A box of kitchen

Cheese cookies

2012-03-17T18:12:00.000+09:00

What a cold cloudy Saturday evening we`re having here! I remember telling you all in my previous post how I was ready to welcome the spring, but what really happened for these past two weeks was snow still occasionally came to cover everything in white. Like these.

Regardless of that chilly whiteness, I know the spring and sunshine will come to us eventually (they have to!), and in the mean time, let`s check out how I made my easy-peasy cheese cookies. The recipe is actually a modification from an English chocolate biscuit recipe in Nigella Christmas, which is a very good crispy cookie recipe that I keep making again and again. As I ended up having too much sweetness, I thought I wanted something savory this time. I actually have posted a cheese cookie recipe before, but this time I made it eggless, simpler, with much less salt content, but still with amazing result.

Now, savory cookie lovers, are you ready?

Grate cheddar cheese and set it aside. I llllove red cheddar. Just look at that color!

Due to my super low kitchen temperature, I usually soften my butter in the microwave. If you too use microwave, heat and check it every few seconds. Just be careful not to overheat it because you don`t want completely melted butter here. I do sometimes have my butter a bit melted at the base, but I just go on and the cookies turn out fine.

So, soften your butter and cream it in a mixing bowl until it has turned pale and much creamier.

Fold in the grated cheese now.

Sift in flour and baking powder until the mixture has turned into dough consistency.

My dough here looks very crumbly, but I learned that it will turn into a nice dough when I use my hand for the final mixing. I guess the heat from my hand helps resoften and melt the butter and thus combine with the flour.

Shape the dough into logs with equal sizes, wrap with a cling wrap, and keep them in refrigerator for at least an hour.

My kitchen counter and fridge don`t have large space, so I always make the logs short. Mine in the picture were about 4-cm in diameter and 10-cm long. If you`re in a hurry, though, you can just roll out the dough on the counter and cut it up with a cookie cutter like making sugar cookies. But for those of you who have the same space problem like me and don`t mind with simple coin shape, I think you`ll find this log-cool-cut method very helpful.

After an hour or so in the fridge, cut the dough into fat coins. Mine were about 2-cm thick here.

Cutting up a cold dough always makes me feel really good! By the way, you can keep the dough in the freezer for a longer storage time and bake later when you want. I usually make 4 logs, bake 2 logs, and keep the other 2 logs in the freezer.

Arrange the coins onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake them in a preheated oven at 170 C for 20 mins.

Your kitchen and home will smell really great during the baking!

These cookies will melt in your mouth and you will have difficulty to stop after having one.

Oh I`m having a serious drooling problem and I guess I just have to make these again now.

Happy weekend!

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CHEESE COOKIES
Makes about 3 dozens

Ingredients:

200 g unsalted butter, softened

80 g cheddar cheese

240 g flour

1 tsp baking powder

Method:

1. Grate the cheddarcheese and set aside.

2. Cream softenedbutter in a bowl until it has turned paler.

3. Fold in gratedcheese, sifted flour, and baking powder.

4. Shape the doughinto logs (about 4-cm in diameter).

5. Wrap the logswith cling wrap and keep in refrigerator for at least 1 hour or until the doughis firm enough.

6. Open the wrapand cut up the dough into fat coins (about 2-cm thick).

7. Arrange the coinson a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

8. Bake at 170 Cfor 20 mins.

Note: For a smaller baking batch, you can keep the leftover dough logs in freezer and bake them anytime you want to.

Spicy vegetable soup with grilled turmeric shishamo

2012-03-04T13:03:00.001+09:00

I think March is probably the most memorable month in a year for me and my husband as it reminds us of many important episodes of our lives. For now I`m not going to talk further about the personal sides, but Japanese academic and fiscal years start in April and end in March, so March is kind of the year-end month where people usually get busier to finish their works and anticipate the upcoming schedules for April as the New Year. And climately speaking, March is also the month when people prepare to welcome the beginning of spring where the snow melts quicker and the trees start to seem alive again.

Now, to celebrate the end of the frosty winter, I`m going to share one Indonesian-ish dish that I usually cook when I feel the urge to consume fibrous meal and one fish dish to make them as a beautiful set.

Let`s start with the soup first.

Heat a bit of oil on medium heat and saute onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, chili, and chili powder until fragrant.

Stir in shrimp paste. For whatever reason you have, you can substitute it for dried shrimp or anchovies (I sometimes do this) or omit it (sometimes I do this too), although it will slightly alter the final taste.

Pour in water-preferably hot-, stir in coconut powder until completely dissolved, and let it simmer.

If you use liquid coconut milk, pour in the coconut milk first, and add water until the liquid volume reach about 2 cups in total. You can even add water in the last step instead. We are going to add quite a lot of stuff to the pot after this, so you don`t want to overfill the pot with liquid right now.

I believe I don`t have many recipes here that include this bamboo shoot despite how frequent I use it. The only bamboo shoots sold in the our nearest store is the one that is ready to use packed in bag filled with water. According to the pack, that white powdery stuff sticking on the bamboo shoots is a kind of amino acid and thus no need to remove it. I hope you can find this bamboo shoots at the stores in your area. Too bad that I never handle fresh bamboo shoots so I have no idea how to handle it.

Anyway, cut the bamboo shoots-in random shapes, as you can see- and add to the simmering liquid in the pot.

Have you met nameko? My husband dislikes this mushroom for its sliminess, but I LOVE it for the same reason. The mushroom is covered with a slimy gelatinous layer, but crunchiness stays even after cooking. It kind of has a distinctive smell that some people probably are not fond of, so you might want to check it first before adding to the whole dish. I usually quickly rinse them with hot water and add them to whatever I`m cooking. Nameko work nicely in stir-fried dishes, but when you add them to soups, they will make the liquid thicker.

So, here is the soup already with nameko and bamboo shoots in it. Oh, I added shimeji mushrooms too but I didn`t have the picture.

Next is konnyaku. If you`ve been following my blog, you probably noticed how I often have konnyaku in my soups. It is recommended to blanch the konnyaku in hot water for a few minutes to remove unpleasant odor, but I usually dice it up, rinse under hot water, and add the cubes to the pot.

Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar while keeping the soup simmering.

When you`re done with the seasoning, put frozen long beans on top, remove from heat, and cover with lid for 5-10 mins until the green beans are softened.If you are using fresh long beans, cook it on low heat with the lid on for 5-10 mins depending on your liking of mushiness or crunchiness.

The soup is done! If you have omitted the shrimp paste or dried shrimp, it means your soup is a vegan version. But if you`re like me who still can`t fully commit to 100% vegan lifestyle, you can continue prepare this side dish.

I used shishamo fish, but you can use your own choice of fish. I use this turmeric seasoning recipe for many kinds of fish, or even chicken, and it always worked in our house. My husband especially is a fan of this turmeric seasoning. It`s quick and simple, but the result is very rewarding.

Wash whatever fish you use and pat dry before starting the seasoning.

Then, if you use small fish like these shishamo, just dump them in a bowl, add olive oil, turmeric, ginger powder-or grated ginger, even better!- pepper, and salt. Mix together everything until each fish is evenly coated with the seasoning.

Line a baking tray with aluminium foil and arrange the turmeric-coated fish onto it. Grill it for 20-30 mins or until the skin has crisped up.

Ah, look at this pair. If you`re an Indonesian, I`m 200% sure you`ll remember about sayur lodeh and ikan asin. But if you`re not, it means you need to give these dishes a try and see if you enjoy them as much as we do.

Happy Sunday!

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SPICY VEGETABLE SOUP

Serves 3-4 persons

Ingredients:

5 cloves garlic, minced/chopped

1/2 cut onion, chopped

2 tsp grated ginger

1 tsp coriander, minced/milled

3 chilies (remove seeds for milder heat)

1 Tbs chili powder

1 tsp shrimp paste

2 cups hot water*

1/2 cup coconut milk powder*

150 g bamboo shoot, chopped

100 g shimeji mushroom

80 g nameko mushroom

100 g konnyaku, diced

100 g frozen long beans

Salt

Pepper

A pinch of sugar

*Note: If using liquid coconut milk instead of powder, adjust the volume into 2 cups

Method:

1. Heat a bit of oil on medium heat and saute onion, garlic, ginger, coriander, chili, and chili powder until fragrant.

2. Stir in shrimp paste.

3. Pour in water and stir in coconut powder until completely dissolved.

4. Stir in the mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and konnyaku.

5. Adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper, and sugar while simmering.

6. When finished with seasoning, put green beans on top, remove from heat, and cover with lid for 5-10 mins until the green beans has softened.

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GRILLED TURMERIC SHISHAMO

Makes 12 grilled shishamo

Ingredients:

12 shishamo, washed and patted dry

1 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp ginger powder

1/2 tsp pepper

1/2 tsp salt

Method:

1. In a bowl, mix together shishamo with the remaining ingredients until the fish is evenly coated.

2. Grill for 20 mins or until the skin has crisped up.

Chocolate bread pudding

2012-02-19T21:06:00.001+09:00

As promised, I`m back to share this bread pudding using the stale cream biscuits I made before. I actually made it on Valentine`s night where I got home at night wondering what I could prepare for a simple celebration. I didn`t prepare any certain menu ahead because initially we didn`t plan to have any celebration. Regardless, I still wanted to bake something chocolatey and sweet for the night and I spotted the stale biscuits sitting sadly in the room. Then I realized I also had the other ingredients, so I quickly grabbed my mixing bowl and whisk.

Arrange stalebread in a baking dish or cake tin and set aside.

I tore the biscuits to make smaller pieces and placed the crust down as I think they will absorb the liquid better that way.

In a mixing bowl, beat eggs and sugar.

I really love it when I can simply use my whisk, not the electric mixer, to make this kind of simple treat.

Stir in milk...

...and cocoa powder...whisk..whisk..

...and these beautiful little jewels.

If you want to use more dried fruits, maybe you should reduce the amount of sugar in the batter to prevent the pudding from being overly sweet.

The final item containing sugar and fat and happiness is white chocolate.

I was too lazy to chop up the chocolate, so I just broke the bar into chunks and stirred them in. And not only that. I also tried to grate the chocolate in, hence the white tiny chunks sticking on my ladle below. I thought I would love it, but it turned out the big chunks worked best for me.

Alright, now gradually pour the batter into the tin and let the bread absorb it.

I don`t make bread pudding often, but pouring in all the batter then bake it right away is what I usually do. Now I came to think that it might be better if: I throw all the bread into the batter in the mixing bowl, stir everything, and wait for a while until the bread has fully absorbed the liquid before finally baking it.

I really think that this method works better and you should try it.

So, this is when all the batter has been poured in. Some of the dried fruits and white chocolate chunks will float on top, but that`s okay.

Sprinkle cinnamon over (or you can stir it in when making the batter) and bake it in preheated oven at 180 for 30 mins or until the top is browned and there`s no liquid remained underneath.

The look is not pretty at all and my ability in food-styling probably made it worse. But, there is a very big sweet but here, this pudding has everything you need when you crave for something warm and sweet on a chilly night. Just hear this: The softened bread is filled with the chocolatey pudding and dried fruits with a lovely sweet milky crust of white chocolate on top. Now what`s not to like there??

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CHOCOLATE BREAD PUDDING

Makes for 15-cm diameter and 5-cm deep cake tin

Ingredients:

Stale bread enough to fill half of the tin (see recipe for cream biscuits here)

2 eggs

3 Tbs sugar

150 ml milk

2 Tbs cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups dried fruits

White chocolate

Cinnamon

Method:
1. Arrange stalebread in a baking dish or tin and set aside.
2. Beat eggs andsugar in a mixing bowl.
3. Stir in cocoa powder, milk,and dried fruits.
4. Chop white chocolateinto small chunks and stir in.
5. Gradually pourthe chocolate batter into the baking tin and let the bread absorb the batter.
6. Sprinkle over cinnamon and bake in preheated oven at 180 C for 30 mins or untilthe top is browned and no liquid remained underneath.

Cream biscuit with strawberry orange jam

2012-02-17T23:34:00.001+09:00

Friday night is finally here and now I can sit down sharing with you about my recent experiment. And speaking of experiment, sometimes I think it`s funny when I realize that I work in a lab where I measure chemicals and stuff, mix them altogether, heat or freeze them, make notes, take pictures, and so on. Then, at home, I practically do the same things, only with edible ingredients and these additional steps. Tasting, and eating the results. I guess I spend my time in two laboratories with two different projects and purposes.

So, back to my kitchen experiment. As I told you before about how I`m into baking these days, I found a biscuit recipe in Betty Crocker`s The Big Red Cookbook in which whipping cream is used to replace butter or shortening. Great! I always prefer to bake everything without butter whenever possible, so I was very excited to give the recipe a try. Not that I`m a butter hater person-believe me, you can kidnap me only with a jar of butter cookies-, but if I have the option not to use it, I`ll be happier.

I`ve once made biscuit using butter before, but the biscuits turned out to be heavy and didn`t rise as high as what I`ve expected. I`m sure my baking skill is the only thing to blame for, but I knew I had to try making them again and I`m so glad I did!

Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

Stir in whipping cream until you can form the dough into a ball.

Like this one. To me it looks like a cauliflower.

You can adjust the amount of the cream to get the right consistency. If you`ve added the whole amount of cream I listed below but your dough is still dry and too crumbly, add 1-2 Tbs more cream. If your dough is too sticky, add a bit more flour.

Knead the dough for a few times on a floured surface and roll out until 1-cm thick.

The next proper thing to do is cutting it out with a biscuit cutter or a cup. I don`t have the cutter or cups with suitable size either, so I just cut it using my knife unevenly. Unintentionally, of course. My apologies to the biscuit inventor.

Have you ever seen biscuits that look like tofu??

Bake them at 210 C for 15 mins or until the top has turned browned.

Seriously, I thought the biscuits has turned into tofu puffs in my oven. Anyway, tofu puffs or biscuits, just look how wonderfully they rise up!

After they`re out from the oven, they will shrink down a bit and you`ll notice the cracking side in each of them.

You can serve them with whatever you like, but I happened to have some strawberries and oranges, so I decided to make my own jam. I don`t have any special recipe for making fruit jam, but in case you`ve never made any, it`s no rocket science and here`s how to make it.

Start with: washing the fruits. Of course.

If you use the same fruits like I did, cut up the strawberries into small chunks and juice the oranges.You can puree everything if you like, but I prefer to have some texture in my jam.

Heat the strawberries, orange juice-I added the pulp in too-, sugar, and a pinch of salt on medium heat.

Confession: that white powder you are now looking at is all SALT. Salt, everyone. It was a very salty accident. I had to discard the juice, rinse the strawberries with water, and pour in another fresh batch of orange juice.

So, make sure that you`re adding more SUGAR than salt, unless salty jam is what you want.

I didn`t add water at all, but the orange juice and the water coming out from the strawberries is enough to turn the mixture into a thick liquid.

Keep stirring and cook until the jam has thickened or until it has reached your preferred consistency.

Pour the jam into a jar, seal, and store it in fridge.

Spread the jam on the biscuits and you`ll find how wonderfully they marry together. The biscuits are so light and puffy and the sweet tangy strawberry jam makes everything joyful! Homemade bread and homemade jam under 1 hour. Can you believe it? I should call them weekend achievement.

I`ll be coming back, hopefully soon, with a post on how I used up the stale biscuits!

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CREAM BISCUITS

Adapted from Betty Crocker`s Big Red Cookbook

Makes about 12 buns

Ingredients:

240 g bread flour

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

200 ml whipping cream (heavy cream)

Method:

1. Mix together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

2. Stir in whipping cream until you can form the dough into a ball.

3. Knead the dough for a few times on a floured surface and roll out until 1-cm thick.

4. Cut out the dough with a biscuit cutter or cup.

5. Bake at 210 C for 15 mins or until the top has turned browned.

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STRAWBERRY ORANGE JAM

Makes about 1 1/2 cup

Ingredients:

10 strawberries

2 medium-sized oranges to produce about 1 cup of juice

2 Tbs sugar

A pinch of salt

Method:

1. Cut up the strawberries into small chunks and juice the oranges

2. Heat the strawberries, orange juice (and the pulp too), sugar, and a pinch of salt on medium heat.

3. Keep stirring and cook until the jam has thickened.

4. Pour the jam into a jar, seal, and store it in fridge.

Anchovy fried rice

2012-02-12T15:57:00.001+09:00

I`ve probably lost count on how many kinds of fried rice I`ve been making in my kitchen. It seems to me that the weekend`s lunch menu in our house is dominated with fried rice and I suppose that happens because lazy cooking is all I can think about when I wake up on weekends.

