Dining in Dallas.com

Chinese Noodles

Here’s an interesting video on how Chinese noodles are made.

Tags: Chinese, Noodles

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Thai Restaurants

I’ve noticed a lot of new Thai restaurants lately. Just a couple of days ago we rated Bangkok City which we should have a review for soon. Thai food for me is a hit or miss. Sometimes I’ll eat something great at a Thai restaurant, but more often than not I’ve been disappointed. I blame it on this one Thai restaurant in Austin called Thai Menu. I probably had the best Thai food I’ve ever tasted at that restaurant. I think I tried every item on their menu at least once. When I found out they were closed I was beyond sad. Since then my expecation for good Thai food is sky high, which is why very few Thai restaurants appeal to me these days.

Still Thai food seem to be gaining popularity judging from the new restaurants popping up everywhere. Is Thai cuisine a new trend these days? Hmm… Actually that got me thinking. I’ve never tried cooking Thai food before because their seasonings and sauces seemed complicated. But I might start with a little help from from a kit at CurrySimple.com. The ready made curry mix and sauces should make the cooking experience a whole lot easier. Plus they claim the mix and sauces are made to restaurant quality WITHOUT the use of MSG or preservatives which is certainly very attractive.

Eventually though I’ll want to create my own Thai sauces. But until I’m good at it I’ll probably default to ready made sauces for now.

Tags: Thai, restaurant, curry, sauce, ready made

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Dining in Breckenridge

Against our better judgement, we decided to eat at the airport since we had some time to kill before our flight and we were hungry. We already knew beforehand the food wasn’t going to be great in terms of overall value but at least it was something to fill the stomach. Well we ended up trying this Bamboo Express place in Terminal D area at DFW airport.

Needless to say it was not very good. It was overly soy sauce flavored and salty beyond recognition. It was about the same as Pei Wei’s I guess is the best way to describe it. I got the beef and chicken broccoli combo with fried rice. Incidentally, white rice was not available so that really made the dish that much more salty. And I think it came out to be like $9.00 or something with the bottled water. Normally I don’t get water but I needed to get water for the plane… that’s besides the point. Point is.. just reiterating what I said earlier.. generally it’s not a good idea to purchase food at the airports here in the US. They usually overcharge and stiff you on quality. I guess they’re able to do that because there are those who have no choice but to purchase food there.

This was the place we stayed at upon arrival at Breckenridge. Fully furnished kitchen shown. Jason did an excellent job booking a fantastic place for this trip. I was mucho impressed.

Our first night’s dinner at our resort in Colorado. I didn’t want to spend too much time cooking the first night, so we bought a baked chicken from Safeway and some ready to eat dinner rolls. The meat was pulled from the bones because I wanted to use the chicken bones to make stock. We cooked some broccoli and cauliflower for the vegetables.

This pic was one peering down a fork in one of the blue trails up Peak 8 I think. This was our second time snowboarding so it was obviously not as scary as last year. I guess the best way to describe this view is just.. awe. I stopped many a time to rest and just capture the greatness of His creation. Well that and my knees were super tired.

This view was taken near the mid part of a slope and it shows what I just snowboarded down from.

I had my mind set on steak when I found out that our lodge had a gas grill. It took a while to pick out the perfect steaks at Safeway. We ended up getting 3 ribeyes that were cut 1 inch thick and were at least 16oz a piece. Inspired by one of our fellow Dining In Dallas compadres who opted to go to NY rather than join us on the slopes at Breckenridge, I decided to prepare the steaks Korean style…or so he says. Basically I just used soy sauce, coke, and some garlic.

Just as we’re about to grill the steaks, however, we discovered that the grill was so dirty that it was unusable. I was hungry, and I didn’t want to waste any time cleaning whatever gunk the previous irresponsible tenants had left behind, so I grilled the steaks on the skillet. Fortunately they turned out okay…a little more done than I had wanted them to be but still tender and juicy. That night we ate steak, more broccoli and cauliflower, and ramen. I was super stuffed afterwards.

Next morning we made eggs for breakfast. There were 4 of us, and we bought 5 dozen eggs for 4 days. That meant each of us had to consume about 4 eggs per day which is okay if you like eggs. I don’t usually eat that many eggs, so I tried to mix it up by cooking the eggs differently each time. What you see here is my version of scrambled eggs and egg omelet.

Green eggs and ham? No, they’re just green noodles and vegetables. I think the noodles had some spinach inside or something to make it green. Whatever. It tasted okay so I didn’t mind. More brocolli and cauliflower…lots of it. We decided to cook the rest of it to get it over with. I think it was at this point that I realized that we had bought too much food. For our 3rd night we had spaghetti with green noodles. I built the sauce from a jar of ready made spaghetti sauce, added some chicken stock I made the first night, freshly diced tomatoes, grilled eggplant, left over steak from last night, and chicken drumsticks. Whatever I could throw into the sauce I did…except for the bananas, but even those nearly fell victim.

