Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Some Insight into Sushi & My Personal Experiance

A couple of my friends and I decided to do dinner a few nights ago, we are huge sushi lovers esp. since many of us tend to associate sushi with the low-calorie factor (plus i had a big lunch). Whether it is as healthy as sushi lovers claim, it sure tastes good and beats eating the typical stir fry with rice. For those who are interested in calorie counting and looking up the nutrition information i normally use About.com: Health: http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/search.php?search_type=foods&searchpro=sushi

Before i talk about my meal, i wanted to share a quick insight into the history of sushi. The type of sushi rolls in the states are rather different than the rolls in Japan. There are a number of rolls that were created in the states to appeal more to the Westerners and Vegetarians, to name a few: the California roll, the Spider roll and the Philadelphia roll. The oldest form of sushi does not even resemble sushi today as the fish was taken out of the rice, only the fish was consumed and the rice was discarded. The contemporary version, internationally known as "sushi," was invented at the end of the Edo period, a.k.a. the beginning of the early modern period of Japan. Hanaya Yohei invented sushi and changed the preparation method by rolling both the rice and the fish together, which became an early form of fast food. Who knew sushi was considered a fast food, def. not similar to the forms of fast food we have today!

Back to my meal, we dined at "Little Tokyo" a small sushi joint in North County, San Diego. I am a huge tuna fan and almost always get the spicy tuna rolls (as a starter)... I noticed with the typical rolls you could order them spicy or not spicy, which is always nice to have that preference. I ordered mine spicy! I also ordered the Fire Roll which consists of spicy krab & cucumber topped with spicy tuna (gotta have my tuna!) The rolls were prepared perfectly and arranged on a platter with wasabi and gari (sweet pickled ginger), i always use the low sodium soy sauce (green cap on bottle) as i find the regular soy sauce (red cap on bottle) too salty. The rice was neither too sticky nor dry. And of course, i had a glass of plum wine which compliments the tuna rolls very well. The nice thing about the cut rolls is you can easily share with your friends, which allows you to get a little taste of something you might not normally try. I left the restaurant feeling full but not stuffed and rather satisfied, i guess that's the beauty of eating sushi.

The cost of the food was fairly priced, although Little Tokyo wouldn't be on the top of my 3 favorite sushi places, it is def. a place i would dine at again. I will undoubtedly be posting more blogs on my sushi insights, until than...

Happy Grubbing!

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Quick & Easy Recipe - Veggie Tortilla Rolls

Tasty appetizer ideal for any occasion. Very easy to make and a huge hit with kids as well as adults. Perfect for veggie lovers!


Prep Time: 20 - 25 mins

Ingredients
10 (12 inch) flour tortillas
3 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese
3 (4.2 ounce) cans of chopped olives
1 1/2 cups of finely grated cheddar cheese
1 bunch of green onion (diced)
1 regular white onion (diced)
2 tbsp of sliced jalapenos


Optional - for those who prefer it slightly spicier
2-3 finely diced jalapeno peppers

Directions
1. In a medium bowl, mix the cream cheese, chopped olives, cheddar cheese, diced white onions, diced green onions and jalapenos. Spread even amounts of the mixture onto the tortillas. Roll tortillas up tightly and chill in the refrigerator for approx. 2 hours.

2. To serve, slice the rolled tortillas diagonally into 1 inch slices and arrange on a serving platter.

Happy Grubbing!

Friday, September 26, 2008

My First Post!

Welcome to my first blog! First and foremost, I love Food! The culture, the people, the restaurants, the location, the experience...pretty much anything food-related (hence the blog title description).

Coming from an Indian background, born and raised in and out of the states, which I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty details (just yet!) I graduated from a university in CA, a couple of years ago and currently work at Novatel Wireless in Sales & Marketing - a wireless tech company HQ'd in San Diego.

I am taking a course - Marketing Via New Media taught by Becky Carroll (blog master), in which she has prompted us to start a blog of our own, something I have been contemplating for quite sometime now. It took me sometime in deciding what I wanted to write about as I thought to myself and analyzed my interests, weekend activities, favorite movies, books and so on, my mind started to wander as my stomach growled, and realized that was it, it was perfect - FOOD. Something we all have in common!

I have done some traveling this year and will be posting photos and excerpts from my travel journal...but essentially I intend this to be a food blog - foods I have cooked and not cooked; restaurants worth writing about; the influence of culture and lastly share some of my personal recipes (okayyyy..maybe they are my mother's recipes). I hope to post a few times a week, do check back regularly and i would love to hear your thoughts.

I look forward to sharing my food stories with you.

Happy Grubbing!