Feed the Traveling Foodie

Mootone Sushi - Andover, MA

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:41:00 +0000

Andover is a very small affluent town, north of Boston, MA. It's not really known for anything.... unless you consider Jay Leno as a comodity that made Andover known, otherwise, it's not much of anything. It's like any other suburbia.

One thing, I think that is special about this town is Mootone Sushi. I adore this place. I have been a regular here since I was 18. As mentioned in a previous post, my cousin Karli and I went to a sushi place once and they brought us a cruise ship full of amazing makis and sashimis; that was an anecdote about Mootone.

I truly adore this place. I am there almost every month (on either a Tuesday or Wednesday).

Long are the days of me ordering my usual: Eel, cucumber and avocado maki, Shrimp with mango maki, and Philadelphia. All I use to have to say was "I'm ordering for pick up..." and they wouldn't even ask for my name and what I wanted. They use to just recite my order and give me the time.

I have evolved from those three rolls, but I still order them. Here are some of the other things I order from Mootone:

This is a pork gyoza. This is actually my first time trying this. It's pretty good.

Chicken Tempura with vegetables... don't even ask but we ordered this meal as well and none of us could finish the sushi we ordered.

From top to bottom: Philadelphia maki, Rainbow Maki, Eel with crabstick and spicy mayo, Dragon Maki, and Andover Maki. What's in an Andover Maki? it's scallop, and salmon cooked with the spicy tuna mayo topped with panko crumbs. Eating it is like Jesus coming down to give you a big hug (haha that's a quote from my boss, who I was with yesterday trying to finish this plate along with my previous boss. I love getting people to eat together. Eating fortifies relationships, especially when you eat sushi together.

Not only do they have sushi, they also have teppanyaki so if you are wanting to see a show and eat it after, you have that option as well.

Overall, I would give Mootone an 8 out of 10, 10 being the best. I will explain my rating system eventually. It's not consistent across all sushi places and locations.

I can go more in depth next time but that's the only 20 minutes I had to blog today.

If you ever find yourself in a little town called Andover, MA definitely visit Mootone.

Mootone
15 Railroad Street
Andover, MA 01810-3516
(978) 623-8006
http://www.mootone.com/

New England Chocolate Company - Salisbury, MA

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 03:35:00 +0000

My boss once told me that a good chocolate boutique always offers you a box so that your chocolate won't be mushed in your bag (but I never really have that problem as I would probably finish that box in a minute after leaving the shop). One of the chocolate places I discovered lately was New England Chocolate Company in Salisbury, MA and they offer you a box for your chocolates, of course they had to be spectacular.

My boyfriend mentioned this place to me about a year ago since he drives by this place every time he goes surfing. He kept telling me he has been meaning to bring me some chocolate home; well, it was a year or so later that we finally did end up going.

I had a serious craving for chocolate about three weeks ago and we just had to stop there. I'm happy we did make the stop. We spent about $6 worth of chocolate and every penny was worth it.

The owner was friendly and exuded this pride on having such a scrumptuos quaint boutique in New England. We ended up having a conversation and I told her about this specific white Brazilian chocolate with dolce de leite inside. We ended the conversation with her telling us about this specific chocolate dish that she makes only on Valentine's day and Thanksgiving (or it could have been Christmas, I can't remember) in which customers have to get on the calling list. I had no idea what it was but I agreed to it. I'm always up for trying anything.

The master chocolatier herself, Jayne. She was concocting almond caramel turtles. Yum!

Finally, the owner called last week and told my boyfriend the specialty chocolate was ready. At that time we still had no idea what this specific chocolate was called until I picked it up yesterday. It is called Turona. Sounds exotic, I know. I only bought three pieces and I was highly disappointed at the fact that I didn't buy more as the turona was serious business. The two pieces I had (two because I was nice enough to offer one to my boyfriend) was just perfect.

So what is a turona? Well, the best way I can describe it is this smooth layering of goodness with creamy milk chocolate. I had to ask the owner exactly what was in it; it contains Belgian milk chocolate, pralines, and wafers and they are layered. So when you do try it, you will be biting into a divine piece of chocolate with a slight crunch!

I just love Chocolate Day aka Valentine's Day!

Without further adieu, here are the decadent confectionaries:

Happy Chocolate Day indeed!

This is what I bought. The little cute cubes on the left are the Turonas, in the center are peanut butter cups, one dark and one milk, above right are chocolate covered pretzels (my other favorites), and below the pretzels are chocolate truffles (better than Lindor!)