After dinner, we decided to do a little shopping and sight-seeing to walk off what we just ate. For me it was almost torture. Nearly every other building that we walked past was a restaurant or eatery. My mouth watered every time the smell of food hits my nose even though I just ate a huge dinner. I could resist it only so much. When I saw the cookies on display at Mary’s Mountain Cookies, I caved in. I bought a Muddy Mogul, fudge sandwiched between two huge peanut butter cookies.

I knew I was in trouble when I saw the sign in front of me. “Crepes a la Carte” it said. Turned out it was a street vendor selling crepes. Again, I found myself ordering a crepe before it even registered in my mind that my Muddy Mogul was still untouched. The crepes were either savory or sweet. I asked what their most popular sweet one was. The guy said smores, and that’s what I got.

To maximize our time on the slopes, we brought sandwiches. A turkey sandwich with American cheese, lettuce, and mayo on wheat bread to be exact. On top of my sandwich was the leftover smores crepe that I didn’t finish last night. I stuck my sandwich in the front pocket of my jacket which wasn’t such a good idea because they were all smashed together when I took it out to eat it. Didn’t bother me though cuz I was hungry. Everything tastes good when you’re hungry, even a turkey smores sandwich.

On our last evening here, we did our customary tradition of eating at a fine dining restaurant. We had it on good authority from the locals of a place called The Dredge (boathouse) and decided to try the place. Sure enough, this restaurant was a huge boat sitting on a frozen lake almost like an island with a couple of bridges leading up to the entrances.

A while ago I watch an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown made a French onion soup unlike any onion soup I’ve seen. Ever since then whenever I see onion soup on the menu I’m tempted to order it, but I never actually did until now. I guess my expectation for it was too high because I thought it was okay at best. The soup itself was good, but the bread was too soggy in my opinion. I was hoping for a little bit more texture from the bread.

House Salad was splendid. It had an assortment of veggies that meshed nicely together. Ranch dressing was supposed to come with the dish but the waitress had to be reminded because she forgot the dressing the first time around.

Coconut Braised Shrimp. This appetizer was very good. Probably the specialty in this dish was the sauce but the way the jumbo shrimp was prepared, was nothing short of perfection. I wanted more but at $3.00 a shrimp, it was a little impractical to order more.

Complimentary Bread. Not much I can say about this. Crispy on outside and soft inside makes for a good bread starter.

I love pork ribs. When I saw it on the menu I decided that I must have it. The question was, should I get the full or half rack? I ended up choosing the half because I had a picture of the full rack of ribs someone ordered at Blue Spruce last year in my mind, so I made my decision based on that. Turned out the half rack was just right quantity-wise. The meat was tender and the BBQ sauce was finger-licking good. The baked potato was perfect. I’ve never tasted a potato so fluffy before. I didn’t even use the butter that came with it because it didn’t need any.

Unfortunately there was one thing that I would’ve done to make this dish even better, and that’s the vegetables (more like the lack of). When I lifted the ribs, I found a couple sticks of baby carrots, exactly two pods of snow peas, and a slice of squash. They weren’t exactly there for decoration because I didn’t see them until I lifted the ribs. They’re not there as a side either (at least I don’t think so) because the quantity was laughably inadequate. My suggestion would be to either have more vegetables or not have them at all. Otherwise it’s just too confusing >_<

Salmon Special. One of the 2 or 3 specials that the waitress suggested. It looked very tender and much like the stuffed red trout dish, just under well done and very nicely seasoned.

Pork Saute. From what I could tell, it looked pretty good. Another person got this dish so I didn’t get a chance to sample it. He had no complaints though so I can only assume it was satisfactory.

Stuffed Red Trout. This dish was amazing. The red trout was prepared just a little under well done and stuffed with assorted seafood delights. I believe it was basically crab and shrimp stuffed inside. It was very well prepared and tingled my taste buds wonderfully. I, of course, squeezed the lemon all over the trout. The rice complemented the trout nicely because the stuffing was slightly on the salty side evident with the 4 or 5 glasses of water I went through.

The Dredge
180 W. Jefferson
Breckenridge, CO 80424
(970) 453-4877

Ambiance: 9
Food: 8
Service: 7
Cleaniness: 9
Value: 8
Health: 8
Overall: 8

We passed by this French bakery before our dinner at the Dredge. Again, I found myself inside the store a few seconds later. The owners were actually French, or people who spoke fluent French. They politely greeted me and said some other things, but I was only half listening because my focus was on the treats on display. I finally got a croissant fruit tart. For some reason I didn’t feel like cutting into it and messing it up, so I brought it back to Dallas with me.

We had so many eggs left over, that we decided to boil the rest and stick it on one of our carry ons back to Dallas. Waste not want not right?

Panda Express’s Orange Chicken entree. Ate this right before we went through security at Denver International Airport. It was actually not that bad considering I’m (George) not a huge fan of orange chicken. But as with any airport food, it probably wasn’t worth it. I didn’t see the receipt but that’s a safe assumption.

All in all, this trip was very efficient and fullfilling. On the snowboarding end, I think I learned or at least I achieved a better understanding of the S-turns. Before, my primary and only way to maneuver was with my heels but now.. I think I can use my toe to move a little. Far from mastery but just a little closer. Improvement nonetheless. One the food side, we were again pleasantly surprised with a great restaurant our last evening there. The locals did not disappoint us and gave us a wonderful choice. So basically, a solid trip all around. I can’t wait till next trip.

Tags: Breckenridge, Colorado, The Dredge

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Super Mushroom Pizza

I’ve always been a huge fan of mushroom pizza. I admit sometimes my love for mushrooms has even gone overboard. I remember a while back I was having pizza at a local italian restaurant and I took out a crisp $5 bill and asked the waitress how much extra mushroom I could get with $5. To my disappointment, she only charged $.50 in the end for an extra mushroom topping and needless to say, my pizza wasn’t made the way I wanted it to be. A little while later I had actually knew a friend that owned a pizza store and I asked him to make me a pizza with lots and lots of mushrooms. I guess I wasn’t clear enough on how much mushroom I wanted. Maybe next time I should just tell them to go ahead and put on all the mushroom they had in stock.

Anyways, I decided that the best way to get a pizza cooked to my liking would be to just make it myself. And that’s what I did. With a simple pepperoni pizza from Target and 2 cartons of mushrooms added on top of it, I simply call it my Super Mushroom Pizza.

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Special Omelette

I’ve come to believe everyone is born with the innate desire to try new things, to explore new horizons, or in our case, to invent new (and not to mention, peculiar) recipes.

Personally, I’m probably as big as Bernie Mac on real Fried Chicken, on real egg omelettes. I especially like to mix-and-match the ingredients I add in with my omelettes. On some days I might throw in mushrooms, onions, and bell peppers for a garden vege omelette and on other days, I might fry some bacon and ham together and make myself a meat lovers omelette.

But one night I realized I was out of all the ingredients I normally used to cook with my omelette. And I wasn’t ready to go to bed without my midnight snack so I used what little I had and attempted to create a new recipe.

Just an ordinary plain omelette in its making

Yes, with Jelly and Bananas!

The final product

Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out what I had imagined it to be. Needless to say, I’ll probably just stick with veges & meat for my omelettes next time.

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Central Market Cooking School

I remember back when I used to live in Austin for a couple of years, the supermarket of choice was HEB. Well, that company also has an offshoot supermarket called Central Market which is basically the Lexus to your Toyota. If you’ve ever been to Central Market, you know what I’m talking about. Everything’s higher quality.. much more health related products.. fresh.. refined.. just high class overall.

Well a few years ago, HEB announced that it’d start expanding and Dallas was on its radar. They brought in Central Market during that time. I’ve probably been to the place about 5 times since it’s arrival since there are just so many options here in Dallas. But I never knew that Central Market held culinary classes. Though.. I’m not surprised. Very fascinating.. probably one of my other DiningInDallas.com colleagues would be interested in checking out. Here’s the link.

http://www.centralmarket.com/cm/cmClasses.jsp

Tags: culinary, cooking, central market

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The Art Institute of Dallas

Check it out. An actual culinary program at an institute here in Dallas. I’ve included the description of what you’ll learn in the culinary arts program. Sounds interesting and something probably someone you know might consider doing if they’re interested in the details and skill in creating food.

Because becoming a truly great culinary artist demands practice and precision, when you enter the Associate of Applied Science degree program in Culinary Arts at The Art Institute of Dallas you’ll be cooking alongside fellow students and faculty in a real-life kitchen environment. You’ll get your start with fundamental cooking and knife skills classes, then progress to lessons in sanitation and safety, as well as baking and pastry courses. Soon, you’ll advance to specialized classes, learning about garde manger, regional and international cuisines, and purchasing and cost control. In your final quarter you’ll put it all together by learning how to professionally assemble your résumé. This is when you will see just how far you’ve come – from first-quarter novice to culinary professional!

You can get an Associate of Applied Science degree in this trade!! They have a class in Baking. Wow.. talk about pursuing your passion right? Cooking is a science after all.

Tags: art institute of dallas, culinary school, cooking

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