Monday, February 23, 2009

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.

Monday, February 16, 2009

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.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Tomatoes


What can you get for 1 dollar?
For 1 dollar you can get snack size parfait from McDonalds
or KFC chicken snacker
or 5lbs of tomatoes from Zion Market!!
This last Monday our secret ingredient was tomato!

We started out with a tomato, iceburg lettuce salad, with tofu, and bacon bits. For dressing, we had a ginger miso. A light tasing meal to opn up palate... screw amuse bouchee.. we're under a $25 budget!



Now... remember that meal that your granny prepared for you when you were young... ok mine was rice with more rice and fish sauce.. but I'm a fob... if I was that rich white kid down the street it would have been tomato soup and grilled cheese... and to relive and recreate my childhood, our second course was just that... vegetable stock tomato soup with grilled cheese made with 7 grain bread and two types of cheese...


our third course was roasted tomato stuffed with salmon and sundried tomato. I was quite proud of this dish as it came to be in a vision...that or Zion supermarket sales ad.. .eh toe-ma-toe toe-mah-toe :)





By this time we were lycopene'd out! So to alleviate that, I decided on a panna cotta hold the tomato juice for dessert... This was surprisingly good.. but being calories conscious... we will try fat free and half-half next time!






Last but not least.. I want to take this time to thank our special Gus Gus for making this meal even more memorable and tasty by providing us with an extremely delicious beverage... vodka with clamato juice, orange and lime and soda. GREAT JOB GUS GUS!
P.S. Sorry for the fobby posting... I'm currently in Vietnam... so there's no fob check.. but foblish or not...
Cheers!
- Monday Supper Club

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Corn

Seriously who doesn't love corn? This past Monday, corn was our Monday Supper Club secret ingredient and I have to say it was another success.

We first started off with the Corn Bread with kernels inside. This was surprisingly tasty, although we should have probably put it in the oven with higher temperature to achieve that gold brown finish on top.



Our second dish was the corn chowder. Our broth was made out of vegetable stocks (celery and onions) and contained chunks of potato and bacon. The cream acted as a thickening agent. Naturally, this was another success although we later thought it would have been even better if we had saved some of the bacon later to sprinkle on top, that and some green onions.



Our third dish (oh my by this time I was quite full) was corn souffle. I was asked by one of the Monday Supper Club members the meaning of the word souffle. Basically, what makes something a souffle? According to wikipedia (my trusted source for everything) the word souffle is a past participle of the french verb souffler which means to blow up. Ahh the french, always make everything seems so elegant. Over hear, anything that is blown up will be either terrorist or fat! Anyway, I digressed the souffle had a nice golden brown top, unfortunately it didn't really rise since the oven was opened. between the egg whites and the cream of corn, the souffle was slightly sweet. Next time I would put in some cheese and bacon into the mixture so it would be corny and cheesy. Har har.. Lesson learned though, leave the oven alone if the souffle is already in.




Q: So why is it that you should not make dinner plans with corn?
A: Because corn flakes!

Sorry I couldn't resist... I had to go through a maize of jokes just to find that one.. .Maize.. get it? Anyway, for dessert we made blueberries cornflakes parfait. It was a nice light treat and I also learned that it sucks to be a single man. All that beating for that amount of frothy cream... not worth it :P Our cornflakes parfait consisted of layer of cornflakes on top of fresh beaten whipped cream and then blueberries sauce and repeat 1 more time.



The entire meal cost less than $30... Enjoy!

Cheers,

- The Monday Supper Club