Restaurant Review: JX Cuisine

Restaurant Review: JX Cuisine - dinner on June 7, 2018

This is a long, long overdue restaurant review of a place less than a mile from my old house back in California. Or you can consider it a filler blog post as I haven't been baking much lately so I dug this out of the draft folder since I had the pictures anyway :).

Beef Chow Fun

Ironically, I first heard about JX Cuisine from work. One of our benefits is if you work late (past 7 pm), you're allowed to order dinner from waiter.com up to a $20 allowance, Monday through Thursday nights. It's been some months since I've left work before 7 pm so eating at work is typically my norm. Waiter.com rotates a number of local restaurants you can order from and they'll deliver to the office. Although the waiter.com menu comes out the Friday before with the next week's dinner offerings, typically you have until 4 pm the same night to order dinner in time, unless a particular restaurant sells out of their allocated dinners to the company.

Xiao Long Bao

JX Cuisine first hit my notice because the first time I tried to order from them on a Monday morning for a Thursday night dinner, they were already sold out. Huh? Sellouts aren't uncommon and usually signal a really good restaurant. Thwarted (and curious) what all the fuss was about, I met a friend there for dinner at the restaurant itself to see what the fuss was about.

Steamed Rice

The restaurant itself wasn't crowded on a weeknight for dinner and service was pretty prompt. The Xiao Long Bao were my favorites that night followed by the Orange Peel Beef. The Chow Fun was pretty typical of a Chinese restaurant; pretty tasty but not sure I'd go out of my way for it, especially since I hadn't realized it came with bean sprouts (I'm not a fan of bean sprouts). Overall, the food was good but I'm not sure I understand the early sellout every time JX Cuisine is an option on the waiter.com menu. My Chinese coworker explained they had a lot of specialty dishes that people really loved, especially those more familiar with "authentic" Chinese cuisine. Ah. Clearly my Westernized taste buds didn't pick those out of the menu, lol.

Orange Peel Beef

Bulgogi

Bulgogi - made March 5, 2019 from Testing Trendy 123

Okay, this is probably the tastiest beef dish I've made in months. And so easy too. Throw the ingredients in a bowl, let the flank steak marinate for an hour or more then grill or stir fry. I don't have a grill so I went the stir fry route.

At first I was going to bust out the Instant Pot to make sure the beef would be tender but I've had years of enjoying  the marinated flank steak my uncle used to grill at family barbecues and knew I didn't need to tenderize the flank steak. As long as I didn't overcook it.

This turned out beautifully. Not soupy like my other Instant Pot experiments, nicely tender while still pink (not red) inside and it had flavor. Not something I can always claim when I cook stuff. I didn't have any cooking wine but that was the only thing I left out. Next time, I'm not so sure I need all those sesame seeds but the rest of the ingredients were on point to make a tasty, easy stir fry.

1 pound flank steak
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1 tablespoon minced garlic
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon ginger
dash of black pepper
splash of white cooking wine

1. Combine marinade ingredients.
2. Thinly slice the steak and marinate for at least several hours. Grill just a few minutes per side or pan fry. Serve warm.

Texas Sheet Cake Brownies

Texas Sheet Cake Brownies - made February 17, 2019 from The Brownie Lover's Cookbook by Daniel Humphreys

I think the "brownies" part of the title is a misnomer. Brownies to me are more dense and fudgy than cake and normally don't have much, if any, leavening. This was made as a normal Texas Sheet Cake, including baking powder for the leavening, and had the lighter texture of a cake, not a brownie.

And like all the other previous Texas Sheet Cakes I've made, it's delicious. Like cut-yourself-another-piece delicious.