This fried rice is not only super quick to prepare, but also embarrassingly simple. Still, I decided to post it anyway. Who knows, maybe my future kids who will stay in their future dorms will read this (on their future tablets perhaps?), cook the fried rice, and forget their cup ramens for a while. Or who knows, you happen to have all the ingredients and are hungry?

What I`d put in my fried rice mostly depends on what`s inside my fridge and this time I had leftover anchovies.

I could have laid the anchovies on my chopping board and chop them, but snipping them up in the jar gives me less mess to clean up later.

So, snip, or chop up the anchovies and set aside.

In a frying pan on medium heat with a bit of oil, stir-fry sliced spring onions, 1 Tbs of grated ginger, and chili. The ginger might sound awfully a lot, especially if you`re not a regular ginger eater, but I find that the ginger gives a nice mellow warmth to the fried rice.

After the spring onions have wilted, stir in the chopped anchovies.

Smells heavenly now, doesn`t it?

And now, stir in cooked rice and adjust the seasoning with pepper and salt, if necessary.

I didn`t add salt because to me the saltiness was good enough.

See? The fried rice is done within 20 minutes or probably even less. The anchovies-ginger combo really gives a very nice flavor to this fried rice. The look is definitely far from fancy, but with this, you can tell that your weekend has started.

Happy Sunday!

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ANCHOVY FRIED RICE

Makes about 2 plates

Ingredients:

2 spring onions

1 Tbs grated ginger

2 dried chili (remove seeds for milder heat)

1 Tbs chopped anchovies

2 plates cooked rice

Pepper

Salt (optional)

Method:

1. Stir fry sliced spring onions, grated ginger, and chili with a bit of oil. Cook until spring onions has wilted.

2. Stir in chopped anchovies.

3. Stir in rice and adjust the seasoning.

Onion soup

2012-02-08T22:43:00.001+09:00

This onion soup was actually one of the realization of my food-dreaming moment during my way home in a freezing snowy evening. Walking. This time I didn`t ride my bike because I`ve learned in a hard way. I still got that bruise as a reminder. Anyway, that day was unbelievably cold that it wouldn`t be surprising at all if a bowl of hot soup was what everyone on the street was thinking about.

And speaking of onion, I always have this love-hate relationship with onion because eating it raw is the least thing I want to do-you`ll find me frowning and sighing every time my burger or sandwich has raw onion in it-, but using it for cooking is kind of a sacred ritual in my kitchen. First time I`ve tried onion soup was at a restaurant and I was utterly impressed on how onion can turn into such a wonderful soup. So, I had been meaning to recreate the soup at home and I finally made it based on Julia Child`s Soupe a l`oignon, but without the wine and cognac. And without the Swiss cheese either. I found the Gruyere cheese sold in the stores to be quite expensive, so I just keep my curiosity inside and moved on with the more affordable cheese. If you think you can handle my butterless, wineless, and Gruyereless onion soup, which I really hope you can, please move along with me. Believe me, it wasn`t bad at all. In fact, I think this was really really good!

Thinly slice 2 onions (which will give you approximately 2 cups of sliced onions) and cook them in a saucepan with 3 Tbs of olive oil on low heat.
The original recipe calls for butter and oil, which you might want to try, but I`m perfectly happy with my olive oil.

During this stage, cover the saucepan and let the onions slowly cook for about 15 mins.
With the low heat, I think the onions should not easily scorch. But since I`m a worrier (not warrior), I sometimes stirred them around to make sure nothing disastrous going on inside there.

After 15 mins, the onions should be all wilted and slightly browned.

Open the cover, raise the heat to moderate, and stir in salt and sugar. From here, all you need to do is stir, stir, and stir. Not every second, but frequent enough to prevent them from burning.

Cook them for like 30-40 mins or until the onions have greatly reduced their volumes-like one fifth of the initial volume- and have evenly caramelized.

Julia wrote, "...until the onions have turned an even deep golden brown". Now I really wish I could see how deep is deep in her kitchen, but I think this one is deep enough for me.

Stir in 1 Tbs of flour to the caramelized onions and let cook for 3 mins.

I`m not proud showing you this, but I had prepared beef stock and stored in my fridge the day before. By stock I mean the boiling water of beef that I`ve used for my pan-fried buns filling. I didn`t add anything to it, so it`s simply water with the beef flavor, although sadly, fat as well. That`s why I fished out the solidified fat with my skimmer in the picture above.

Pour in the beef stock or any stock you want or even water to the onions, lower the heat, and stir to combine. Simmer the soup for about 30 mins and adjust the seasoning.
Julia`s method is to remove the pan from heat while blending in the stock and dry white wine before simmering it again.

Now here`s for extra oomph factor.

Place toasted bread in an oven-proof ramekin.

Ladle in the onion soup until 4/5 full. Hold your self, we`re not done yet.

Place another toasted bread on top.

Top with your choice of cheese and bake at 210 C for 20 mins or until everything looks yummier!

I`m not too happy with the final photos, but I couldn`t wait any longer. So after giving it merely several shots, my spoon got busy digging in all the soul-warming goodness. My husband was about to sleep when I fed him a spoon of the soup. The soup seemed to be effective enough to wake him up, because he sat up straight and finished the whole ramekin.

The soup is rich, sweet, and savory and the addition of bread and cheese make the whole set even harder to resist. If I were the one to decide what Seven Wonders are, this onion soup would definitely be in the list.

Bon appetite!

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ONION SOUP

Makes about 2 cups or 3-4 individual ramekins

Ingredients:

2 onions or approximately 2 cups of sliced onions

3 Tbs olive oil
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
Pepper

400 ml beef stock

Toasted bread

Cheese for topping

Method:
1. Thinly slice onions and cook them in a saucepan with 3 Tbs of olive oil on low heat.
2. Cover the saucepan and let the onions slowly cook for about 15 mins.
3. Open the cover, raise the heat to moderate, and stir in salt and sugar. Stir it frequently to prevent the onions from burning.
4. Cook them for like 30-40 mins or until the onions have greatly reduced their volumes and have evenly caramelized or turned deep brown.
5. Stir in 1 Tbs of flour to the caramelized onions and let cook for 3 mins.
6. Pour in the beef stock or any stock you want or water, stir to combine, lower the heat, and simmer for 30 mins.
7. Simmer for 30 mins and adjust the seasoning.

For serving
1. Place toasted bread in an oven-proof ramekin.
2. Ladle in the onion soup until 4/5 full.
3. Place another toasted bread on top.
4. Top with your choice of cheese and bake at 210 C for 20 mins

Cinnamon banana wraps

2012-01-22T21:02:00.000+09:00

I was craving for something buttery and sweet today and I finally came up with these banana wraps. At first I was thinking of calling them "banana puff", but I decided to go with "wraps". They are very quick and easy to make, especially if you use store-bought or pre-made puff pastry. Honestly, I can`t see myself making my own pastry sheet. Not in a gazillion year.

Oh I really should finish this post quickly because I need to meditate before Monday comes. And by meditate, I mean not doing anything. I believe that`s what Sunday night is for.

So here`s how to make the wraps:

Cut pre-made puff pastry into 8 triangles.

I should feel embarrassed showing you my cutting ability, but this reminds me of how I should get a ruler for my kitchen.

Brush the pastry with olive oil.

Sprinkle over brown sugar and cinnamon.

If you want, you can do the cutting after this stage. About the amount of the sugar, I wanted the wraps to be just slightly sweet, so I only used like 1 tbs of it. If you`re a sweet tooth person, you might want to add more sugar.

Now, I don`t have the picture here, but you need to slice a banana into approximately 2-cm thick coins.

Wrapping time.

Take one pastry triangle, place a banana slice at the center, and fold in one pointy edge like in the picture.

Next, fold in the other two edges to the center to cover the whole banana. Done!

Or done-ish, because there is an optional step where you seal the wraps with egg wash (which I didn`t) and brush the surface too (which I did).

One thing I learned from here is not to overdo the brushing because the egg will drip to the bottom of the pastry and get burned during the baking.

Done! Now bake them in a preheated oven at 200 C for 15-20 min or until nicely puffed up and golden brown.

They`re puffy and buttery with sweet cinnamony banana filling inside. Just perfect for our freezing Sunday evening. I totally recommend you to have this with a cup of hot chai because it`ll make everything perfecter.

As I didn`t seal the wraps, they all puffed open and I can`t find proper words to describe their shapes, except "unknown random puffs". Good thing that I have the pictures, so you can define it your self.

For those of you who wondered what that robot was doing there, this was a special request from my husband who wanted me to include his new ~~pet~~ robot toy in the picture. Well, I had nothing else in mind to style up the wraps anyway. I seriously need to improve my propping style.

Have a lovely Sunday!

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CINNAMON BANANA WRAPS

Makes 8 wraps

Ingredients:

18 x 18-cm pre-made puff pastry

1 tbs olive oil

1-2 tbs brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 banana, sliced into coins

1 egg

Method:

1. Cut pre-made puff pastry into 8 triangles.

2. Brush the pastry with olive oil

3. Sprinkle over brown sugar and cinnamon

4. Slice banana into 2-cm thick coins

5. Take one triangle, place one slice of banana, and wrap by folding all three pointy edges of the pastry into the center.

6. Brush with egg wash.

7. Bake in preheated oven at 200 C for 15-20 min or until nicely puffed up and golden brown.

Miso fried rice and a resolution

2012-01-15T13:44:00.000+09:00

I know I`ve been MIAing for a while and that because for the whole last week, my mind was fully occupied with job-related things. I wanted to say that that`s a good thing with being busy, but sadly, it was not. My current job contract will about to end and a while ago, I applied for a job for the errrth time and I finally got myself an interview. The irony was, I wanted that job so much and I really felt that I had a good shot, but the second I finished my interview, I knew I blew it away just like that. That day, it seemed clearer than ever to me that my greatest weakness is being interviewed. So, I just went home feeling uneasy and regretting the way I responded to the questions. It`s all about "I should have explained this and that" in my mind. And despite my fear of the result, I still had the excitement thinking of a tiny possibility for me to get it until a letter came two days later saying that I don`t get the job. Then, I crashed down, pretty badly. I always knew that I`m more a writer than a speaker, but I never thought that it would cost me this bad. And to make things gloomier, my paper got rejected too earlier that day. But I quickly resubmitted it to a different journal in the same day and I`m glad I did. So, one rejection to start my day and another rejection to welcome me home. Now how about that?

Anyway, I`m glad to say that I`ve finished with the sad part, so let me continue with the good part. Or at least I think it`s good for me. I thought it would take days for me to get over it, but to my surprise, I was already fine the next day and even better, I`m ready to move on. It occurred to me that now I knew the root of my problem, I have to work on my communication/speaking skill for interviews, or in a broader term, my self-selling skill in job hunting. Otherwise, I will spend the rest of my time just whining about why I fail again, or worse, blaming the universe.So here I am, with new battery, which I hope will last very long, and new homework to do. Failing should make me better instead of merely feeling defeated. And please remind me about all this speech when I start whining again, alright?

OK, now I`m done with sharing about my life. I don`t mean to drag you into my gloominess, but I hope the lesson works not only for me, but for people out there too who are probably in the same situation.

Now, please come to my kitchen because I`m going to share my quick and easy meal, which happens to be a vegan recipe too. I just hope that this fried rice doesn`t represent my story above because really, they don`t relate at all. In fact, this post has helped me getting back on my feet before the Monday comes.
Cooking time!

Start with chopping a spring onion.

In a frying pan with a bit of oil, stir-fry the spring onion with chilli.

You can remove the chilli seed before slice/chop it up for a milder heat. For me, I`ve never removed any chili seed in my life. Maybe having a baby would be my only reason to do that in the future.

Next, throw in sliced shiitake mushrooms.

And toss in shimeji mushrooms.

Speaking of mushrooms, I remembered my recent conversation with my dearly cousin who lives in Netherland. She said that it`s difficult to copy my recipe because she rarely/never see the ingredients I use here at her place. I`m sure that she`s not alone in having this opinion because I too have some difficulties in finding some ingredients listed in recipes from outside Japan. But even so, I think the basic idea of sharing recipes, at least for me and especially for non-baking ones, is to inspire people to cook. And more importantly, with whatever we have or like. Other than that, don`t you think it`s fun to learn about new or foreign food we never see before?

Aaaand....back to the frying pan before I burn everything.

Add a tbs (or more, or less) of miso paste and stir up.

Then, to give it a red effect, add 1 tbs of red chili powder or flakes.

Season with salt (go easy with it because miso is already salty), ginger, and pepper. Stir until everything combined.

Dump in cooked rice and good luck with the stirring.

This fried rice has a pretty good resemblance with Indonesian fried rice. Just add a fried egg on top and shrimp rice crackers on the side and no one will sue you from calling it Indonesian fried rice. Although, one will quickly notice a difference because of the dominant miso flavor in the dish. And before I forget, this dish is not only quick and easy to prepare, but also comforting. After all, what`s not comforting from miso and mushrooms?

Print recipe

MISO FRIED RICE

Makes about 2 plates

Ingredients:

1 spring onion

2-3 chili

Shiitake mushrooms

Shimeji mushrooms

1 tbs miso paste

1 tbs chili powder/flakes

Ginger

Salt

Pepper

2 plates cooked rice

Tomato (optional)

Parsley (optional)

Method:

1. Saute chopped spring onion and chili in a frying pan with a bit of olive oil.

2. Stir in shiitake mushrooms and cook until it wilted.

3. Stir in shimeji mushrooms and cook until it wilted.

4. Add 1 tbs of miso paste and 1 tbs of chili powder/flakes.

5. Season with ginger, salt, and pepper and stir up.

6. Add 2 plates of cooked rice and stir until everything combined.

7. Optional: garnish with chopped tomato and parsley to serve.

Pan-fried buns for a start in 2012

2012-01-02T14:48:00.001+09:00

Happy New Year 2012, everyone! How was your New Year`s day there??

It`s already Jan 2 evening at our place, which also means the last day of my holiday. I have really enjoyed my time in the kitchen and in fact, I baked and cooked so much that he begged me to stop cooking for a while. It really sounded bizarre considering how often I usually ask him to buy store-bought food during our regular weekdays, or even sometimes on weekends. This holiday, however, I had (and am having) a sudden unstoppable obsession in bread making. Bread dough was one of my kitchen nightmares that I used to avoid the best I can. I remembered last year where I burst into tears when both my hands got trapped in a very sticky monstrous bread dough. The results were disasters too! I did stop trying making any kind of bread until I bought an old cooking magazine featuring pan-fried buns (Orange Page 2010, Vol 1). The buns look very similar with the regular steamed buns, only these ones got beautiful crusty side on the base.

My attempt in making the buns using the magazine`s recipe just worked and I hope by sharing this post I can encourage those who haven`t tried making steamed buns. This is going to be a very long post, but please don`t be put off by that because doing it is actually much less complicated than explaining it.

Alright, ready to scroll down your mouse?

Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl and stir in lukewarm water mixed with olive oil.

From what I`ve experienced, I found that using a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients works best for me. A kneader is good too. But definitely not by hand. Not for me. Not at this stage.

After the mixture turns into a dough, knead it by hands, and shape into a ball and let rest for 30 mins or 1 hour. I was worried looking at how ugly it was, but it turned out to be alright later.

In the mean time, prepare the filling. You can use your favorite filling, but here I used chicken and mushrooms filling.

Saute chopped shiitake mushrooms and garlic (the garlic picture isn`t here, sorry!) with olive oil until they has shrinked and released the nutty scent.

Stir in minced chicken and let cook through.

Throw in chopped garlic chives.

This is a very garlicky chickeny filling.

Add soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and pepper. It`s better to oversalt the filling a little bit as it will go together with the plain buns.

After the filling is ready, set aside to let it cool.

Now here`s the dough ball that has been leavened. I flattened it pushing the air out and kneaded by hand for a couple more times. Look how smooth it is now!

