I realize this is an extremely long entry! Feel fee to break it up and take bathroom breaks in between each paragraph.
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So much chaos has been happening lately that I’ve been leaving cooking in the dust. Although I haven’t had my midterms yet (I’m one of the lucky few who only has one round of midterms), my design class has been killing me (200 drawings assigned over the weekend… madness. Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!!! – I had to…). But I’m back!
A few weeks ago, my friend Kathryn and I went to Nickel Diner. I bought eat.shop los angeles and it’s one of the restaurants it recommended. Just the fact that “diner” was in its title made me think of a soda shop, lots of red stripes, cherries, and just nostalgic ol’ America. Well… it wasn’t like that. Rather, it was hipster (should have know… oh LA, you and your hipster ways). But those expectations didn’t hinder my experience there. When we asked for the dessert menu, our lovely tattooed waiter presented us with a tray of deserts. A FREAKING TRAY! We gazed with delight and a glimmer of drool came to say hi (weird visual). We decided to be bold and try their last bacon donut and salt peanut cake. Now the bacon donut is self-explanatory, but the cake… it has PO-TA-TO chips in it. That gave the cake an extra crunch, but you couldn’t really taste the potato. Both desserts were quite tasty and a little bit savory. Kathryn and I kept on trying to figure out what they used to make the icing of the cake out of. It was light… but then had this interesting butter consistency when you cut into it. But instantly, it melted in your mouth. Overall, great experience and it helps to have good company. I would love to go back and try actual dishes. They smelled and looked so good.
Now for the banana bread I made. Good ol’ PunchFork was there for me again. One of my roommates had some brown bananas that needed lovin’ so I decided to look up a recipe for banana bread. The recipe I used is actually called, “banana banana bread.” Now I was in midst of design class chaos, I hadn’t cooked all week (partially due to not having enough time, but mostly due to the fact that I couldn’t get to Ralphs… lesson folks, you need a car in LA). But I had this urge to make something and get it done that night. Cooking and baking is very therapeutic for me (and very beneficial to my friends around me). Now, I think I went a bit crazy, but I decided to make 24 servings. That means I need ten bananas. Well, my roommate only had three brown ones, so I ran over to the sketchy Superior market next door. Surprisingly, they didn’t have brown bananas (all you USC students, you’d think they would have worse produce there, but it’s actually not that bad). Now that was bad for me, but good for everyone else. I looked for the most jacked up bananas and headed home. In less than two hours I had four loaves of banana bread. Pretty tasty too. It wasn’t as sweet as I would have liked (because of the not-as-ripe bananas), but still good stuff. Oh, and I forgot to add the walnuts into the dough, so I ended up sprinkling them on top with a bunch of brown sugar. Brown sugar crusts are the best.
And lastly, I had my first experience with Brazilian BBQ this past weekend! For all you LA kids, it’s dineLA the next two weeks. That means a bunch of restaurants (especially swanky ones) will create a set menu and it’s cheaper than what it would originally cost. My friend Kathryn and I wanted to take advantage of this wonderful event (we are determined to become foodies). She picked the restaurant, Libra Brazilian Steakhouse, and I made the reservation. Despite attempting to invite a huge group of people, a couple of our friends ended up joining us in the end. No worries, it was still a lot of fun. Now back home, I have some brothers at my church who make a big deal about Brazilian BBQ. From what I understood, it was a man’s meal. Lots of MEAT. Libra is a pretty nice restaurant. I don’t know if I expected a cave or something… but it was swanky and definitely a place a guy should take a girl out to (First of all, the girl will love the ambiance. Secondly, the guy can eat as much meat as he wants. So a win-win situation). We started with the salad bar that was pretty impressive. There was marinated mushrooms, smoked salmon on a slice of potato… and to class it up, no ranch dressing. Just olive oils (there were like five different kinds) and different vinegars. You know you’ve hit it big when there are only olive oil and vinegar dressings. There were also hot sides, but I honestly wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t that hot and the flavors were a bit weak. But now let’s get to the MEAT (pun anyone?). Men walked around with sticks of meat and asked if you wanted any. Despite having these cards that indicated how we wanted our meat to be cooked, it really didn’t make a difference. So here’s what I think I had: house special picanha (sirloin cap), Brazilian sausage, smoked sausage, tri-tip, top sirloin, BBQ chicken, garlic picanha, chicken hearts, pineapple with cinnamon (Yes, that was on a stick. No it’s not a meat), ribeye steak, filet mignon, skirt steak, and prime ribs. Honestly, it’s a blur now so I’m not too clear on exactly what I ate. Most of the meats were delicious though. The chicken was soooo tender and the garlic picanha was superb. I love garlic, so that really hit the spot. I wasn’t going to go for the chicken hearts, but one of the guys at my table got like four and we all decided to take a bite. According to him, it tasted like dried olives. I honestly only tasted garlic. As for dessert, two of us had sorbet (lemon, blood orange, and passion fruit) and the other two had chocolate mousse. Now in the picture you see below, we all look pretty happy and alive. But let me tell you, once we sat in the car… it was over. At least for the guys. They were laying back, mouths open, holding their stomachs and groaning a bit. It was a good night. (Sorry for the lack of photos at Libra. I felt like enjoying my dinner and company and taking pictures would ruin that. Ah, the balance between work and play.)
I just wanted to leave on one last note. Although I don’t have pictures of it (I need to get better at documenting the food I cook and eat), I have made these fruit crumb bars a couple of times and they are DELICIOUS. Sadly, I can’t say that it’s my original recipe, but I do add a good helping of brown sugar on top to create a crunchier crust. I used raspberry the first time and strawberry the second (blueberries were too expensive or out of season when I made it). I’ve gotten a lot of complements for them, so I highly recommend you to try it out (Men can bake too!).
