days but even as a leftover, it still tasted really good!

The chicken is marinated with ginger, garlic and stuff and it is very tasty. Plus, you can eat lots of vegetable this way.

There are some other things which I would like to try from his cookbook but I had to return the book so I cook one more thing from this book and returned the book. The other dish I made was coleslaw salad with fried wonton. This one was also really good. I will post it next time.

Empanadas cooking play date

The other day, I had a play date with some other moms. We decided to have a play date and also cook something together. I always wanted to try making Empanadas so we decided to make empanadas on this play date.

Empanada is a very popular dish in Latin America and Spain. You make a dough and wrap meat and some vegetables with the dough and bake or fry them.

This time, we decided to try baked Empanada. One of my mom friend got a recipe from her friend in Chile. This particular Emapandas have ground beef, onions, boiled egg and olives. Also, it supposed to have raisins in it but I forgot to have the raisin ready so we totally forgot about the raisin.

First, we knelt the dough.

At the same time, make the filling. Saute the onions.

Add meat and spices.

Divide the dough into small balls and roll it out. ( For me, this was the most difficult part. So my friend rolled most of them out!)

My friend brought Empanada molding so we used them to shape empanadas. With this tool, it is easy to make a perfect empanadas. I love it!

Add the fillings. Ground beef with onion, boiled egg and olive.

Then, close it to make the empanada shape! Oh we brushed the edge with egg wash to make it stick better.

Brush the empanadas with egg wash and bake in the oven. Here is the end result! Looking great.

I think it came out really good! This was my first time making Empanada and it took us a while to get it done but we had lots of fun and it was great! I definitely try making this again!

This was the Chilean version of Empanadas but one of the mom said that she knows Venezuelan version of Empanadas so we will try that sometime.

One of the great thing about living in the U.S. (Especially in California and NY) is that you meet people from all over the world. You get to learn different cultures and you get to learn some special dishes like this.

It is sometimes quite a challenge to cook and watch your kid but since we were four of us today, one of us were able to watch the kids all the time so others can concentrate on cooking.

It was a great idea to do cooking and have a play date. We made lots of Empanadas so everybody brought some home for dinner. So, we have play date and when you get home, the dinner is ready!

Before I have a baby, I was not sure if I will be able to have mom friends around here since I didn't know many people but I found wonderful mom friends. And our kids are about same age so we can always talk about their growth and help each other with what we know. I am so thankful that I met these ladies. I hope we can keep our friendship and watch our kids grow together!

Back to Empanadas, we had a little bit of dough left over so after dinner, I made some dessert Empanadas with chopped apple and chocolate. It tasted good but since I am not good with rolling the dough out, the dough part was too thick. I think it was great if the dough was thinner. I need to practice rolling our the dough.

Anyhow, great turn out! I loved cooking play date. I am sure there are more to come!