i hope you eat good food, grow beautiful things, and have more love than you know what to do with.
Disclaimer: The following post contains accounts of raising and processing poultry for food. If that makes you uncomfortable, please navigate away from this page! We had a quail processing day (guide to raising quail) which is always a somewhat somber and work heavy day. A …
Yes yes, this dish is normally done with chicken or fish, but I’ve been experimenting with vegetables and seafood to delicious success. Nanbanzuke is the Japanese version of escabeche, a Spanish and Portuguese dish of cooked fish marinated in a spiced vinegar sauce which was …
My kids love potatoes in most, if not all forms—so warm, crispy Japanese potato croquettes disappear quickly in this house. It’s pretty easy to make with a rice cooker that can steam the potatoes, and also easy to jazz up by mixing in different things: hotdog, ham, chorizo, shrimp, imitation crab, ground beef, chives, jalapeno, and cheese are just some of the many ways you can make these deep fried delights special. I prefer steaming the potatoes so it’s not too mushy or watery.
You can also use different sauces on them—curry, tonkatsu, Worcestershire, gravy, ketchup, mayonnaise, tartar sauce, mustard etc. all to deadly effect. They also easily reheat (especially if you have an air fryer.)
Well that’s a mouthful… quite literally! Today is Chinese New Years Eve and since my parents and sister are in Costa Rica, I won’t have as much to do (nor as much to eat)—so I decided to treat us and make a quilt bento. I …
I love both pupusas and arepas (but must confess I didn’t really know the difference until recently)–they’re both corn cakes made from corn flour, but pupusas are stuffed before they are grilled, while arepas are stuffed after. They also use different flours, with pupusas using …
Persimmons are a fun fruit to grow, the trees get pretty big and loaded with bright orange fruits and remain productive for decades. In the Fall when they drop their leaves, the fruits stay on, looking like bizarre Christmas ornaments against the bare branches.
There’s two types of persimmons: astringent and non-astringent. Astringency is that feeling when you bite into a banana peel and your mouth suddenly goes dry. The astringent type, like Hachiya, are often elongated and pointed and need to be fully ripened (bletted) before it turns soft, sweet, juicy, and syrupy. Usually we leave it out on the porch or outside a window until it ripens, sometimes going through a frost or two. I grow the astringent type (although I’m now at a new location and started over with another tree—they are sensitive to transplant but once established, super hardy.)
Fuyu persimmons on the other hand are non-astringent and can be eaten as is, crispy and juicy and sweet. Both types can be dried although Hachiya are more commonly used. They are called shìbǐng (柿餅) in Chinese, hoshigaki (干し柿) in Japanese, and gotgam (곶감) in Korean
In order to do so, normally you’d skin them, string them up by the stems (I use butchers twine), and hang them in the eaves of the house during winter, squeezing them every day as you pass by to make sure they turn out tender. When dried, they’re like dates, and can be used much in the same way. Depending on how dry it is where you are, it can take between 3-6 weeks to fully dry them. Due to their high sugar content, they aren’t very likely to go bad unless you live in a very humid area.
If you don’t have eaves upon which to hang them (I don’t), a clothes drying rack in the garage or kitchen works too! Serve it with tea on a chilly afternoon, or diced and mixed into rice to make a sweet and savory rice ball.
A single lobster goes through many iterations in my household, until every last drop of flavor gets extracted from all its parts—lobster bisque being the last stop on that train. The first of which was ganjang lobster (soy marinated tail meat and tomalley, raw), next …
Not to brag or anything but I do make a mean lobster salad, lightly dressed with mayo, with herbs from the garden, a hint of Old Bay, and some salt cured lemon for when I’m having that hankering for a lobster roll. It’s cheaper than …
Obligatory disclaimer that there is a risk of eating food raw, especially seafood. Proceed at your own risk. Also included is the disclaimer for safely eating the tomalley (cooked or raw) of crustaceans, also proceed at your own risk.
I have been craving ganjang gejang, which is a Korean dish of raw crabs marinated in soy sauce. It’s often nicknamed the “Rice Thief” because it’s so delicious it can make a whole bowl of rice disappear. Unfortunately, female blue claws are hard to come by right now, and for whatever reason I have been unable to find any. I did see a tub… albeit empty, at the Asian supermarket which had a whopping price tag of $36 per dozen on it.
In the end, I decided to forego looking for more, and turned my attention to something that is more readily available where I am: lobsters.
Lobster can be done in the same way (and there are a few videos out there showing people eating it), but it’s not as popular. Shrimp is also a popular option too, but I’d have to find live head on shrimp to guarantee freshness, and that’s possibly even more difficult to source. Raw abalone may be next on my list, since that can be found at the Korean grocery store.
In any case, I ferreted home a lobster from my local fish store and stuck it in the freezer while I made the marinade. Choose one that’s smaller, a pound or so, so that it doesn’t take too long to marinate. Lobster is far easier to clean than crab—give it a good scrub and simply cut the membrane behind the head, lift (but without separating) the head shell and remove the lungs from the sides. Cut an opening in the membrane between the claw joints to allow the marinade to penetrate the claw shell. Be careful not to lose the fatty tomalley (or roe, if you are so lucky to find a lobster with it)!
After a minimum of 24 hours, you can remove the tail meat, slice thin, pour a bit more of the marinade on, garnish with the marinated tomalley, spring onion, sesame seed, sliced peppers, a drizzle of sesame oil, and eat with a bowl of hot white rice.
Normally “gua bao” is made with melt in your mouth fatty braised pork, with cilantro and crushed peanuts for traditional Taiwanese fare. That will probably be a recipe for another day. Instead, this is a simple roasted pork belly, spiced and done in the air …