I know, its difficult not to have a craving after seeing all the chocolate goodness. If you want to try Jayne's chocolate and find out about her story, check out her website at http://www.newenglandchocolatecompany.com/ or check out her chocolate heaven at:

New England Chocolate Company Inc.
123 Lafayette Road
Salisbury, Massachusetts 01952

You missed the turonas but I promise there are other greatness in her boutique to enjoy.

Valentine's Day = Happy Chocolate Day!

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 18:25:00 +0000

Valentine's day = love, kisses, heartbreak, and deliciousness

If it weren't for chocolate, I think Valentine's day would just be another boring holiday and even more boring because you actually don't even have the day off from work if it falls in as a weekday.

I spent some time in a little chocolate place in Salisbury, MA yesterday. I want to do a quick blog on them in a little bit, but this is what I got:

Guess this food game

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:14:00 +0000

If you can guess this food and where it's from, I will cook for you next time I see you.

Been a bit busy at work to write a blog, but I have some recipes and restaurant reviews coming next week.

Oh, and I'm also busy for the next three weeks as I will be moving into a condo! Woohooo I'm an adult now... I think...

Here's the rough agenda of what's coming up.

- Restaurant review for Irish Cottage, Ebenezer's Pub, and Dali's Tapas
- Sushi in Boston - not sure where yet, but I'm sure its sometime in March around my birthday
- Pasta - since I haven't had any sort of pasta post
- Logo - I am working with a show de bola friend that is designing my branding. I haven't told him specifically what I want, but it will come to life soon.

Ok that's it. Foreign recipe blog tomorrow (by foreign I mean my mom made up this recipe and I adopted it and made it my own but this definition of foreign recipe won't always hold true, it will get redefined again and again).

Xoxo
Your hungry traveling foodie

Newburyport, MA - my home

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:30:00 +0000

Newburyport, MA - port city, tourists, water view, and my home.

No blog yesterday as it was Superbowl Sunday. I didn't really watch the game since I was too busy cooking. And what was I cooking? Pancit. What's pancit you ask? Well, its a traditional filipino dish made up of rice noodles (you can actually make it with egg noodles as well but I prefer vermicelli), chicken, shrimp, cabbage, carrots, celery, and green beans. It's seasoned with soy sauce.

I keep getting asked to cook this so I ended up cooking two versions as one of my "customers" is a pescetarian (n. a person that only eats vegetables and seafood). So the first one I made had chicken and shrimp in it. Normally I put pork in there as well, but I wanted to keep this one simple. The second one was the pescetarian version. You can seriously even make it vegetarian if you wanted.

There's some sort of noodle dish like this in pretty much every Asian nationality. Pancit would be more of a combination of Chinese and Spanish cooking.

Anyway, it took me about 2 hours just chopping up the vegetables and peeling the shrimp and shredding the boiled chicken. My arms are still pretty sore and feels like I have been lifting weights.

Here are the colorful ingredients:

Green beans(cut diagonally and thin, not quite sure what that slicing method is called), carrots (julienned), and I almost forgot, one medium onion diced and four cloves of garlic (I love garlic)

Cabbage!

Snow peas cut in half diagonally and peeled whole shrimp (about half a pound)

Boiled chicken shredded by hand

Vermicelli - rice noodles and soy sauce (low sodium of course)

Here's the quick recipe:

Sautee the onions and garlic in 2 tbps vegetable oil (medium heat); once they are translucent, add the chicken and shrimp (or just shrimp for the pescetarian version). Once the shrimp is pinkish (which means its cooked), add about 3 tbps soy sauce (more if you want). Keep mixing them until the soy sauce is well infused with the ingredients. Add in about 3 cups of chicken stock and simmer for 2 minutes (to add more flavor, I usually add in chicken bouillon cube or powder). Then add in cabbage, green beans, snow peas, carrots, and celery. Cook until the vegetables are tender. I kinda like my veggies crispy, so I cook them for about 3-5 minutes in medium heat. Then finally add in and cook the noodles until all the liquids are absorbed by the noodles. I promise it is a fantastic recipe. It's my first favorite noodle dish next to chap chae, a sweet Korean noodle dish. Enjoy!

Quincy, Massachusetts - Kam Man International Market

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:24:00 +0000

Quincy - beaches, clam shacks, Blue Hills, and a shit load of Asians

Lucy, a British Filipina friend, introduced me to Kam Man International Market. When you walk in there, you feel like you're in China town. It's a massive super market that houses pretty much anything you need. They have a bank in there, a shop with herbs, bubble tea, DVD/CD store, utilities store, and the actual super market. It literally is a Super Market.

I'm a bit hungover today and I figured this place would be perfect to nourish me with all the food they have. I ate so much I actually feel a little sicker. But the food is nonetheless amazing.

