Many of you might not know that my parents both grew up in Brazil for the better part of their youth, so they're invariably more Brazilian than Korean (at times). That means that growing up I was exuded with as much Brazilian culture as Korean culture. I still root for Brazil during the World Cup, especially after they won it all in the penalty kicks in 1994 at the Rose Bowl. Anyway, I took up the challenge of cooking for about 25 people last Saturday with none other than Brazilian barbeque for my friend Sarah's graduation party at her condo complex in Culver City. Here are the photos:
Cutting up the top sirloin for picanha, a garlic flavored beef.
My sister Michelle doing some prep work. We got all of our produce from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market that morning. The produce was stellar (though a bit expensive).
Putting the meat on the grill. We also grilled chicken, sausages, and bell peppers.
The meat came out perfectly medium rare. Exactly how most of my friends like it.
A wonderful early dinner in the clubhouse.
A little fancy dessert I made with fresh whipped cream, ripe plum, Chandler strawberry and basil leaf, with a bit of chocolate syrup.
A mini Diddy Reese-like ice cream sandwich using Brownbread ice cream from Scoops. I ordered a whole galloon of that stuff and most of it was gone! Other dishes (not shown) were feijoada, kolvi, rice, baby summer squashes, and tomato-cucumer salad. Meats were picanha (garlic beef), grilled chicken breasts, sausages, and grilled bell peppers. Frank did a great job helping me out on the grill while Christine, Joolee, and Sarah helped a lot with other miscellaneous prep and cooking. The feijoada was overwhelmingly the favorite sidedish, probably because I used a mound of chopped pork belly to flavor the black bean stew. Traditionally ingredients such as pig feet and pig ears are used but I didn't think my friends would like those (some would).
Overall the party was a huge success and everyone had a great time. I think my sister and I could make a fearsome catering duo if our respective careers ever fail. We'd call it - Matt&Mish Foods - pretty cute.
Congrats to Sarah Jung for finally graduating from Irvine! It was a long five years but she got it done. Now she's leaving us to go teach in Korea for a year (or two). Sad day. I wonder how many of these reunions we'll have in the next few months, with so many people leaving LA for grad school or other various reasons. Either way, we had some great photos to remember everything, taken by Frank the resident photographer.
Photos courtesy of WonhoPhoto.com. That's my friend Frank's photo site and he's for hire. A great event photographer; you can see his work on his website (previous link).
4 comments:
Welcome (back) to the foodbloggin' world! :) I, too, can rarely get enough of the brownbread crack cream! haha.
thanks h.c. I think with some new camera equipment I can start focusing on a good food blog. and i like the name.
Great pics, if you really want to get down with the method and all the right tools and such for doing the perfect picanha and such, I'm importing them all from brazil plus making a great small stainless grill for running them on, great results have come from tasty testing. Check out http://www.churrascoshop.com/ for all the goodies. Happy bbqing.
thanks gaucho! yeah, i'd love to do it all authentic and such, but I was cooking at a friend's condo. I'll check that site sometime.
Post a Comment