Lucky Joy BBQ

It has been a while, yes? Thought I would never return, yes? Well I am back, at least for a while - not sure whether that is a good or bad thing but hey, I have tried some really good places lately and thought I'd share by bombarding my readers with blocks and blocks of text about food. Too much to read? Print it out and take it to the washroom - if you know what I mean. I'm just kidding.

Having watched a lot of Diners, Drive-ins and, Dives episodes lately, Lucky Joy BBQ is what I would call a dive. It is a hidden little gem between Cambie and No. 5 road in Richmond. From the outside, it isn't really appealing - neither is the decor inside - but hey, we're not here to admire the... I actually don't remember much about the decor besides the pink plastic they used to protect the table. But anyway, the food.

Lucky Joy serves traditional Chinese style dinners as well as HK style cafe food. Depending on which dinner option you choose, you get some complementary dishes. Dinner for two-three came with soup, rice, dessert and chicken wings where as dinner for four and above gets a complementary choice of crab, lobster, or chicken - I believe. Correct me if I am wrong. Of course, the prices also differs between the meals. B, K, E, and I came for dinner and ordered the Dinner-for-four option because we really wanted crab. For our four dishes, we chose: sweet sticky spare ribs, beef brisket and daikon hotpot, salt and pepper tofu, green beans stir fried with preserved fish and black beans, and our crab was stir fried with green onion and ginger on top of a bed of Yee-mein (additional $3.00). Please note that these are not the exact names on the menu; we ordered in Chinese and I have no clue what the English translation for it is on the menu.

Soup and crab were the first dishes served. The soup was a standard chinese soup; meat and vegetables. It had a lot of flavor, but I think it was just MSG because I got really thirsty afterwards. The Crab was deep-fried first before being stir-fried with the green onion and ginger sauce. The meat was fluffy and the sauce was a good complimented to the crab. My favourite dish of all time from Chinese restaurants has got to be sweet and sticky spare ribs and personally, I think Lucky Joy does it really, really, really well. The spare ribs were deep-fried to perfection and then coated with the sweet and sticky sauce. Not too sweet and not too salty. There was plenty of juicy meat on the bones and the outside was still crunchy despite the sauce. The salt and pepper tofu was great as well. Crispy outside with smooth tofu on the inside, perfectly seasoned to my tastes. The best part of the green beans was that they were crisp, not soggy - one of my biggest food related pet peeves are soggy, limp, green beans. There was also a good amount of black beans as well as chunks of preserved fish. The dish that I probably will not order again will be the beef brisket. Aside from the beef brisket not being soft like it should be, it was seasoned differently that I was accustomed to - a bit too strong in my opinion. B really liked it though, so like everything else, it is just a matter of tastes. After two bowls of rice and almost the whole plate of ribs, I was stuffed to the brim and only managed a few spoonfuls of the dessert: "eight treasure sweet soup". It was a bit watery - kind of like watered down red bean soup with red rice but it wasn't too sweet and made a very nice palate cleanser.

At the end of the meal, we still had tons of food left over. All together, this dinner came to be around $80, or $20 a person - not bad considering the amount of food we had would serve 5-6 comfortably.

Cheesecake Shot Glasses

Cheesecake in a shot glass - So its the holidays and we definitely did a lot of cooking! So please excuse the random posts but I am going to post up all the holiday treats that E and I made before the new year! The strawberry cheesecake in a shot glass is so easy to make and you can make it a day a head and its a great little dessert to have after all that holiday turkey.

Cheesecake (should roughly make 6 to 8 2oz shot glasses and not filling it to the brim)

• 250ml of cream cheese (let it soften)
• 250ml of whipping cream or Cool Whip
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
  
• a box of graham crackers
• 150ml of melted butter

Strawberry Sauce

• 8 cups of frozen strawberry thawed
• 1/4 cup of white sugar (you can add a little more if you want it sweeter)

1. blend the thawed strawberries with the 1/4 cup of sugar - it should be a thick sauce, if its too runny add more thawed strawberries (set the sauce aside, you will need to add a little bit to the cheesecake mix to get a pinkish hue)
2. whip the cream until stiff and fold it into the soften cream cheese and slowly add the 1/2 cup of sugar - fold until everything is well blended add about a 1/4 cup of the blended strawberry sauce into the mixture to get a pinkish color - don't add too much or else the mixture will be too runny
3. taste the mixture it should taste a bit tart/sweet with a hint of the cream cheese, once satisfied put the mixture into a piping bag
   
4. mash about a quarter of the box of graham crackers into fine crumbs - doesn't have to be exact. If you have left overs store it in a container for next time, mix it with the melted butter

Assembling the Shots

1. spoon a layer of the graham cracker mixture into each glass for the "crust"
2. pipe a layer of the cheesecake mixture into each glass (not too thick you will be piping total of 2 layers into each glass)
3. put a teaspoon of the strawberry sauce into each glass
4. pipe the second layer on top of the sauce this is how you get the "swirl" effect as seen in the picture.
   