Next is dough portioning.

1. Shape the dough into a log and cut crosswise into halves and cut the halves into another halves to get 4 equal portions. Then, half each cut and this will result in 8 equal portions.

By equal, of course, I mean, humanely possible equal.

2. For the finishing knead, pull out the edge of each portion dough and tuck it in repeatedly while shaping into a ball shown in Picture 3 above.

4. With a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a disc.

My dough was a little springy that the flattened disc kept springing back making the disc rather thick. But I just continued to the filling anyway.

Next is the filling.

1. Place the disc onto your palm and flatten it once more.

From what I`ve learned, it`s better to flatten the edges and leave the center a little thick.

2. Place the filling onto the disc.

Try small first and when you get used to the wrapping, add more filling.

3. Pleat the edge and seal them altogether.

As you can see in the picture, I didn`t pleat it. I just sealed the edge and I was satisfied enough if the filling could be wrapped neatly.

4. Twist the edge for final sealing while shaping into a round bun.

Go easy with the twisting. Once the bun is safely sealed, you`re good. I overdid the sealing and the center got stretched out too far making the surface too thin and the base too thick.

Heat a bit of oil on a frying pan over medium heat and place the filled buns. They will puff up, so space them apart.

After 1 minute frying the base, quickly, but carefully pour in 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water.

There will be a serious oil splatter at the beginning, but if you add enough water, which covers like 1/4 or 1/3 of the bun, the splatter will be quickly gone and the water will simmer instead.

After adding the water, quickly cover the pan with a lid and let the water and steam cook the bun for 7-8 minutes.

After the buns have nicely puffed up, open the lid, crank up the heat, and let the water evaporate. Add sesame oil and swirl around to coat the bun base for final frying for another minute.

Done!

Ready to devour?

Here, let me cut it open for you so you can see the inside. This is why I suggest you not to overdo the sealing. This must be the most weird-looking bun I`ve ever had.

I also made the regular steamed buns with the same dough. Tastewise, I love them both. Love, love, love. Cooking-processwise, the steaming method was simpler and quicker as I could cook more buns at once in my steamer and I didn`t need to do anything except waiting. Texturewise, the fried ones have wonderful textures with the irresistible heavenly crusts.

These crusts. Do I need to say more?

Print recipe

PAN-FRIED BUNS
Adapted from Orange Page 2010, Vol 1

Makes 8 buns

Ingredients:

For filling
5 cloves of garlic

150 g minced chicken

100 g shiitake mushrooms

Garlic chives

2 tbs soy sauce

1 tbs sesame oil

Salt

Pepper

For buns

200 g bread flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tbs olive oil

100 ml lukewarm water

Methods:

For the filling

1. Saute chopped shiitake mushrooms and garlic with olive oil until they has shrinked and released the nutty scent.

2. Stir in minced chicken and let cook through.

3. Throw in chopped garlic chives.

4. Add soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, salt, and pepper.

5. Let it cool down.

For the buns

1. Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt in a bowl and stir in lukewarm water mixed with olive oil.

2. After the mixture turns into a dough, knead it by hands, and shape into a ball and let rest for 30 mins or 1 hour.

3. Flatten the leavened dough to push the air out and knead by hands for a couple more times.

4. Shape the dough into a log and cut crosswise into halves and cut the halves into another halves to get 4 equal portions. Then, half each cut and this will result in 8 equal portions.

5. For the finishing knead, pull out the edge of each portion dough and tuck it in repeatedly while shaping into a ball

6. With a rolling pin, roll out each ball into a disc.

For filling and frying

1. Place the disc onto your palm and flatten it once more.

2. Place the filling onto the disc.

3. Pleat the edge and seal them altogether.

4. Twist the edge for final sealing while shaping into a round bun.

5. Heat a bit of oil on a frying pan over medium heat and place the buns. They will puff up, so space them apart.

6. After 1 minute frying the base, quickly, but carefully pour in 1/3 to 1/2 cup of water.

7. Quickly cover the pan with a lid and let the water and steam cook the bun for 7-8 minutes.

8. After the buns have nicely puffed up, open the lid, crank up the heat, and let the water evaporate. Add sesame oil and swirl around to coat the bun base for final frying for another minute.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-29T18:29:00.000+09:00

Starting today I`m officially on my winter break and as one of my "vacation assignments", I have just completed making my RECIPE LIST that I placed under a new page above. I thought it would be nice for me and the readers to have a quick glance on what I`ve been posting/cooking this far without having to check out each category on the side bar. I`m planning to keep updating the list whenever I posted a new dish and hopefully the list will be better and yummier. New Year`s resolution it is!

So, I hope you all are enjoying the holiday season with your loved ones and of course, good food.

Happy holidays!

p.s. The tiramisu cake above was made using store-bought sponge cake (aha, busted!) and Kahlua coffee liqueur. The basic recipe for the liqueurless filling can be checked out here.

Petite sweethearts and Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T19:14:00.000+09:00

It`s an unbelievably freezing Sunday night at our place here. We were supposed to go outside today, but we cancelled the plan after we saw the snow started falling. Not so much for a willpower, huh. After all, the idea of staying at home with the warmth, plenty of food, and hot drinks leaves us almost no reason to go outside where the freezing air can bite our noses off.

So, since it`s Christmas today, we`d like to wish you all a very merry Christmas! As a virtual gift, let me share with you these adorable petite cakes snowed with icing sugar on your special day!

The method to make this bite-sized cakes is very similar with making muffins, only the batter is slightly thicker than the muffin batter is. The original recipe of the petite cakes actually comes from my cake mold pack and I have modified few ingredients and steps. Here`s how to make them.

Beat whole egg and sugar until the mixture has turned creamy and pale yellow.

Beat in olive oil (or melted butter, as suggested in the original recipe) to the mixture.

Stir in raisins.

Fold in sifted flour and baking powder and your batter is ready.

Well, actually the original recipe suggests to let the batter sit for 15 mins before proceeding to baking. I didn`t actually do this step, but it took me a few minutes to prepare my mold and spooning in the batter. So I guess I somehow did the step half-way.

Grease the molds with olive oil or butter and spoon the batter into them until 3/4 (or 7/8, as the original recipe says) full. I filled each mold with roughly 1/2 teaspoon of batter and boy, was it challenging!

You can see here how messy I am in doing this work. And yet I keep thinking that I will get better someday. *yawn*

Bake them in preheated oven at 180 C for 15 C or until the cakes are nicely puffed up and the surface has turned golden brown. Let the cakes cool down.

Now, how petite they are? This petite. Although I call it as bite-sized cake, I`m positive my husband can eat 3 of them easily in one go.

It`s snowy outside, and snowy inside. After the cakes are cool enough, dust them with icing sugar.

The amazing thing about this cake is the texture. The surface is soft when the cakes are just taken out of the oven, but it will firm up when it cools down. The result is a tiny cake with the whole surface, including the unbrowned surface, crusted up leaving the inside soft and fluffy.

You know what else you should try with the cakes if you don`t mind the extra calories? Chocolate fondue. Yum!

Print recipe

PETITE SWEETHEARTS

Makes about 40 bite-sized cakes

Ingredients:

1 egg

50 g sugar

50 ml (1/4 cup) olive oil or 50 g melted butter

1/4 tsp baking powder

1 tbs raisins

Vanilla oil
Icing sugar for dusting

Method:

1. Beat egg and sugar until the mixture turns creamy and pale yellow.

2. Whisk in olive oil and vanilla oil.

3. Throw in raisins and stir to combine.

4. Fold in sifted flour and baking powder.

5. Spoon the batter into oil/butter-greased cake mold until 2/3 full.

6. Bake in preheated oven at 180 C for 15 mins or until the surface has turned golden brown.
7. Let the cakes cool down and dust with icing sugar.

Pretzella

2011-12-22T23:27:00.001+09:00

First time I had mini pretzels, I knew that I had to do some makeover with them, only I was completely clueless about what I could do. To me it`s a little too dry and the taste was too plain, although fairly speaking, the only pretzels I`ve ever had were from the store packed in a bag like potato chips and they were sprinkled with salt.

But that was a story from the past, because pretzel never looks the same to me anymore. It was last month when I stumbled upon an awesome post at Live Love Pasta showing how to make chocolate bark using pretzel and that post really got me excited to start my pretzel project. Next thing I knew, I had my chocolate-drizzled pretzels, which I named Pretzella for their pretty princessy looks, lining up on my kitchen counter.
Last December, I made chocolate bark with assorted nuts and it was undoubtedly good not to mention how extremely easy to make it. But this time, I wanted to bring the chocolate-pretzel goodie to my lab as Christmas gifts, so I thought it was better to prepare it in individual portions. With the bark, however, I imagined it would be difficult to divide it into equal portions without the risk of cracking it (in a bad way). I`m just too clumsy to handle it.

Anyway, I finally came up with the Pretzella, certainly with simple method, and here`s what I used:

Dark chocolate...

...white chocolate..and milk chocolate (no picture here).

And the last ingredient but with huge impact is....

...this joyous full-of-color decorative sprinkles. I don`t usually use artificial coloring in my cooking, but this time I made an exception. This time, I was much much much happier with it.

Let`s assemble now.

Arrange the mini pretzels on a parchment paper or aluminium foil.

Let your wildest and craziest imagination guide you designing your pretzella. For me, this was what I could think of so far and I`d love to see your version!

After arranging the pretzels, prepare the chocolate. Or, do it reversely, especially if the chocolate is quick to set.
Break the chocolate bars into pieces, place them in separate bowls, and melt them in microwave or double boiler. If you use microwave like I do, heat it for 1 min, check if it melts, and reheat if necessary. If you use double boiler, make sure you keep the simmering water even after the chocolate has melted because you may need to reheat the chocolate later.

With a spoon (or whatever suits you), drizzle the melted dark chocolate over the pretzels leaving the center unfilled. The basic idea is using the chocolate to glue the pretzels together into whatever shapes you make.

Now carefully fill the center with the melted white chocolate. I flattened the "peak" of the white chocolate by gently brushing it down with the tip of a fork.

I know, it looks as if a toddler made them. In fact, if only I had kids, I would tell people it was them who did the work.

For the last touch, dress them up with the sprinkles. Make sure that you add the sprinkles quick enough before the chocolate starts to set. The sprinkles will easily come off, or won`t stick at all, if you add them after the chocolate has set.

Bibidi-bobidi-boo! The mini pretzels has turned into pretty pretzella!

This is after I let the pretzella sit at room temperature for 15 mins or probably less. In winter, our room is usually cold because we don`t turn on the heater unless the chill is unbearable. You can keep it in fridge if you want.

And this is the back view. The chocolate enters the holes and spreads a little bit making it stick properly to the pretzel.

And these are pretzella with milk chocolate in another design. Hair barrette, anyone?

Eye candy, yes. My husband`s face lit up the second he saw them. Crowd pleaser, of course.

After all, you can`t possibly go wrong with pretzel and chocolate, can you?

PRETZELLA

Ingredients:

Dark chocolate

White chocolate

Milk chocolate

Mini pretzels

Decorative sprinkles

Method:

1. Break all chocolate into pieces, place in separate bowls, and melt them in microwave or double boiler.

2. Arrange mini pretzels on parchment paper or aluminium foil.

3. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the pretzels to glue them together.

4. Before the chocolate sets, quickly sprinkle the decorative sprinkles.

5. Let the chocolate set in refrigerator or at room temperature if it is cold enough outside.

Spiced oxtail stew

2011-12-06T19:07:00.001+09:00

I sometimes wonder if every time an Indonesian hears the word "oxtail", this will be the first thing pops in his/her mind:

Oxtail soup

I honestly think it will. There are probably other dishes, such as grilled or fried oxtail, which I`ve never had, but from what I can remember, the oxtail has such an unbreakable bond with the soup as if the only reason why oxtail exists in the first place is because it needs to be cooked in soup.

Having said that, for the last few weeks I couldn`t help thinking the possibility of cooking the oxtail in spice laden stewing liquid with the depth of brown sugar. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that? And thank goodness it didn`t go wrong! When I finally gave it a try, it was so heavenly that I completely forgot about the soup and I know I had to share it with you. Don`t let the length of the ingredient list turn you off, because this stew is incredibly easy to make. Especially if you have a pressure cooker like I use here. You just plunge everything in the pot, set your timer, and wait.

Look at these. Marvelous. Not a very healthy day, but keep your fruits and veggies near you for detoxing later.

Parboil the oxtail for 15 mins to remove excess fat and some other impurities.

You can check out some tips on fat removal in the link I gave you above, but I have modified a parboiling tips from Hyosun of Eating and Living with her gorgeous Galbijjim. Thank you, Hyosun!

In my modified technique, after 15 mins parboiling it, I drained all the water, and rinsed with hot water. No, I didn`t worry about losing the "stock" because I believe the parboiled oxtail would still give a very good flavor to the dish. And it did.

After the oxtail is rinsed, set aside and get your pressure cooker. I really really hope you have one in your kitchen.

Heat a bit of oil in the pressure cooker and saute spices listed in the recipe at the end of this post.

Throw in the oxtail and lightly stir to coat with spices.

Pour in sauce made of soy sauce, brown sugar, lemon juice, and salt dissolved in water. I suggest you go easy with the salt at this stage, because you can still adjust the saltiness later. In fact, I usually omit the salt here and add it only when the cooking is done and I`m happy with stew consistency.

When I cook with my pressure cooker, I usually add water at least enough to cover the meat (or whatever I cook) because I think too little water won`t create enough steam and thus producing not enough pressure to tenderize the ingredients in a short time.

It probably depends on your cooker`s type, but here`s how mine usually works. Set the lid on, lock it, crank the heat up, wait until the safety pin popped up, and turn down the heat to low to cook. And for the sake of your safety, please consult with your manual. For cooking time, I cooked this one for 40 mins and because the meat hadn`t tenderized enough for me, I recooked it for another 20 mins.

After the meat has tenderized, adjust the consistency of the soup by thinning it out with water or thicken it up by reducing the water on high heat with occasional stirring for another 5-10 mins with the lid open. When the consistency is right, adjust the taste with salt or sugar.

Now that you`ve seen that 80% of the cooking process is actually the waiting without even opening the lid, don`t you think this dish is easy? You just need to be patient. Although I`m not sure the patience will stay there when the stew is done and served right in front of you with steaming hot rice, because I promise you will finish it in much shorter time than the cooking.

Print recipe

SPICED OXTAIL STEW

Serves 2-3 persons

Ingredients:

500 g oxtail

# Ingredient A:

1/2 cut onion

8 cloves garlic

4 dried chili

1 tbs grated ginger

3 star anise

Fennel seeds

Cinnamon

Cloves

Cardamom

Coriander

Black pepper

White pepper

# Ingredient B:

1/2 cut lemon (juiced)

2-3 tbs brown sugar

3 tbs soy sauce

2 cups water

Salt

Method:

1. Parboil oxtail in boiling water for 15 mins, drain, rinse with hot water. This will help remove the excess fat and impurities. Set aside.

2. Heat a bit of oil in a pressure cooker and saute Ingredient A until fragrant.

3. Dump in the parboiled oxtail and pour in Ingredient B. Add more water if necessary and make sure the oxtails are immersed in water.

4. Lock the lid and cook it for 40 mins, wait until it`s safe to open the lid (please consult with your cooker`s manual), and check if the meat is tender enough.If it`s not, cook it for another 20 mins or more.
5. Adjust the taste with salt and sugar and the consistency by adding more water to thin it out or cooking it longer with the lid open to thicken it up.

6. Serve with hot steamed rice.

Kabocheese mini muffins

2011-12-01T23:18:00.001+09:00

I know Halloween is way over and fall is even ending, but I have been planning (and delaying) to make at least one recipe using kabocha or Japanese squash/pumpkin this year. So, I finally made one today, with another weird name. I have prepared a bag of mashed kabocha in my freezer since last month, so it was real quick to whip these muffins up. One thing from this post that amazed me is how quick the whole process went in one day. I planned the recipe only a couple hours ago and now I`m writing a post on it. Even my muffin tin was just delivered today! Maybe this is my productive day. Or muffin day.

