June 8th 2009 - Gus

Raspberry vinaigrette salad with glazed walnut





Clam chowder





Fish and chips




Creme Brulee

Happy Birthday Henry

We've been discussing quite sometime now about doing a fancy meal for a monday night supper. Of course a fancy meal would go against our fundamental rules of keeping it under the budget. So for a very special occasion, we went all out for Henry's bday.




salad




Ribs




Cheesecake

May 11th

Sorry folks, trying to catch up.

Corn and sweet potato salad - Roasted sweet corn mixed with sweet potato and cilantro on top of fried onion strips. Corn like bacon makes everything tastes good. If you disagree you're dead inside or just count yourself out of an invite to the Monday Night Supper Club =P



The second course was oven baked chicken drumsticks coated with wheat flour. The dressing was a a sweet and bit tangy sauce. Tony's poor man's version of sweet and sour sauce I think.



The next dish was a shrimp pizza made with fresh dough. I have to give Kristal props for actually making fresh dough! That's nuts! The pizza was probably my favorite dish for the night. So yummy!



A special thanks and congratulations to Trammie our awesome guest of the night as well as finishing the the rock n' roll marathon yesterday with a kick ass time! Tonight theme is ballarific as we will be celebrating Henry's dinner. Can't wait!

Cheers-

Monday Night Supper Club

May 4th

Wow I am totally slackin on the updating department. Sorry! Really been busier than a 1 legged man at an ass kicking race. Anyhoo, May 4th was my cooking night and our special guest of the evening was Moose. This of course was my first time meeting the man, the legend, the ummm body part that I will not mention because this is a family oriented blog. Right... so moving on to the cooking.

It's been a while since I had the cooking night and was quite rusty on the grocery shopping.

For starter we had strawberry, tangerine salad with a citrus mustard dressing. Au contraire to Tony's belief I did not just use his salad dressing but actually created a dressing from olive oil, some mustard mix, vinegar, tangerine juice and black pepper to create my own original dressing. Side note, I went to Zion to get some of the grocery but skipped on getting the salad there even though it was 1.99 for 1lb of salad. I didn't want to get it there because I didn't think it was fresh and didn't want to sort through it for salad. Who do I think I am? Rich? So I ended up paying $2.99 at Food 4 less for a 8 oz bag of salad. Grocery shopping fail!



The second course was Lentil Soup - Fresh lentil , with celery and onion and chicken buillon for broth. It was quick and quite hearty.




The next course was pan fried salmon on a bed of greens.



To redeem myself I decided to make homemade ice-cream to keep the cost down. We had home made oreo cookies ice-cream. It was a treat and a science project rolled into one!





So moral of the story is no I am not rich enough to shop outside of Zion and yes Tony you can make ice-cream at home and I did this before for 7th grade class. =)

Monday Meal - April 6th 2009

Hey OH!

Sorry folks, I've been busier than a one legged man at an ass kicking race so haven't had the chance to update on the blog. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances, we did not have a supper night for this past Monday. But I'm here to update on the April 6th dinner anyhow. =) Right, moving on.


We started off with calamari - Chopped off squid that was dipped in wheat flour and fried with olive oil. We had two different types of sauce, one was spicy creamy sauce (aka siracha and mayo) and a delectable pureed tomato sauce from a can.




Stir Fry Enoki Mushrooms - This was a simple but very tasty accompanying dish for the shrimp ravioli below.




Shrimp Ravioli in Brown Butter Sauce - What a great idea for ravioli! Shrimp with sour cream wrapped in wonton wraps and covered with mushrooms! The brown butter sauce was to die for.. LITERALLY! I could tell my heart was about to go into cardiac arrest. But even then, it would still be worth it. Jk! it's healthy! Butter is made out of milk, which comes from cows... and what do cows eat? Grass! A nice leafy green vegetables.. Consuming butter is just a more efficient way of eating vegetables.. uh yea..



