Wok Star Eleanor Hoh

Be a Wok Star!

Eleanor Hoh

Share Our Strength, Bake Sale Ending Childhood Hunger

By 1 Comment

Eating last of apple pie using Renee’s Freakin’ Flamingo’s Grand Marnier Blueberry Peach Sauce! She and many local food bloggers are in a Food Blogger Bake Sale for Share Our Strength, Saturday May 14 at Fairchild Tropical Gardens. You can purchase Renee’s delish all-natural jams and marmalade as well as fresh baked goods from many other food bloggers, here are just some…
Mango and Lime’s oatmeal-dulce de leche cookies
Miami Dish‘s coconut sandwich cookies with mango-papaya jam
A Hungry Artist’s chocolate orange cupcakes

There’ll also be gift certificates including mine!
Wok Star cooking class gift certificate for 2 guests at beautiful Jungle Walls Miami
Chef Michael Schwartz, Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink and James Beard award winner has donated a $100 gift certificate towards the raffle

I know it’s a bit late but I heard if you are a member of your local library, you can get a substantial discount admission coupon to Fairchild or museums!

Photo

Turnip, Pork Soup (Cook Like A Wok Star 3.0)

By 4 Comments

Turnip, Chinese Mushroom, Pork Soup. I had with a little red rice.

While making this Turnip, Chinese Mushroom and Pork Soup, the smells and all the tasting was such a tease! I couldn’t stop diving into it and had an early lunch! Today’s ‘thought process’ and part of Cook Like A Wok Star series was how to use the same ingredients to make a soup and also a stew! I even videotaped some of this and I’m learning how to edit and piece it together. I’ll let you know when I upload to youtube, don’t laugh at my attempt, at least I’m trying.

I’m very excited to be invited to join #LetsLunch, a group of wonderful food bloggers I met through twitter! You can see my twitter feed in the sidebar. Someone thinks up a category and everyone goes off and creates a dish, take photos and writes a blog post and link to each other. Today’s liquid lunch is a tribute to @geokaren who’s had to have surgery and wasn’t able to eat solids. Keep checking back for the latest updates at the bottom of this post!

I love using my cast iron wok to stir fry my veggies and meat prior to transferring to a claypot to make soup! This wok is the best material for getting the veggies crunchy and also to sear the marinaded sliced pork shoulder. Because I don’t teach using ‘recipes’, this is a very rough guideline to the ingredients and seasonings I used. I’ll be using these same ingredients to make a stew right after posting this, so I hope you’ll come back for that.

Korean turnip, Chinese mushrooms rehydrating, carrots, ginger, garlic, scallions
Leave chopped veggies on cutting board. I added in onions.
Chicken broth, tamari, sherry & pepper seasonings to flavor the soup.
TSPC: tamari, sherry, pepper, cornstarch to marinade sliced pork shoulder
4 basic seasonings I use to marinade protein or make sauce.
Stir fry veggies in my cast iron wok with a little oil, garlic, ginger.
Frying your veggies first saves you a cleanup step!
Stir fry pork with a little oil and garlic, ginger in my cast iron wok.
Add pork to claypot, done!

Do visit these other fabulous bloggers and their liquid lunches:
(I took the liberty of copying this list from Cheryl’s list!)

Cheryl’s Miso Bacon Corn Chowder at A Tiger in the Kitchen. Congratulations to Cheryl on her recent book, A Memoir of Food and Family!

Caitlin‘s Spring Greens Soup with Homemade Baguette at Caitlin Shetterly

Ellise‘s Cucumber-Avocado Gazpacho at Cowgirl Chef

Linda‘s Crack Pie-Inspired Shake at Free Range Cookies

Mai‘s Peanut Butter-Espresso Smoothie at Cooking in The Fruit Bowl

Rashda‘s Spring Pea & Mint Soup at Hot Curries & Cold Beer

Steff‘s Gazpacho at The Kitchen Trials

Little Lotus Restaurant

By 2 Comments

Chef Michael Asalie’s Black cod

All the folks who made Little Lotus Restaurant’s opening successful!

I absolutely loved getting to know this group of folks at Little Lotus Restaurant Miami! It’s an Asian and Japanese Tapas Restaurant, we totally need this here! How they pulled it together in 3 weeks is a miracle, so enterprising and a delightful ‘hidden treasure’ in downtown Miami. The two chefs are both well known in their own right: Sushi Chef Michael Asalie used to be with Morimoto, New York and Indonesian Chef Nyoman Atmaja was and still is part time with Yakkosan.

The brains behind getting this all up and running is Sari Maharani, a paralegal by day and restauranteur, shop owner and as well as a foodie by night! With another restaurant, Banana and Leaf in the works as well, opening June. I’m not sure when she sleeps but I love her energy and ‘nothing is impossible’ attitude. Better hang with her a lot more.

Chef Michael has a baby face but don’t let that fool you, he’s very talented and creative. All the dishes he made for us last night were not on the menu. Each one was like a piece of sculptured art work like the chive through a raspberry! The flavor of the fish was so delicate and perfectly paired with a light sauce. Not the usual generic sushi served around town with wasabi and soy sauce! They were ALL outstanding but the one that stood out most was the Hamachi sashimi which he topped with fried shallots and then Jalapeno peppers and capers! Wow, did that pop in your mouth. I love how he fused Indonesian ingredients with Japanese.

Tuna Sashimi, beautiful presentation

Chef Nyoman Atmaja’s Crispy Baby Bok Choy
with garlic soy dressing

We didn’t get a chance to sample too much of Chef Nyoman’s dishes except for his Green curry shrimp and Crispy Baby Bok Choy. I’m so looking forward to trying more of his other Indonesian dishes, many very familiar to me as I grew up eating them like Nasi Rendang.

Over the top dessert with unusual addition of Cruller with coconut ice cream, coconut sorbet in a coconut shell and fresh mango.

I like this simple decor, focus on the food!

Well, Miami, I highly recommend this little ‘hidden treasure’ and do go and try their introductory lunch menu for $4.99! How can you beat that? By the way, I always think of more stuff to add, so I hope you’ll subscribe to my feed for the latest updates. Little Lotus Restaurant doesn’t have a website yet but visit their Facebook to get the latest scoop. Just realized they don’t have address on their page! 22 NE 1st Street, #107, Miami, FL 33132, it’s in an odd location, International Jewelry Center, opposite Macy’s downtown, use this entrance, the other is harder to find at night. Oh, tell them Wok Star sent you, gotta get my brownie points up, ha.

Sari and I already discussed having a HOH WOK CLUB gathering there sooon, so if you’re interested to join us, email me: wokstar at eleanorhoh dot com

Little Lotus on Urbanspoon