Alright, so here`s how I cook and store the kabocha: Steam the kabocha for like 20 mins in a steamer until the flesh and the skin has softened. Microwave works very well too for cooking kabocha. Remove the skin, but don`t throw away because it`s perfectly edible. Mash the kabocha flesh, wrap in a storage bag, and keep in freezer until you use it.

Now, let`s pretend that you have cooked kabocha in your mixing bowl.

Mash the kabocha in a mixing bowl.

Whisk in olive oil...

...whole eggs and...

...sugar.
I used light brown sugar for this recipe and with the amount of sugar I used here the muffins were not too sweet. If you prefer sweeter version, try adding more sugar.

I wanted something to give balance to the kabocha sweetness, so I added cubed cheese...

...and parmesan cheese. Sweet and salty are made in heaven.

Fold in sifted flour and baking powder.

Try not to overmix the batter to give some fluffiness to the muffin later. Give only a few stirs and just when the flour are invisible, you`re good.

Spoon the batter into muffin cups or tin and bake them in preheated oven at 200 C for 15 mins or until the top has turned firmed and inserted skewer comes out clean.

I didn`t use muffin cups because: 1, All my muffin cups are too big for this tin, and 2, I needed to test my new non-stick muffin tin (which was delivered today!). I was so nervous thinking about any possible disasters if it didn`t work out!

But watching them puffing up cozily in my oven really made me feel relieved. And hhhhungrrrrry.

The first word came to my mind when I saw these cuties: BELLS. I don`t know why, but their shapes definitely ring bells in my head.

They might seem dense in texture, but don`t judge muffins from their looks.

Because, these pumpkiny muffins are fluffy and moist and...look at those ooey gooey cheesy bits inside. I was so happy with how they turned out I thought now is Friday night!

Print recipe

KABOCHEESE MINI MUFFINS

Makes about 24 mini muffins or 12 regular-sized muffins

Ingredients:

200 g steamed kabocha (remove the skin)

150 ml olive oil

3 whole eggs

120 g brown sugar (this gives a mild sweetness)

100 g cheese (cubed into small chunks)

1 tbs powdered parmesan cheese

1 tsp baking powder

200 g flour

Method:

1. Combine mashed kabocha and olive oil in a mixing bowl.

2. Whisk in eggs, sugar, cubed cheese, and parmesan cheese.

3. Fold in sifted flour and baking powder.
4. Spoon the batter into muffin cups or tins.
5. Bake at 200 C for 15 mins or until the top has turned firm and golden brown and inserted skewer comes out clean

Gyoza soup

2011-11-30T23:02:00.001+09:00

Winter hasn`t officially come yet, but I`ve been starting making soups these days. One of them is this gyoza (Japanese dumpling) soup and this was my first time making it because I usually pan-fry them. Ever heard this?

"Who doesn`t love dumplings?"

For the soup, I prepared a very simple dashi (Japanese stock) using dried shiitake mushroom and dried kombu (sea kelp). Unlike the shiitake mushrooms, kombu can be used readily during the boiling, so it will appear later in the process.

According to the instruction, the mushrooms have to be rehydrated for at least 3 hours (overnight in the fridge works best) to help release the umami and soften the mushrooms. What I usually do is I immerse 4 or 5 dried mushrooms in 2-3 cups of water, place a mug or this Rilakkuma tea cup atop to keep them under the water level and let it sit while I prepare the other ingredients or go out for shopping. Or check out your new posts. Or sleep.

Now let`s work on the filling. When I prepare pan-fried gyoza, I want the filling to be flavorful so I used more ingredients in it. But, since this one comes with soup, I liked the filling to be simpler and lighter in taste and let the soup enrich them.

Chopping time, everyone. Chop up this maitake mushrooms....

...cabbage (in the bowl-forgot to take the picture)...and this garlic chives (nira in Japanese). If you asked me like 7 years ago what that was in my hand, I would super confidently answer, "Grass.". Lesson for me: Sometimes it`s good to look back and see how much we`ve learned all these years.

Back to the filling where we need one more thing, konnyaku noodles. Usually konnyaku needs to be blanched in hot water for a few minutes, but I just go with hot water from my tap. You don`t have to be like me, you know that.

And to make life easier, use a kitchen scissors and snip the noodles up.

Combine all those ingredients in a bowl and lightly season the mixture with salt and pepper, if you want to.

The wrapping is my least favorite part, but I know it`s worth the effort. For the wrapping steps, please see here.

This time I didn`t bother pleating the edge. Next time I will...I think.

Alright, the wrapped gyoza is done and let`s move on to the soup.

Heat a bit of oil over medium heat and saute garlic and chili until they are fragrant.

Pour in the mushroom stock, chop up the mushrooms, and throw them in the soup.

Add dried kombu to the soup, red chili flakes (if you want it to be red and spicy), chopped carrot to enhance the aroma (no picture here, sorry), and season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a while.

My soup was so frothy I almost thought I added soap too! But I believe I didn`t (I didn`t!), so I just used my skimmer to make the soup clearer.

By the way, this stage is where you should be done with the seasoning and stirring, because after this....

...we need to add the dumpling and stirring the soup with the dumplings in is not a very good idea, unless you are fine with having a bowl of soup with your dumplings torn apart. Also, you can not keep leftover because the dumplings will absorb the soup while getting mushier and mushier. I learned these lessons in a hard way.

But, I had nothing to complain about because I was too busy slurping and chewing all the goodness in this bowl. The gyoza were so soft that it kept slipped away from my chopsticks and obviously I should have used a spoon instead. But even so, I finished this soup in my bowl within seconds! And just for an idea, I think adding the pan-fried gyoza in the soup will work fantastic too!

Print page

GYOZA SOUP

Makes 2-3 cup soup

Ingredients:

#For soup

5 dried shiitake mushrooms

1 dried kombu (sea kelp)

2-3 cups water

1 tbs olive oil

4 cloves garlic

2-3 dried chili (remove seeds for milder heat)

1 tbs red chili flake

1 carrot

Salt and pepper to taste

#For gyoza

Gyoza wrappers

Cabbage

Maitake mushrooms

Garlic chives

Konnyaku noodles

Salt and pepper (optional)

Method:

1. Rehydrate 4 or 5 dried mushrooms in 2-3 cups of water and let it sit for several hours while preparing the other ingredients.

2. For the filling, mix chopped cabbage, garlic chives, and konnyaku noodles in a bowl. Lightly season with salt and pepper if necessary.

3. Place 1-2 tsp of the filling on a gyoza wrapper, wrap into half-moon shape, and seal the edges with water.

4. Heat a bit of oil over medium heat and saute garlic and chili until they are fragrant.

5. Pour in the mushroom stock, chop up the mushrooms, and throw them in the soup.

6. Add dried kombu to the soup, red chili flakes, chopped carrot, and season with salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a while.

7. Carefully add the gyoza to the soup and let it cook until the skin has turned translucent and soft.

8. Ready to serve.

Our first ever (small) Thanksgiving dinner!

2011-11-26T11:10:00.001+09:00

Happy belated Thanksgiving, everyone! I know it`s late and you probably are still full of the good food from the big dinners, but I hope me sharing our tiny turkeyless Thanksgiving dinner experience with you won`t give you headache.

Both my husband and I did not grow up celebrating Thanksgiving tradition and people in Japan don`t celebrate it either, but I`m really keen on the idea of devoting a day in a year to remember what we should be thankful for. Our togetherness and healthiness, me still having a job(s), him passing tests and getting the scholarship, and us enjoying and living our lives are only a handful of countless good things we are actually blessed with. And with the earthquake we`ve experienced before, I just couldn`t feel grateful enough with what we have now. This is, of course, not to say that I don`t feel thankful in my each day because I surely do, but I think sitting together with your loved ones to have a special dinner to celebrate it is a very heart-warming gesture.

At first I was worried if he would be reluctant to the idea of us having the Thanksgiving dinner, but when I asked him about it, he quickly replied, "Nice! Chicken!". I should have known that with meat, I could easily make him do anything. So, last night we finally had our first ever, belated Thanksgiving dinner (we couldn`t make it on Thursday) with a very simple but super delightful menu! No step-by-step pictures this time, but I hope this will still bring out the festive moments we had.

We had vegetables salad dressed with olive oil, lemon juice, black peppers, and salt and garnished with chunks of boiled eggs I easily made with this method.

So here comes the bird. Chicken, not turkey. The star of the night: Mediterranean grilled chicken! I got the fabulous recipe from Katerina of Culinary Flavors and the first time I tried it, I fainted with joy. Thank you, Katerina!

I wasn`t familiar with the use of yoghurt and mint in roasting/grilling chicken, but I`ve learned that trying new things can bring more deliciousness in my life. And you bet I was right! The chicken was moist and succulent and the flavors coming out were just incredible. I love leaving the mint leaves on the chicken as I think it gives a lovely hint for the flavor. Another great thing with the chicken is it`s very easy to make! Please visit the link I provided above to get the recipe and give it a try.

And for the carb, I cooked a simple potato dish by shallow-frying boiled potato with olive oil, rosemary, and garlic. Rosemary and garlic. Beautiful. I fainted twice last night. I have no idea why I didn`t use rosemary more often in my cooking rituals, because I clearly should! If you want to see the step-by-step preparation, I`ve made a similar dish a while ago, although with different ingredients.

For desserts, we had store-bought ice creams, although I have prepared another batch of chocolate mint cake too and this time with almond flour and no icing. I`m so addicted to this cake.

I guess we both smiled when we went to bed and I was very glad that we had that lovely dinner!

I know people, and maybe you too, are already planning for Christmas and New Year`s celebrations, so enjoy preparing the next feasts and big dinners!

Chocolate mint cake with nutty icing

2011-11-20T15:05:00.001+09:00

One thing I realized about my cooking habit is I tend to bake cakes, especially those with icing, in late fall or winter. I seem to crave something sweet, creamy, and rich when the air gets crisp and chill, but doesn`t it happen to everyone? The cake I`m showing you here is actually for my husband`s belated birthday celebration, which we were supposed to have 3 months ago because his birthday was in August. This was our second time celebrating birthdays together and his last year`s birthday cake didn`t come out on time either. My New Year`s resolution should be: make a birthday cake on the birthday.

Anyway, one or two months ago, I stumbled upon a blog of an Irish ice cream maker/company and found their gluten-, dairy-, and butter- free brownies recipe. Unlike other recipes I`ve known and tried, the recipe calls for almond flour, olive oil, and egg whites. As an ice cream maker, they seem to have many egg whites leftovers and this brownies recipe is one of the alternatives to use them. I feel really bad for not keeping the link for the original recipe. I`ve been trying to find the blog again, but still no luck so far. So, if you happen to know this Irish ice cream maker`s blog, please let me know so I can share the link here.

Back to the recipe, I`m more than happy to use the olive oil because honestly, for me it is far easier working with the oil than butter in addition to the health reason. However, as I wasn`t into keeping the leftover yolks, I used whole eggs instead of the whites only. There was one thing in the recipe that brought out my curiosity the most, which was the use of almond flour. During my first trial, I kept worrying if the cake would even turn into a cake, but the result was just fantastic! It surprised me already that the cake rose just like the regular cakes, but I was even more surprised with the texture because it was definitely the moistest yet lightest brownies I`ve ever had. It almost reminded me of sponge cake due to the lightness, which is why I`m calling it chocolate cake, but its deep chocolatey flavor brought my mind back to brownies.

This time, however, despite my intention to recreate that joy, I ran out both my almond flour and whole almond stock, so I had to use the regular flour. The cake turned out denser than the almond version, but overall it was still good. So, if you are not allergic to almond and happen to have the almond flour in your pantry, look away from your regular flour and use the almond flour. Also, if you have leftover egg whites or if you`re curious (I am still curious), you can try the original recipe where egg whites are used instead of whole eggs.

Alright, kitchen now?

Mix sugar and cocoa with a whisk in a mixing bowl and crush any lumps in the mixture. Having sugar lumps in the cake are fine maybe, but cocoa lumps? Na-ah.

This is not from the original recipe, but chocolate and mint combo is my weakness, so I added dried mint leaves. Your weakness too? If so, get 1 tbs of dried mint leaves- more, if you want the cake to be super minty- and chop up.

Whisk in the chopped mint leaves.

Ideally, I wanted the mint leaves to be much finer, but this was what I could do the best. I`m never ambitious in my kitchen.

Beat in whole eggs and the dry mixture will turn into a gooey mass.

Pour in olive oil and stir well.

Fold in almond flour (very recommended) or sifted flour.

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 40 min.

Here is the cake after 35 min baking. The top was firm with a crack in the middle, although it didn`t crack when I used almond flour.
Cool it in the pan for 30 min or more depending on your room`s temperature and then unmould it onto a cooling rack.

Confession: I cooled the cake on a plate instead of a rack.

Remove any uneven surfaces, half the cake into 2 discs, and invert the cake to set the flattest surface-the bottom side should be the flattest one-facing up on top.

Now, for the icing, chop up mixed nuts and reserve some whole nuts for decoration. Set the nuts aside.

By the way, I only have salted nuts, so that`s what I used. But have you tried try sweet-salty icing on your cake?

Whisk up 150 ml of heavy cream and add 2 tsp of sugar.

When the cream has stiffened enough, fold in 2/3 of the chopped nuts.

The icing is ready!

Get you cake plate and cover the rim with aluminium foil. This will keep your plate clean when you do the icing.

Place the first disc on the plate and spread the cream generously.

Set the other disc on top to make the second layer and ice the top.

Spread the remaining cream to ice the whole cake.

I know, even a 10-year old kid can do better at this than me.

Sprinkle over the remaining chopped nuts and whole nuts.

And carefully remove the aluminium foil. Ta-da! Super clean icing-free rim!

Add more whole nuts on the side and the cake is done!

Happy birthday, honey! Here`s for more and more sweetness and cakes in the coming years!

This cake might not be the best looking cake in my life-and let`s be honest, it`s not-, but we finished half of the cake the day I made it. That`s how much we loved it. The crunchy nuts gave a really nice contrast to the icing and the minty-chocolatey cake. And can I say it again? It`s chocolatey, it`s minty, and it`s heavenly.

Want a slice?

Print recipe

CHOCOLATE MINT CAKE WITH NUTTY ICING

Ingredients:

For the cake (cake pan size: 15 cm in diameter and 5 cm in height)

125 g sugar

40 g cocoa

1 tbs chopped dried mint leaves

3 whole eggs

30 g flour (substitute for 30 g almond flour for lighter consistency)

30 ml olive oil

Vanila oil

For the icing

150 ml heavy cream

1 tsp sugar (add more if using sugarless instant coffee)

100-150 g chopped/minced mixed nuts

Whole nuts for decoration

Method:

1. Mix sugar and cocoa in a mixing bowl.

2. Beat in whole eggs.

3. Beat in olive oil and vanila oil.

4. Fold in flour or almond flour.

5. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake in preheated oven at 170 C for 35 min

6. After the cake is ready, cool it in the pan for 30 min and unmould onto a rack.

7. Half the cake into two discs and remove uneven surface with knife if necessary.

To ice

1. Whisk heavy cream and sugar at low speed and gradually increase the speed when the cream has started to get thicker.

2. Keep whisking until the cream has stiffened.

3. Fold in 2/3 of the chopped nuts and stir to combine.

4. Cover the rim of a plate with aluminium foil leaving the plate completely covered when the cake is placed on it.

5. Place one disc of the cake on the plate and spread the icing generously on its surface.

6. Stack the iced layer with the other disc and repeat the icing process.

7. Ice the side of the cake with the remaining cream.
8. Sprinkle over remaining chopped nuts and whole nuts on top and decorate the side with the whole nuts.

Oefs en Cocotte (the simple and lazy version)

2011-11-19T11:38:00.001+09:00

This Oefs en Cocotte , or eggs cooked in ramekins, is another dish that I made based on Julia Child`s recipe for our Saturday`s brunch. I call my version as the simple and lazy version because I don`t use butter and heavy cream that are called for in her recipe (this makes for the "simple") and I just steamed the eggs instead of baking them (and this makes for the "lazy"). These last couple months, I usually eat only plants-based diets to start my day and save the animal protein for my lunch or dinner, but I`ve been wanting to give a try on Julia`s eggs recipe as serving eggs in individual ramekins without the fuss of peeling the shells off sounds totally wonderful to me. So I finally had these lovely eggs for our brunch with the lighter ingredients, aka. no butter and cream.

