Month: May 2020

Tororo (Grated Japanese Yam) Over Rice Recipe

Tororo (Grated Japanese Yam) Over Rice Recipe

I grow nagaimo (Dioscorea polystachya), also known as the cinnamon vine, Chinese yam, or Japanese yam here in my backyard—it’s a beautiful and funny perennial vine, growing little bulbils that you can stick into the ground or steam over rice. It is a pain to 

Wild Mushroom Cream Pasta

Wild Mushroom Cream Pasta

Disclaimer: I’m out of cooking sherry and white wine so Armagnac tagged in. As the growing and foraging season gets underway, I’m looking to clear stuff out from my fridge and pantry. A young chicken of the woods has been sitting in the freezer all 

Spicy Seafood Dynamite

Spicy Seafood Dynamite

This is a fun recipe that can be modified to your taste. Seafood dynamite is usually some sort of baked seafood dish with mayo, the creaminess of the mayonnaise making it a decadent treat. You can often find it in the appetizer section of a sushi restaurant or a buffet line. I usually only allow myself a single serving, lest my waistline disagrees with me. You can use fake seafood of course, crab stick and the like, but I prefer to deck it out with things I personally enjoy (not that I don’t love crab sticks either.) In the summer, it’s a great thing to use up leftover crab meat from my crabbing adventures or fish from fishing. If you find morels, boletes, chantarelles, or oyster mushrooms, they can also be used in place of chicken of the woods (I just happened to have a cotw in my freezer from last year). If you don’t have any of those, button mushrooms from the store works too.

You don’t have to make it anywhere near to this degree, it does fine with just mayo, salt, and sugar. I’ll put a star next to any of the optional ingredients.

Ingredients

  • 1 cup mixed seafood (calamari, octopus, shrimp, scallops, crabmeat, lobster, fish, mussels, crab stick or any combination thereof.) Squeezed to remove moisture.
  • 1/2 cup mushrooms (chicken of the woods, maitake, boletes, morels, chants, oysters, buttons, portabello) diced*
  • 2/3rd cup mayonnaise
  • 1/2 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon tobiko/masago*
  • 1 tablespoons sriracha (omit for non-spicy version or double for very spicy version)*
  • 2 tablespoons mozzarella cheese*
  • Shredded nori* for garnish
  • Scallions or chives* for garnish
  • Teriyaki sauce*
  • Togarashi pepper powder*
  1. Mix seafood, mayonnaise, mushroom, sugar, salt, tobiko/masago, and sriracha if using together. Place into a baking dish (or crab or scallop shell.)
  2. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit until seafood is cooked through and mayonnaise is puffy and golden.
  3. Top with mozzarella cheese. Bake for an additional 5-7 minutes until cheese has melted and is slightly golden.
  4. Garnish with scallions, togarashi, nori, more tobiko/masago, sriracha, and teriyaki sauce. Serve hot and with a spoon.
Cheeping Chickweed

Cheeping Chickweed

First, let me just say yes, chickweed (Stellaria media) tastes good—like if butter lettuce and alfalfa sprouts had a baby… but it’s a pain to harvest and harvest enough of it to justify making a salad. However, if you have nothing to do and are 

Zero Waste Origami Bone/Scrap Boxes

Zero Waste Origami Bone/Scrap Boxes

When we were little, my grandparents taught my sister and I how to make these origami boxes from the stacks of magazines they would get in the mail. We would sit at their country style dining table (which is now the kotatsu table in my