i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
One of the places I always wanted to visit with the kids, but didn’t get to until last week, is the Cold Spring Harbor Fish Hatchery and Aquarium. It used to supply the state with trout for stocking in public ponds, but became a not-for-profit …
One of the things I’m committed to is supporting both my local economy and mindfully reducing waste—this includes the meat that I eat which means if it’s edible on the animal, I will find a way to enjoy it. I don’t shy away from organ …
Salmon Ochazuke (rice steeped in tea and dashi) is my oldest daughter’s favorite style of ochazuke—it has several of the things she loves: Salmon, ikura (salted salmon roe), seaweed, and rice. It’s one of my favorites too as it’s a breeze to put together and so comforting on crisp fall nights.
Some make ochazuke only with tea, but I find mixing in dashi stock makes it even more scrumptious. Toasting the nori (seaweed) over the stove for a few minutes helps bring out the flavor. I shredded some of my abundant shiso from the garden.
You can either salt and cook the salmon yourself, or you can use smoked salmon. For smoked salmon, you can either cook it on the stove or allow it to get cooked by the hot rice and water. Since smoked salmon is readily available and keeps so that I can use it for other things, I tend to use that in place of fresh.
The holidays are around the corner and while this year it looks like we’re not going anywhere or hosting anything, I still enjoy creating spreads as if I were. This deviled egg recipe is very simple, using a normal deviled egg base but elevated to …
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 sit in her bed and eat. Accompanying it would be assorted pickles, salted duck eggs, pork floss, furikake, or fermented bean curd depending on what was available at the time. These days I’ve developed the habit of making myself a bowl whenever I lose my appetite and have no idea what I want to eat (Yes, this actually happens to me sometimes!)
It’s easy, light, and nourishing, the fragrant flavor of the tea medling wonderfully with the rice. It clears my palate and allows me to refresh. There are so many combinations of flavors that could be created too (which I’ll post in the future.)
Today I decided to make yaki-onigiri, which is grilled rice balls that have been brushed with a soy sauce tare. I had a few leftover so I made a simple Ochazuke with a green tea dashi broth. The yaki onigiri is like Guo Ba, which is the cripsed rice on the bottom of a I use a jasmine green tea, although Oolong, Hojicha (roasted green tea), or another green leaf tea, all work as well. I put a dollop of butter just because I’m a little nuts and enjoy butter with my rice.
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 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 using Karasumi, which is cured mullet roe. Also known as Bottarga in Italian and Wuyuzi in Chinese, this briny delicacy that is full of salty, umami, ocean flavor is a national export product of Taiwan. I have a recipe of one style of Karasumi Pasta, plus several that use it as garnish.
This pasta however, is cream based which is a bit more rich and heavy than the lighter Japanese style. Either way, it’s a delicious treat as Autumn moves in. Normally, it is served sliced with daikon radish, garlic, scallions, as an accompaniment to alcohol. I recreated that combination of flavors to great success here. The radish chips mellow out from the heat it isn’t too spicy, but provides a refreshing crunch for for flavor and texture.
If you were wondering about a simple and tasty dish should you have some Bottarga/Karasumi/Wuyuzi hand (or you can purchase them on Amazon). Bottarga, Karasumi, and Wuyuzi taste almost interchangeably so you can purchase it under either name.
I toss in the crumbled/grated bottarga at the end when the pasta is off the heat so that it doesn’t get cooked, as it will turn dry.
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 …