Mousaka - Ok so this dish is Tony's ghetto albeit creative version of the Greek Mousaka. What do you do when you got eggplants, mom's leftover meat, boxed mash potato, sour cream, and cheese? Throw everything together into a baking dish and put it in the oven! Instant mousaka meatloaf thingymajig! Finally a successful attempt at being white! Next stop... proper tipping at a Pho restaurant... aww who am I kidding.. two dollars is plenty for 5 bowls of pho =P




Apple Crisps with Ice-cream - Finally the last dish was a cinnamon apple crisps with granola crumbs and cookies n' cream ice-cream from Fosselman. Again, very simple but extremely tasty, not to mention healthy. Granola and apples!




Another job well done for the Monday Night Supper Club. Special thanks to Chickayo for spearheading the cooking night and a huge thank you to our great guest Minh who graciously brought two bottles of wine.

Cheers -

Monday Night Supper Club

A low cost but tasty meal

Forget the rice, forget the cabbage Tony's new theme is CHEAP but tasty. hmmm just how I like my meal...

This week Chickayo could not make it as she had to take Kai to the airport. Our honored guests of the evening were Juan and Marcie.

We started off with the ritual shot made by yours truly of vodka, dry vermouth, apple schnapps, olive juice and a splash of lime juice.

We started off with a watermelon salad with mandarin orange and faux chicherones(sp?) in a mustard vinaigrette dressing. While salad was extremely good the general consensus was that the salad could be improved with a more crunchy texture like toasted almonds or walnut. or bacon. Bacon sure makes everything tastes good =)


The next dish was chicken cutlet with rice and curry. Boneless thigh meat dipped in whole wheat flour, eggs and covered in panko bread crumb then fried with olive oil. Can we say healthy?! The curry was made with curry mix, sauteed carrots and onions in chicken broth with corn. This was by far my favorite entree of Monday Night Supper club.. The chicken was extremely tasty, crunchy, yet light and not at all oily. The curry was also very good although a bit mild but it worked to not overpower the chicken.



Dessert was blueberry angel cake with whipped cream. Real light with right amount of tart from the blueberry. Perfect ending to a perfect meal.



This meal cost $20 but the good times with friends are priceless. Cheers to Juan and Marcie for making it to this week Monday Night Supper Club and our special and unexpected guest Tu. We look forward for Kristal to come back next week with more exciting ingredients and fr0m our kitchen to yours... cheers to inexpensive but tasty dining.


- Monday Night Supper Club

Rice Rice Baby March 23, 2009

For this last Monday night supper club, I decided on rice as the main ingredient. Despite the fact that a bag of rice can get quite costly, I was fortunate that rice is a regular staple in any Asian home. Tony's place is no exception.

We started off with white sushi - a poor man's toro according to Tony and he is right! Just a nice clean cut of white tuna on top of sushi rice and a splash of ponzu sauce.






For the real appetizer however. Now see this is how you know it is the Chubbymonster's cooking night... there will always be just a slight bit too much food.

The real appetizer was spicy tuna hand roll - tuna mixed with mayo and siracha on sushi rice wrapped with seaweed.



The next dish was kimchi fried rice. a special thanks to our very special guest Kai for making it happen with his expertise in making kimchi fried rice. Real simple, cooked rice fried with kimchi and some marinated beef from Zion market and a little scallions. We topped the rice with a fried egg.




To relieve us from a carborific meal, the next dish was a marinated beef wrap. Real simple grilled marinated beef with juliened carrots and radish. Wrap all of these goodies up with lettuce leaf and dip in red chilli paste.



To keep up with the rice theme, we finished up with sweet sticky rice and mango.



The entire meal cost less than $24. Special thanks to Kai for making the kimchi fried rice and to the rest of the Monday Night Supper Club members for a job well done!


