Otafuku noodles house

The store locates at 16525 S Western Ave, Gardena, its own parking lot is behind the restaurant.

Rice with Aji and vegetables: A must try! 

Cold udon with sea eel tempura $13

After you finish the noodles, they will give you the soup (in this red pot) to mix with the remain dipping sauce

Hot soba with sea eel tempura $13

Rice with shrimp tempura

Taiwanese style BBQ baby squid

I love the BBQ squid at night market in Taiwan. I don't know which kind of sauce they use to marinate squid or calamari, so I try to imitate it as mixing the sauce by myself. It seems to be "converged". 

I bought a box of baby squid from Nijia, that's whole squid, so I need to clean them by myself (take time and it's dirty job). Next time I will by the cleaned ones from Wholefood!!!

OK, so all you need is:

1. Ingredients:

- Baby squids: 15 or 1 big calamari (I prefer remove their skin, bone and inner part)

- Sauce: 1/4 cups of rice wine (guess white wine is ok), 2 spoons of brown sugar, 1 spoon of soy sauce, if you have oyster sauce, add 1, some dried red chili, 1 spoon of oil (olive oil).

- Skewer (prefer the metal ones), I got these from Mitsuwa: made in Japan!!!

2. Method:

- Making sauce: Add all sauce ingredients into a small pot, heat until broil then simmer for 5 minutes, the mixture will be thinker. Cook it while you prepare the squid (either clean the baby squid or cut a calamari into smaller pieces)

- After the sauce gets cool (warm is ok), add the squids into the pot, mix well and marinate for at least 15 minutes.

- Preheat the oven to 400 degree, then skew the squids into skewers

- I use baking setting, for 20 minutes.

- Here is the BBQ squids, the flavor is great, almost similar to what I ate before. You can eat squid with rice, mix with salad, or just squid

How to make Homemade Inarizushi (稲荷寿司)

This homemade sushi is suitable for breakfast. I just need to prepare for 10 minutes with a bowl of rice.

All you need:

1. Rice

- Take the rice out of cooking pot, add a little salt, sugar, and 1/2 spoon of rice vinegar.

- Mix well and leave it there for 5 minutes to cool down

2. Tofu skin: I bought this one from Nijia market in Torance, I think it's the best one I can find there with the most natural ingredients.

3. Topping: I use chopped green onion and cooked salmon. I may try pickle daikon or ginger next time.

4. Stuff the rice into the tofu skin (they make it like a bag already) after 5 minutes. 1 small bowl of rice can make exactly 4 pieces.

5. Enjoin it!

Here is the best salmon I can find in Mistuwa. It's a little bit pricey compared to the other brands but it has 2 jars in a package, so you don't have to push yourself finished a whole jar in a short time. If   you dont have tofu skin, just prepare a bowl of rice, and 1 spoon of this salmon and chopped green onion, may some slices of dried seaweeds, your breakfast is ready!

Yamadaya ramen

The restaurant locates in a small plaza, at 1175 Baker street, Costa Mesa. At dinner, if you are lucky, you don't have to wait.... The price is very reasonable. around $9 for a bowl of ramen, or you can add ~ $5.00 for an extra bowl of rice with tofu or curry. If you don't like oily soup ramen, just choose the ramen with fish-based soup, the one with soy sauce is suggested.

Spicy ramen

 

The best spicy ramen I've ever eat in America. They don't use Vietnamese spicy sauce as the other stores. Here is the soup after mixing the hot sauce.

mapo tofu rice

Curry rice

Cold (not really cold) noodles with fish-based soup

626 night market

Sanuki No Sato in Torrance

This restaurant serves from the simplest and cheapest dish: noodle to the most expensive one.  Don't forget to order a pitcher of imported dry ashahi! It opens from 5:30 for dinner, but when I were there, there was a long line already at 5:20.

8206 S. Western Ave., Gardena, CA 90248 Tel(310) 324-9184

Sashimi

Nabeyaki udon

Spicy udon: super spicy!! if you often eat mild soft tofu, don't choose this

New Shun knife 7" - Classic Asian cook's

This is the best knife I've ever had. It's super light and sharp. The first day I used it, I had to cut slowly because its sharpness was over my expectation.

The best purchase from Amazon deal 

And here is the sashimi I cut by myself using this knife: The best ever home-cut sashimi: