Main St. Gyros in Pioneer Square Seattle: Restaurant Review

Here's another quick food post on a little corner place that sells Mediterranean food called Main St. Gyros. Located in Pioneer Square, this place is surrounded by local businesses, shops, 

Summer Smoothie Recipe: Watermelon* + Blueberry

 

 

 

 

 

I know Summer is almost over, but there's still a good month left! This Summer, I have had an abundance of blueberries in my yard and when you can't eat them all, you have to freeze them! Frozen blueberries are one of the most delicious treats and are perfect to add to fruit smoothies. If you don't have frozen blueberries, you can find them in your grocery store and even in bulk at places like Costco (and they have it organic)!

 



This recipe is perfect for the end of summer. It is cooling with the fresh watermelon, but to balance out that 'coolness,' there is some 'warmth' added to it from some fresh ginger (if you understand TCM or Traditional Chinese Medicine, you may understand the whole usage of 'cool' and 'warm' foods..it is a bit hard to explain, especially in English). Blueberries are also high in antioxidants (and they taste delicious) so this smoothie is just a win-win treat. I also like to add lemon just for an extra Vitamin C boost.

 

Here's what you'll need:

3 cups of fresh cut watermelon

1 to 2 cups of frozen blueberries (really a preference thing)

1 quarter slice of a lemon (if it is organic, include the rind)

1/2 inch to 1 inch size of peeled ginger root

 

 

Don't fill your blender up too full, or else the juices from the watermelon may overflow.

Blend watermelon first and then add the frozen blueberries. After they are almost fully blended, add the lemon and ginger. You don't need anything else!

 

And there you go! A healthy and refreshing summer treat =)

 

Readers, what are you favorite summer fruits? Do you have a favorite smoothie recipe? Let me know, I'd love to try them out.

Fresh Albacore Tuna Poke Recipe

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of my favorite things to eat is poke (pronounced poʊˈkeɪ/). Poke is a Hawaiian dish (kind of like an appetizers) that is a raw salad usually made with sashimi Ahi Tuna aka Yellowfin Tuna. It comes either spicy, or with no spice and can be sweetend too. It is usually made with soy sauce, sesame oil, inamona, chopped chili peppers, ogo seaweed and maybe a few tweaks here and there. I don't think I can pin point exactly how the original recipe is supposed to be like since there are many variations and they all are pretty tasty.

 

For my recipe, I used Albacore tuna, which is more of a white meat tuna. Below are the ingredients and instructions on how I made my poke!

 

Ingredients

1 lb Albacore Tuna

2 small cucumbers (or just 1 English cucumber)

1/2 chopped green onions

1 to 2 tablespoons of ponzu (citrus flavored soy sauce--eye ball or adjust to taste)

1/2 to 1 tablespoon of sesame oil

1 to 2 teaspoons of togarashi (japanese pepper/spice mix -- add to taste)

sea salt

 

Directions

 

1) Chop tuna into small, bite- sized cubes around 1/2 inch or so and chop cucumbers into cubes smaller than chopped tuna. Finely chop geren onions.

2) Place all chopped ingredients into a bowl and add your ponzu and sesame oil. Make sure you toss it well so everything is coated. For spice, proceed to add the togarashi and mix well. You can then add your sea salt at this point, sprinkling a little at a time. You won't need much.

 

And that's it! Super simple and quick and healthy. You can either eat right away or cover the bowl with saran wrap and place it in the fridge to let the flavors soak in more. Either way, this dish will taste good. I personally like eating it by itself, but you can eat it over rice as well or even over a bed of arugula.

 

Readers, have you ever tried poke? If you are a fan of  tuna sashimi/sushi (raw fish) you should definitely give this a try. What are your favorite Hawaiian foods? Let me know!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Natsu Matsuri 2014 Seattle

Another year, another festival! Of course I attended Natsu Matsuri at the Seattle Uwajimaya store again and here are some pictures that captured the day. This was two weekends ago but better late than never!

Seattle was blessed with beautiful weather so it made the event even better. And of course, be ready for all the food pics >.<

 

 

 

 

 

I'm such a sucker for somen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And this Tonkotsu Ramen was bomb.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cutest little boy ever! His hair too!

 

 

Of course, you need ice cream for a hot day!

 

 

And that's it! Hope ya'lls Summer is going well  (if you're in Summer season that is)

Hardwok Cafe, Taiwanese Food: Restaurant Review

We celebrated my cousins birthday a couple weekends ago and he was craving to try out this Taiwanese café located in China Town. The place is called Hardwok Café (haha get it? Hard "wok"?) and is a Taiwanese style café that has many Taiwanese dishes as well as popular Taiwanese styled drinks and treats! (If I'm wrong about it being Taiwanese, my bad! But I'm pretty sure it is..)

First off, you got to have bubble tea! I had the Honey Green Milk Tea with pudding (instead of tapioca since I don't care for it that much) and holy crap this was so good! I usually love honey flavored anything and tend to get black milk tea over green milk tea, but I'm glad I got the green milk tea version since it is lighter and you can really taste the honey in it.

My drinke =)

We also ordered quite a bit of appetizer things. This one below is the pork blood rice cakes. Yes, this may sound gross to some, but seriously, this was good. It reminds me of the Korean pork blood sausage that is filled with rice as well. This one was actually a bunch of rice in a pork blood stew and then cut into little rice cake squares. The sauce on top was sweet and when dipped with the ground peanuts it made for a nice treat. I couldn't eat too much of it since it was a little sweeter than I would have liked it to be, but it was still good.

 



You can see that this is mainly rice and what holds it together like the glue is the pork blood sauce.



 

 

 

Another little snack that is one of my favorites is stewed chopped pork ears. The cartilage is nice and crunchy on the ear and the flavor is really simple. I really like the texture of this, but I know it doesn't math everyone's tastes.  We poured a little of the sweet/savory sauce over it and enjoyed nibbling on this.

 

 

My cousin, who is a really big fan of tonkatsu (the breaded and fried Japanese pork dish) wanted to try this Taiwanese style one and it was pretty good! There wasn't any sauce, but it wasn't really needed since the breading was flavorful enough on its own and the pork wasn't dry. I believe they pounded it out to be thinner and more tender.

 

 

Ah, on to my dish! This was so good! If you are a fan of braised pork and pork hock, you would absolutely love this dish. It came with a bowl of noodle soup which was very clean tasting and a real palette cleanser. The pork hock was nice and tender, but not too done where it would be too slimy/mushy. I definitely had leftovers and took some of this deliciousness home!

 

Another food over view

 

When we saw that they had the Xiao Long Bao (literally translated as little dragon bun/dumplings), I knew I had to try them. These are my favorite types of dumplings since they have the soup inside (if done right and the outside wrapping doesn't break!). I have to say this one wasn't as good as I would hope it to be and I probably wouldn't order it again since I've had better dumplings in other restaurants. For the price though, this isn't bad, and is good to share amongst 2 people for a quick snack.

Next, we had this turnip cake pudding type thing and again, this wasn't as good as I was hoping it to be. The flavor was there, but the texture was a little too soft for my liking. Also, I found the use of that same sweet/savory sauce to be a bit too powerful for this dish. A simpler soy sauce or something would have been better, or even nothing at all. Just having the sauce on the side instead of poured over would have been better.

 

 

My brother wanted the pork over rice dish. I took a bite or two and it was pretty good--it is definitely filling. I really liked the steeped hard boiled eggs on top along with the pickled radish (takuan).

 

And now, THE BEST PART! CAN WE PLEASE LOOK AND APPRECIATE THE BEAUTY OF THIS DESSERT!?!?!

 

This was the strawberry custard honey toast (more like strawberry ice cram). These type of sweetened breads/toast are really popular in Asia and in many Hong Kong and Taiwanese styled restaurants.

 

They loaded the dish with fresh strawberries, tons of ice creams, and some blueberries and a couple of strawberry Pocky sticks as garnish.

 

Inside, the bread is actually squared out to bite sized pieces and each piece is coated with the most delicious butter & honey blend and toasted to perfection. UGHHH! I'm craving it again! They have other flavors that I for sure want to try next time I'm there!

 

 

 

The only bad thing about the place is the size of it. If you are in a larger group or come at bad times, you will have to wait awhile. Other than the wait, everything else is on point. The staff are really nice and you can even order your bubble tea or other drinks beforehand while you wait, so at least you have something to sip on. The food comes out pretty fast too, so that's a plus when you're already waiting and are getting even more hungry. The pricing is very reasonable as well and I like that the portions are too big--it lets you try out more food things! I'm definitely going to come back here. Not sure when, but I definitely will =)

 

Have you tried any Taiwanese food? What is your favorite? Have you seen a dessert like this before?!