Elephant Thai Cuisine - Riverside, CA

Elephant Thai Cuisine

3720 Mission Inn Ave.
Riverside, CA 92501

(951) 682-9300

Appetizer: Money balls

Had Thai food with Mia and Nicole in Downtown Riverside after The Amazing College Race on Sunday, 1/22/12 (I will blog about that later because I had a smoothie that was directly related to the race). The food was great, but my favorite will probably always be Thai Royal Orchid in Fresno and Thai House in Berkeley, which I don't believe I ever photographed. I would go back to Elephant though! While the money balls were interesting and tasty, I think they could have used a tiny bit more flavor on the inside. If I go back, I'd try a different appetizer (but if I were in a group and most people wanted the money bags, that'd be fine with me too) and other dishes too, although I did think the pad thai and the pad see-ew were delicious! Reminds me of the time when Michelle S and I made pad thai for Filipino Club in high school. Yeah...I know that doesn't make sense. Anyway, here are the pictures!

Inside the "Money ball" - veggies, ground lean meat, rice. Not amazing, but still interesting and yummy!

Pad thai. I will never get tired of pad thai unless I have a bad dish or if I eat it every single meal. This was great, but if you don't like green onions, don't eat those big green onions, of course.

Pad see-ew, another one of my favorites. We got beef since the pad thai was chicken.

Facebook Page + Delicia Italian Fine Dark Chocolate Truffles

Sorry. I've been slacking here. Here's something to distract you for a bit while I scramble to read for school and prep for work: I have a Corrie Food Facebook page. I made a big announcement there that I will announce here sometime in the future. I want it to be official before I post about it here.

I loved this dark chocolate (but not really the Delicia Milk)! It had a slightly grainy texture with bits of cacao nibs or something. I love good dark chocolate.

Teppanyaki at Sakura Chaya - Fresno, CA

They just do the fire thing for show. It's pretty effective in entertaining people though!
Teppanyaki = Cooking with an iron griddle. Nowadays they do this in front of the people about to eat.

...and without flash.

Sakura Chaya

690 East Nees
Fresno, CA 93720

Went to Sakura Chaya with old high school friends (and current newer buddies) over winter break. My cousin, Ashley, has been encouraging me to go here for their teppan yaki because she said it's better here than at other places. I've been here for regular dining several times because my family is in love with this place (lots of Japanese families go here, if that means anything to you as a potential customer/guest). It has a fantastic box lunch special, and the food quality is consistently great.

Fried rice is always good at teppan yaki places

My order: Teriyaki chicken. Sooo delicious!! I usually eat everything on my plate--including the side of fried rice. One time I cleared my plate the night of formal at my high school. Not sure if that was a good idea, but whatever. It was delicious.

Trader Joe's Candy Cane Joe-Joe's

I love these things so much. Their free samples really work on me! I had one and had to buy a box. They're basically Oreos but with crushed candy canes in the cream center. Yum! The only thing that bugs me about these is that they're called "Joe-Joe's" instead of "Joe-Joes." I guess the apostrophe makes it look better, but I'm just a grammar and punctuation nerd sometimes. Sorry...I had to say it! I also hate when restaurants spell things wrong on their menus. I've seen "wasabie" for "wasabi" before. Embarrassing.

Japanese Sesame Chicken Wings (Sweet & Sour Chicken)

My mom made these little chicken wings for our New Year's party this year. They were SO good. I wanted to eat all of them in that tray (I should have taken a picture of them all lined up), and I even stole some to take back with me to SoCal. The juice at the bottom of the pan is sooo delicious--especially with white rice. It's seriously one of my favorite chicken dishes, and I eat a lot of chicken. Anyway, Mom got the recipe from her cousin. Not sure how her cousin got it. I'm excited to make these for the next party I attend or host!

I don't really get the name. These aren't sweet & sour, which is why I renamed them above.

Here's the recipe:

Chicken

3 lbs chicken

garlic salt

ajinomoto (Japanese for MSG)

2 eggs

cornstarch

1) Sprinkle chicken w/garlic salt & MSG
2) Let stand one hour
3) Dip in beaten eggs
4) Roll in cornstarch
5) Brown in fat
6) Set in baking dish (Mom used a big dish lined with foil)

Sauce

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup dashi

3-4 cup shoyu

1/2 cup vinegar or 3/4 C. Japanese vinegar

1 tsp MSG

dash salt

1) Cook until sugar dissolves
2) Pour over chicken
3) Bake 325 degrees F for 1 hr & 15 min, turning every 20 min
4) Sprinkle w/sesame seeds

Mantra (Fine Indian Cuisine & Banquet) - Corona, CA

My first plate (to figure out which things I liked the most)

Mantra

480 N. Main Street
Corona, CA 92880
Website here

All-you-can-eat lunch buffet (11am-3pm)
Dinner (5-10pm)

Michelle and Chris invited me to join them for Indian food at this place. I happened to be coming from somewhere on the other side of Corona, so I met them there after I saw Julie and her baby. SO CUTE. Anyway, the food was delicious. My favorite was the one I thought I'd hate: One of the orange-red chicken dishes. It wasn't chicken tikka masala...I didn't think it was butter chicken. I know for sure it listed "ginger" as one of the ingredients because I thought for sure I wouldn't like it, and then I did and went back and looked at the name and ingredients again. I can't find the name on the website. Weird. Anyway, it was SO good.