I'm in experimenting mode for my niece's wedding this fall. I think I mentioned my wedding gift to the bride and groom was to make their wedding dessert bar for the reception. My niece likes Texas Sheet Cakes and wanted to have that as one of the dessert offerings. I'm trying to fancy it up so rather than baking it as a sheet cake and serving it as cut squares (pssh, anyone can do that), I toyed with fancying it up and baking in silicone dome molds. Turn it over dome side up and blanket with the frosting for a smooth(ish) glazed look. I may also drizzle the glazed domes with white chocolate or caramel or milk chocolate

These turned out delicious as most of the Texas Sheet Cake recipes I've made have. But, as aforementioned, these were too cakey to be brownies. They weren't even cakey brownies. They were....cakes. Which I'm fine with. I just don't think I can call them "brownies". They're little cakes. Delicious little cakes but cakes nonetheless. Next time I need to thin the glaze a little so it pours more evenly and doesn't set so fast. But I think I'm getting close for this section of the wedding dessert table.

2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup sour cream
2 eggs
1 cup butter
1 cup water
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Icing
6 tablespoons milk
5 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
4 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat in the sour cream and eggs; set aside.
3. In a medium-sized pan over low heat, melt the butter. Add water and whisk in the cocoa powder until combined. Bring to boil before removing from heat.
4. Cool mixture slightly then temper into the egg mixture, before adding all of the wet ingredients and beat until smooth and combined.
5. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake until toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, about 20-25 minutes.
6. Icing: in a medium saucepan, combine milk with cocoa powder and butter. Whisk until melted and smooth. Bring to boil before removing from the heat. Stir in the powdered sugar and vanilla extract, mixing until well blended and no lumps remain. Spread frosting over warm cake.

Browned Butter Fudge Brownies

Browned Butter Fudge Brownies - made February 13, 2019 from The Food Charlatan

I credit The Food Charlatan with the recipe that was one of the most popular I'd ever made and served for one of my holiday dessert parties: the Brownie-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies.

So this brownie looked promising, especially as it was billed as the "best" brownies ever. You know I'm always a little wary about "best" hyperlatives. Not because I question whether it'd be good or not but we all have our own preferences and one person's "best" of something might be someone else's "okay". Nothing wrong with that; we all have different taste buds and that's a good thing.

Case in point, I'm sure most people would like these brownies. Fudgy, dense, chewy - all hallmarks of a good brownie. But in my case, I found these a little too sweet for me. I don't know if my sweet tooth was off when I made this as I rarely find things "too sweet". But although these had unsweetened chocolate, I think there was a little too much sugar for me to offset it.

For those who prefer more chocolate than sweet in a brownie, I'd recommend cutting back on the sugar by maybe 1/4 to 1/2 and mixing in a couple tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder in place of a couple tablespoons of flour.

1 1/4 cups salted butter (2 1/2 sticks), melted and browned (go to original blog for instructions on how to brown the butter)
4 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs
1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. To the just melted and browned butter, add the unsweetened chocolate and whisk until melted and combined.
3. Add sugar and whisk together. Add salt, water and vanilla; whisk to combine. Stir in eggs, one at a time, whisking until each egg is incorporated. Stir in flour until just combined. Whisk until batter is smooth and all ingredients are incorporated. Do not overmix.
4. Pour into prepared pan and smooth top. Sprinkle chocolate chips, if using, over top. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs, not raw batter. Remove from oven and let cool completely before cutting and serving.

Instant Pot Korean Beef

Instant Pot Korean Beef - made February 17, 2019 from I Heart Eating

Another easy beef dinner recipe where you throw ingredients into an Instant Pot, turn it on and come back in 40 minutes. I've done a few of these in the last few weeks and I have to admit, while they all "turned out" (in my parlance, that means I didn't give myself food poisoning with my own cooking), I'm not sure they stand out or would be something I'd serve to someone other than myself.

But I think that could also be due to my not eating any of it with rice, pasta, bread or any other carb that makes life worth living. Which means the sauce from each dish goes to waste since it's not flavoring rice or pasta or being soaked up with crusty bread.

