Sometimes, you look in the fridge and you just don’t know what to cook. There are the usual basic ingredients in there, plus some ingredients that have been partially used up for other dishes. But what can you do with that?
For Annie, it’s all instinct. Or, “simply hantam“, as she calls it.
Here’s how she came up with this “Tofu, Tomato and Egg Scramble”
Continue reading Tofu, Tomato and Egg Scramble
One of the more popular posts on House of Annie is the pan-fried tilapia post (which reminds me, I really gotta update that page and do a proper recipe for it). When I was growing up in Hawaii, tilapia used to be known as a “rubbish fish” because it lived anywhere (fresh water, brackish water, salt water) and ate anything. We’d catch it in the stream behind our house, let it live in the laundry room sink for a week to clean out and then we’d steam it whole with black bean and ginger to mask the muddy smell.
Mmmmm.
Nowadays, tilapia is becoming more widely used around the world, especially as frozen fillets become available in local markets. You don’t have to gut, skin, or fillet it. It tastes fine, with no muddy smell or flavor. Tilapia fillets have a firm, white flesh that lends itself quite well to lots of different applications.
Here’s a semi-gourmet, muy delicioso fish taco recipe using tilapia fillets that is perfect for Cinco de Mayo, or any day of the week for that matter.
Annie had such a delicious success with the Roasted Leg of Lamb recipe from “Cooking In Style the Costco Way” that she picked up another Costco cookbook, “Easy Cooking the Costco Way”. In it, she found a recipe for polenta pie that she really wanted to try.
Normally, we buy polenta in a thick, sausage-like tube from Trader Joe’s. We cut the tube up into rounds and then pan fry or grill them. The polenta cakes then serve as the base for any number of different main dishes.
Continue reading Polenta Pie
One Friday evening, Annie was craving a salad from California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. The nearest CPKs to us in San Jose are either at the Oakridge Mall or the Valley Fair Mall. Neither of which I felt like driving 20 minutes to the mall, then wasting 10 more minutes fighting for parking in the garage, and then waiting in the restaurant for another “15 to 20 minutes” (which inevitably turns into 45 minutes to an hour during primetime) with our two growling tummies plus the kidlets’. No way, Jose!
Also I didn’t feel like a salad. But perhaps something Italian…? I fired up the web browser and went over to Restaurant.com to see if there were any Italian places closer to us. Lo and behold, there’s one right in our neighborhood: Pizzeria Andiamo’s on San Felipe Rd at Yerba Buena. We had eaten there in the distant past but they had recently changed owners and I was meaning to go back.
Continue reading Pizzeria Andiamo’s (San Jose)