Start with simmer water in a shallow frying pan or an oven-proof baking dish.

I don`t have any baking dishes that can be used on my IH stove, so I figured that I need to do the whole cooking process on the stove. So, again, if you want the the simple way, just go with your frying pan.

While waiting the water to get simmered, crack an egg in an individual ramekin. You can grease the ramekins first with butter or oil before placing the eggs. I skipped this part as I was going to prepare another oily dish.

By the way, I feel like I was preparing this for kids. Just look at these Lego colors.

Now carefully place the ramekins in the pan.

Don`t drop them, please. You don`t want poached eggs all over your pan with the ramekins in it, especially on your beautiful Saturday morning.

You can see that the water level is no more than half the ramekin`s height. I did it to prevent the water from getting into the ramekins. Also, this way I could place the ramekins with my hands easily without getting my fingers cooked.

Put the lid on ~~and you can go back to sleep~~.

Here`s how they look under the lid after 5 mins on low heat.
After 5 mins, remove from heat.

Now, the next step would depend on your preference. If you want hard-boiled egg consistency, let the ramekins sit inside the pan at room temperature with the lid still on for like 5-10 mins. This will extend the cooking process. I did it this way, although with no intention of making them into hard-boiled eggs. But, if you want the yolks to be soft or runny, you probably should lessen the cooking time or open the lid and serve the eggs right away.

In Julia`s recipe, after the buttered ramekins containing eggs and whipping cream are steamed on a stove, the ramekins and the baking dish are transferred to the oven and baked at 375 F (190 C) for 7-10 mins. I have no idea how the eggs would turn out in her recipe, but I clearly overcooked my eggs.

This is another reason why I let the lid on for 10 mins. I was busy sauteeing these string beans with crushed garlic and black pepper while forgetting about the eggs still getting cooked inside the pan.

Well, at least this time we had a more proper brunch compared with our usual lazy Saturdays before.

Steamed eggs, sauteed string beans, and yaki-imo (baked sweet potato). I love yaki-imo, especially for breakfast.

Here is the hard-steamed yolk. It`s different in so many ways with the runny yolk, but the convenience it offers during the cooking and eating is definitely a big plus of this steamed egg. I`ve never cooked and had any boiled eggs this neat before. Ever.

Enjoy your weekend`s feast!

Print recipe

OEFS EN COCOTTE (shallow pan-steamed version)

Ingredients and equipments:

Individual ramekins (optional: greased with oil/butter)

Eggs

A shallow frying pan containing simmering water with a lid

Salt and pepper

Sesame seeds

Method:

1. Simmer water in a shallow frying pan with the water level is half of the ramekin`s height

2. Crack an egg in the individual ramekin

3. Carefully place the ramekins in the pan and put the lid on

4. Cook for 5 mins on low heat

5. Remove from heat

6. For hard-boiled egg consistency, let the ramekins sit inside the pan at room temperature with the lid on for another 5-10 mins before serving. For soft-boiled egg consistency, serve right away.

7. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and sesame seeds when serving.

Miso risotto

2011-11-03T00:45:00.001+09:00

Hi there! How was your Halloween party? Did you have heavily sugared celebrations? For us here, we don`t celebrate it. It just happens that there is no Halloween tradition where I grew up and live now, and to top it up, I suck at horrory stuffs. But I really enjoyed finding Halloween-themed cookies and candies out there, though!

Anyway, from my kitchen, I wasn`t sure if I should share my oddly named dish with you and you`re about to know why. When it comes to step-by-step pictures, I know people get tempted to quickly scroll down the mouse to see the final result. And if you do, I`m afraid to say that given my lacks of effort and talent in food styling (meet me, Ms. Excuses), the appearance of dish might kill your appetite. But I hope you won`t leave from there, because I think you need to know what`s exactly in it and also, I want you to try it.

It all started on one lazy Saturday noon when I found our rice cooker`s lid widely opened for God knows how long. Well, it actually only took me seconds to figure out how long it was and who did it because my husband, who everyday has his breakfast around 7AM after coming home from his newspaper delivering routine (yes, I`m shamelessly still asleep), was the last one who opened the rice cooker and of course, forgot to close it. With the heating in the open air for hours, the rice was almost all browned and dried when I saw it. I almost cried too!!

It just so happened that I was planning on cooking fried rice, for our lunch that day, but with this dehydrated rice, I knew it wasn`t a good choice. That`s where I came up with the risotto idea. I just stick on to my thought that risotto has a texture somewhere between porridge and regular cooked rice. To be honest, although I occasionally enjoy risotto at Italian eateries, this was my first time making one, which I`m sure not in a proper or traditional way too.

For a starter, I used cooked rice instead of uncooked ones. And as you might guess from the title, I used: miso, Japanese fermented soy paste.

Start with preparing the miso seasoning. This is just a rough measurement. For 2 plates of rice, I used 2 heaping tbs of miso paste and diluted it in 3/4 cup of water. I also added soy sauce and pepper to the sauce for more flavors. No salt here since miso and soy sauce made me happy already.

Slice spring onion and cook it on medium heat until it smells good and gets wilted

Toss in your favorite mushroom. I used eringi here. I know, I use it awfully a lot in my kitchen.

Now here comes the fish. If you can find this kind of fish at your place, by all means use it because the tiny fishes go wonderfully with miso. They are called shirasu in Japanese. In English, some people call it baby sardines and others call it baby anchovies. I actually have a post using shirasu for fried rice here. Anyway, toss in the shirasu or whatever you feel like having with your risotto.

Then, chopped tomato. Since I made miso soup with tomato, I keep using the combo as I love how the tomato gives a light touch of sweet tanginess to the salty miso.

After giving some good stir, dump in the rice and stir again. Oh...poor rice....

Get the miso sauce you prepared earlier and pour it in to the rice. This looks like a big mess that is far from appetizing, but please, bear with me.

Stir it well and if you think the rice still hasn`t reached the consistency of risotto, add more water. I did add an extra cup of water since the rice seemed too dry to me. By the way, although I haven`t tried it, I think you can try adding cream or milk instead of water to make the risotto creamier, like a real risotto. I just wanted something lighter when I made this, so I went with water.

When your risotto seems done, adjust the seasoning and stir in sliced green paprika to give the crunchy edge to the whole mushiness.

Olalaaaaa....here it is, our miso risotto. My risotto wasn`t watery enough compared to risotto I`ve had before, but I didn`t think of this at all once I spooned it in my mouth. Uuummppphhh.....yum! That`s all I can say. And if you love miso soup served with rice, there is a pretty good chance you`ll enjoy this one too.

By the way, can I call it "misotto" now?

Print recipe

MISO RISOTTO

Makes about 2 plates

Ingredients:

1 spring onion

100 g mushrooms

100 g shirasu

1 medium-sized tomato

5 small green paprika

2 plates cooked/steamed rice

2 tbs miso

3/4 cup water to dissolve the miso*

2 Tbs soy sauce

Pepper

1 cup water to soften the rice during cooking*

Salt (only if necessary)

*Substitute water for heavy cream or milk to get a creamy consistency

Method:

1. Prepare the miso sauce by dissolving 2 tbs miso paste with 3/4 cup of water

2. Add soy sauce and a pinch of pepper to the miso sauce and set aside.

3. Cook sliced spring onions with a bit of oil in a pan over medium heat until fragrant and soft.

4. Toss in sliced mushroom, shirasu, and chopped tomato to the pan and stir well.

5. Throw in cooked rice and stir until the rice is evenly coated.

6. Pour in the miso sauce, stir, and adjust the consistency by adding more water to thin out.

7. Adjust the seasoning and throw in sliced green paprika.
8. Ready to serve.

Teriyaki saury

2011-10-15T22:58:00.000+09:00

Pacific saury. First time I know the English name of this fish, from Wikipedia. I usually call it in Japanese, which is Sanma. Sanma is in season since a month ago and from what I`ve seen, the most common and simple way to cook this fish is by rubbing some salt on the whole fish and grilling or broiling it. Very tasty, I tell you. The only downside, like other fish, is the bones. Sanma actually has a lot of bones scattered throughout its flesh and I usually pressure-cook sanma or other bony fish to make the bones more edible (I had posted it here) and to make my husband enjoy the fish more. However, this time I turned away from my pressure cooker, cooked the fish using my regular frying pan, and hoped that we could handle the bones during eating.

Anyway, I was lucky to get this gutted sanma from the store, although actually doing the gutting myself won`t take more than 10 minutes. Well, I chose less mess for me to clean up. You see how the sanma laid partly on my counter and above the sink? I put a small bowl next to fish and that`s how big my kitchen counter is.

Cut the fish into smaller pieces, wash, and pat dry with paper towel.

Dust the fish pieces evenly with flour. This will help the fish to hold its texture during frying. That`s what I heard from TV.

Heat oil on medium heat and sear the fish.

When both sides has turned golden brown, set aside on a plate. Don`t eat them yet. I know you want to.

By the way, remove oil used for frying fish from the pan and wipe off the pan surface with paper towel to make it super clean. We don`t need any oil for the next steps.

For the sauce, grate a good amount of fresh ginger. By all means, please use the fresh one.

To the grated ginger, pour in soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, mirin (I didn`t add this one) and pepper and mix well. Salt? I didn`t add even a pinch of it because this sauce is already salty for me.

Set your clean pan over low heat and pour in the sauce.

Put in the fried fish.

And while the sauce is cooking, flip over the fish to get both sides evenly coated. Cook until the sauce has reduced into glaze and sprinkle in sesame seeds. If you`re worried about the fish not getting cooked through, set a lid over the pan and cook it for a few more minutes. Be careful, though, the sauce will thicken quite fast and get scorched if you don`t watch it.

Although the ingredients are utterly simple, this dish is an absolute pleaser. The flavors coming out from the fish and the sweet savory glaze were just fantastic!

The bones? Yeah, they`re still there making my chopsticks busy. Maybe next time I will tenderize the bones first. But hey, you can choose your own fish and still try this recipe because you have to experience this yumminess. With or without bones. Trust me.

Print recipe

TERIYAKI SAURY

Ingredients:

2 sanma (Pacific saury)

1 tbs flour for dusting

3 tsp grated ginger

50 ml soy sauce

2 tbs vinegar
Mirin (I didn`t add)

1 tsp sugar

Pepper

Sesame seed

Method:

1. Gut and cut Pacific saury (or other fish) into small pieces.

2. Wash the pieces and pat dry with paper towel.

3. Lightly dust the fish with flour.

4. Sear the flour-coated fish with a bit of oil in a frying pan over medium heat until both sides get nicely browned. Set aside.

5. Wipe off the frying pan to clean the remaining oil and set aside.

6. For the sauce, grate fresh ginger in a container and add soy sauce, vinegar, sugar, mirin, and salt and stir well.

7. Set the cleaned frying pan over low heat and pour in the sauce.

8. Put the seared fish pieces in the pan and cook both sides to coat with the sauce evenly until the sauce has thickened.

9. Garnish the fish with sesame seeds and serve.

Mushroom pot pie

2011-10-11T20:12:00.003+09:00

Oh finally, finally I`ve finished my presentation today and now is time get back to my "more fun" world.

Before I share the food, let me share about this one first. Or these ones. A blogger friend of mine Sissi from With A Glass, who is a very dedicated food blogger and talented cook (I truly admire her productivity!) recently passed on the Versatile Blogger award to me, and as if that`s not making me flattered enough, she passed on another award, the Liebster blogger award. Must be my lucky day! Thank you, Sissi! As the award requires the one who accepts it to share a list of 7 random things, here is my list!

1. I`m more a writer than a speaker.
Sadly to say, that doesn`t necessarily mean I`m good at writing.

2. My precious collection is books.

3. List no 2 explains for my poor eyesight.

4. No heels, flats only.
Well, I tried, but my feet kept telling me that heels are not for them.

5. I`ve never eaten scones in my life. Embarrassing, I know.
6. Doing jogging is my annual New Year`s resolution.
7. "Inception" puzzled me big time.

Now you know more bits about me, and to continue the award tradition, I`d love to pass the Versatile Blogger award on to these food bloggers who are such fabulous cooks, photographers, and bento stylists. I`m 200% sure that all bloggers in my list have (repeatedly) accepted such awards, but I hope they don`t mind accepting another award from me. If you haven`t visited their blogs, oh you should now!

1. Jun at Indochine Kitchen

2. Rita at Mocchachocolata Rita

3. Jenn at Bentobird
4. Nami at Just One Cookbook
5. CG at Cooking Gallery
6. Lauren at Lauren`s Latest
7. Lindsey at The Tiny Skillet

I`m really embarrassed to say that I`m still working on my list for bloggers to whom I`d like to pass on the Liebster award, but I hope to come up with it on my next post. So, until that happens, let`s cook now!

I had been wanting to make this pot pie since 2 years ago when I watched Nigella`s video on chicken pot pie. I hope you don`t get sick of hearing me referring to Nigella`s recipes, but other than I`m a fan of her, it was actually my first time knowing how to make a chicken pot pie and she absolutely makes the process look incredibly easy. Anyway, based on that, I made my version of no meat, all mushrooms pot pie and I l-o-v-e-d it. Not really proud of the cheating step using storebought pie sheets, but still, I loved it.

Okay, so these are the mushrooms I used for the pie filling. They are shimeji (upper left), eringi (upper right), and shiitake (center bottom). Slice or chop them up and set aside. Do not mix them up, since we`re going to cook them separately.

Heat oil on a pan and saute chopped/minced garlic.

Now we`re going to saute the mushrooms, but we need to do that one mushroom type at a time.
Start with shiitake mushroom first. Throw them in to the sauteed garlic and cook them until they shrink and wilted. Ideally, I want them to get browned rather than steamed. When I put too much of them in the pan, I add a little more oil to help the browning. And that usually works for me.
When the shiitake mushroom looks done, place the mushroom and the garlic, everything on a plate and set aside.

Continue with the eringi mushroom. The pan should be still oily enough, but you can add the oil if you need to. Same like the shiitake, sautee until they get browned and set them aside.

Last mushroom, the shimeji. Now, the reason I cook shimeji the last is because this mushroom has way more water content than shiitake and eringi do. After one minute sauteing or so, you`ll see how much water released from the wilted mushroom and this water would hamper the browning process. I suppose cranking up the heat and adding more oil will do the trick, but I`m good with them get cooked through.

Put back the browned shiitake and eringi mushrooms to the pan together with the "watery" shimeji.

To make the white sauce, I added 2 tbs of flour to the mushrooms, but I think the sauce ended up too thick with 200 ml of milk. So I think I`ll reduce half of the flour next time I make this again.

This is the 200 milk I poured into the mushrooms. And it was plain soy milk. It was Plants day.
Stir until the flour is dissolved and season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

And I added 1 tbs (or maybe more) of aonori (seaweed flakes).
Okay, I have a confession to make. I remembered having like 1 tbs Parmesan cheese left in the fridge, so I used it up for this filling. Not a Plants day anymore.

Place the filling in individual ramekins, or whatever baking dish you use.

I`m not proud of this, but I was really excited using this pie sheet since it`s my first time making pie. You make your own pie sheet? Then I salute you, my friend.
Cut the sheet into size that is enough to cover the top of your ramekins or dish and use the leftover for the rim.

Now this is my verdict about this step. Nigella wet the rim of the ramekin with water and lined it with the sheet. So that`s what I did. I suppose this would help the pie sheet covering the top stick to the ramekin and also give a nice thick puffy pie on the rim. But in my case, when the baking is done, the pie sheet on the rim was slightly undercooked. So, although I don`t know for sure, I think skipping the rim part of the pie wouldn`t hurt.

And by skipping the rim, you can go placing the sheet to cover the ramekin while giving the sheet a gentle push so it sticks to the dish.

Now this is a decorative step that you can just follow or simply skip. I probably didn`t push it enough to make the lines visible in the final result.
Finished the preparation? Bake the pie in preheated oven at 200 C for 20 mins. Or just follow the instruction on the pie sheet`s package.

Woohooohoooo....look at these chubby pies! They beautifully puffed up and the smell was really, really good!

Even my spoon smiled a lot. Well, I smiled a lot.

