Tuesday, March 31, 2009

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

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

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

Sunday, March 22, 2009

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!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

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

--

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

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