Restaurant Review: Amarin Thai

Amarin Thai - lunch on August 22, 2013

Amarin Thai has three locations in the South Bay and the peninsula and, fortunately for me, one of those is within walking distance of my office.  I went here for lunch with a coworker when we both had time between meetings for the 10-minute walk. I prefer to walk here as they're in a small strip mall and parking is dicey during the busy lunch rush as they have to share the spots with other small eateries.  Walking is better.

This particular location is pretty humble as it's essentially a small room crowded with as many tables as they can fit in there.  I don't advise coming here with more than 4 people in your party as their largest tables only appear to fit four.  You can put tables together, of course, but seriously, this place is small.  The interior shot above was taken from the doorway and there are only 3-4 small tables to the left  that aren't in the picture.  Otherwise, there are also a few 2- or 4-top tables outside which can be utilized in good weather.

Like all places that cater to the business crowd at lunch, Amarin Thai has a lunch special menu along with their regular menu and they serve your order within a few minutes.  The longest I might have ever waited for an order was 7-8 minutes.  Each order comes with a cup of soup: a clear, spicy broth with chopped vegetables.  I almost always get the pad thai (of course), no bean sprouts with chicken and shrimp.  I'm a big fan of pad thai and Amarin Thai serves a good one.  Not quite as good as the one from my favorite Thai place (Krung Thai) but still decent.  It isn't fancy but if you want a quick lunch for $10, it's a good place to go.

Cashew Butter Cookies

Cashew Butter Cookies - made August 24, 2013 from Land O Lakes Cookies

I have certain prejudices when it comes to cookies.  The biggest one I've mentioned before is I don't like nuts in my cookies, especially in the thick, fat, chubby, chewy cookies I typically prefer.  Nuts are meant to be crisp and I don't like them in cookies because they steam and soften during baking.  Notable exceptions are macadamias as in white chocolate macadamia cookies or coconut macadamia cookies or other types of nuts (except walnuts) where they're part of a crisp cookie like almonds in the Lemon Chip Cookies or the Pecan Butter Shortbread or something like Mexican Wedding Cakes where the pecans are the star of the cookie.  I also don't mind nuts on top of cookies or brownies as long as they stay crisp and provide a texture contrast.

But every once in awhile, I try out a recipe that will challenge my prejudice, just in case it turns out so fantastically well that I'll be glad I kept an open mind. Hmm, this recipe didn't quite do that but for an unexpected reason.  It turns out I didn't mind the cashews in the cookies as I have a soft spot for cashews in my cookie-eating heart.  But I didn't like the honey.  I don't care for honey in sweets because I don't like the flavor of honey that much and most of the time, it's a little too sweet for me. I do like it in savory dishes, like when it's paired and offset with something salty like soy sauce.  But I've never been into baked goods like baklava because the honey makes it too sweet. These cookies weren't necessarily overly sweet but the honey flavor was definitely present so I didn't like these cookies as much as I had hoped.

However, I always maintain everyone's tastes are different so while I may not like something, it doesn't mean others won't like it.  I brought a plate of these to work and left them in our communal kitchen one morning.  A few hours later, I walked by and found this:

So someone must've liked them :).

¾ cup butter, softened

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup honey

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup chopped salted cashews

1.     Heat oven to 375˚F.  In large mixer bowl combine butter, sugar, honey and egg.  Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until well mixed (1 to 2 minutes).  Reduce speed to low.  Add all remaining ingredients except chopped cashews and cashew halves.  Continue beating, scraping bowl often, until well mixed (1 to 2 minutes).

2.     By hand, stir in chopped cashews.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheets; top each cookie with cashew half.  Bake for 6 to 9 minutes or until golden brown.

Restaurant Review: Pho 99

Pho 99 - lunch on August 18, 2013

This is another go-to place my parents and I lunch at after church on Sundays.  Similar to Li Zhou, it seems to be a small, independently-owned restaurant that doesn't have its own website so I'm linking to the yelp reviews.  The inside is simply furnished so don't expect fancy but they're clean and they're quick.

We like to get the fried Vietnamese spring rolls as an appetizer - they're 5 for $5.95 and come out fast, hot, crisp and just a little greasy.  I always blot with a paper napkin first then just enjoy them.

They do a good pho here if you're in the mood for hot soup that comes out almost as soon as you order it.  This particular Sunday I was more in the mood for an entree than soup so I ordered the grilled beef and shrimp rice plate.  The shrimp is rather sparse (you get 3) but the beef is tender and has good flavor. They also give you a fair amount of rice so it's a pretty good value for under $10.

As with most pho restaurants, they're fast, cheap and filling so they're the perfect place for a quick lunch.

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Chickpea Cookies)

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies - made August 24, 2013 from Texan Erin

Let me start off by saying if I had titled these "Chickpea Cookies", you probably would've skipped this entry and kept on going. I would have too.  Chickpeas?  In cookies?  Heck, I had to google "chickpeas" and see exactly what they were.  Then I was even more turned off to discover they're just another name for garbanzo beans.  I have no love for garbanzo beans.  Just bad memories of my parents trying to make me eat them when I was a kid and me spitting them out into my napkin, excusing myself from the table on the pretext of having to go to the bathroom and flushing that napkinful of garbanzo beans down the toilet.  Ick.

So why on earth am I using chickpeas (less traumatizing for me to think of them as chickpeas instead of the garbanzo beans of my childhood) in something as sacrosanct as cookies?? If you've seen the picture of these from Texan Erin's blog, you'll understand why I felt compelled. Some people might want to try them because they're gluten-free, dairy free, and contain no white sugar. I made them because her picture of them looked so good. And a friend as good as dared me to make them.  So I did.

The only change I made from the original recipe is I used almond butter instead of natural peanut butter, mostly because I prefer almond butter and the recipe said it was okay to make the substitution.  So that's what my cookies came out darker than hers.  Otherwise, I followed the directions to the letter, including weighing out all my ingredients to the last gram.  I didn't want any excuses on this recipe and wanted to be able to judge it on its own merit, chickpeas and all.

Baked for 10 minutes

They actually turned out better than I expected.  As with the limited number of things I've made that are gluten-free, they're rather dense, soft and "fudgy".  There are no crisp edges to this one and I'd advise you to let  the cookies cool completely before tasting them or else they might be too gooey.  I baked the first batch for the 10 minutes directed in the recipe and it was a little too gooey.  I baked the second batch an extra 5 minutes with no discernible difference in taste and the texture was just as soft but not as gooey once it had cooled. I think these would be hard to overbake but you definitely don't want to underbake them either.  Taste-wise, you can't taste the chickpeas at all; it seems they just contribute to the texture and give the cookies some body.  The honey was also not prevalent which was good for me since I don't like the taste of honey.  I liked these cookies but I don't know if I could say I loved them.  If someone wanted something with no flour, no sugar and no dairy, this cookie is a good choice.  I don't know that I would add these to my holiday baking list but if I did need to bake for someone who's gluten free, I'm going with these cookies.

Baked for 15 minutes

1¼ cups canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) natural peanut butter (don't use regular peanut butter) or almond butter, room temperature
¼ cup (80 grams) honey 
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn't have salt in it
½ cup (90 grams) chocolate chips

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they're combined.
2. Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky.
3. With wet hands, form into 1½" balls. Place onto a Silpat or a piece of parchment paper. If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls. They don't do much rising.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes (or up to 15 minutes). The dough balls will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven. They will not set like normal cookies.
5. Store in an airtight container at room temperature (or in the fridge) for up to 1 week.

Restaurant Review: Howie's Artisan Pizza

Howie's Artisan Pizza - dinner on August 16, 2013

I had never heard of Howie's Artisan Pizza before but the night I met my cousin and Vanilla King for dinner at Mayfield Bakery & Cafe, we passed by Howie's on our way to the Palo Alto Cream as Howie's was located in the same Town & Country Village just outside the Stanford campus.  They had a menu posted on the outside of the restaurant so we ventured a look.  Despite already being full from dinner and trying to save room for ice cream sandwiches for dessert, the menu looked mouth watering and we resolved to come back and try out Howie's.

Garlicky Prawns appetizer

I ended up trying it out first because when I met Lisa, one of my oldest friends from high school, for dinner last month, I suggested Howie's. Lisa was up for it and we have compatible eating tastes so it was easy to agree on Garlicky Prawns for the appetizer and we split the Baked Potato Pizza.  I don't have a picture of the inside of the restaurant because we never went in.  Howie's has outdoor seating and it was nice summer night with perfect weather so it was an easy choice to make to be seated outside.

Baked Potato Pizza

The Garlicky Prawns were delicious. As someone partial to shrimp, I really enjoyed them. It comes with garlic bread which can also be ordered as a separate appetizer but I'd go with the two-fer and get the prawns instead so you can have both.  The Baked Potato Pizza had scalloped potatoes, grueyere cheese and bacon.  It was also tasty although our choice of toppings was probably a bit more carbo-loading than I needed.  Potatoes aren't a typical pizza topping for me so I thought it would be interesting to try. Uh, tasted just like sliced potatoes on a pizza :). The crust was also good.  It wasn't as thick as Premier Pizza's but still a decent thickness with a crisp edge if you don't want to gorge on too much bread. Think of it almost like a perfect blend of flatbread and deep dish pizza.  It's got the crunch of flatbread pizza at the edges but also the satisfying chewiness of deep dish in the middle.

Price-wise, Howie's is inline with specialty, mom-and-pop places with good pizza so I didn't mind paying it. I'm always of the mindset that I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for good food made well than get the mass-produced cheap stuff which isn't very good or is only "okay". From their website, Howie's looks like they've been in business since late 2009 and, 4 years later, they appear to still be thriving by the crowd there on the Friday night we went.  It's also very family friendly (lots of kids in action) if you wanted to bring your family out for a good pizza night.

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough August 23, 2013, adapted from Crazy for Crust

Never let it be said I'll pass up trying a new chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Because I won't.  Especially when they're big cookies loaded with chocolate chips. And have brown butter.  And come from a food blogger whose taste seems so similar to my own and whose recipes I've tried before with much success.  This is no exception.  In fact, I'll even go so far as to say this may dislodge one of my previously favorite recipes for chocolate chip cookies and take one of the top 2 spots for chocolate chip cookie greatness. It ranks right up there with Alton Brown's recipe in my book.

Actually, it might even have a slight edge over Alton's recipe although I may have to bake both and try them "side by side".  You know, just to be sure.  But for now, I'm going off of sensory memory.  My taste buds have excellent recall. Why do I like this particular cookie so much? Well, you all know my idea of an optimal chocolate chip cookie eating experience is to eat it warm, 10 minutes out of the oven.  Eat it too soon and it's more gooey than chewy, not to mention you burn your tongue (er, not that I would know or anything).  But give it 10 minutes to cool and the edges have had time to get a little crisp while the middle is still soft and the chocolate chips are still melt-y.  Yum.  But oftentimes, a good chocolate chip cookies 10 minutes out of the oven is only so-so once it's completely cool.  That's when I notice it's too sweet or the texture isn't quite so chewy at room temp or it stales too fast and less than a day later it's already dry.

This particular cookie was fantastic 10 minutes out of the oven but even better(!) once it had cooled. The taste held up as well as the texture.  I actually baked it a minute or two longer than Dorothy's original instructions because I preferred it a little more baked than gooey.  The only other thing I did differently was instead of mini chocolate chips, I chopped up a slab of milk chocolate into chunks and used that instead. So good. Like "extra miles on the treadmill worth it" good.

Just to show you how thick these cookies bake up, here's a comparison of one of the cookies against my iphone encased in its Otterbox - pretty chubby, eh? 

2 sticks butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cup light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract, optional (I left it out)
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate chunks)

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, about 6 minutes, until it becomes brown in color. It will foam, reduce, then foam again. Once it’s done cooking the foam is a light brown and it will dissipate after you remove it from the heat. Once it starts to brown, keep stirring so it doesn’t burn. Let sit for about 5 minutes to cool.
2. Pour into an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. While still hot, add both sugars and mix on low until combined. Let sit to cool for a few minutes.
3. While butter mixture is cooling, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir and set aside.
4. Turn mixer (with butter mixture bowl attached) on low. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing completely. Mix in vanilla extract and almond extract (optional, but it adds great flavor). Add flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
5. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill dough for at least 3 hours. (My alternative: I portioned the dough into generous-sized dough balls first, placed them in an upside-down plastic pie cover, covered them in plastic wrap then chilled them overnight.  This way you can bake them directly when you're ready.)
6. Preheat oven to 350°. Line cookie sheets with parchment or silpat liners. If you didn't already portion your dough into dough balls, you may need to let the bowl of cookie dough sit at room temp for about 20 minutes before you can scoop it.
7. Scoop out 1/4 cup sized balls and place 6-8 on a sheet. They don’t spread a lot, but they’re BIG cookies.
8. Bake for about 11-12 minutes. They will be golden on the outside and still doughy on the inside. Let cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from pans to cool completely.

Eatery Review: Premier Pizza

Premier Pizza - lunch on July 31, 2013

I'm blogging out of order about the places where I've eaten but I didn't want to skip this one.  One of my coworkers and I went to get lunch near the office.  The main purpose of the trip (at least for me) was to go to Prolific Oven but since neither of us wanted to get lunch there, we opted for Premier Pizza instead.  Both are located in the same strip mall and we both had meetings until noon so we didn't arrive until the height of the lunch rush. 

Neither one of us had a lot of time for lunch since duty called back at the office but fortunately, Premier Pizza is quick.  You can order pizza by the slice of whatever is available at the time so there's no wait time for the pizza to bake.  This is also a good place to go to if you're hungry and on a budget.  One slice of pizza is $4.25 and the slices are huge!  It's literally a quarter of a pizza. For under $5, you can pretty much fill up for the rest of the day.  What I like about them is their crust; it's soft and thick crust but not too dense or hard. 

 

Premier Pizza also specializes in corporate catering and it's how I heard about them in the first place when my old company ordered in for lunch and I tried out their pizza.  They have four locations to serve the South Bay and Silicon Valley. They're a good option when you have to feed a lot of people at once and the different choices of toppings means you can easily accommodate both vegetarians and meat lovers alike.