Cheers -

Monday Night Supper Club

Tony's cooking night 03-16-2009

Salad - Field of greens with persimmons and mango with tangerine vinaigrette dressing



Chicken - panko crusted oven baked like fried but GOURMET cornish game hen "$2"






Risotto - Wild mushroom risotto with panko crust on top slowly cooked with wine. This is a "get some" dish according to Tony.





Ice-cream - Fosselman ice-cream with korean waffle cookies




Receipt - in his quest to beat Kristal's budget of last week, Tony successfully made the meal for less than $15.00! A man who can make a great meal under a budget is quite sexy haha!

Cabbage

Want to lose 20lbs in 7 days? Try the cabbage soup diet! Okay maybe not, but this week's meal was spearheaded by Chickayo and her secret ingredient was cabbage!

A few fun facts about cabbages

1. They are an excellent source of Vitamin C
2. High source of fiber and helps reduce the risk of colon cancer
3. Eating cabbages can cause you to be quite gassy

Well two out of three aint all bad. :)

Our menu consisted of

Cabbage Soup - Puree cabbage with vegetable cream soup. The soup was topped with sour cream, bacon, and accompanied by sweet toast. The soup was light and oh so good.





Soba Noodles with Cabbage - We cooked the soba noodles and mixed it with ponzu and ginger sauce dressing with seaweed and sesame seeds. This dish was extremely tasty, especially when combined with the meat that was left over from the cabbage wraps.





Cabbage Wraps - This was cooked groundmeat wrapped in cabbages and topped with tomato sauce and cooked in the oven. Set it and forget it! ok maybe not... maybe it would have been a wise idea to check to make sure that the plate we used to contain the cabbage wraps were oven safe. Oh well, when life gives you lemons make lemonade and now the Foodslut has a brand new "artistic plate."



Great job Chickayo for cooking this meal and most of all awesome job on making this meal for only $16! A big thank you to our guest Karen for her help in the kitchen, presence, and bottle of wine. :) Until next time, happy eating! Oh and Happy Pi Day!


Cheers--

The Monday Supper Club

--

Wham Bam Thank You SPAM!

This week our secret ingredient was SPAM. After being away for two weeks I had a hard time coming up with the secret ingredient until I went into my parents' pantry and found a can of luncheon meat from an obscure brand-- aka fake spam. Seriously, forget the free calendars from supermarkets and forget the saran-wrapped remote controls... you know you're inside an Asian household when you see fake sh*t. I have to admit, I am quite proud of my parents' Asian cheapness. How else would they be able to put their kids through college?!

As you precious readers know the routine, the deal is to make a great meal for 4 people under $25. Sadly, spam can be quite costly even when it is on sale and I knew that to make a 4 course meal with Spam as the key ingredient will be a hard task.

The menu consisted of spam musubi - pan fried spam on a bed of japanese rice with seaweed wrapper. We dipped the musubi in the eel sauce. This was probably my favorite dish - sweet and salty with crispy texture from the seaweed.



mac n' cheese spam - Growing up I hated mac n' cheese.. In fact I did not really eat mac n cheese until very recently. We put the spam inside the mac n cheese. Pour croutons crumbs on top with a spray of pam so that the crumbs will stick. To ensure ultimate deliciousness - I added my extra secret ingredient... that's right! bacon bits! SEriously?! Who does not like bacon? Except maybe pigs and Muslims.





spam with ramen - As you go down the menu list you probably think this is less gourmet and more starving college students dinner but to offset the poorness of the ramen and spam, I threw in some stir fry asparagus. Gourmet I tell you!




jello shaped as spam - This dish was probably my favorite because I had a chance to be creative. What better way to celebrate spam by making jello that is shaped like spam?! I used peach flavored gelatin to make the spam, lemon flavored gelatin to make the egg yolks and the egg whites were actually panna cotta!





The total meal came to $24.86! For a while I was fretting my decisions to use spam as the main ingredient since it can be quite expensive and easily go over the $25 budget. But with my menu, I was able to use lots of fillers (e.g rice from spam musubi, noodles from mac n cheese, ramen) so that we'll be full without having to use a lot of spam. Speaking of that Asian cheapness... I guess the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree :) Mama and Papa Nguyen are quite proud. Overall, a huge sincere thank you to my sous chefs Foodsluts, Chikayo, and Kunney for another great meal!

Cheers -


The Monday Supper Club

my green green onions

What can you get for 4 quarters? A pack of gum? A cheap thrill at a XXX arcade? or....

HOW ABOUT 10 SPRIGS OF GREEN ONION? 99 cents. Talk about recession dining. But how versatile is this ingredient? When raw, it's potent. But when diced and added to foods, it's a sweet & spicy flavor. Just like me.

We started off with a White Tuna Tartare With Spicy Lemon-Ginger Vinaigrette w/ fried wonton chips. Perfect balance of creaminess from the white tuna and spiciness from the unique vinaigrette. My only regret is not being able to make more of it!

And who doesn't like pad thai? We followed the recipe of fellow fob Kai on making "PHAT THAI". The only thing we would have done different is soak the noodles in water longer. It took awhile for the noodles to breakdown their chewiness. But overall, it was simple and so cheap to make.

Ok, I have to admit, galbi doesn't really have much green onions on it. But crap, for 2.99 a lb, how can I resist. This piece of galbi is sitting on top a failed onion pancake. I'm a cook. Not a baker. Making green onion pancake was a pain in the ass. EPIC FAIL.

Flower, our special guest of the week not only blessed us with her insight on her weekend sexcapade with her man, but also with this tasty orange dessert. It was topped with a sugar-nutmeg-cranberry-mint syrup. A perfect light dessert of end our gorge

The damage? 24.09. And everyone had leftovers to take home! Next week, ChubbyMonster will be back from her homeland...hopefully with some tricks up her sleeves on how to increase our bang for the buck idea.

Onions!

If you really want to know the rules of Monday Supper Club, here it is:

1) There's always a themed ingredient. The ingredient should be versatile and affordable.
2) The meal should strive to be under 25 bucks for 4 people.
3) The invited guest must help cook and bring a drink that pairs with the ingredient for the week.
4) We must drink alcohol.
5) You must be invited to attend. And you have to be fun.
6) The general rule is, whatever you eat, you better say it's good. Gosh darn it, you helped cook it.

The rules will evolve. Ultimately, the goal is to have fun and hopefully, inspire you to not always eat out.

Our secret ingredient this week was ONIONS!!! 10 lbs for 2 dollars!!!! 10 lbs!!!!

We started out with a beautiful red onion, tomatoes, cucumber salad, topped with a piece of fried tofu. We dressed it with some old ginger dressing I had in the fridge. Simple and light.



There are few things I would spend hours making. And typically, the rule of MSC is to make things together. However, today, I had to break some rules. We made French Onion Soup. We made those onions CRY!!!!! 1 hour of sweating the onions. Tons of brandy. Another hour to cook the broth. Topped with oozy goozy mozzarella....it was heaven.



And finally, we wrapped it up in a steak sandwich. It was stuffed with cheese (mozzarella left over from French Onion), grilled onions and red peppers. I used to buy only rib eye at markets...usually avoiding the cheaper cuts steaks. Being budget conscious, we opted to cook with chuck steak and boy was it tasty. It was eye opening to try out other cuts of meat. Don't be scared...you should too!! Oh yeh, we also made oven baked, Japanese cookie crumbed onion rings. Guilt-free!





And what was dessert? 3/4 cooked brownies a la mode (coffee ice cream). Why would we mess that up with onions?



Total dollars spent? 22.47. Booyah. Thanks Kristal for taking head role this week! Dave and Henry, thanks for the alki (the TRUE SECRET INGREDIENT of MSC). Anytime starting cooking w/ Jagerbomb shots= good time. And that we did.