Oh, look inside, and go dig in! Every spoonful of this pie and the filling will totally bring the oomphs out of you.

MUSHROOM POT PIE

Makes 2-3 individual pot pies

Ingredients:

3 cloves garlic

100 g shiitake mushroom

100 g eringi mushroom

100 g shimeji mushroom

1 Tbs flour

200 ml plain soy milk

1 Tbs aonori (seaweed flakes)

1 Tbs parmesan cheese

Salt

Pepper

Nutmeg

2 sheets of 10x10-cm pre-made puff pastry or according to the ramekin`s size

Strips of pre-made puff pastry to line the ramekin`s rim (optional)

Method:

1. Slice or chop up mushrooms, separate each mushroom type, and set aside.

2. Heat oil on a pan and saute chopped/minced garlic.

3. Saute mushrooms one type at a time. Start with shiitake, eringi, and end with shimeji. Saute the mushrooms until browned and wilted.

4. After all mushrooms are browned and wilted, put them back together in the pan.

5. Stir in 2 Tbs of flour and cook for 3 mins.

6. Pour in 200 ml soy milk and add 1 Tbs aonori and 1 Tbs parmesan cheese.

7. Stir to combine and adjust the seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

8. Place the filling in individual ramekins.

9. Wet the ramekin`s rim with water.

10. Optional: Line the rim with the reserved puff pastry strips.

11. Cover the ramekin with the puff pastry sheet and press the edge to make sure that it properly sticks.

12. Pierce the middle of the puff pastry for air vent during baking.

13. Optional: Press the surface of a fork on the ramekin edge to give a decorative grids.

14. Bake in a preheated oven at 200 C for 20 mins or according to the puff pastry`s package.

Jogi Nyorai Saihoji temple

2011-10-02T13:50:00.000+09:00

Yesterday we visited Jogi (Johgi) Nyorai Hoji, a complex of Buddhist temples located 45 minutes away by motorcycle from our city. Season-wise, this trip was officially our first trip to welcome the fall and say goodbye to summer. And temperature-wise, it was so cold!
For a comparison, this was the temperature on the road in September during our trip to Yakurai Garden. It was burning hot out there!

And this one was during our trip yesterday.

So much for a change! This temperature easily explained for my shivering under my shirt and jacket that were supposedly warm enough for 20 C. The temperature in our city was indeed 18-20 C, but this Jogi area is located higher, thus has the lower temperature.
Lesson learned: listen to your husband when he asked you to put on warmer jackets, otherwise you`ll end up wearing his too-big-for-you raincoat to make the cold wind a little bearable.

This thermometer sticks on his motorcycle and I thought it was broken, or even worse, didn`t function at all! But every time we pass temperature signs on the side of the road, they always show more or less same temperatures with his thermometer, I just have to accept that this buddy is nothing but reliable enough.

Anyway, on our way to the temple, we made a quick stop where this enormous Buddha statue gracefully sitting at the side of the road.

And here is the front view. I`m not big on statues, but it`s hard not to record this view.

Standing on the deck, we could see what he watches everyday.

After leaving the Buddha, we continued our ride and made another stop at this artificial lake near a dam. But come on, we should go to the temple already. I wasn`t too happy with that cloud over there.

Here we came to Jogi bridge! Finally!

But wait, I saw something wonderful from this very bridge, so we took another, and the last stop here before entering the main Jogi temple site. I know, right? So many "happy distractions"!

And this was what made us stopped at the bridge!

Helloooo, fall! I love how the leaves reflect the transition of summer to fall through the green-yellow-orange gradation. See that pagoda on the left? Oh we`re going there now!

Err...I`m sorry, another distraction here: a cute little buddy with the camouflage leafy color on its head and back and the vibrant red coloring the legs blend perfectly with the bridge tone.

In to the temple area now!

Alright, you might think that I`m not being serious here since you still can`t see anything with temples, but what`s on my hands here is what I`d call as simplicity at its best. This deep-fried tofu, which is called abura age, or aburage in Japanese, probably the most known keyword for Jogi`s specialties. There are vendors selling freshly cooked aburage for 140 yen (or 1.6 USD) each and we can eat the aburage inside the shop or under the provided tents. And yes, this is me standing at the tent, coulnd`t wait to eat this goodness while it`s still hot.

What makes this tofu incredible-in my opinion- is its pillowy texture with thick and dense interior, but still retains its fluffiness, and the perfect thin crust wrapping all the goodness. And look at the size! I surely lost count on how many millions of tofu I`ve eaten in my life, but this one definitely soared to the top of my list for must-eat food.
How to enjoy this? According to the recommendation from the vendors, simply drizzle soy sauce and sprinkle some shichimi, or seven spices and they`re sure right! This tofu can`t possibly go wrong with them. Excuse me for the bite marks, but good heaven, this was GOOD! So good that we bought a pack of 5 fried tofu to bring home because one is not enough. So really good that he asked me another serving at home the same night before finishing half of mine too. And he`s not even a tofu lover!

Alright, before I drool over this tofu picture, this is the main gate of the temple, everyone. Behind the gate is a mausoleum for Sadayoshi Taira, one of the important people involved in the history of this temple. We wanted to enter the gate, but it started to rain (oh, I knew it!) and we decided to make a quick visit to the other sites instead.
Hey, we bought our packed tofu at the store on the left! Oh..I can`t think anything else other than tofu right now.

And while we were waiting the rain to stop, he managed to get a picture of this main temple. People come and pray in front of and inside the hall. There is actually a Kannon Goddess statue standing in front of this temple, but too bad the rain, although not falling hard, has successfully turned off our mood in taking her picture.

Then we took a walk to the pagoda site and look what we`ve found! A koi pond!

Give me food, give me food!

I think this one in silver and red colors reminds me of Ultraman.

And we both agreed that the white fish in the middle looks very pretty and graceful with its feathery fins.

Remember the pagoda top we saw from the bridge? Here it is, the five-storied pagoda.

Sorry for the white fleck near the pagoda top. I didn`t realize my lens was wet until I saw this picture and I thought I was careful enough.

The rain stopped already and we decided to go home before the rain started falling again. He was a little disappointed with the weather, but still we`ve spent such an amazing time here. With fantastic food too.
Happy Sunday!

Stir-fried shrimps with vegetables

2011-09-25T00:32:00.000+09:00

Stir-frying is probably the most frequent cooking method I use at home. I mean, why not? With stir-frying, we can whip up descent, if not fabulous, meals in a matter of minutes from almost any kind of food, be it vegetables or meat, whole food or processed ones. But there are times when my stir-frying rituals run a little slower than usual, especially when the ingredients need some extra time for the preparation. Like for today`s dinner where I used fried eggplants as one of the ingredients. Plus, I used shrimps, which also means extra work for me to devein them. But even so, I usually end up forgetting all the fussy preparation when I start the cooking.

So, shall we cook now?

Wash eggplants and cut them into your desired shapes. For me, I quartered them lengthwise and then halved them crosswise. Usually people deep-fry the eggplants to make the "fried eggplants", but I always shallow-fry them because I`m too stubborn. If you too want to shallow-fry them, heat oil enough to coat the eggplants on a pan and do the frying in batches. Just make sure you don`t put too many pieces at once because the frying is supposed to give the caramelized bits, not to steam them. Another thing is, the eggplants will absorb the oil very quickly that you might need to add more oil every time you fry the fresh batch.

Set aside the fried eggplants. Honestly, I can just gobble these guys up only with a drizzle of soy sauce.

Next ingredient: shrimps. I didn`t remove the shells as I wanted to get more flavor and to prevent them from curling in too much, but I cut open their backs and discarded the veins. And washed them, of course.

On the same pan used for fyring eggplants, heat oil and fry the shrimps. I think the smell and the changing color are what I love the most from frying shrimps.

Flip over the shrimps and throw in garlic. I usually mince the garlic, but this time I just bashed the cloves and used them right away. Oh, this smells even better!

Then, throw in shiitake mushroom slices and keep stirring until the mushrooms shrank and wilted. Now the smell is getting double-better!

Slowly stir in the fried eggplants and season it with soy sauce, salt, and pepper. The fried eggplants are very soft, so be careful not to break them apart during stirring.

Final touch to add the greeny look: broccoli. The stems and florets. Please use them all. Now, since I love the broccoli to stay crunchy, I usually just throw them in the pan, cook for like 30 secs, turn off the heat, and put a lid on the pan to trap the heat inside and thus steaming them for a few minutes.

This looks like a cooked salad, I know. But I loved every bit of it that I finished this whole plate without even remembered that I didn`t eat rice with it. Juiciness, crunchiness, and bursts of flavors blended beautifully in this dish. The fussy work on cleaning the shrimps was definitely gone far from my mind when I devoured everything on this plate. What fussy work?

Happy Saturday and enjoy your weekend feasts!

Ingredients:

Shrimp, washed and deveined

Garlic

Eggplants

Shiitake mushrooms

Broccoli

Soy sauce

Salt

Pepper

Cosmos meadow at Yakurai Garden-Part 2

2011-09-19T16:20:00.000+09:00

Here they are, the close-ups from the previous post. Which color(s) do you like?

If I have to choose only one favorite, this will be it. The sharpness of the this butterfly`s V-shaped wings below has deeply awed me. But I love the color pattern of the butterfly above, though. I can`t choose one!

All the up-close and personal images here were shot by my husband, whose patience and endurance under the scorching heat and sweat-me-off humidity are far beyond what I`m capable of. I guess he deserves some good food today. I`m thinking now.

Cosmos meadow at Yakurai Garden-Part 1

2011-09-19T14:36:00.000+09:00

I know my blog is running slow at the moment and it seems to me that with less cooking-related posts and more outdoor adventures going on, this supposed-to-be food blog is turning into a travel blog. I actually don`t mind if that really happens, but I`m somehow sure that there will be more posts on food coming on.

So, bear with me again and I hope you enjoy the pictures we took on our visit to Yakurai Garden. And since there are too many pictures to share in one post, I decided to put the close-up pictures in a separate post (Part 2).

On the way to the garden, we passed these beautiful paddy fields under the perfect sky and I tapped his shoulder asking him to stop the bike. Just look at these, how could I not stop here??

This is me crouching over to get a closer look at...

...these precious rice stalks that have been feeding me for my whole life.

After another hour riding or so, the garden, finally. As what the garden`s homepage promised us, we could see meadows of cosmos with heavenly colors of red, pink, violet, orange, and white. The peak season is between this month and October and that might explain why the greens partly still dominate the view. But I had nothing to complain about.

With these candy-colored flowers cheerfully seated over the green grassy stems, why should I?

And I was so thrilled to see the blue sky full of clouds above. For those of you who haven`t known me well, I`m a cloud freak. I do love blue skies, but add white fluffy clouds to them and you`ll find me shamelessly screaming while busy recording the moments with my camera.

These clouds, they look ridiculously very near to the ground, don`t they?

There`s no flower here, but I think the colors filling in this place is equally gorgeous as those in the meadows.

The sun was setting down and we got to take these backlit pictures before going home.

Love this silhouetted stalks!

Coming right up with the next post for the close-ups!

Grilled shishamo with sambal

2011-09-10T22:26:00.000+09:00

Just about a week ago, a fellow blogger Nami, whose fabulous blog "Just One Cookbook" always keeps me hungry and drooling over my PC screen, showed her shishamo wrap in one of her posts and that reminded me how I love those fish. Shishamo, or Japanese smelt, is very tasty, easy to deal with, and you can eat the whole thing, from head to tail. And since I was born with genes that makes me crave for spicy food all the time, I`m going to share with you my version of cooking shishamo. A spicy version, just like the other dishes I have here.

So this is a pack of shishamo with a sac of roe inside each of them I usually get from the store. Apparently, Nami rinses these fish before cooking them, but I do not. Ahem, I did not. Will rinse them next time.

If using oven, line them up onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins. When I serve them without sambal or any condiments, I usually coat them with olive oil, garlic powder, pepper, and cayenne to get more flavors. And just a pinch of salt as the fish is already a little salty. But with sambal, I just grill them as is.

While the fish is in the oven, spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the beautiful nutty scent. Set the toasted seeds aside when you`re done.

Next is sambal. There are various ways of making sambal involving raw or cooked ingredients, but this is how I usually make it. I actually have written about sambal last year, where I served with fried tempeh, with slightly different ingredients. This time I substituted shrimp paste for dried shrimp. I love, really love shrimp paste for its pungency, but today I wanted a milder version.

So, put chilies, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor (or mortar, of course). If you`re lucky enough to have fresh chilies, by all means use them and you can omit the chili powder. As most of the time I can only get the dried ones, I have to add chili powder to make the paste redder like the regular sambal.

Grinding the sambal paste in a food processor might scream "unauthentic" to the air, but I`m perfectly happy with it. With the sambal. It still is a sambal for me, after all.

Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat. Since the paste didn`t look red enough for me, I added some more chili powder, which I didn`t show you here.

While sauteing, puree tomatoes and pour it to the sambal paste.

Last aromatic is lemon. Squeeze in the juice and grate in the zest.

Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water. I sometimes add fish sauce too when there are no shrimp paste or dried shrimp in the sambal. I don`t know if other Indonesian use soy sauce or fish sauce for making sambal, but to me sambal tastes more wonderful with these two condiments.

Now this is the consistency I like when I make my sambal. Not too dry, but certainly not runny. You can use this sambal paste for spicy fried rice or red curry, although you need to add some other spices and coconut milk for the latter.

When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat.

Remember the grilled shishamo? Please tell me that you aren`t forgetting them in the oven.

Toss them in the sambal to get them lightly (or heavily, your call) coated.

Stack the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish and pop it back to the oven for another 10 mins.

Or you can just serve this right away, which what I usually do when I`m super hungry.

Now for the rice, you can certainly serve the regular steamed rice, but you might want to try out this version. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds you made earlier, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.

For two plates of rice, I added 1 tbs sesame oil. Not much, really. I just want the rice to be scented, not to be oily.

Here is the fish back from the oven, red and gorgeous. Well, who`s hungry now? I am. I certainly am. And look how happy that little kid over there.

Scented rice, spicy fish, and of course, raw vegetables. Our Saturyday`s feast, everyone.

GRILLED SHISHAMO WITH SAMBAL

Ingredients:

Shishamo

For sambal paste

Makes about 1 cup

3 dried chili

2 tbs chili powder

1/2 cut onion (but preferably shallots)

Thumb-sized ginger

3 candlenuts

1 Tbs dried shrimp (or shrimp paste for more pungency)

2 small-sized tomatoes (or 1 medium-sized one)

1/2 cut lemon juice and zest

Salt

1 Tbs soy sauce

Brown sugar

Pepper

Sesame-scented rice

2 plates steamed rice

2 Tbs sesame seed, toasted

1 Tbs sesame oil

Method:
For grilled shishamo
1. Arrange shishamo fish onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and grill them for 20 mins.
2. Set aside when grilling is done.

For sambal
1. Put chili, onion, garlic, chili powder, candlenuts, and ginger in a food processor or mortar and blitz or grind.
2. Saute the sambal paste with a bit of oil on medium heat.
3. Puree fresh tomatoes and stir in the sambal paste in the pan.
4. Squeeze in lemon juice and grate in the zest.
5. Season with salt, soy sauce, brown sugar, and pepper and keep stirring it to prevent it from scorching and to reduce the water.
6. When the sambal reaches the consistency you like, remove from heat.

For serving
1. Toss the grilled shishamo in the sambal until evenly coated.
2. Arrange the sambal-coated fish in a baking dish.
3. Optional: Pop the fish back to the oven for another 10 mins.

For sesame-scented rice
1. Spread sesame seeds on a heated frying pan and toast them for like 5-10 mins until they lightly brown and you can smell the nutty scent.
2. Put hot steamed rice in a bowl, sprinkle in the toasted sesame seeds, add sesame oil and stir until well combined.

The Okama crater lake at Zao Quasi National Park

2011-09-01T21:26:00.000+09:00

We had another motorcycle trip and this time we rode 74 km to the south-west where one of the major tourist sites in Tohoku area called Zao Okama crater lake is located. He told me the day before that it would take 2 hours to get there considering the distance. Being a biker, he was thrilled with the plan. But me? Na-ah. I mean, two hours on a motorcycle? I couldn`t even imagine how that would feel like. But I came to quickly realize that I should take all the opportunities given for us to have some adventures out there while we can. We have the motorcycle, we have time, we have cameras, and we are certainly still blessed with our physical strengths. So, off we rode then!

