Pick the ugly ones!

This week, I am in Detroit visiting family and friends so I won't be cooking anything. So instead, I will bring you a story about two of my favorite seafood selections: oysters and crab legs.

One of my family's favorite pastimes is going to buffets. Ever since I was a little kid and discovered a Chinese buffet in St. Louis, I always enjoyed going to buffets just because I can taste so many different things without ordering just one dish. If I didn't like it, then I would just leave it on the plate and get something else. I know, think of the starving people out there, but trust me, some of this stuff you wouldn't wish your worst enemy to eat! My family would always go to Chinese/Asian buffets just because of the selection and my dad also preferred to eat the crab legs there. This man can go through many platefuls of crab legs. Sometimes we would be sitting there for hours and waiting for him to finish. The running joke was that the restaurant was losing more money the longer my family was in there. So yes, I got my love of seafood from my dad.

Two of the casino buffets in Detroit have seafood night. As I was craving crab legs, I asked if we could go tonight to appease my craving for those delicious sea creatures. While waiting in line, my parents were recounting the last few times they were at this place eating crab legs. They described it as plump and meaty, sweet and tasty, and very bountiful because there wasn't many people around, unlike tonight. Then my dad said he's been doing an experiment the last few times and told us to "Pick the ugly ones!" Apparently he thinks that the ones that aren't as bright in color or darker with a few spots or imperfections on the shell have the meat more intact so it's easier(and meatier) to eat. I told him that he was crazy and I don't like looking at the ugly ones. It's that bright red-orange color that I love to see. The brighter, the more odds that I'm going to pick them! I told him that I would try his test tonight and see if it's true.(My dad thinks he knows everything.)  Even though I tried it and some of the "ugly" ones did have meatier claws and they were easier to get the meat out in one pull, I don't think that rule really applies. What do other people think?

I'm still sticking with the whole presentation part of it and the prettier the crab claws are, the more likely I'm going to like the presentation of the food. That picture is my first plate of crab legs and oysters with some lemon to squeeze on top and also drawn butter for the crab legs. That indeed is a great color scheme and a delicious meal! Thanks mom and dad!

I will give tips on how to break crab legs to make them easier to eat in a later blog entry. Maybe I'll even post a video showing you how I do it!

Welcome to my colorful culinary world!

Ever since I was a little kid, I have always enjoyed cooking for people, even if it was just simple stuff like fried eggs for my parents' friends during poker night. I always told them that one day I would grow up and have my own food stand or restaurant like a lot of people did back in my native Vietnam. I was very fortunate to have my parents expose me to many different flavors and ingredients in the culture that I left there to come to America and pursue my dreams. As I grew up, I realized that not only do I enjoy eating many types of cuisines, but my passion for food and cooking is boundless.

With my origins in Vietnamese and Asian cooking, I started venturing out and discovering new wonderful tastes and infused them into my background. Being a fan of chemistry, I experimented with combining different flavors and found a lot of combinations that worked and some that didn't! From then on, my cooking became very eclectic in tastes, flavors, ingredients, and presentations.

The name of this blog is called Cooking Chromatically because I love to make my food very colorful. Sometimes I have used colors as well as flavors to decide what to add to a dish. I have always believed that food should always be appealing to the eye as well as your taste buds. Whenever I post pictures of my food on my Facebook page, my goal is to make my friends drool from seeing them. I have done my job if that is the case. That goes into the other reason for the name: chromatically could be interpreted as "with hue", and with my name being Hieu, it's a play on words!

In this blog, you will find many facets of food. Of course, there will be recipes and pictures of my food, but there will also be stories of how a dish developed and evolved, kitchen disasters, and people and things that influence my meals.  As I'm not much of a measuring kind of guy, I will try to give a formal recipe but I will also walk you through the cooking process until it becomes an amazing colorful dish on your table. I will also talk about ingredients, give background on them, and give tips on where to find them. I will also give insight into how I present my food for the greatest impact. I will post about places I visit and dishes of others that I enjoy as well. Who knows, it might lead to a dish in my own kitchen someday!

As you can tell by now, food really excites me! I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I will enjoy writing about it and welcoming you into my culinary world. I'm always open to questions, suggestions, and requests. You can email me at cookingchromatically@gmail.com.