I was having a craving for sushi, so I took Shannon to Tokyo Icheban, my town's premiere sushi restaurant. Ironically I didn't order sushi at all, even though it was the original lure of this place. The service here is generally excellent as soon as you walk in the door and starts to wane the longer you're there. They seem to have a policy of sending 3 people to each new table and then just getting around to other people later. It's because of this that we didn't order dessert, which was a chocolate hazelnut ice cream in the shape of a pear. Every time we go there we've wanted to order this dessert but it's always out of stock. I guess we'll never know if they actually had it or not now.

We shared a pot of green tea, which was particularly strong. I drank only 2 cups and I was literally buzzing about the table. We shared an order of yam tempura. Shannon had the California Rolls (which were much better than mine) as her entree. There are over 200 menu items to choose from, so I was having a hard time deciding. I was going to go with another eel dish because I know it's something I'm not going to prepare at home for this project, but instead I went with yakisoba. It was steaming so viciously that it was challenging to take a picture. It was actually quite tasty once it cooled off enough to put in my mouth. Luckily my chopsticks skills are horrid and there was plenty of cooling time between trying to scoop and the actual delivery of food.

I was quite surprised that I ate an entire skillet of noodles and am still feeling the burn. It's like I've got a big ball of dough resting in my stomach. It certainly doesn't help that we went for ice cream afterwards either. I was feeling generous and left a decent tip, about 40% of our bill. I guess I'd like to support one of the only worthwhile restaurants we have here.

In search of lesser-used vegetables and still in the mood for curry, I decided to make Curried Cabbage. I haven't had a whole lot of success making cabbage dishes outside of cabbage rolls and coleslaw. This dish was alright, except for the fact that it had cabbage in it. I happen to like curry a lot, especially the part where I end up smelling like it in my sweat (free ginger-coriander deodorant!) but the cabbage just didn't do it for me. The taste is too bitter and needs to be masked by something and even though the curry flavor is dominant, the cabbage still had its role in the flavorful.

Luckily my main dish was excellent. Unfortunately I only made enough for myself and Lemongrass Chicken with Sweet Lime Sauce is exactly the kind of dish that Shannon loves. So much so that I took a single bite and, being the darling boyfriend that I am, wrapped up my portion for her to eat for lunch tomorrow. It's a great sweet and sour kind of blend in the sauce and the marinade just makes it that much more flavorful. Not only that, but the marinade also blackened it quite nicely on the outside while keeping the meat tender and juicy on the inside. I actually liked it quite a bit from the single bite I ate, and this isn't typically a flavor combo I would go particularly gaga over.

Tonight I made the ever-popular Chicken Vindaloo. I have had this at several places, none particularly authentic Indian, and did not find it particularly spicy. However, everything I've ever read about vindaloo is that it is the spicy curry. Needless to say I was expecting a very, very hot dish. When it wasn't scorching my tongue after the first few bites, I thought maybe it was a cumulative heat that would kill me later on. Maybe I was a little scared of adding too much heat because of all the warnings, because it never really burned me at all. I feel burned by the lack of burn, to be honest.

Shannon thought that this dish was very good or, in her words, "I like it. It's better than the other curries." Since she is the one that introduced me to curry in the first place, I imagine that makes it quite good. I thought the whole process of making the vindaloo paste was quite time consuming and although I listed all of the ingredients here, I'd really just recommend buying a commercially prepared vindaloo paste if it's available. More and more I'm finding myself attracted to curry pastes, having yet to actually buy one, simply because there are so many tiny amounts of ingredients in these recipes that it's just not worthwhile to try and make such small portions.

Following in the footsteps of the Alton Brown dinner, I decided to make a similar recipe to one that I saw Jamie Oliver cook on Letterman a few nights ago. The original dish involves shrimp and scallops, which would have been lovely if I had shrimp and scallops. Scallops are something like /pound which puts them far out of my price range, no matter how fond I may be of them. One of the comments on the Jamie Oliver bulletin board was that this dish wasn't Thai, as he stated, but more Malaysian. So, I call them Malaysian Noodles. They were delicious and freakishly filling. There was a hint of spiciness from the chilies that was nicely dulled by the coconut milk and it just has a very nice hot and sour sort of flavor to it.

Since I didn't have the seafood accompaniment, I made Grilled Lemongrass Beef to go along with it. I've actually never had lemongrass before (on purpose anyway) and, for some reason, was surprised that it tasted pretty much like, well, grassy lemon. The lemony flavor was all but completely overshadowed by garlic and chili. I have to say that this is probably the most beautiful steak that I've cooked so far this year. Take a look at those perfect grill marks! The marinade is also quite tasty, even though I had expected it not to be. One thing that was a little off-putting was the smell of fish sauce emanating from the grill. Instead of cooking it juicy steak it smelled as though I was whipping up fillet-o-fish from McDonalds. Luckily the finished product did not resemble this in the slightest.

Altogether I successfully made an Asian flared meal once again without simultaneously repulsing myself. Not only did I finish the whole thing, but I was quite full afterwards with plenty of leftovers (I only had the pictured amount of a single steak). I must say that I am quite happy with this accomplishment, even though I am somewhat disappointed with lemongrass. On a similar note, I am now curious of how I can get my hands on lime leaves.

I've been trying to cram in Good Eats episodes lately wherever I can. Every time I watch an episode of Alton Brown's show I always learn something, even if it's a tiny, mostly irrelevant fact. In this case it was another way of roasting a chicken. My typical method has been to throw the whole bird in a roaster and cook it until it is done. His method is to butterfly it (a skill I learned watching the show) and roasting it under the oven broiler. I roasted the chicken on top of vegetables before, but mostly because I don't have a roasting rack. Turns out that he's fond of that method because it adds flavor.

Aside from the method itself, I also learned that by keeping my oven door open enough to let out some of the hot air I can keep the broiler on indefinitely where previously it would always shut off on me. This will be especially useful when it comes to crisping cheese and so on in the future. To flavor his chicken he made a spice paste and applied it under the skin. This spice paste he said was technically a "gremolata". I modified it slightly to make Roasted Lemon Rosemary Chicken; something I'm not usually fond of.

The resulting chicken was far more tender and flavorful than any chicken I have previously made and divided easily into quarters for simple servings. It also took less time to cook and had delicious, crispy skin. I am completely sold on this method of roasting a chicken, except that it tends to be far more laborious (frequent turning, actual cutting involved etc.) than my previous method.

Alton lost me when he recommended that I use the leftover oil in the pan mixed with mustard and red wine vinegar to make vinaigrette for a simple green salad. To his defence he was using a much larger chicken and had a lot more oil leftover, but the majority of what I had was the cold, coagulating type of chicken fat that a good salad dressing would not make. Since this dressing was what I had hoped to use to make my side dish, I ended up eating the chicken by itself.