5. to finish it off add another teaspoon of the strawberry sauce and a sprig of mint leave
6. store it in the fridge and serve when ready

Enjoy!

Angel Hair Pasta

Angel Hair Pasta with Mushroom, Basil, and Fried Egg

Thought I share this with everyone, I followed the recipe and made it last night.

• angel hair pasta or any other dry pasta you want to use
• extra virgin olive oil
• few garlic cloves, peeled and sliced
• red pepper flakes, as much as you need
• button or cremini mushrooms – washed, patted with a paper towel and thickly sliced
• grape tomatoes, halved
• salt and pepper to taste
• a lot of fresh Basil, roughly torn – divided (keep some aside for garnish)
• egg(s) to be fried
• butter if you want to fry the egg in butter

1. Cook pasta as per instructions in a pot of boiling water, but only al dente. Drain and save some of the cooking liquid. Set aside.
2. Add extra virgin olive oil to a heavy bottomed pan. Add the garlic and the crushed pepper and start heating the oil. Keep the heat low or to medium; the oil will be infused with the flavor of garlic and pepper as it heats. Break up the garlic slices in the oil to release the flavor. High heat will burn the garlic and you do not want that. Cook until the garlic starts to sizzle, but they should not turn brown.
3. Add the sliced mushrooms and increase the heat to high. Cook them until they release no more water and are slightly browned around the edges. Add the halved tomatoes, salt and pepper now and cook at high to medium heat until the tomatoes are lightly softened, but not mushed.
4. Add the torn fresh basil leaves and stir up the mix. Reduce the heat. Add the cooked pasta and stir it in. Toss for everything to combine. If the pasta is too dry for you, add some of the cooking liquid. Adjust salt and pepper.

To cook the eggs:

1. Heat butter/olive oil in pan (~2 teaspoons per egg). Carefully break in the egg(s) in to the pan making sure the yolk does not break. Cook at medium heat until the white is set and the yolk is still runny. Top off the pasta with the fried egg(s). Gently toss so that the yolk combines with the pasta for a creamy feel. The egg yolk will cook in the heat of the pasta in the pan
2. Remove cooked pasta on a serving plate. Garnish with more fresh basil, crushed pepper and olive oil if you wish.
3. Serve warm.

Found this on Hell yeah, recipes!

It was wonderfully delicious, but for me the dish didnt look as nice as the picture displayed at the top of this post.

Is it July already?!

You know the saying "Time flies"? Well to me, it seemed like I got sucked into some kind of time-space-continuum- type-of-thing and was just recently deposited back onto Earth. L.A. seemed so long ago. On our last days in the city of Angels, we took a quick road trip to Hollywood to do some touristy stuff and also explored Little Tokyo. It has been a while since I have posted and I am so behind on everything - and I have no good excuse for my lack of blogging except that I was busy saving the world. You know, typical day-to-day stuff like that. Here is just a quick Frankenstein of a vlog and some pictures that I finally got around to editing. Enjoy!

And while I was busy rescuing cats stuck on trees, Lisa's unexpected road-trip around America has finally come to a close. San Fransciso, Las Vegas, Oregon, Utah, Seattle, etc - I'm quite jealous actually. She raved about this really awesome pizza place in San Fran and would probably be blogging about her trip and everything else soon - as T is still in L.A. for business and has the cameras.

Ok, picture spam time - but hey, who doesn't like spam?

Los Angeles: Day 5

Everyone slept in late, had a big breakfast and then cat napped away the day while the sun shone through the windows. We did take a break between doing a whole lot of nothing to step outside and explore downtown by foot. Mainly because I had to stop by See's (which turned out to be a tourist shop selling See's chocolates) for the coffee candy that my Mom have been craving for since the dawn of time. Okay, not really - but you get what I mean. Came back, read, slept some more, played some games, made dinner, and then crawled up on the sofa bed to eat some Pinkberry and watch "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding" before we called it a day.

Second to last day and it was a good lazy day.

Here's a quick spam of some pictures from the first three days,