It's got brown sugar so I can't say it's strictly low carb but compared to my previous carb consumption, it's all relative. Good ,easy option for a weeknight dinner. Would be good with rice. I assume.

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup beef broth
5 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
2 tablespoons freshly grated ginger
2-4 tablespoons Gochujang sauce, depending on desired heat (I didn't have any so I omitted it and added sliced onions instead)
1/2 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper
3-4 pounds boneless beef chuck roast, cut into 1-inch cubes

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together all ingredients except the roast. 
2. Place cubed roast into Instant Pot. Pour sauce over cubed meat.
3. Close the lid and make sure the pressure release valve is turned to "sealing".
4. Press the Meat program button and adjust the time to 40 minutes.
5. Once it has finished cooking, allow beef to remain in pot for 25 minutes of natural pressure release.
6. Carefully release any pressure left at the time by turning the pressure release valve to "venting". Serve warm.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies at high altitude

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies (revisited) - made dough February 10, 2019, from Knewton

I'm going through some re-testing of a few of my favorite recipes at a higher altitude to make sure they'll still turn out when I (potentially) make them for my niece's wedding in Denver. Having discovered my chocolate chip cookie recipe didn't really need to be adjusted for high altitude baking, I decided to try my luck with my favorite recipe for chocolate chocolate chip cookies.

If you recall, I was on a quest to find a good copycat recipe of Levain Bakery's chocolate chocolate chip cookie which I loved when I tried it on my trip to Manhattan. This one from Knewton was the best one I'd found so I wanted to make sure it would work at any altitude.

This time, I only made the recipe as is and didn't make any of the adjustments for the higher altitude. I made the cookies rather small since, if memory serves, it was also rather rich. I'd run out of Pernigotti cocoa and my Valrhona cocoa was still packed in a box somewhere in my garage but I did have some Guittard unsweetened cocoa powder that survived the move and actually got unpacked so I went with that.

The dough was a bit on the dry side when I had mixed everythnig. I don't know if that's because I didn't beat the butter enough and it's rather cold here (hello, actual real winter) but I packed the dough balls rather densely and, when it came time to bake them, was careful to underbake. As in, I only baked these for maybe 7-8 minutes. Then I let them cool completely before taking that first taste test bite. Hallelujah, they still turned out delicious with the perfect fudgy texture that's a must in all chocolate chocolate cookies. They might've become dry if I baked them for the time declared in the recipe, especially since I made them much smaller than before, so I've adjusted the time below to accommodate baking at a higher altitude. I also baked them at a lower temperature and they didn't spread. Actually, they hardly spread at all.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup bread flour
5/8 cup cocoa powder
5/8 teaspoon baking soda
5/8 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 sticks (14 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cold, cut into tablespoons
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 large egg + 1 large egg yolk
2 cups chocolate chunks

1. Sift flours, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together.
2. Beat cold butter until creamy, 1-2 minutes. Add sugars and beat until combined. Add vanilla, egg and egg yolk until just combined. Add dry ingredients and beat until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in chocolate chunks.
3. Portion the dough into 4-ounce dough balls. Separate each ball into halves and combine the smooth halves together, leaving the "ripped" edges on the outside. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight. If making them as small dough balls, pat into thick discs.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper and evenly space dough balls. Bake for 17-18 minutes for larger cookies or 7-8 minutes for smaller cookies at higher altitudes or until middles are set.  Cool completely on wire racks.

Turkey Taco-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Turkey Taco-Stuffed Sweet Potatoes - made February 10, 2019 from Cookin Canuck

This is another easy recipe to make and has the added advantage of being healthy-ish. You can omit the cheese at the end if you want dairy-free. I like recipes like this because they're easy for a non-cook like me to make and I like the base ingredients of sweet potato and ground turkey. I'm less of a fan of tomatoes but can eat them mixed into something, as in this case. Plus, bonus, it uses up some of my Penzey's spices.

