Bella Vita

Bella Vita, an Italian restaurant that is famous for its brick oven pizza in Times Square area. Considering the area of the restaurant, the price is reasonable. Expect to wait at least 20 minutes on the weekend, especially big group. The place was a bit small, nice crowd, great ambience.

Fried Calamari $8.95. Fresh tender fried calamari served with spicy marinara sauce. This lovely, big portion appetizer was so tender and juicy, crispy and not too oily. When dipped a piece in spicy marinara sauce, it was delicious.


Large pizza $15.95. Homemade tomato sauce and fresh mozarella with choose-your-own topping at $2.50 each. We had fresh mushroom and chicken. It was so fresh with right amount of sauce and toppings. The crust was made to perfection and it was scattered with basil. I love basil~


Spaghetti e Pollo Cacciatore $25.95
This was a family sized Spagetti with peppers, onions, mushrooms, white wine, sliced chicken breast in a light tomato sauce. It was very fresh and tasty, though a little more sauce won't hurt on this dish~


Bella Vita
211 W 43rd Street, between Broadway and Eight Avenue
New York, NY
Tel: 212-730-1479
Fax: 212-123-4567

Torys

Torys is a yakitori restaurant located in midtown area. Most of the items that we had were from the yakitori menu. Portion served is of appetiser size, so we had to order a lot of dish.

We started off with Kyona & Jyako, onsen tamago salad: baby arugula scattered with roast baby sardine and dressing of poached organic egg. The salad was so tasty and light.


Torys specialized in yakitori, the yakitori menu is divided into 4 parts: Yakitori Chicken, Chicken Limited, Yakitori Special, and Vegetable. Highlight was Chicken Limited which has very limited availabity. We arrived there at 7pm and some Chicken Limited had sold out. I feel that "Chicken Limited" is weird. The menu listing had soft knee bone, soft bone, neck, tail, hmmm...aren't those parts that normally people do not eat?

Some of the yakitori dishes we ordered were liver, meatball, soft knee bone, chicken tail, organic pork, lamb chop, eringi mushroom. They were all very small portion and each skewer cost $2-$4.50, they were expensive. The yakitori dishes were served with sea salt, and not season with yakitori sauce, hence it had a nice grilled and burned taste instead of sweet taste.


Lamb Chop $6


We ordered tofu cooked in hot pot and chicken rice cooked in earthenware pot. Both were cooked at the table. The tofu required 25 minutes and chicken rice required 35 minutes to cook.


As soon as we finished all yakitori dishes, the tofu was done. Daiginjyo tofu premium pure tofu in hot pot $8. We shared among 4 people so everyone just had 1 spoonful of tofu *lol*. It was plain silken tofu, we had to add some salt for a little taste. It was so soft, silky and melted in the mouth. It worth waiting 25 minutes to get those one spoonful of tofu. I wished there were more.


Jidori Donabe Gohan rice with chicken cooked in earthenware pot $12. This was small portion too, everyone just had 2 spoonfuls haha.. It tasted a bit like claypot chicken rice.


Dessert time! We decided to have 1 dessert each. Each of them tasted very good, we didn't regret ordering 4 different desserts to share.
Coffee jelly with vanilla ice cream $6
Pumpkin pudding $7
Ice Banana: Frozen banana served with coconut milk, tapioca & mint $7 Yawaraka annin tofu creamy apricot kernel tofu $5.5


It was a great dinner , good food with good company, especially with friends that take photos of food too. Most of the time, I feel that people scrutinize at me for taking food pictures. It has become a ritual for me that I must take food pictures before anyone is allowed to touch the food.


Yakitori Torys
248 E 52nd Street
New York, NY 10022
Tel: 212-813-1800

Vegetables

I travel to Flushing (home to Chinese/ Korean communities in the northern part of Queens, New York) to buy Asian grocery & vegetables weekly. For the next 3 days dinner will consist a lot of vegetables. If I keep too long they will end up in rubbish bin.

Mixed vegetables


I saw this weird mushroom a few times but never tasted and didn't know how to cook.


I happened to see WokkingMum cooked this dish. It has become one of our favorite dish; tender flesh, mild flavor, chewy texture, it tastes like abalone (poor man's version).

oshiruko

The reason I made green tea ice cream was because I bought the wrong red bean when trying to make Ichigo Daifuku. I didn't want to waste the red bean so I tried making this dessert.


There are 2 kinds of red bean soup in Japanese dessert: zenzai and oshiruko. Zenzai is served cold and thick/less watery. Oshiruko is served hot and more watery. Both zenzai and oshiruko are served with mochi or shiratama/ glutinuous rice dumplings. Mine is combination *lol* because it is watery and I served it cold as I don't want the ice cream to melt fast.

Shiratama is similar to Chinese Tong Yuen. I put 50g of glutinuous rice and 50ml of water. Mix them until the dough is as soft as ear lobe.