Before I go into detail about today, let's re-visit last night and the cause of my hangover. My friend Puerto (that's not really her name, but that's what we call her since she's Dominican) and I decided that we should have a diva night in lieu of the diva playlist she put together (diva playlist consisted of Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Beyonce etc). We love themes so we referred to last night as diva night. The order of business was dinner, movie and drinks. So she came over with champagne, Pomegranate pucker, popcorn, chips, and salsa. We watched Hangover and drank the whole champagne proceeded to finish a bottle of Robert Mondavi Chardonnay. Drunk as skunks indeed. We laughed all night because the movie was hilarious and we couldn't stop cackling about this penguin getting assaulted by a seal (I know its supposed to be serious but come on, a confused pre-pubescent seal trying to have sex with a penguin is hilarious): http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7379554.stm

Oh, I forgot, we had girl scout cookies as well.

Back to Kam Man, first order of business was the hotdog wrapped in this sweet bun. Amazing indeed. Then I proceeded to eat a sesame ball with this sticky mung paste inside. Then I ordered white rice, sauteed garlic green beans, and fried fish. Everything else was good except for the fish.

Kam Man is a serious super market with:

Desserts and Pastries

Too cute to eat!

Roast Duck

A plethora of cooked dishes

Feet - you can get any type of feet you want like chicken feet or pigs hooves

Seafood

Fresh Produce

Lastly, I bought myself a meat cleaver (a whopping $10 meat cleaver, great price!) today to open the fresh coconuts I bought from Kam Man. I went to youtube.com and found an instructional video of how to open a coconut with a meat cleaver under five seconds. Well, it took me a good five minutes and it was messier than I expected but it was worth it!

London (circa January 2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:30:00 +0000

London - city of sex, dancing, shopping, style, and drugs

What an intro! What more can you ask for. Not much of a post today as I barely took pictures of food while I was there. And more importantly, I didn't even try any of the local cuisines. I know, lame but I'm sure I'll be back there soon and I will for surely try the local food next time.

In the meantime, I am missing everything in London today. I'm sure it's cold there right now, but I miss the people, the shopping (although its super expensive), and the style. It's my second favorite city in the world!

If you ever visit, I bet you would miss these too:

Tracey Neull - great shoe display. Too bad everything in there was more than 300 pounds...

Camden - the punkish area of London. My friend said you don't want to go there at night by yourself, but during the day, this place is just fun.

People of London - As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, a part of my job is to seek trends in the global market place. London was a perfect place for it. People loved to get their pictures taken. The people I captured in my camera had this innate attitude that they are IT. They own the city because they look good.

This guy was the most interesting guy I took a picture of. When I asked him if I could take his photo, he said only if I pay him. I said no. Then he let me take his picture then asked "will you get tea with me?" in which I replied by thanking him and walking away.

Lastly, this is the only shot I got of food.

Tapas!!! Not sure what the place is called but it was on/near Marylbone High. It was amazing to say the least.

Maybe next time I go to the UK I will have myself a spotted dick...

California - (Circa 2009 this time last year)

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:29:00 +0000

California - In & Out and that's about it....

I love this place SOOOO Much

Work is super busy, but I have some travel plans coming up. It will be domestic restaurant travels in New England for awhile and Europe in April. Stay tuned for traveling foodie updates...

Lost ... very little time to blog

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 01:22:00 +0000

Lost - tropical island, monsters, fresh fruits, time travel, physics = the best show ever, therefore, I have 2.5 minutes to blog tonight. As the theme tonight is Lost, and they are always running around this tropical island eating fresh fruits, I have a massive craving for a coconut and a fresh papaya.

Papaya dessert (I think its pureed papaya with a bit of milk and ice) with cassis. Seriously, Brazilian's have it figured out!

Here's my random quick dinner for tonight.

Brown rice, plain omelette seasoned with Adobo Goya, and sauteed collard greens with garlic! Its my 15 minute meal since its Lost time!!!

Random, I know, but actually quite good and healthy.

Montreal (Circa August 2009)

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:36:00 +0000

Montreal - partying, strip clubs, shopping, and fabulous sushi.

As you keep reading my blog, you'll get to know that I have this crazy love affair with sushi. I would eat sushi every day, twice a day, maybe even three times a day if I could. There are a few sushi rules I do live by, like do not eat raw sushi on Mondays (but more about that later). As I was craving sushi today, I figured I'd re-visit one of my favorite sushi haven, Oishii Sushi in Montreal (Oishii Sushi277 Bernard Ouest Montreal, QC H2V 1T5, Canada http://www.oishii.ca/).

