Kitchen Chick

Fabulously Easy Mango Sorbet

Joe and I hosted a BBQ this past weekend and served up no less than five flavors of homemade ice cream using our new ice cream maker. I had a can of mango puree in the cupboard and wanted to use for mango sorbet, but all of the recipes I looked at used fresh mangoes. I didn't want to use fresh mangoes. If you've ever tasted the imported mangoes sold in American grocery stores, you would know why I didn't want to use fresh mangoes. Besides, I was really liking the idea of opening a can of mango puree over skinning and chopping and puree-ing mangoes. (We had, after all, four more flavors to make and no time to lose.)

Necessity is the mother of new recipes...

Kitchen Chick's Easy Mango Sorbet

3/4 Cup sugar
1 Cup water
1 Tbs lime juice
approx 3 Cups mango puree (one 30 oz can)

Combine water, sugar, and lime juice in a saucepan and cook, stirring occasionally, over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Add mango puree and stir to mix completely. Pour into ice cream maker or sorbet freezer and freeze until mixture firms up.

Follow your sorbet or ice cream maker instructions for suggested times.

I let it go nearly an hour in my ice cream maker and then put it in the freezer to finish hardening.

I'm thinking about trying two or three drops of rose or orange water in my next batch.

Cans of mango pulp can be found at Indian grocery stores. I originally started buying them for making quick mango lassi.

Taco Boy!

NOTE:  (20 July 2008) This restaurant is closed, and has been replaced by a Mexican buffet we haven't tried yet.  -- Joe

In the past few months there has been an explosion in Mexican and Central American restaurants in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area, and we'll eventually cover them all. (The good ones, anyway.) One of our newest favorites is the oddly-named Taco Boy, which is tucked away in a little strip mall near Golfside and Clark in Ypsilanti.

Four Tacos and a Gordita (clockwise from the gordita at top right: carnitas, inalambricos, al pastor, and chorizo)

Taco Boy has an extensive menu of Mexican dishes, though to be truthful we've barely gotten past the taco and soup sections. They have a selection of the more commonly found tacos: al pastor, carnitas, asada, tongue, chorizo, chicken. Fans of the al pastor style should definitely give Taco Boy's version a try. They also have tacos inalambricos, the delicious but oddly-named -- "inalambrico" literally means "wireless" in Spanish -- variety we've only seen at Taqueria Jalisco before.  They're filled with a bizarre but very tasty assortment of ingredients including steak, bacon, poblano peppers, and plantains. (Taqueria Jalisco and Taco Boy are apparently related in some way.) Their Gordita has fillings that are similar to a taco but served between two halves of a thick patty of masa. (We both prefer the tacos over the gorditas.)

Your server will also bring you a complementary bowl of beans to go with the chips and salsa. Add a few tacos, and you have a full meal already. Vegetarians be aware:  these beans have bacon in them.

With Taco Boy on the scene, La Loma now has some serious competition in the tortilla soup category. Taco Boy's tortilla soup is absolutely delicious and comes with large pieces of avocado. The tortilla strips are added to the broth just before serving, ensuring that they're still firm. I have a hard time not ordering it everytime. One bowl can make a full meal.

Sopa de tortilla

If you're really hungry, try the daily lunch buffet at $8.95 a person. Or try one of the full entrees. I ordered the chilaquiles from the breakfast menu, and it was a huge platter with generous side portions of rice and beans. I could barely eat half.

Flan
I adore flan in all its variants. If you are a flan connoisseur, you'll want to try Taco Boy's flan as it's different from all the other flans served in the area. We found it it sort of "brownie-like" in texture, a bit dry perhaps, with a nice cinnamon coating on top. The serving is large enough to share between two.

Taco Boy Mexican Restaurant
(734) 528-9844
2071 Golfside Dr
Ypsilanti, MI 481

Cherry Blossom Japanese Restaurant

Red Miso Soup
Cherry blossoms bloom in Spring, and Ann Arbor's newest Japanese restuarant is no exception. Cherry Blossom Japanese Restaurant opened two weeks ago in the former Chi Chi's location on State St. past I-94.  The owners are not new to the restaurant business. They also run the original Cherry Blossom restaurant in Novi, and this experience shows in both menu and service.

The spacious restaurant has been remodeled with beautiful warm tones. Behind the sushi bar, a pair of sutble waterfalls send water sliding down stone walls while the sushi chefs work their art. You can choose Western seating, or, if you like, ask about seating in one of the traditional tatami rooms.  Just remember to remove your shoes before entering the room.

We started our sampling with the tempura appetizer and hiyayakko -- cold boiled tofu. Joe declared the tempura dipping sauce the best he's tasted in a long while. The hiyayakko came with finely sliced scallions and shaved bonito and grated ginger, creating an interesting mix of tastes between the plain tofu, the seafood flavors of the bonito, and the ginger's sharp spiciness. 

Dry-Fried Green Beans

Joe and I have a problem -- we don't like the same vegetables. Well, that isn't completely true, but it's true enough that it can be difficult to find vegetable dishes that we both like. Fortunately I have learned to like beans, a food I would have absolutely not touched at all some years ago. The breakthrough came with Ethiopian and Indian lentil dishes. Then somewhere I acquired a liking for Mexican refried beans and black beans, and then white beans beans cooked in soups and cassoulet. And now the world of beans has opened wide for me. Recently I even cooked a kidney bean dahl, a bean I never thought I'd willingly eat. Someday maybe I'll even learn to like lima beans.

One kind of bean my mother made me eat as a child was the green string bean. I was a very picky eater. My mother worried constantly about what to feed me, and worried about whether or not I was eating enough healthy foods. I had to eat a minimum amount of the vegetable-du-jour before I was allowed to leave the table. This torture of staring at the despised beans until I summoned the nerve to choke down a few mouthfuls was for my own good, but once in college and living on my own, I felt free to ignore all the foods I didn't like. My mother can now be pleased I am now eating my vegetables of my own free will. But I had to go through years of figuring out just how I like to eat them. It's something I'm still figuring out, but now it's not torture. Rather, it's an adventure.