Make the dough into small balls, flatten them with your palms. Press the middle so the dumplings can be cooked evenly. Put the dumplings into boil water. They will float when they are done.

Green Tea Ice Cream

When I told my sister that I made green tea ice cream, she was excited. "How did you make ice cream? Do you have ice cream maker?" she asked. "Nope, I bought Vanilla ice cream and green tea powder." I replied. Hoho yeah that was a cheat. As a matter of fact, there are many Japanese restaurants that do them this way as well. The secret is to get good quality of green tea powder.


It is easy to make.
1. Soften vanilla ice cream
2. Add some green tea powder and mix it. I bought 350ml tub and I put 5 teaspoons of green tea powder.
3. Put back into ice cream tub and freeze it.


Green tea ice cream with red bean and shiratama.

Ichigo Daifuku

One of my favorite Japanese dessert is Ichigo Daifuku. Daifuku is sweet Japanese glutinious rice cake/ mochi. Ichigo means strawberry. Ichigo Daifuku contains strawberry wrapped in red bean paste.


Red bean paste is a common daifuku filling, however mashed red bean is fine too. The thing about red bean paste is that you have to find the right kind, Japanese vs Chinese. Make sure to get Japanese red bean paste as the canned chinese red bean paste is a little too wet and not suitable for the daifuku filling.


How to make the filling:


1. Place a piece of lint-free cloth and put a spoonful of red bean paste.
2. Flatten the paste with the same piece of cloth.
3. Add a strawberry (stem removed) on top.
4. Using the cloth, wrap the paste around strawberry.
Paste can be wrapped by hand too. But by using a piece of cloth, it can remove excessive water from the paste.

The dough recipe can be found here Kyoto Cooking Circle

Halloween

Halloween is a big event in US, celebrated by both adults and kids. Children go trick or treats, knocking on neighbours' doors collecting candies. Adults celebrate by having costume parties.

Treat bags. I packed 1 pumpkin marshmallow and 1 M&M packet/2 mini chocolates in a treat bag.


Children went from door to door, and also from one store to another store collecting candies while parents waited outside the store.


I went to NYC's Village Halloween Parade, which is the largest Halloween celebration in the US. The parade streched more than a mile, presented the night of every October 31st in NYC. It was reported that 2 million people gathered for the event. Unreal.

It was so crowded, it took us 10 minutes to get out of subway station. 20 minutes to find a good spot for 4 people.


The crowd


Some interesting costumes.


The parade. More photos of the parade here


This is hubby, it was scary.


There was a man dressed like this as if he was headless, took away his head from the neck.

Below are my some houses in the neighbourhood.

Scrambled eggs

Jon liked this breakfast on the roadtrip. He liked the idea of the baked bean in a seperate small bowl. He does not like the food to get "contaminated" with other food Duh.. less the eggs of course.. (messy eater).


This is my version of baked bean in seperate bowl :)


I made scrambled eggs for the first time. I did exactly what Gordon Ramsay did.

But mine seemed a bit funny. Anyway Jon said it was good, maybe he just wanted to please me.

Bea's Cafe

Bea's is a small cafe that serves homestyle breakfast (in New Hampshire). Great breakfast to start the day.

Egg and ham croissant with homemade fries.


Sunnyside up eggs. Underneath was homemade fries topped with bacon and cheese. Served with toast.

Bea's Cafe
Conway Marketplace
50 White Mountain Highway
Conway, NH 03818-4208
Tel: (603) 447-4900

My trip to New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. One of its 4 nicknames is "Switzerland of America" for its beautiful mountain scenery.

Having told that most of the trip will be in car, I didn't expect to enjoy it. I prepared a lot of sweets and mints to reduce the chance of getting motion sickness.


We went for mountail trail, walking along pathway that carpetted with colourful leaves and foliage. It was so cold near 2°C but everyone enjoyed it.


I love the colorful leaves.


This is the first time I enjoyed travelling in a car. Throughout the whole roadtrip, the drive was spectacular. View was always so beautiful as if we were driving through a canvas painting. We made a lot of stops, took loads of pictures and enjoyed the breathtaking views. Below are some of my favorite shots.




The only thing I didn't enjoy was the scenic train ride up to the mountain. It was a steam locomotive that produced large amount of smoke. The train consists of a coal burning locomotive pushing a single passenger car up the mountain, and descending the mountain by going backwards. The railway is 3 miles (4.8km) long. Each 3-mile ride burns one ton of coal and consumes 1,000 gallons(3800l) of water.


It was so jerky, way worst then the subway rides in NYC only slower. I did not enjoy as much as I would have liked to as I tend to feel dizzy from the "rocking" seat. So most of the time I sat straight and looked straight in front.

It snowed up in the mountain, the view was great, something I have never seen before.