This is when I wanted to take some pictures of the woods and needed to take a short break after sitting on Booboo for an hour. While waiting for me, he checked the map.

This road led us to a very long and steep zig-zag driving line going up to the mountain. Yup, we were climbing up the mountain with the lil` Booboo. I wish I could take some pictures of the climbing lines, but it was foggy up there and we couldn` clearly see anything except the road itself. I checked the thermometer and it was 15 C, ten degrees lower than in our city.

After our steep zig-zagging ride for like 30 minutes, we finallly got there.
This sign shows us the directions for two different mountains. We started from the right first.

See a small house up there? It is actually a temple. So we climbed up and boy, it might look easy (and I did think it was easy), but the stairs (not visible here) were dead steep I couldn`t speak a word while climbing on them!

On top, finally. The weather changed very quickly here, and very extreme. Like from this...

...to this. In 20 minutes. And the cloud was not above us anymore. It`s beside us. That`s how high we were.

Very earthy colors, don`t you think?

Then we headed to the opposite direction and this time was closer to the lake.

This lake is also called as Five Colors Lake because rumor has it that the color changes five times a day along with the angle of the sun.

I didn`t get to see the five-color thing, but I think that`s because we were there for only a few hours, which was apparently not enough to see the whole changes. After all, I considered my self lucky to get to see this sublime view of emerald-colored crater lake under the not-raining weather.

I thought people can`t get too close to the lake for the safety reason, but it turned out I was wrong. See two veery tiny people standing near the edge of the lake? Hint: seven o`clock.
No, we didn`t go there, of course. First, we wanted to go home before dark considering the ~~dangerous~~ challenging road, and second, I`m (always) a chicken. I was, am, and will always be one.

Done shooting the lake, he hiked down through a steep trail with greenery surrounds us.

When I told him that I can (proudly) call my self a hiker now, he said, a real hiker would start climbing up right from the base of the mountain with his own feet, not on a motorcycle. Oh, laugh all you want, baby. With a trail like this...

...and this?? Oh yes, I`m definitely a hiker.

A dedicated photographer would change his lenses to suit the objects under any circumstances. And it seems like I am never getting near to be one. I was busy breathing in and out I couldn`t bother to change my lens when I intended to go to the macro world. So these are the "macro"est shoots I`ve got with my regular zoom lens. And please don`t ask me what flowers they are. I think I should get a book about flowers and trees.

The weather changed again and this time the fog started to blanket all over the place.

Yes, that`s me, thinking how much calories we burned off here. I`m sorry, but I`m just getting all crazy about calories these days, even on a mountain!

And me again, exhausted on my way up to the "peak". Well, I kind of posed for the photo, but I was really out of breath! I thought I`d find something to see up there, but when we got there, all I could see is another rocky trail going up to a higher land. Oh, maybe next time, when I`m better prepared. With better shoes.

So we hiked down after this lady.

And we stopped by at a ropeway station. Under this kind of weather, I was surprised to see that some people actually still took the rides!

Here is the last flower shot before we left there.

And of course, the souvenir! We got a set of kokeshi, handmade wooden dolls. Cute, right? The dolls are kids wearing Japanese traditional clothing for each season. From left to right is spring, summer, fall (facing upward), and winter. I really should get a better photo of them. Oh, cute cute cute!

Two hours later, we finally got home unbelievably exhausted from the hiking and riding. We were too tired even to sleep that night! But looking back at how we`ve spent our day getting closer to the nature (and the clouds!) really made my day. Our day.
And I seriously need a pair of hiking shoes. And a book for plants` names.

Masu no sushi, a specialty of Toyama

2011-08-30T00:24:00.002+09:00

I don`t usually write about store-bought food, but this one is an exception. A huge one. Because I am truly in love with this sushi and I knew it from the very first bite. Last summer, I vividly remember how I was amazed by a pack of sushi my labmate brought from her grandma`s town, Toyama prefecture. It was "masu no sushi" or "masu sushi" and although I`ve honestly thought the fish was salmon, my friend who brought it told me it was trout.

Having lived in Japan for 6.5 years now, you probably can imagine how my life here is surrounded with so many varieties of sushi. But eating sushi brought as a souvenir? Obviously last summer was my first time. And since the masu sushi has impressively wowed me with its presentation and delicacy, this year, I specifically (and politely, of course) asked her if she could bring me that sushi again from her hometown. And she said, no problem. She even asked me which grade I wanted. I didn`t even know they have grades! But I simply asked for the affordable one.

Anyway, she was finally back to the lab, with this delightful box. I was so ecstatic I felt like I had to hug her!

Have you ever seen sushi in a box like this? At a glance, I wouldn`t know it was sushi inside.

Inside the box, there is a round flat-bottomed wooden container with a lid tightly pressed over it. It`s like a miniature of hangiri, a wooden rice bowl used for preparing sushi rice.

And inside the box there comes the next wrapper, bamboo leaves. Oh, so exciting!

And beneath the leaves, there is a beautiful peachy orange color filling up the whole space.

The package comes with a set of plastic cutter, chopsticks, and soy sauce. Perfect.

Look at this. A cake. Last year, I seriously thought it was a cake. Covered with fish.

So, a slice for me with wasabi on top. I mean, the first slice. Trust me, you won`t stop with one slice.

Unlike regular sushi where the rice is considerably fluffy, the rice in this masu sushi is really dense and sticky with stronger sweetness, hence the thought of cake, or probably sticky sweet rice cake. You might think that sweet rice with fish won`t do well, but believe me, this one works just wonderful.

And the second slice to come soon.

If you are a sushi lover and in Japan, I beg you to try this masu sushi. You just have to. But if you are outside Japan, err...what can I say..enjoy the pictures? I`m sorry. Please don`t hate me.

Pan-fried senbei (Japanese rice crackers)

2011-08-24T21:29:00.004+09:00

This is another post from me since the banana muffins about using up leftovers at home, and this time I`ve got rice. Since my husband and I are ~~genetically~~ gastronomically designed to be rice eaters, we constantly have leftover rice at home, which we usually place on top of the freshly cooked batch in the rice cooker, wait for a while to heat it up, and eat it up altogether. The cycle repeats all the time, except for one day when I remembered watching a TV program about making senbei, or Japanese rice crackers, at home with a frying pan. During my first year in Japan, I got the impression that senbei is the national snack of Japan, if there`s such a thing. In fact, I think of senbei as sort of Japanese potato chips due to its dominance in the non-Western snack corners in the stores.

Regular senbei sold at the stores are usually crunchy, hence the name "crackers" regardless the shapes or tastes. But these pan-fried version give a different texture of senbei with a crispy exterior and mochi-like glutinous interior. I personally don`t see it as cracker. Fried mashed rice, maybe? Oh, let`s just call it senbei, then.

Anyway, this is very easy to make. With simple ingredients too!
You just need cooked rice and grind it until you can`t see the individual grains and it turned into a very, very sticky dough. I`ve tried using steaming hot rice and cold one. Not fridge cold, though, just not hot. Both turned alright for making these senbei.
By the way, I only had like 3 (heaping) tbs of cooked rice when I made these senbei and that gave me 6 pieces of palm-sized senbei.

Before I continue, here is my verdict about the grinding/mashing. Although you can see in the pictures that I ground the rice using mortar and pestle, I recommend you to use a zip-lock storage bag instead. I don`t know if I did it wrong, but the ground rice stuck (like glued stuck!) to the pestle and the mortar and this really made the grinding harder. When I placed the rice in a bag, and mashed it with a pestle from outside the bag, my life turned so much easier. I wish I took the pictures when I did it with a plastic bag, but I`m sure you get the idea just fine.

Alright, after the mashed rice is done, now throw in your favorite ingredients (cheese? meat? sugar?). and mix well. I used seaweed flakes and sesame seeds. My must-have pantry items.

Wet both of your palms with water (I tried oil too, but I love water better) to prevent the dough from sticking, place a portion of the dough on your palm, and shape it into a thin disc. Now this is optional, top the senbei discs with dried shrimps for extra flavor.
Frying time! Put the senbei directly on a heated frying pan with a bit of oil.

When the bottom browned, flip it over, and brush the browned surface with soy sauce and sesame oil. When the other side got browned too, flip it over again, brush with the sauce too, and you`re done!

If you want, sprinkle some more seaweed flakes on top.
Not bad for leftovers, huh. Other than nibbling on them right away, I also put these senbei in a bowl of hot kimchi nabe. Oh, loved it! Like crazily loved it! And if I have to add rice to any soup, it has to be these senbei, not the regular steamed rice.

Oh, there`s one thing you should know, especially if you`ve never had senbei before. This senbei will tend to stick on your teeth and the wise thing to do is to brush your teeth afterward. But, regardless how often I had senbei stuck in my teeth, I always ended up making them again. That`s how much addictive these guys are.
Enjoy!

Ingredients:

Steamed/cooked rice

Sesame seeds (better if toasted first)

Seaweed flakes
Dried shrimps

Soy sauce

Sesame oil

Polvorones (almond cookies)

2011-08-21T22:23:00.009+09:00

I had been meaning to make these cookies since months ago after I came across Pioneer Woman`s post on Mexican wedding cookies called Polvorones. The cookies and the ingredients just reminded me of a widely known cookie in Indonesia called Putri Salju or Snow White. Yes, that princess. I guess the icing sugar sort of represents the snow flakes, but I`m clueless on how the princess idea came in. Anyway, I was 97% sure that the Snow White cookies were somehow an adaptation of Polvorones and I was really excited to try it out. I finally made them today, although I ended up slightly modifying a recipe from Seasaltwithfood.

Let`s start with the preparation.

Soften unsalted butter at room temperature.

If you have almond flour or ground almond, lucky you because you can skip this step. But if you don`t, toast raw almond in oven at 150 C for 15 mins, stir occasionally during toasting, let it cool, and grind it.

Same like almonds, toast flour at 150 C for 20 mins, stir occasionally during toasting, and let it cool.

Almonds and flour are done, so we can start cooking now.

Cream the softened butter and sugar.

Whisk in ground almond.

Slowly fold in the toasted flour until it turns into dough.

Like this.

All recipes I found describing the dough to have a very crumbly consistency. At the beginning, my dough was actually rather moist than crumbly making me thinking that I might need to add some flour. But I kept continuing the work and after a few minutes, the dough did turn drier and very crumbly. It was indeed so crumbly that it was quite tricky to roll out the dough. But I know you`ll manage it, because I did.

Place a portion of the dough on the counter or working board, press it tightly with your hands, and roll it out very gently with a rolling pin to make a 1-cm thick dough. Just a little push with the rolling pin will easily crack open the dough. So, go easy with the rolling. If, though, the dough cracks open, pull it back together with your hand and reroll it.

Bake them in preheated oven at 150 C for 20 minutes.

Welcome to my wedding, sweeties!

But I think a light dusting with icing sugar will make them look even more gorgeous.

Note: The cookies are already sweet themselves, but the addition of the icing sugar really makes a difference here. If you don`t mind with the extra calories, go for it, but I hope you do it in moderation.

And I have to hide these away from my Winnie the Pooh because he loves to grab the cookie jar late at night.

So, what about the Polvorones and the Snow White stuff? I honestly think that they`re the same cookies. The buttery texture with the good crunch and nuttiness of the almond are just heavenly. And the sugar dusting makes it a perfect sweet marriage indeed.

Happy Sunday!

P.S. My waist line!!

Ingredients:
Adapted from Seasaltwithfood

Makes about 35 cookies (5-cm in diameter, 1-cm thick)

200 g unsalted butter

100 g sugar

130 g ground almond

220 g flour

1 tsp vanilla oil

Icing sugar for dusting

Bake at 150 C for 20 mins

Stir-fried shiitake mushroom and octopus

2011-08-20T22:56:00.003+09:00

Newsflash: I fell asleep during my pilates exercise today. Fell asleep. Right on my mat.

I started to do exercises a lot recently and they mostly involve aerobics. Other than riding bicycle everyday to my lab, which is only 10 minutes away, I didn`t do any sport. For years. And since my body started to scream out through my waist line and those annoying jiggly parts (and not to mention all those unwearable pants!), I decided to do some regular exercises at home. So I bought some DVDs and one of them is for pilates. I`m doing relatively fine with the aerobics, but the pilates is a lot of work!! I usually spend my energy and time more on laying down, sighing, and practically just watching during the whole pilates program. The instructor`s body must be made of rubber as she looks so, so flexible. And strong too! So, today, like the day before, and before that too, I gave up after only 5 minutes trying to do the sit-ups with both of my legs pulled up. And I just watched and listened to her instructions. Then, next thing I knew, I was awake. Because apparently I fell asleep. He said, "You do know that you should follow what she is doing, don`t you?". Then I knew I was awaken by that noise. Yeah, like he knows how to do that torturing sit-ups.

So that was my humiliating story that I know I shouldn`t have told you all yet I still did. And now is time to share what I cook the most in our kitchen, which has nothing to do with the pilates.
Stir-fried mushroom. With one stove in my kitchen, stir-frying is the simplest cooking method I know that give a dish looks like a real prepared dish. It usually requires a lot of chopping and slicing, but once everything are prepared, the dish is ready almost in no time. And I cook mushrooms a lot. Like almost in every dish. Shiitake is my numero uno of choice because of its nutty note during sauteing and its meatiness, but I also use maitake, shimeji, and eringgi a lot in my repertoires.

So, shall we?

Now let`s start with the octopus first. I used boiled octopus, but you can use other fresh (or boiled) seafood you like. Or meat.

The octopus head has a very stretchy skin, so I just pulled it off and cut it up with my scissors.

Cube the skinless octopus.

Dust the cubes with flour.

And shallow-dry them for a few minutes until they look crisped up and golden. Be careful with the oil splatter. It`s nasty, but I know I just have to go through it.

The fried octopus. Set them aside. We`ll need them later.

I usually stir-fry the boiled octopus without frying it first, but this time I want some texture other than chewiness. And frying gave what I wanted.

Next is to prepare, aka. chopping and slicing, other ingredients before starting the stir-frying.

Onion, some cloves of garlic, and chili. Checked. Sorry, no picture for this one.

Shiitake mushrooms. Trim off the hard tip of the stem, but do use the stem.

Slice up everything into thin strips. Checked.

And shishitou. Japanese green chili. Slice it up. Checked.

Alright, we`re ready now.
Heat a bit of oil on a pan and saute garlic, onion, and chili. Can you smell that?

In the mushroom goes. It might look like a lot at the beginning, but after cooking for a while, the strips will lose their structure and shrink a lot. And when they do, season with soy sauce, oyster sauce, vinegar, salt, and pepper. You can add sugar if you want it to be sweet.

Throw in the green chili.

And quickly stir in the fried octopus. I love the chili to be slightly crunchy so I don`t want to cook it too long.

Once everything combined, the dish is ready.

Just a little more preparation here. I sometimes sprinkle sesame seeds over the hot steamed rice. Sesame seeds smell best after toasting. But I`m happy enough with the untoasted ones.

Place the stir-fried mushroom over the rice and it`s ready!

I call this a plate of happiness for our Saturday`s dinner.

Enjoy your weekend!

Ingredients:

Garlic

Onion

Chili

Boiled octopus
Flour (only to lightly coat the octopus)

Shiitake mushrooms

Shishitou (Japanese green chili)

Soy sauce

Oyster sauce

Vinegar

Salt

Pepper

Watermelon drink

2011-08-18T18:07:00.000+09:00

Since I made my cucumber agua fresca that day, I just can`t stop making fruit drinks in my kitchen. And when I got myself a book for smoothie recipes, I stepped up to add some vegetables in. I realized how rare I ate raw vegetables for my daily meals and I know that`s just not good. Not good for my skin! So I blend up carrot, cabbage, bell pepper, tomato, apple, blueberries, oranges, lemon, etc etc, you name it. The good thing is, I get to borrow the natural sweetness from the fruits and make the less sweet or rather bland vegetables more drinkable. I don`t usually eat raw vegetables due to their blandness at the first place. Anyway, I drink it everyday, usually twice at morning and night. Repeat: Everyday. To my surprise, not only I started to get used to the natural sweetness (although sometimes when it tastes too bland or weird, I add a bit of honey), I found the taste of the fruit and veg mix isn`t that bad for me.
Now this post is for what I`ve made last month, where I haven`t thought of mixing it with veggies. But still this drink is one of my favorites, next to eating the watermelon as it is. Watermelon is one of my biggest love affairs with food. I see it as a beautiful crunchy yet moist sponge full of refreshing sweetness. It`s just perfect. Even with the seeds in. If the seeds bother you, though, you might be better choose the seedless watermelon for this drink.

