i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Leftover rice is never wasted in this house–and there’s nothing better than kimchi fried rice to use it up. I used the kimchi I made this past fall (recipe here) now that it’s been properly fermented and pickled. You can use any meat you like, …
Taco rice (takoraisu) is another example of a yoshoku dish, a Japanese western style meal that gained popularity and the country made it their own. It was invented in the 1960’s by a Japanese chef who enjoyed tacos. I usually make this when we have leftovers …
I finished the rest of my first jar of Abokichi’s Chili Miso Oil so I broke out the SPICY Chili Miso Oil for today’s lunch (but I’m pretty sure you can also do this recipe with their Curry Miso Oil too.) I like hummus because it makes for a wonderfully light lunch, or smeared on toast to pair with eggs for breakfast, and incorporating this condiment in place of Tahini puts a wonderful spin on it. My husband and I both like it spicy, so this was perfect. If you prefer it not spicy, then their regular Chili Miso Oil only packs a little heat.
This recipe is also, incidentally, vegan.
Ingredients
Saturday February 17th, 2018 I’ve been wanting to raise quail for a while, especially for quail eggs for my bento. I am on the fence about raising them for meat, but will probably have to process the males when the time comes. In any case, …
This is a recipe I’ve been wanting to do for a while–I had convenience store purin when we were in Japan and they’re so addictively delicious. Smooth and creamy, and not as rich as flan, it makes for the perfect dessert, portioned out in little …
I reserved the heart and liver of the two muscovy ducks that we processed, because I am a fiend of offal and really wanted to make a pate. Due to the muscovy’s large size, foie gras de canard (duck fatty liver) is usually made from the livers of moulards–a sterile hybrid between a muscovy duck and a mallard derived duck like the peking. The peking duck has the fat content, while the lean muscovy duck brings its size into the new mix of genes.
My muscovies free range, which means that they’re even lower in fat than the ones that live the entirety of their lives in a box (click here to read about the pros and cons of keeping muscovies). The tender liver, lacking much fat, is closer to that of a chicken’s, with the delicate flavor of duck that I so love.
I used an egg to stretch the pate and give it a smoother texture, so I suppose this is like a hybrid between chopped liver and pate. I capped it with a layer of butter, so that it will keep for longer and the pate won’t oxidize and dry out from coming into contact with air.
It came out beautifully, the duck hearts were surprisingly tender, and I ended up with two adorable little ramakins of it. I didn’t have any rendered duck fat, but I would have used some of that in place of part of the butter for a deeper duck flavor. Muscovy has a sweetness to it that I find quite delicious. Serve with melba toast or sliced French bread.
Ingredients
1. Boil an egg, peel and put to the side.
2. In a pan, place 1 tablespoon of butter and sautee shallots over medium heat until fragrant. Add pinch of thyme, salt, and pepper.
3. Cook liver and hearts until just done (overcooking will lead to toughness) and add 1 tablespoon of sherry or bourbon to the pan. Immediately remove from heat.
4. Place egg and all the contents of the pan into a food processor. Add two tablespoons of cold butter (or 1 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of rendered duck fat). Process until desired consistency.
5. Place pate into ramakins. Melt remaining tablespoon of butter and pour over the pate. Refrigerate until butter cap is set.
This might be a bit beyond some modern western palettes (so if you’re squeamish, I suggest you stop reading now. You have been warned!) but duck blood and pig’s blood is a part of traditional Chinese and Taiwanese cuisine. Blood cake is a mixture of …
We waited another 2 days before resolving to give our eggshell sprout heads a haircut–follow this link if you want to read about this super fun craft. By then I already had the sandwich lined up–a traditional egg and cress sandwich that’s popular during English …
This is an easy sweets recipe from my childhood in Taiwan–Bing Tang Hu Lu. Of the memories that I could see in my mind’s eye, my dad coming home with a skewer of hawberry tang hu lu sticks is one of the most vivid of the time we spent in my parents hometown of Taipei.
With Valentines Day and Chinese New Years just around the corner, I wanted to share this treat with my own kids who have never visited Taiwan before. I went back once in 2010, with one of my best friends (her dad lives in Taipei) and every night when we went to visit the night market, I’d walk in and buy a strawberry one, and buy another when when we’d leave to head home.
Sometimes, because I live a bit farther from the rest of my family (and they travel to Central America a lot), I feel a little disconnected from my Chinese heritage. But moments like these, making traditional things for my kids to eat and watching them enjoy it with all the wonder little children can muster, I can’t help but imagine that my sister and I must have been just like them when we were their age, even half the world away.
Ingredients
When I was little, I had this big book of arts and crafts suitable for kids and one of the things I always wanted to do was sprouts growing in an empty egg shell and then draw faces on them so that when the seeds …