Sunday, September 4, 2016 - The Pacific Ocean
You'd think that after a long ass day as Disneyland and California adventure, we would make sure the next day was pretty easy and relaxing. Unfortunately, you are again wrong (man, you guys are terrible at this game).
So if you didn't know, I'm an avid fisherman. I like the ocean, being on a boat, the thrill of feeling the bite, and the fight to land a fish. I've been chasing big game tuna for several years now. But honestly, its because I love to eat sashimi, and since its so freakin' expensive I rarely have it. BUT, when you catch your own tuna, you have the freshest sashimi available and its best if eaten within the first couple days. So basically, you get to binge eat sashimi like its a bag of chips with zero concern about how much its going to cost you when you get the bill. Its foolproof logic. (Please don't ruin this for me by explaining that its not). Anyhow, Holly grabs her very first ocean fish, a bonito. These have a darker and more bold flavor than yellowfin tuna when cooked. But when eaten raw, its better than yellowfin and yellowtail tuna, according to my palate, and my palate know when its eating expensive stuff. Nice job Holls!
Monday, September 5, 2016 - Long Beach Greek Festival and Gyoza
Finally! A down day. Just go to a festival, go to the grocery store, cut some sashimi, cook some lobster dynamite, make gyoza, and have Steven and Michelle over for dinner; easy breezy.
So I really like street fairs, festivals, cultural festivals... because you are guaranteed some really awesome food. Imagine how excited I was to find out there was a GREEK festival this weekend. TIME TO EAT! This festival did not disappoint. Every booth I saw was something different, there were no repeats! Everyone's food looked so good that I got stupid excited enough to plan to have two meals there; one when we first got there and another on the way out. Yeah, we were there for 45 minutes, it didn't happen. But here's what we did get to: Spanakopita, some thing like spanakopita except with cheese instead of spinach (what a genius that guy was), Octopus, a souvlaki, and Galaktoboureko. The Galaktoboureko was one of those impulse dessert buys, the kind that takes you from, "Meh, I could pass on dessert" to, "This must be mine!" Its phyllo dough, filled with egg custard, the drenched in honey. People! I dare you resist this amazingness. Oh yeah, and the octopus. If you didn't know, the greek and italians have the secret when it comes to making tender and flavorful octopus. If you don't really like octopus or have never had octopus, it will make you a believer.
Okay, we're running low on time for our weekend so we hurry up the eating at the greek festival so that we can go grocery shopping, so that we can eat again... We need stuff to make lobster dynamite. This consists of lobster and dynamite sauce. The sauce is a mixture of Kewpie (Japanese Mayo), Sriracha, which was super cool in asian cultures decades before it ever became mainstream hipster popular, and most importantly, masago (salmon roe). Parboil a lobster, dice the meat, toss it with some sauteed mushrooms and onions, add the dynamite sauce, and put it in the boiler. Served topped with some shaved bonito flakes and this dish on top of rice is one of my absolute favorite dishes in the world I can rarely find it in sushi restaurants and I don't know a single person who makes it at home. So if you want to become my best friend, make me lobster dynamite.
So the deal was, we make sashimi with the bonito that Holly caught, we make the lobster dynamite with the lobster that we caught at Ranch 99, and Steven makes us gyoza. What ended up happening is that he pawned off the manual labor on to us. Actually no, apparently gyoza making is a very social tradition. Teaching people how to fold gyoza and folding them with other people is a totally normal group activity. I guess sometimes I would roll lumpia with my mom and my sister or a friend or something; this was pretty much the same thing.
Dinner ended up being fantastic. Steven let me keep the remainder of the gyoza, which is no longer remaining, and everyone had a good time. Cooking and eating with other people is fun, if you haven't done it in a while, be sure to call up some friends and get it cracking.
[Said in chinese accent] DAAAAAAANG! He makes the gyoza so fast!
And there you have it! 5 days worth of shenanigans in 3 different posts! Turns out, its much harder to do it this way. Or, I just have a lot more pictures to show and stories to tell. The next post is already out of the camera, so I hope to get the next one up soon.
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