Chop up and put them in a blender

Aah..the cooling mint leaves. I never get enough of them.

Whiz up. Oh, lovely.
By the way, I didn`t need to add sugar or honey at all as this was sweet enough for me.

And as always, I forgot something. Oranges.
Use a squeezer to get the juice (and pulp too if you want), pour it in to the blender and puree it again.

And since I didn`t take the picture after I added the orange juice, please pretend that you see a jar of watermelon puree with light orangeness. Thank you.
By the way, you can add water (or not) to your preference of thickness. Although the more water you add, the less sweet it would be, and the more sugar (or honey) you would likely add.

Say hello to this freshness. Happy slurping!

Ingredients:
Watermelon (seedless one, if necessary)
Orange juice
Mint leaves
Water (optional)
Sugar or honey (optional)

Sunflower field in Osaki

2011-08-16T22:38:00.006+09:00

So this is where we`ve been for one of our dates in this summer. We took a motorcycle ride for 30 km to the north to get to a wide open space with green, yellow, and blue all over the place.

Sunflowers were everywhere we looked. That 1-hour long ride under the burning sun was totally payed off here.

Alright, if you were at this place, what would you do other than taking pictures like crazy? Tell me.

Not adoring these gorgeous ladies is a crime. And not taking pictures of them is even a bigger crime.

I have no idea what I was doing there, but it is possible that I thought I could communicate with them.

Meh. Maybe not.
And fyi, I`m 156 cm tall and that`s not enough to compete with most of those flowers.

And this lil` boy just wouldn`t leave me alone.

What`s on your mind when you look at this?
Me, I want to eat it! Oh, just look at that vivid yellowness.

And here`s the last one, before going home.

And no, I didn`t eat any of them, in case you`re about to scream at me.
Hope you enjoyed the virtual trip with us!

Pineapple and cucumber in spicy light syrup

2011-08-14T22:00:00.005+09:00

The idea of eating fruits with chili, which is my nature by the way, never fails to bring out the puzzled looks on my Japanese friends` faces whenever I mention it. It was sort of Fruits with chili?? Really?? faces. And that was when I realized how I basically grew up and live up chewing chili with almost any kind of food. Chocolate with chili? Tried it last year. What an interesting taste!

Anyway, the fruit drink I made here is basically a lighter and partly drinkable (or slurpable) version of Indonesian fruit salad called rujak, which is a mix of cut fruits like mango, cucumber, and pineapple dressed with sweet and spicy sauce made of dark brown, chili, and tamarind. I do love rujak the way it is, but at the moment I need to keep the thought of eating the fruits with the thick sugar paste (aka. more sugar less water) away. After all, slurping the cold spicy syrup (aka. more water less sugar) with occasional fruits chewing is what I am craving for these super hot days.

I only used pineapple and cucumber here, but you`re certainly welcome to experiment with your favorite fruits. Maybe next time I`ll go with apple.

So, start with pineapple. My first time dealing with fresh pineapple was just a year ago (I know!). Having to peel off its skin was my only reason for not buying pineapple. But when I found pineapples sold with a serving guidance tagged on them, my pineaple-less days were over.

So, if you too are intimidated by the skin like I was, I hope this guidance can be handy for you. It`s in Japanese, but I`m sure you can figure it out from the pictures.

Peel off the skin and cut up the pineapple. Oh, I love this last part of the cutting process.

Next is cucumbers. After the pineapple, they come very easy to handle with. Slice them up in any shapes you like.

Mix the cut pineapple and cucumbers in a container.

Now for those of you who are new with eating fruits with chili, here comes the challenge.
Throw in sliced chili. It depends on how much you can handle the heat, but you can certainly use much less chili than I did. I turn crazy when it comes to chili and you don`t have to be like me.
And by the way, I used dried chili because that`s what I got here. Go with fresh chili (deseed or not, depending on your heat tolerance) whenever you can because the fresh skin are soft enough to eat. The skin of the dried ones are actually a little too hard and papery to chew, so I sometimes boil them together with the syrup. And since I said sometimes, this time I just threw them in with the fruits and let the syrup soften them a bit after several hours soaking.

Because I skipped the boiling work, I used hot water to dissolve dark brown sugar in a cup.

Add this chili powder, vinegar, and a pinch of salt. If you have tamarind in hands, use the juice instead of vinegar.

Just make the syrup thick, pour it in batches to the fruits while thinning it out with water, and adjust the taste until the fruits are completely soaked up in the container. For me, I like it to be lightly sweet but with intense heat and sourness. For a rough measurement, I added 1 tbs sliced chili, 3 tbs brown sugar, 6 tbs of vinegar, and a pinch of salt to a total volume of 750 ml fruits and water, which was my container capacity.

Add peanuts too. You can sprinkle the peanuts later when serving for a greater crunch factor, or before soaking to make them mushy. Whichever it is, please add the peanuts. Trust me.

Close the container tightly and keep it in refrigerator for several hours before serving. The longer you soak the fruits, the more they gain the taste. Ah, heaven.

Ready for the challenge?

Ingredients:

Pineapple

Cucumbers

Dark brown sugar or palm sugar

Chili

Chili powder
Vinegar or tamarind juice

Salt

Peanuts
Water

Chocolate banana muffins

2011-07-27T21:54:00.007+09:00

Have you ever had your banana so overripe and blackened that no one in the house wouldn`t touch it? Well. I have. In fact, many times. And it felt as if I was the most horrible person on earth when I decided to threw them away as I used to consider them as "ugly and non-edible" food. Guilty!

But it`s different now. In a good way. Thanks to Nigella, again, there are good recipes in her Nigella Kitchen book that transform these bad-looking banana into something more appetizing. One of the recipes was this chocolate banana muffins. I made some changes with the original recipe, which were less banana (as I only had one left), less sugar, and less oil. Oh, and I added choc bar.

So, speaking of bad, how bad did my banana look like?
This bad. Sad, right? I feel sad just looking at it.

No worries, though, as we`re about to do some magic here. Ready with your magic ~~wand~~ whisk?

Peel off the skin, put the banana in a mixing bowl, and mash it up with a whisk. If your banana is ripe enough, or overripe like mine was, mashing it up would be very very easy, although using a whisk will probably leave a bit of texture.

Whisk in vegetable oil (I used olive oil, regular one) and few drops of vanilla oil. And love potion too, if you have it.

Beat in eggs...

...brown sugar...

...then chocolate bars broken - or torn, as they were already melting out in my hot kitchen - into small chunks.

Note 1: The original recipe calls for cocoa powder mixed with flour to be added later on, but I wanted to use the chocolate bars that had been sitting for ages in my kitchen.

Note 2: If you omit the chocolate, you`d better add more sugar because with the amount of sugar I used here (see Ingredients), the muffin itself doesn`t taste sweet enough.

Fold in sifted flour and baking soda.

And spoon the mixture into muffin tin lined with parchment paper or muffin cups.
Bake for 15 mins at 200 C.

Here they are, puffing up delightfully! Not so ugly anymore, huh?
My muffins came out in irregular shapes of course. I can`t remember if I`ve ever made something neatly.

So let me show you again what the magic did.

From this:

To this:

And you can totally smell the banana aroma coming out from these fluffy muffins filled with heavenly oozes of dark chocolate.

My husband is not big on some particular fruits and banana are one of them. He also tends to freak out whenever we had blackened banana in our house. Even so, he already ate three (three!) muffins while I am typing this. Wonderful day.

So this is my Wednesday resolution: I will never, ever, throw away my banana, again.

Ingredients (adapted from Nigella Kitchen):

Makes for 12 muffins
1 overripe banana

100 ml olive oil

2 whole eggs

80 g brown sugar

Vanilla oil

80 g dark chocolate
200 g cake flour
1 tsp baking soda

Bake at 200 C for 15 min

Typhoon potato

2011-07-21T11:23:00.004+09:00

What a (weird) name. I know. I`m just having trouble with the naming.

Anyway, yesterday a typhoon came from the south and we had an unbelievably cold raining day as the temperature suddenly dropped from 33 to 21 C. So, for the cold evening, I made this potato dish (hence the name is) with boil-and-saute technique, which I learned from J amie`s 30 minute meals. His clever and quick methods to prepare everything within 30 mins might not be applicable in my kitchen that only has a single stove, but still I really love learning about his recipes and watching how quick he moves!

First, boil washed potatoes in enough water. You can peel the skin first before or after boiling later, but I just left it as it is.

While waiting potatoes boiled, chop up some shiitake mushrooms...

...and garlic too. Sauté them altogether with a bit of olive oil.

Keep sautéing until the mushroom get wilted and the smells of garlic and mushrooms combine beautifully.

Remember the potatoes? Try poke them in in with a fork to check if they are tender enough. If they are, drain and put them in together with the garlic and mushrooms. And by tender enough, I mean according to your preference.

Chop the potatoes up with your spatula. This is easy to do if the potatoes are soft enough.

Keep chopping up until the potatoes turned into smaller chunks.

Add parmesan cheese (generously, if you`re a cheese lover) and season with nutmeg, thyme, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper and stir until all the potatoes are well coated.

The potatoes are ready, but I added chervil to dress them up a bit.

Yum yum yum! Let`s dig in!

P.S. If you make this as a side dish, you might want to consider making this spicy wings too to get the party started. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
Potatoes
Garlic
Mushrooms
Parmesan cheese
Nutmeg
Thyme
Cayenne pepper
Salt
Pepper
Chervil

The unplanned green trip to Akiu waterfall

2011-07-20T02:18:00.007+09:00

I`m never a spontaneous person when it comes to trips, but last weekend I apparently turned into one. And this is why. We were actually planning to make a different trip, but my carelessness (ah!) in checking out the bus schedule has made us cancel the trip. Feeling reluctant to go home or go around the city, we headed to the tourism information center at the central station and got a bunch of pamphlets there to see other goable places.

Then, considering the transportation possibility, we found another good destination, which was Akiu waterfall that locates about 1.5 hours by bus from where we live. Although this scenic spot is famously known for its beauty during the autumn with the red-yellow-orange colored leaves surrounding the already gorgeous waterfall, I don`t think seeing there all in green is a deal breaker at all.

Anyway, after fueled up with lunch, we hopped on the bus feeling both excited and nervous about our trip.

And we finally got there! The gate and the gargoyles. Welcome!

Oh wait, I was so sleepy after the long bus riding I needed the caffeine boost first.

And we`re back entering the complex and soon finding this shrine.

The walkway down to the waterfall area. I could hear the water splash already from here.

And there it was, the Akiu waterfall. It wasn`t as big as what we`ve expected, but it`s simply beautiful.

Daydreaming at the viewing deck.

We then took a forest walk. His idea, of course. My first time. Ever. And I was a total chicken there. Please don`t mock me.

Oh, there is a small soba and udon restaurant at the entrance of the forest. Love all the colors here!

Alright, to the forest. I held my camera tight while trying to forget my fears and to concentrate more on enjoying all the beauties.

Like this, don`t you call this as a beauty? I felt like I was pulled inside a painting.

Although I finally enjoyed taking pictures in the all-green-and-brown forest, I couldn`t help feeling relieved when we finally made our way out and reached the main road again. The normal road, only packed with lots of greens.

Beware of bears, it says. But he just grabbed my hand and pulled me to keep walking with him. We`re lucky we didn`t meet any throughout the way!

Peeping down from the walkway, there it was the basin. With a girl posing like a mermaid on a rock.

After walked and walked and walked, we were finally there!
Getting distracted with the lady? Just think of her as the part of the nature then. And as a matter of fact, she really is! By the way, I somehow still insist that this is a different waterfall considering the height, but the sign indicates the same name and all the info I could get mentioning only one waterfall here. Weird. Or maybe I`m the one who is weird.

The picture above and this one below are actually his shots. L-O-V-E!!!

The other side of the basin. Very calm and relaxing.

With the waterfall and the forest, and not to mention the sore legs from all the walk, I felt like a real hiker. But a trip is not a trip without buying some souvenirs. That`s just my nature and I shouldn`t fight it.

He bought these luckycharm keyholders (our favorite animals: cat for him, cow for me) for each of us. His charm wishes the good luck to come and the bad luck to go away. Mine wishes I can spend my days happily and cheerfully. I`m neither a believer nor a superstitious person, but I do think this kind of stuff represents a very nice gesture as you wish all the good things for the person you gave.

And, the souvenirs include FOOD. So I got these fresh blueberries! Yippie!

The popular summer treat in Japan: soft (ice) cream. Not a real souvenir, though, since he finished it up like in 5 mins after he got it.

We`re deeply exhausted, but totally satisfied and happy with the wonderful adventure. Time to go home.

But since the bus hasn`t arrived yet, let me devour the other kind of beauty on earth.

Hope you enjoyed this exhaustively long post!

Easy peasy spicy wings

2011-07-15T23:14:00.005+09:00

Now, how many of my posts have "spicy" word in them? Not sure, but definitely a lot. And how many with "easy" word? A lot too. Maybe my cooking journey is all about easy and spicy.

Anyway, if you`ve never cooked anything in your life before, try this one. You`ll impress your guests. But there`s a good chance that you finish the whole batch yourself before you can even invite anyone over. Alright, I`m exaggerating here, but you should try this first to get the truth out.

Put chicken wings in a bowl and get all the spices in your pantry. I`m 30% kidding and 90% serious. I know that doesn`t sound mathematically correct. But you must know that I`m terrible at math. And other than that, that`s how badly I want the wings to be spicy. Real hot and spicy. In the middle of this scorching summer.

The dry ingredients I used were: chili, cayenne pepper, white pepper, ginger, garlic, coriander, cloves, and cardamon, and salt. Go generous with the spices, but control your self with the salt.

The wet ones were: olive oil, chili-infused sesame oil, soy sauce and fish sauce.

Rub the whole spices, oil, and sauces until the wings are well coated. I use my bare hands, but you can always use gloves if you want. Tongs? Well, not as good as our hands, but you should try them out if you`re curious.

Wrap the bowl with a plastic wrap, or transfer the whole content into a storage bag, and keep the wings in the fridge for at least 2 hours. To be honest, I do sometimes bake them right away. Results were not bad at all, but from what I`ve noticed, letting them rest in the fridge for a couple of hours do help give better flavors.

So while the wings were meditating in my fridge, we decided to take a short ride on our beloved Booboo up to the hill in our city and get some fresh(er) air.

It was almost sunset when we got there. And as what I`ve expected, it wasn`t hot at all up there! This is the only picture I`ve got that has trees, but if only you could come with us, you`d see that this place is almost practically an upland forest. And some of our campuses are located here too!

And far down there, standing proudly the concrete kingdom. Sure it has trees, but mostly are buildings. With heat.

And when I started to wonder what people were having for their dinner, I remembered how I missed my chicken wings. Time to go home!

Oh..there you are...all red and sexy.

Bake them at 200 C for 15 to 20 mins. Hungry!

Alright, all cooked now. They might not look quite attractive now, but let`s dress them up a bit.

Mix soy sauce and chili-infused sesame oil in a bowl and then lightly coat the roasted wings with the sauce mix. This will make the wings glossy, moist, and more rich in flavor.

You can sprinkle sesame seeds to give an edge and serve it with some vegetables to lessen the guilt like I did. Don`t forget to prepare a box of tissue paper. To clean your fingers when you`re done. And to wipe off your tears because of the chili and the happiness.

Have fun with the spice experiment and enjoy flying with the wings!

Ingredients:
Chicken wings
Chili
Cayenne pepper
White pepper
Garlic
Ginger
Coriander
Cloves
Cardamon
Olive oil
Chili-infused sesame oil
Soy sauce
Fish sauce

Bake at 200 C for 15 to 20 mins