My only trouble spot (you know there had to be one), is I didn't cook the sweet potatoes long enough. The original directions said to microwave them for 4-5 minutes. I tried that but they were still hard as rocks. So I ended up boiling them until they were mostly tender. I say mostly because I was afraid of boiling them too much and having them end up mushy, in which case, they would've fallen apart when I tried to scoop out the sweet potato and still leave the skins.

You can't actually scoop out all of the sweet potatoes and just leave skin as the skins would fall apart without any sweet potato to hold them together. So I carefully cut the insides out but left some sweet potato around the rim. That mostly worked. But the inner sweet potato was still a bit too firm so I ended up mashing them, pan frying them then baking them a little longer. But hey, other than that (ha), these turned out pretty well. Like I said, pretty healthy, at least compared to some of the other stuff I eat.

2 medium-sized sweet potatoes, cooked whole (can be boiled, microwaved or baked)
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin, divided
1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 + 1/8 teaspoon ground pepper
3/4 pound lean ground turkey
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 1/4 cup canned crushed tomatoes
1/4 cup grated cheese (I used cheddar)
2 tablespoons minced flat-leaf parsley

1. Cut cooked sweet potatoes in half, length-wise. Carefully scoop the flesh out of the potatoes, leaving a thin layer around the edges. With the back of a fork, mash the potato flesh until most lumps are gone. Stir in the olive oil, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Divide the mashed sweet potatoes evenly between the potato skins. Place on a baking sheet.
2. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Lightly coat with nonstick cooking spray. Add ground turkey and cook, breaking up with a wooden spoon until cooked through. Stir in the garlic, chili powder, remaining 3/4 teaspoon cumin, oregano, paprika and remaining 1/4 teaspoons of salt and pepper. Cook for 1 minute. Stir in the crushed tomatoes.
3. Preheat the broiler. Spoon the turkey mixture into each sweet potato skin. Top each with 1 tablespoon grated cheese. Broil until the cheese is melted, about 30 seconds. Garnish with parsley.

Instant Pot Beef

Original title: Crockpot Beef and Broccoli - made February 9, 2019, modified from BS Recipes

This was originally a recipe for Crockpot Beef and Broccoli but I rarely use my crock pot anymore since I now have an Instant Pot. And let's not kid ourselves that I would eat broccoli. So I modified this to make in my Instant Pot and omitted the broccoli. Hence, the more plain but accurate recipe title of "Instant Pot Beef".

I also used stew meat rather than chuck roast since I knew making it in the Instant Pot would render even stew meat tender. And....I couldn't tell you the difference between chuck roast and stew meat other than stew meat is cheaper and tends to be tougher if not properly tenderized.

The original blog recipe said this made a lot of sauce and recommended making only a half recipe so that's what I (mostly) did. The recipe below is a half recipe with the exception of I increased the brown sugar slightly to 1/4 cup just to make measuring easier as the original recipe called for 1/3 cup but I can't imagine most people would have a 1/6 measuring cup.

This is the kind of recipe I favor: easy to make if you consider cooking being to throw ingredients into a pot and turn it on, short list of ingredients I had on hand, and pretty tasty. It probably would've tasted better with some rice to mop up the sauce but I'm cutting back on carbs so I ate it "straight".

1 pound boneless beef chuck roast, sliced into thin strips (I used stew meat)
1/2 cup beef broth
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tablespoon sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons sauce after being cooked

1. Place beef in Instant Pot. Combine beef broth, soy sauce, brown sugar, oil and garlic. Pour over beef. Press Stew setting on Instant Pot. 
2. When finished cooking, let steam release naturally for 10 minutes then complete release manually.
3. Ladle out a spoonful of cooked sauce in a small bowl and stir in cornstarch to dissolve. Pour back into Instant Pot and press Saute setting. Stir until sauce has thickened and mixture has come to a boil, stirring for 5 minutes. Serve.