POG Cocktail

A couple months ago, when my husband and I were on Maui, we stopped by a restaurant called Sea House for happy hour.  (You can read my post about the restaurant here.)  I tried a cocktail there called the Sea House Punch.  It was one of the few cocktails I had on Maui that wasn't a Mai Tai, and I wish I had tried it sooner.  It was so good.  As my blog post about Sea House mentioned, it contained coconut rum, POG (a mixture of passion fruit, orange and guava juice), pineapple juice and mango puree.

After one sip of this cocktail, both my husband and I were in love with POG, which is pretty hard to find when you're not in Hawaii.  We broke down a few weeks ago and ordered some on Amazon.  The brand we got is called Hawaiian Sun, and the flavor is Pass-O-Guava Nectar.  It's not 100% juice, and I don't think it's the same brand we had at Sea House, but it's as close as we could find that ships to L.A. 

The box of POG arrived yesterday, and we were both so excited.  Now summer will feel like a lazy day at the beach on Maui.  All we needed was some POG!

Today, I decided to create my own version of the cocktail that I had at Sea House.  It's not exactly the same, but it's refreshing and light, perfect for sipping on a summer day. 

POG cocktail (makes 2)

Ingredients:
1 11.5 oz can POG
4 oz pineapple juice
4 oz Malibu coconut rum

Method:

Fill 2 large glasses with ice.  Divide the POG, pineapple juice and Malibu evenly among the glasses.  Stir to combine.  Sip by the pool and envision yourself at an open-air bar overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Happy drinking!

Beer Battered Chips

If you've read some of my previous blog posts, you know how much I love beer battered chips.  My husband and I visited Australia this past December, and we ate beer battered chips every chance we got.

For those of you who don't know, "chips" are what those in England and Australia call "fries."  Or, those of us in the U.S. say "French fries" instead of "chips."  Who's right and who's wrong is not for me to decide; all I know is that the beer battered variety is amazing.

The good news is that they're really easy to make.  All you need is a deep fryer, a bottle of beer, some flour and potatoes.  Here's the recipe:

Beer Battered Chips

Ingredients:

6 large potatoes (not peeled but cut into wedges)
2 cups all purpose flour
1 can or bottle of beer
TexJoy (or your favorite seasoning mix)
vegetable oil for deep frying
sea salt

Method:

Spread out the wedges on a cookie sheet so that they're in a single layer and place the cookie sheet in the freezer.  You may need more than one cookie sheet, or you could put parchment paper between the layers of wedges to keep them from sticking together.

Freeze for at least 2 hours but longer is fine.  I've frozen them overnight before.

Heat up the oil in your deep fryer.  Meanwhile, put one cup of flour in a large bowl. (I use bread pans because they're the perfect size and shape for chips.)  Add the beer and mix to combine.  Put the remaining cup of flour in another large bowl (or bread pan). Add TexJoy to taste.  I probably add a couple tablespoons but it depends how spicy I want it. 

Then remove the potatoes from the freezer.  Add the frozen potato wedges to the bowl with the flour and TexJoy mixture, and stir to coat the wedges evenly with flour. 

Dunk the wedges into the beer mixture and then drop them into the deep fryer.  Fry until golden and crispy, probably about 5 minutes.  It depends how hot your oil is and how thick your wedges are.  I suggest tasting one to make sure it's done.  :)

Transfer the wedges to a serving platter to eat immediately, or place them on paper towels on a cookie sheet and keep warm in your oven set to the lowest temperature (probably 170).  Sprinkle the wedges with sea salt and TexJoy while they cool.

Tips:

Make sure you don't put a new batch of hot greasy wedges on top of a batch of wedges that has been cooling for awhile.  If you do that, the wedges on the bottom will get soggy.  Put new batches next to older ones to allow excess grease to drip off before lumping all the chips together for serving.

When I was trying to find a recipe for beer battered chips, most recipes I found said to microwave the wedges before freezing them.  By accident, I discovered that the microwaving part isn't necessary.  We forgot to microwave them first, so we decided to see if the frozen wedges would still fry through without getting too greasy.  They were prefect.

The reason you need to freeze the wedges is that it helps the flour and batter stick to them better.  I know it requires some planning ahead and quite a bit of space in the freezer, but it's worth it.  Otherwise, you'll have great chips (or fries) but they won't be beer battered.

If you want an easy way to chop up the potatoes, may I recommend this nifty gadget pictured to the right.  It makes the process very easy.  I got mine at Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Warning: these are addictive.  Not good for diets.  Great with grilled food or your favorite meat.

Most notably, we made these for Easter dinner this year.  We decided to have an Australian themed meal, so we made beer battered chips, a leg of lamb and a salad.  I've mentioned in other posts that when we were in Australia a lot of the meals we had consisted of chips, a salad and some kind of meat.  It really is a great combination.

The fries are amazing and addictive on their own, but they're also delicious with your favorite dip.  There's a rosemary dip that we made to go with the lamb, and we ended up eating it with the fries too.


Happy eating!

Star Bar

One of the best meals my husband and I had while visiting Sydney, Australia was at a Star Bar.  It used to be Planet Hollywood, and it still has all the movie memorabilia inside.  It could use a really good cleaning and a little upkeep, but you get what you pay for.

Eating out in Sydney can get expensive, and we were often told that bars are best for reasonably priced food that's also really good.  Star Bar fit the bill.  For only $40 A.U.D., we shared a bottle of wine and each got a meal.  Really, how can you beat that?

We tend to like sweet wine, so we shared a bottle of pink Moscato.  I don't remember it being the best wine I had ever tasted, but I also don't remember us having a problem finishing the bottle.  If we went to Star Bar again, we'd probably get the pink Moscato again too.

I ordered the chicken schnitzel.  There was a free upgrade to add shrimp on top of it, and it came with a salad and chips.  One thing that I found to be pretty common in Australia was for a typical meal to consist of some sort of meat, a salad and chips (or "fries" as we call them in the U.S.).  It's a great combination.  I had never had chicken schnitzel before, but it was so good.  I really enjoyed it.  It wasn't too greasy.  It was lightly breaded and juicy.  I'd definitely order it again.

My husband ordered the chopped steak which came with chips (no salad this time).  It was a juicy, tender, flavorful steak.  I wouldn't be against ordering that next time.

If you're traveling to Sydney, I'd definitely recommend checking out some of the bar menus for dinner.  Star Bar is kinda fun if you like Hollywood props.  Since it's a former Planet Hollywood, it seems kind of like an alternate universe...like you're in an end of the world type movie.  It wasn't very crowded when we were there, around 6pm on a week night.  I saw a few people come in to share a pitcher of beer and a basket of chips.  I saw some couples eating dinner together and a few people on their laptops or reading a newspaper. 

Happy eating!

In-Bar-Go

I usually tend to avoid airport food.  It's overpriced and usually not very good.  Airport food to me usually means paying over twice as much as usual for McDonald's.

Well, there's one exception to this rule.  The best airport food I ever had was at the Brisbane airport.  My husband and I were in Australia this past December, and we had a layover in Brisbane while flying via Virgin Australia from Sydney to Proserpine.  It had been an early morning, and we were both pretty hungry by the time we arrived in Brisbane.  We also needed to kill time during the layover.  After glancing at a couple menus, we grabbed a table at In-Bar-Go.  First of all, the name is perfect for an airport bar.  We ordered several items to share assuming that the portions would be small.  We got a garlic bread pizza, wedges and satay chicken skewers.

We ordered way too much food.

The garlic bread pizza would've been enough on it's own.  It's probably the best pizza crust I've ever eaten.  I don't know if garlic bread pizza is a typical Australian thing, but I'd never had something like that in the U.S. (or, in "the States" as everything in Australia seemed to refer to the good ol' U.S. of A.).  The crust looked like a typical pizza crust, but it really tasted just like garlic bread.  That crust with cheese on top was amazing.  The closest comparison I can make is to cheese bread...but this was better.

The wedges were beer battered potato wedges, and they came with sour cream for dipping.  They would've been enough on their own too.  Beer battered chips (or fries as those of us in "the States" call them) are amazing.  I ate them every chance I got in Australia.  Now, you have to make sure you get the "beer battered" chips and not just "chips."  Chips are the same as fries.  They're fine...but with beer batter...they're amazing!  The wedges at In-Bar-Go were probably the best beer battered chips I had while in Australia.  They were thick and crispy and delicious.

The satay chicken skewers were okay.  They came with a sweet and spicy dipping sauce if I remember correctly.  It was nice to have some meat along with all the carbs we ordered, but next time I'd probably just get the garlic bread pizza or the wedges.  One order of one of those is plenty for two people to share during a layover lunch.

I really look forward to going back to Australia someday (hopefully soon), and I'm going to make a point to fly out of the domestic terminal of the Brisbane airport so that I can eat at In-Bar-Go.  It's that good.  Seriously.  I'm not exaggerating.

Since returning to the U.S., I've made a point of learning how to make beer battered chips, but I have yet to figure out how to recreate that garlic bread pizza.  Australia, I love you for so many reasons, but you sure get bonus points for amazing airport food!

Happy eating!

Turkey Kofta with Tahini Sauce

For dinner tonight, we tried a recipe I found in the latest issue of Eating Well magazine, Turkey Kofta with Tahini Sauce.  Here's the link to the online recipe:

http://www.eatingwell.com/turkey_kofta_tahini_sauce

We made the recipe almost exactly as described.  I managed to squeeze the turkey onto 3 skewers instead of the suggested 4, but that's the only change I made for the turkey.  For the tahini sauce, I used a 6-ounce container of plain nonfat Greek yogurt and doubled the other ingredients for the sauce.

The turkey kofta had a slightly middle eastern taste but wasn't as spicy as I usually like.  It was good though, and we'll probably make it again.

The tahini sauce was the real standout.  My husband especially loved it.  It kind of tasted like hummus because of the tahini paste, and he's a huge fan of hummus.  For lunch, my husband often spreads hummus on flatbread, fills it with mixed greens and rolls it up like a wrap.  He plans to substitute the tahini sauce for hummus in his future wraps.  We'll probably make the tahini sauce much more often than the turkey kofta.

I didn't know what tahini paste was before making this recipe, but it's basically like natural peanut butter (where it separates and you have to stir it) with sesame seeds instead of peanuts.  It was even in the peanut butter section of the grocery store.

If you like middle eastern food, you'll like this meal.  It'd go well with rice or a salad.  We had it with a grilled wedge salad (see the recipe here) and some grilled baby potatoes.  The potatoes were really good with the tahini sauce too.  At the very least, make the tahini sauce.  It's so good!

I always love trying new recipes, and it's especially fun trying grilled recipes in the summer.

Happy eating!