Alright, let’s do a little of an introduction for those who are new to Japadog! What is a Japadog? If you’ve never had a Japadog, it’s basically a Japanese version of the Hot Dog stand. Well, they have evolved from being a hot dog stand to several hot dog stands in downtown Vancouver, and now they even have their own store! Check them out at: http://www.japadog.com.

Still don’t know what it is? Maybe a picture would help!

Japadog Menu

They sell ranging from a variety of hot dogs. The regular ones, you get for $3-$4.50. And the “special ones” you get for $4.50-$7. It’s quite insane if you think about it, $7 for a hot dog? I thought they used to sell them for a dollar! Well, not anymore! After the Japanese had perfect it.

So, my girlfriend and I decided to try and make this at home. And we found out, it’s really not that complicated.

Here’s what we used for ingredients (but of course, you can put whatever toppings you like):

• 1 Smoked Sausage (from Costco – it’s super long, 1 sausage could make 2 hot dogs)
• Sliced Mushrooms
• 1 finely-chopped Onion
• Japanese Kewpie Mayonnaise
• Teriyaki Sauce (for our recipe, we used Brickstone Fine Foods Sassy Teriyaki Sauce)
• Bonito Flakes
• Honey Mustard
• I almost forgot…The Buns! (any would do, I couldn’t find hot dog buns that day at my local grocer, so I got big buns which were perfect for the huge dogs!)

So, here are step-by-step instructions. (Sorry, no pictures as our hands were busy!)

1. Oven baked the sausage until cooked.
2. While you sausage is cooking, cut up your onion and slice up your mushrooms.
3. Now do this part when the sausage is 90% complete, add a bit of oil to a pan on medium heat, fry the onions until they are golden brown.
4. Now do the same to the mushrooms, make sure it doesn’t turn watery (that’s when you know it’s complete).
5. Turn your heat to low and stir in the Teriyaki sauce to make it nice and hot! Be sure to stir constantly or it will burn up!
6. Your sausage should be done when you finish this part. Take it out of the oven, let it sit for 1 minute and you can either slice it or cut it in half (if you get Costco’s ginormous sausages).
7. Now, put your sausage on your bun and add your chosen toppings!! Be sure to add the hot toppings before you add the cold, this would keep your hot dog nice and hot! For ours, we first added onions, then mushrooms, then teriyaki sauce, then honey mustard, then Japanese mayo, and finally topped it with Bonito flakes.
8. Serve HOT!!!

Homemade Japadog

Homemade Japadog

There we have it, homemade Japadog! It was so delicious that I think we will stop going to Japadog (sorry, your hotdogs are nice too). And start making our own! So, give it a try and let me know how it turns out. Be sure to leave me a comment down below. If you like this post, be sure to LIKE me here.

As you may remember last Sunday was Mother’s Day and so my brother and I both prepared a special meal for our mom. I had a very busy week, so my brother did most of the prep work and I did most of the cooking and cleaning. The result, well…a Happy Mother’s Day!

Flowers

Of course, this was part of the meal!

Live Spotted Prawns

Here’s our appetizers. We got it for $10.99/lbs at our local asian market. It’s usually around Mother’s Day that the prawns go on sale. And it’s usually what people have during this and the next weekend. The week after Mother’s Day, it got even lower…it was only $8.99/lbs. (Talk about timing and marketing.)

Cooked Spotted Prawns

Fresh. Juicy. and BIG are probably the three best words I could use to describe it.

Soup

This soup is a famous one for those who have been to Olive Garden. Yup, it’s Zuppa Toscana. I first learned how to make this soup from my girlfriend’s sister, which was unbelievably easy to make. Soups are always hard for me to make, but with the recipe that I followed from my girlfriend, it was actually not too bad. I’ll have to do a DIY on my next blog post on this.

Slow Roasted Prime Rib

This was the main course! Not sure how heavy this thing was, but anything you get from Costco is not small. I didn’t pick this up myself, my parents did as I was taking a seminar that weekend. So, I had no time to grocery shop. And my brother helped marinade it with our home secret recipe.

Marinade Scrap from Prime Rib

Here’s a picture of the remainings from the Prime Rib marinade. Anybody want to try and guess what he used?

Au Jus

This was the making of au jus, which is french for “its own juice”. Basically, the recipe of au jus main ingredients required the remaining juice of the finished roasted prime rib. For au jus recipe, you can follow this recipe here. My mom loved the au jus, it was perfect on the prime rib!

Prime Rib with Au Jus

The prime rib was a little over done, but it was still good. (Just not a lot of blood, which my brother loves!) My brother loves it blue rare, but the rest of the family prefers it medium-well done. It’s very hard to please with one prime rib!

Well, that was the entire night. We ended up finishing only half of the prime rib. I was planning on dessert, but we were too full. (Actually, I didn’t really plan dessert, which I normally would’ve planned first!) Like I said, busy me!

Like I always do, I like to leave my readers with a question to ponder. How do you like your prime rib done? Leave me a message down below.

What a week it’s been! I have finally moved my two websites “robinleung.com” and “eatwith.robinleung.com” to a new host. The old host was just too slow in my opinion. Before I go any further, I’d like to thank @anothersamchan for hosting my blog. I’d also like to thank all my readers for your support! I moved up to #95 featured blog on Urbanspoon.com. Let’s keep it going!!

And my biggest apologies to those who have tried to access my blog this week, but couldn’t, as I was moving hosting. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

As I promised in my previous blog post, I would be doing a DIY on how I made this soup on Mother’s Day. You have to understand, soup is not my specialty. This idea came from my girlfriend’s sister, which both are soup lovers. I forgot the occasion, but she discovered how to make Olive Garden’s Zuppa Toscana (one of the best soups ever), from a simple recipe. So, I’m giving her the credits, or else I’d never would have knew how simple it’d be to make this.

Zuppa Toscana

First of all, the ingredients:

Ingredients

• 1 package of Italian sausage (hot or mild)
• 1 cup of cream (heavy or light)
• 3 large russet potatoes
• 1 large diced white onion
• bacon pieces
• 10 cups of water
• chicken bouillon
• kale

Kale

Steps:

1. Get a medium size pot and fill 1/3 with water and boil. Put Italian sausage in and boil for a couple minutes (it doesn’t have to be throughly cooked). This step will make your zuppa less fat, and it’s optional. You can choose to pan-fry the sausage as well. But, this is a much healthier way.
   
2. In a large pot, fill it with 10 cups of water (even 11 would be okay). And bring to boil.
   
3. Add in 5 tbsp of chicken brouillon.
   
4. Add in potatoes and onions. Cook for about 30minutes, until potatoes are soft and can be broken.
   
5. Add in cream and sausage. Turn your heat down to low-medium. Stir occasionally until re-broils.
   
6. Add in kale. Stir throughly until kale softens.
   
7. Done! Don’t forget to turn off your heat.
   

Now, that wasn’t too hard! Was it? What other soups are there that you have enjoyed making? Let me know in the comments below!