I visit Montreal often as I have family that live there. My cousin introduced me to Oishii almost two years ago. It's located about 10 minutes from downtown Montreal in a not quite so busy street. My cousin raved about this place, so I figured it must be good. Little did I know it would be one of my favorite places to eat sushi (I would make the exception to eat here on Mondays).

The first dish she had me try was black cod. Best way to describe it is: butter. The thing just melted like butter in my mouth! It came with this citrusy soy sauce and green onions on the side. This dish alone made me fall in love with the place.

My cousin and I ate that day like we weren't going to ever eat again. She's probably the only person I eat sushi with that would literally order a boat load of sushi without batting an eyelash. One of our first sushi dates, we ended up with one of those big boat dishes on our table with all eyes on us as the server laid our food on the table. I guess its pretty entertaining to watch two fit Asian girls eat as much sushi as possible. That's the beauty about sushi, you could eat an island full of it, and you would not ever feel disgusting (unless you ate bad sushi, then yeah, you'd feel pretty gross).

So the day we had one of our incredible sushi dates last summer, the dishes kept coming and we kept eating:

Fried sticky rice fried, topped with salmon and tuna sushi?

Fried Avocado Maki with a light soy/sesame sauce

Mystery dish but it's delicious nonetheless

Yin Yang - fried salmon and yellow tail (I think its yellow tail), with asparagus and a miso dipping sauce. Props with the presentation; its a true work of art.

Philadelphia Maki and Yellowtail - simple but nonetheless as special as the rest

Salmon/tuna, egg, crab stick, cucumber maki... whew! What a handful of stuff in a small green roll. And of course, we can't forget the miso sauce

Tuna Avocado Maki topped with a battered deep fried sweet potato piece! Ooh la la

Yup, we ate EVERYTHING!

But just because we ate everything, doesn't mean we didn't have room for dessert. Green tea cheesecake was divine. It has a crunchy sugary crust on top like you would see on a creme brulee. And did I mention the chocolate syrup?

Mmmm, it's 10:30 pm and I gradually worked myself up to an appetite. Oooh, but before I forget, I try not to eat sushi on Mondays as word has it that fresh fish is delivered on Tuesdays, however like I mentioned above, I would eat sushi on any given Monday in Oishii anytime. Til next time...

Brasilia!

noreply@blogger.com (Feed the Traveling Foodie) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:49:00 +0000

Brazil - guarana, samba, fashion, Cristo Redento, favela, bikinis, and meat! It was an amazing place to be sent to for work, especially after living a few months of cruel winter days in New England. It was almost 80 degrees and humid every day. The beach called my name every minute. We were in Sao Paolo for the first half of the trip; not much there really, just a big city, full of traffic. As for food, believe it or not we ate sushi almost every night as there was a sushi restaurant down the street from our hotel.

They did not have an English menu at all, so luckily we had our Brazilian counterparts ordering pretty much everything we pointed to our first night there. What else can I say about Sao Paulo? Well, the partying is pretty fun. Brazilians know how to party. We ended up at a club at 11 pm and the partying barely started at that time. Clubs are the best places to people watch. Can I just say that I had this vision that Brazilians (men and women) would be hot because of models like Adriana Lima and Ana Beatriz Barros. However, that's not quite the case. They have nice bodies, and nice booties (female booties that is), but the face area... well, not so much. I didn't mention Gisele as I personally do not think she is hot. As one Dutch guy mentioned in the plane from Sao Paulo to Rio "Out of 30 girls in a club only 10 are hot. In Argentina, Out of 30 girls, 29 are hot" - so take note single boys, Argentinian girls are smoking hot and other people I traveled with mentioned the same thing. Back to the partying, as we ordered our drinks at the bar, we were told it was open bar all night... and open bar is a huge hangover just waiting to happen. Caipirinhas flowed like Niagara Falls. I even had the bartenders make strawberry caipirinhas with sparkling wine. Oh what a massive hangover it was!

Please blame the caipirinhas for the blurry picture. This is the clearest picture I have from that night!

Four days of eating and drinking, I had enough of Sao Paulo. It was fun but not quite an adventure. I was looking forward to getting on a plane to go to Rio to really start the adventure. As I sat in the plane heading to Rio, I was daydreaming of all the adventures I wanted to experience in Rio: visiting Cristo Redentor, paragliding, surfing, shopping, favela touring, and of course, pigging out! Unfortunately, I only got to do four of the planned adventures mentioned above.

View of Rio from the airplane.

I started my day with one coco (coconut) everyday.