KHEER on the left and RAS MALAI = "Homemade cheese flatten balls of vanner) soaked in malai (clotted cream) flavored with cardmom [sic]"

The ras malai up close

The restaurant from the outside. Pretty big place.

Shaved Snow at Class 302 - Rowland Heights, CA

Class 302
1015 S Nogales St., Ste 125

Rowland Heights, CA 91748

Christy told me about Class 302 last school year, but we didn't end up having it together until last quarter. It was awesome and so weird but cool at the same time. It's like piles of thin sheets/layers of slightly sweetened frozen milk topped with fresh fruit and sweetened condensed milk. We shared the Mango Strawberry Shaved Snow. There are other topping options, of course. If you've had halo halo before, it's like that but without the beans and other crazy (but delicious for the most part) ingredients...and this ice is like no other ice you've ever had. It's not really shaved ice technically because it's not just frozen water, but has a similar concept to those of the shaved ice dishes you can find at other places like Guppy Teahouse, Ten Ren's Tea Time, etc.

So layer-y and milky but light and not too sweet!

*Thanks to Christy for letting me take pictures on her camera because I left my memory card in my computer at home!

Quady Winery's Electra Wines: Moscato & Red - Madera, CA

Sold at Quady Winery in Madera

I absolutely love both of these. They are in the top five of my favorite alcoholic beverages. They're my top two favorite wines for sure. I was so relieved when my dad introduced me to them because I had finally found wines that I didn't force myself to drink. I first had Electra frozen, which, I have to say, is AMAZING. Seriously, go try that. Then I had the Red blended with ice, and then I tried each chilled. You can taste a little alcohol in each, but the Electra is kinda like apple cider or sparkling soda (but better). Or like apple (or I guess grape makes more sense) juice morphing into a sparkling wine. The Red has slightly more body or whatever you want to call it...as if it has more of something in it than the Electra. I tried hard not to let the darker color influence my perception of the taste, but there is a difference. They both have light flavors (to me that means they don't bite or sting you as you drink them like a lot of regular wines do), and they're both delightfully fizzy. That sounds SO cheesy, but it's the truth. I could drink these over and over again and not get sick of them. These are even better than Quady's Purple, which I loved and which a few friends went crazy over when they tried it. It still is pretty awesome though. I really could do a commercial for these drinks.

Here's what the Quady Winery people say about the two:

Electra

"Electra – With the first sip you feel the wine- light as springtime, delicately sweet, refreshingly crisp, a bouquet of flowers with the taste of peach and melon. Electra is electricity for the mouth!

"In 1990, we decided to produce a new type of dessert wine, light, delicate, easy to drink, and very refreshing. We tasted Orange Muscat grape juice as it was turning into wine. When the juice was just on the verge — halfway between wine and grape juice, a small test batch was bottled. The wine tasted wonderful, but the alcohol was only 4% (most wines are at least 12%). The wine was bottled using sterile filtration to prevent re-fermentation and the new creation named Electra after the electric like texture one notices on the tip of the tongue.

"Electra goes with summer fruits (strawberries, nectarines, peaches, melons), salads, spicy Asian and Indian foods, light desserts, blue skies and fresh air. And with only 4% alcohol, you can still play volleyball after the picnic."- Quady Winery

Red Electra

"Red Electra is a yummy wine with only 5% alcohol, a pretty red color, a grapy sweet taste, and a tangy, spritzy mouth feel. It's a good wine for angels to drink when they party." -- Quady Winery

Russian Tea Cakes

Snow balls/Russian tea cookies/Mexican wedding cakes: One of my favorite cookies!

I made the walnuts chunky instead of finely chopped for the first time!

I love these cookies so, so much. I brought them to a kids event the other week, and some kids thought they were donut holes. haha Then I made more for Christmas Eve because my aunt and I like powdered sugar-covered cookies and they look so pretty and snowy!

Recipe from AllRecipes

1 cup butter (2 standard-sized cubes)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons confectioners' sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup chopped walnuts
1/3 cup confectioners' sugar for decoration

1) Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2) In a medium bowl, cream butter & vanilla until smooth
3) Combine the 6 tablespoons confectioners' sugar & flour; stir into the butter mixture until just blended
4) Mix in chopped walnuts
5) Roll dough into 1-inch balls & place them 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet
6) Bake for 12 minutes in preheated oven
7) When cool, roll cookies in remaining confectioners' sugar (I actually roll them when they're still at least a little warm)