Stir Fry Beef & Broccoli

So I like to try to make some Vietnamese dishes from this one food blog I found called: Wandering Chopsticks. One thing I tried off the website(even though it isn't Vietnamese- it isn't real Chinese food either but whatever) was the beef and broccoli. It was tasty with some extra soy sauce, but I bought too much meat when I did it and did not adjust the ingredients to match as much as I should have. It was still a good stir fry- just not as saucy as the other beef and broccoli dishes you get elsewhere. I'd try it again some other time though.

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posts in progress...

photos we have but no time to write about yet:
1) Houston Restaurant Week(s) - got 3 different places to talk about
2) Red Fish in Cypress
3) Auntie Pastas in Bellaire
4) Attempt at beef & broccoli that didn't turn out right but was still tasty
5) King Ranch Chicken casserole

and things to come I guess!

We're working on it.. I plomise.

late

There have been a lot of changes lately and we keep falling behind on posting... but we're still trying! I thought we had a post about a trip to Seoul Garden before...ah ha! I found it here: Seoul. This is where my sister, Huong, first took my family to eat Korean food and it has been our normal place to go to when we want Korean food. Seoul Garden is good but the service can suck and they can be sort of picky about things, so this time I wanted to try a different Korean place. After looking up some things, I read nicer reviews for Korea Garden (seriously across the street from Seoul). Gave it a shot- good food, very nice staff, no one pushing us to order certain amounts, but no soup included in the mix of things. I think I like the side dishes better at Seoul though. If you're a newcomer to trying Korean food and going w/o someone who does- I would try out Korea Garden because they are nicer and speak better English...

The other photos are from our trip to Super H Mart after dinner. Fun supermarket to check out!

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Bo Tai Chanh

So I have become a fan of beef carpaccio. Bo Tai Chanh is the Vietnamese version that you can order in some restaurants, and I also had some really good beef carpaccio at Beavers on one of their Thursday night Culture nights. I found a recipe for the Vietnamese version so I thought I'd give it a try. The basic way to make it is to:
1) buy some good meat and thinly slice it
2) sear it quickly to get some color
3) take off and let it sit in some lemon juice, orange juice, and a bit of fish sauce
4) after it's cooked to how you want it- drain the juices, add herbs and fried shallots/onions and enjoy!

Honestly, after getting a quick sear, the meat was really good on it's on. I think we used too much citrus with it because it kind of overpowered the meat- but it was still good. Need to tweek the measurements a bit next time, but here's what it looked it!

House of Pies

Sorry guys- Ryan and I have been falling behind on our posts! I don't really have much to say about the House of Pies- the food is just the normal stuff like Denny's-sandwiches, breakfast, what have you. I don't come here to eat that kind of food. I come for the cheesecake! I am not one for pies- If I do order them, I normally just eat all the crust and leave the rest of it on the plate. I do enjoy the cheesecakes from The Cheesecake Factory but if I ever crave turtle or strawberry cheesecake (at any given hour!) House of pies is it. I've been going there since high school. Huge piece for under $4!

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Dim Sum King

We had to run a few wedding errands in Bellaire (Chinatown Bellaire, not the city Bellaire), and we had been wanting to get Dim Sum for a while, so we stopped in at Dim Sum King. Kimmy had been to this one before, but I hadn't. It was pretty cheap and most of the things we ordered were really good. If you've never done dim sum before, it's basically a bunch of small plates of food - dumplings, fried stuff, etc. - and you just order a bunch of them. At this place, they have a nice menu with pictures so you know exactly what you're getting. You mark what you want on a sheet of paper, and they start bringing them out. We ordered way too much food, but Brian helped me finish the leftovers later that day. I embarrassed us by knocking my water glass over while trying to take one of these pictures, but the ladies swooped in and cleaned it up in about 10 seconds.

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Snow Cone Cravings

With the weather not getting any better and just hotter than ever... I have been craving snow cones a lot. The problem is... out there near washington/heights area, I have no idea where snow cone stands are! My favorite kind of snow cones have a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle- I use to get it at Mr. Snow in Waco. A Korean dessert where they serve shaved ice, topped with condensed milk, ice cream, and fresh fruit would have also been great to eat with the heat but that's all the way down in Bellaire/Chinatown. After Ryan did some googling for me, he found Tampico Refresqueria which wasn't too far away. We drove up and there was a good line so we figured it would be good. It was alright as far as snow cones go I guess. They didn't have ice cream- I had to go with a regular snow cone. They put a TON of syrup on there so after you eat the top you just have flavored sugar water left over. There's a new snow cone stand that opened July 4th weekend closer to I10 that we found on the way home called Mango Beach. Will have to try that place out soon. :)

Back to that Korean dessert- In Ryan's search he found a place called Oasis. It's no where near the heights area but out in Bellaire/West U- where I work. Last week, I ended up having a lot of clients cancel or no show so there was plenty of free time. Lots of free time and nothing to do... get in the car and drive... where? We (the grad student and I) didn't know but then I realized that we were close to that snow cone place and asked if she wanted to stop by. We did. It was great! It just opened too. I got a snow cream which was shaved ice, flavored syrup, ice cream, and fresh fruit. The grad student wasn't sure if she'd like what I got so she got a lime snow cone instead, but after trying mine and after telling people at work what we had.. we went back later that week and all got snow creams. Too bad I won't be working over there for much longer. I would get snow creams almost every week!