Nothing like drinking fresh coconut water every morning by the beach. As I mentioned, I was there for work, so we went shopping, a lot. I should explain that my job involves traveling around the world to see what the trends are in the global fashion market, so visiting boutiques and malls is a big part of our agenda. Although we worked a lot, we also took the time to eat a lot as well. Every meal was big and heavy. Nothing about Brazilian eating was light. There was always rice and meat... and seafood was never far behind. My mouth is watering while I blog this, but I miss all the traditional Brazilian foods: cheesy bread shaped like a ball, black beans with smoked meats (sausage, pigs feet, tail, beef), rice, the crab dish, flan, dolce de leite, and fresh fruits.

Words cannot describe the colorful flavors that my mouth experienced in Rio, so here are some images for you to savor:

Guarana - best way to describe it is a combination of gingerale, sprite, and bitters. I thought it would give me more enegy than Coca Cola, but they're about the same.

Alessandro E Frederico - probably one of the best Italian restaurants I have ever had. If you ever visit Rio and stay at the Intercontinental (which I do not advise!), definitely check this place out.

Appetizer - Salad with grilled shrimp and grilled bread with goat cheese. SHOW DE BOLA! (Show de Bola is a Brazilian term to describe something is awesome or amazing)

Lunch - Some sort of tender steak with a soy mushroom sauce, accompanied by brocolli rice, and fresh vegetables.

Day 2 of Rio, we wandered around Copacobana then stopped at some hotel by the beach. It was just a delight eating amazing seafood and watching the head high waves at the same time... and of course, it was entertaining to watch the men and their sungas (Brazilian word for Speedo).

Crab Dish - This dish was definitely passed around and the whole bowl was spotless after we ate. If I have to guess, they sauteed some onions, tomatoes, garlic, added the crab meat, seasoned with salt and other magical seasonings and they cracked about three eggs and mixed all of them up together and sprinkled cilantro and green onions on top. Show de bola for sure!

View from the restaurant - Sunga and waves, what more can you ask for?

Day 3 Churrascaria - of course we went to a Brazilain barbecue. I wish I had more pictures but I was too busy eating and I always had the green card up to say "Yes, please" more meat.
If you are ever in Ipanema, go to Porcao! (http://www.porcao.com.br/). Great desserts too!

Day 4

Feijoda - Traditional Brazilian dish with black beans and smoked meat that comprises of pigs feet, tail, beef, and sausages. There's always a side dish of sauteed garlic and collard greens. Holla!

Favela Favela tour - favela is the Brazilian word for slum. Rio is full of favelas. I had no idea what I was getting myself into during this tour. The tour guide (who lives in the favelas) mentioned that before he left his house the day before, he heard fifteen shots fired by his door. He said he is used to the police shooting at people. I don't quite know the history of the political problems in the favelas but you know the system is backwards when the citizens of the favelas trust the druglords (they offer protection to the residents) more than the police. We were told not to take pictures of anyone with a gun (especially not the cops). As sad as the conditions were in the favelas, there was such beauty and kindness in the eyes of the people that live there. The culture itself in that environment was breathtaking and the people were very welcoming. The tour was a combination of driving and walking. We were in the heart of the favela experiencing the every day lives of the working class Brazilians. Rocinha - the biggest favela in Rio. They build upward to get more people into their community.

In the heart of the favela

Music - During our favela tour, we were brought up into this alleyway that seemed like it would reach the heavens. When we finally got up there, the view was breathtaking and even more breathtaking were these young drummers. The beats were so loud, it tugged at my heart strings. I wanted to get up and dance, and finally, we were invited to dance with the dancers dressed like showgirls with feather headpieces. The music and the dancing made me forget the sadness of life below us.

Cristo Redento

Our last adventure in Rio was seeing Cristo Redento up in the mountains. Wow! I am in no way religious (but raised in a very Catholic country), this place was amazing. It took a good 45 minutes to an hour to drive up. It was a bit cloudy that day but the sight was still great. We saw some monkeys halfway up and some tropical fruit in the woods all around us; it was so tempting to get out of the van and just run in the woods to see if I could eat as many fruits as I could and challenge myself to survive in there a la Survivorman. I bet I could survive out there just eating fruits, but who knows what kind of crazy animals are out there.

Misc Photos:

The one that got away...

Kids - Young street entertainers trying to earn their living. This reminds me of the movie The City of God. I hope the best for them.

Sunday street fair in/near Leblon

Copacobana street pattern

I'm going to miss Brazil, but I know I will be back. I brought back with me souvenirs as well as vivid memories. I learned many life lessons in Brazil. The biggest lesson I learned is appreciation. Appreciate what you have as life is truly beautiful.