i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Fall is here and with it comes sweet and crisp vegetables and a huge bumper crop of my shiso! What better way to showcase seasonal cool crop veggies and herald the arrival of the Autumn salmon than kakiage ikura don? Kaki-age is a type of …
I love O-chazuke/Cha Pao Fan, which is rice steeped in hot tea. When I was young, if we stayed over at my grandparent’s house, my grandma would give us each a bowl right before we went to sleep. It was the only time we could …
Akebia is such an interesting plant, and for those who like bitter gourd (which I really hated as a child but has since begun to miss in my old age), the thick rind is like a perennial version of it. It’s tender and juicy, despite the bitterness. You can stuff it with meat and braise or fry, or slice thin and tempura’d. I decided that a quick sauté with some miso would make a tasty side dish for white rice.
It is quite bitter, so I soak the slices for about half an hour in salt water to lower the bitterness. Eating with the season means Akebia pods in the fall are made into all sorts of things–they are considered a sansai (mountain vegetable). I’m not entirely sure I can eat as much as I have, and wonder if perhaps selling some as a specialty vegetable might be better.
Miso itame is a traditional way of eating the pods, so that’s the most common preparation you might see online.
The fruit on my akebia have split open, smiling with their seed and pulp glistening on the inside. I find it too much work to sit and eat it directly from the pod, so instead I decided I’d separate the pulp from the seeds with …
Now that things have settled down a little in my life for this moment in time (including the terrifying ordeal of getting the dojo inspected for NYS COVID compliance), my creative juices are flowing so I decided to make a simple, but elegant pasta dish …
I know I’m known for generally extravagant meals, so a simple egg fried rice dish seems to be a bit out of character for me. Even more so because as a child, I hated fried rice in any way, shape, or form. This is actually because it’s what I was very often packed for lunch… but these days, I find myself missing the flavors of my childhood, and on a whim I decided to make a simple fried rice.
This season is drawing to a close and my ducks have stopped laying, so I’m using up the last of my duck eggs. My chives will also end their season soon and die back to the ground, waiting to spring up more lush and explosive next year. The recipe for this I have written for chicken eggs, so you won’t have to dilute the duck egg with milk to keep it soft and fluffy.
If you plan to add meat or extra vegetables to this, add it after the egg but before the rice. If you add soy sauce, sake, sugar, and garlic, you’ll recreate Japanese Hibachi fried rice. Smoked salmon, wet bean curd, dried douchi, chili crisp, sausage, spam, ham, chicken, charsui, etc. are all fine additions. I know there is a stigma against MSG, but oh well. I often add it when making Chinese or Japanese dishes to no ill effects.
Contrary to popular belief, it’s fine to use fresh rice for this, your rice will simply be slightly softer. If you want to recreate day old rice, stick it in the refrigerator, uncovered, until it is thoroughly cooled.
If you walk along the streets of Flushing or NYC’s Chinatown, carts located on the corners waft the heavenly spiced scent of Xinjiang style kebabs to passerby’s. Lamb, beef, chicken are available, but delectable organ meats such as kidney, liver, heart, intestine, and tendon jockey …
One of the things I am thankful for after starting to grow my own food is also being friends with other homesteaders, big and small, who also focus on being mindful in terms of where our food comes from and the care it takes into …
Every year, during the course of my crabbing adventures I catch a few soft shelled crabs. When that happens, I start thinking about what deliciousness I can make with them.
Soft shelled crabs are crabs that have just molted from their shells and their new shells have not hardened just yet. This occurs so that they can grow bigger. In this phase, they’re eaten whole, shell and all, and make for delightful fried dishes. Po Boy’s and sushi (Spider roll, anyone?) and other delicately crispy, crabby, treats that take no effort on the part of the person eating.
While you could also use them for Crab Nanbanzuke, today I decided for more southern fare: fried soft shelled crab and grits. I drizzled a lemon garlic Bourbon butter sauce over it, and topped it with a fried egg. I thought it looked cute, like the crab is wearing a little sunhat. Chives from the garden, some slices of radish for color and bite, and some cheddar cheese made brunch a decadent affair.
You should clean the crab by cutting off the front and pulling out the stomach (crabs are scavengers), lifting each point of the shells up and remove the gills. Finally, cut off the apron on the stomach. I only lightly dredged it in a cornstarch spice mixture because I find that very often, the batter is too thick which detracts from the original flavor of the crab.
Every year, inevitably, all sorts of plants emerge from my compost pile from the seeds of the stuff I throw into it. Squash and pumpkin most commonly, especially since much of the Halloween decorations get tossed in at the end of the season. This year …