My Top 10 Favorite Foods

I closed my last entry by recommending Good Eats to my readers.  (I also HIGHLY recommend it to stay-home Moms looking for new recipes and a great visual to teach you how!)  With food on the brain, and not that you care, I thought I'd share my top 10 favorite foods.  Sounds a little juvenile, I guess, but I AM a stay-home Mom, and therefore FOOD - cooking, eating, and enjoying - is a HUGE part of my life.  I LOVE to eat.  The size of my rear these days could convince just about anyone of that.  And so, without further ado, here's what I love to eat:

1. SUSHI - all kinds, really, but if I had to pick one item to eat every day for the rest of my life, it would be salmon nigiri sushi.  Yes, a slab of raw salmon lying atop a miniature log of slightly warm, slightly sweet, slightly vinegary short grain sushi rice with a dab of wasabi between them...just for fun.  LIKE...BUTTA.
2. Bulgogi - blame it on the Korean bathhouse, but give me a bit of wafer-thin marinated beef sizzling over super-high heat with some rice and a half-dozen side dishes and I am ONE...HAPPY...LADY.
3. The Chinese Stuff :  Kung Pao Shrimp, Orange Chicken, Sweet & Sour Pork, Honey Walnut Shrimp, Mongolian Beef - you know, the restaurant standbys.  I group them together because they're really all the same stuff in different variations...and I love them.  (YES, this is cheating, but it's my blog. Period.)
4. Chicken Coconut Kurma - an Indian curry dish that requires rice (I'm on a roll here) and some hunks of garlic naan (flatbread) torn off to dunk in and soak up the leftover curry sauce.  The richness of the coconut milk, the warm, soothing body of curry contrasting against the crunchy cashews...YUM.
5. Molten Chocolate Cake - Warm and gooey in the center, delicately crisp around the edges, and all pure, achingly rich chocolate...a chocoholic heaven.
6. Chicago Dogs - OMGoodness.  No, really.  I was a skeptic, but now...there is no other way to eat them.  It's hard to find poppy seed-studded buns, but Ballpark buns work just as well.  Add peppers, onion, tomatoes, pickles, mustard...and the best dogs you can find.  Gorge on them.  Oh, YEAH.
7. Crown Rack of Lamb - breadcrumbs, rosemary, mustard all pressed onto the outer edges of a rack of lamb and then cooked to perfection equals, well, just that:  perfection.  Yes, it's got a mildly gamy flavor, but we're not talking mutton or venison, it's lamb, and it's spectacular.
8. Miso Salmon - back to Asian, if you haven't had my husband's miso salmon, well, you haven't had cooked salmon.  I generally find cooking fish to be an absolute waste - sooooooo much better raw - but slather it with miso paste and soy and brown sugar all mixed together into a glaze and then grill it and top it with green onion and sesame seeds and...that fish deserved to be cooked.
9. Blue Bayou food:  THE Monte Cristo, garlic pomme frites, and the long-gone barbecue chicken salad - again I'm cheating, and maybe it's more memories than taste, but WOW.  15 years ago the Blue Bayou at Disneyland had a salad with baby lettuce, tomatoes, pepper jack, grilled chicken glazed in bbq sauce, black beans, and honey-dijon-ranch dressing, all topped by candied pecans, that could make a duck sing opera.  They STILL have the (THE) Monte Cristo, a battered-and-deep-fried ham and cheese sandwich on thick slices of egg bread covered in powdered sugar that you dip into loosened red raspberry jam.  Orgasmic.  And the garlic fries...shoestring fries topped with chopped parsley and flash-fried garlic, fried in duck fat and served up alongside a dear friend:  Again, perfection.
10. ANYTHING at Roy's - No, seriously.  If you've never been to Roy's Hawaiian Fusion - and there are lots of them around the country these days, so if there isn't one in your area, go to the one that will inevitably be near where you vacation! - you MUST go.  I have never, ever, ever ordered anything that wasn't PHENOMENAL.  EVER.  And I've ordered just about everything on their menu, to the great and building dismay of my butt.  If you don't get there someday, I will weep for you, truly.

Okey-doke, that's it for now!  Enjoy, my dear friends and readers!  Relish your food - and add it to your Chicago dogs!  LIFE...IS...DELICIOUS!