covering all sorts of cravings

Most times whenever I make something, I get greedy and want to be able to cover all sorts of cravings all at once.

Like making this garlic cheese boule, I also wanted to try "Korean garlic bread"

According to what I've seen online since I’d never tried it before, "korean garlic bread" has a sweet cream cheese filling in it.

So, I bought a boule, sliced it to make it a "pull apart", stuffed it with 2 cloves minced garlic, some butter (couple of dabs), some olive oil (1 tablespoon) and shredded cheese (about 50 grams).

My bread knife sucks, so it was hard to cut this boule without smooshing it.

I baked it in a 350F (180C) oven for 30 minutes covered, then took the foil off and toasted it for 5 minutes.

Online I also saw how someone blended cottage cheese with some sugar and lemon to make a "sweetened cream cheese".

I thought this was interesting plus you can apparently get more protein from this concoction than actual cream cheese...

So I blended cottage cheese (200 grams) with 2 tablespoons sugar, zest of 1/2 a lemon and the juice.

It was my first time buying cottage cheese in Japan. 

I had envisioned the cottage cheese to be more liquidy when I opened it, but it wasn't, so when I tried to blend it, it took a while and didn't get smooth like cream cheese.

I think I need to add a little milk next time.

Instead of putting the sweet cream cheese into the garlic bread, we just used it as a spread while eating the garlic bread.

Overall though, Satoshi loved this, it was definitely worth trying.

I'll make this again adding a little more shredded cheese next time.

iburi gakko cream cheese

Remember that dip we had at Donpachi in Sendai?

Well, I found the tsukemono, Iburi Gakko (smoked pickles in Akita dialect).

Smoked Daikon, a type of pickle from Akita Prefecture.

I used about a 2-inch sized piece and chopped it up.

Then mixed with some cream cheese.

No real recipe.

I also found those Levain crackers, the ones that are made in Japan.

NOTES: This is great on crackers, but I am thinking it might be nice put in with a tuna sandwich too.

I'm making this again.

cake pops

Cake pops...they are all over the web.

I've tried them here, and here.

My blog friend, Genki also documented her adventures making them, here.

It was a rainy day on Sunday, so since I was stuck indoors, I decided to try my hand at making them.

I took the easy way out and bought 2 slices of cake instead of making a whole cake. The type of cake I used is called castella, a moist eggy cake that originated in Portugal and is a famous food item in Nagasaki.

Instead of a can of frosting, I used some cream cheese and powdered sugar.

Kat's castella cake pops : makes about 7

2 thick slices castella
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
54 grams cream cheese
1/2 tablespoon milk

Chocolate to coat:
1/2 a bar Lindt Bittersweet chocolate (49%)
2 handfuls 60% Ghiradelli chocolate chips

Mix the first 4 ingredients together and "eyeball" out 7 balls.
Chill.

Heat chocolate over double boiler.
Dip ball into chocolate, then drizzle chocolate in circular motion around the ball.
Decorate with your favorite sprinkles.

NOTES: There was supposed to be 7 but when I tried dipping the first ball into the chocolate on a chopstick (like a true cake pop) it totally disintergrated and HAD to be fished out and eaten right away.

So, I changed my method and dipped the balls into the chocolate, placed them onto parchment paper then drizzled the chocolate over the top.

They weren't overly sweet and Satoshi liked them too.

Would I make these again? probably not, too much of a p.i.t.a. I am glad I tried making them though.

red velvet cupcakes

For Satoshi's birthday yesterday, I made red velvet cupcakes using half of this recipe for the cake and half of this recipe for the frosting.

I subbed the sour cream with plain yogurt.

Actually with the butter shortage still going on here, making this cake used quite a bit of butter (half a box), but this was so worth it. The cake was moist and the frosting...yum!

Happy Birthday Satoshi!

kiri

Ever since the butter shortage, I've switched to cream cheese for my morning toast.

At the supermarket, 6 slices of cream cheese are about 298 yen (about US$2.98) or 49.6 yen per pat. The other week while shopping at the gourmet supermarket, they had a 10 pack for 375 yen (about US$3.75) or about 37.5 yen per pat...I picked up two boxes.

I've also found a good wheat bread made by Takaki bakery. It is there "ishigama" (stone oven) line. There are only 4 slices in a bag for 273 yen (about US$2.73) (in Japan, most breads do not have more than 6 slices).

With the shortage of butter, most bakeries have turned to using margarine or shortening, but they don't use margarine or shortening to make this bread, they use olive oil.

saturday

As I told Lori in the comments from a previous post, we eat out mostly on weekends. This is an agreement that Satoshi and I have had from before we were married. The agreement is that on weekends, I don't cook...so I have "the weekend off". My half of the agreement is that Satoshi is allowed to sleep until 9:00 a.m. (Though with our holo-holo (galavanting) schedule, usually he has to wake up earlier.)

Anyway, last Saturday was a beautiful day.

Breakfast was really simple, yomogi (mugwort) toast, with adzuki cream cheese and a strawberry-banana flax seed smoothie.

Half a banana, 5 strawberries, 1/2 a teaspoon of ground flax seed and 1/2 a cup of milk. Whiz in food processor, makes 1 serving. Add more milk if too thick.

After breakfast, we walked to Suigetsu Park. Most of the cherry blossoms were billowing to the ground. Seeing the ground all pink is just as beautiful as seeing the blossoms on the trees.

We also visited Sonpachiyakujin, we've visited this temple before and I've written about it here. The archway at the entrance seems to be eroding and starting to lean. Still, it was beautiful with the cherry blossoms.

From Sonpachiyakujin, we walked to Satsukiyama Park then to Kawanishi. Lunch was at a restaurant called Corin. There was a line, so we waited for a table.

I ordered the daily lunch special--fried shrimp and Chinese roast pork (950 yen--about US$9.50). This came with ratatouille, a salad and "clam chowder". (Actually it was clam flavored soup, nothing chowder-y or clammy about it...)

Satoshi had the jumbo fried shrimp (1600 yen--about US$16). Ordering this, he was told he'd have to wait about 20 minutes for them to cook it. Boy, were they HUGE!

We both added dessert--ice cream (each 250 yen about US$2.50).

Mine was honey & walnut, Satoshi's was matcha (green tea).

After lunch, we walked to Hibarigaoka-Hanayashiki through a little park near the tracks. Most of the cherry blossoms were billowing off the trees, but it was still nice to be out and about.

foodie kind of weekend

On Saturday, we got together with my host family, their children and their children's children. I've written about my host-mom and a little about my host family here. With everyone's busy schedules, we were finally able to get together. Boy was it loud! 4 kids running around, mostly laughing and sometimes crying. My host-mom, who loves to cook, cooked up a storm! We had lots of good food and though it was hard for the adults to sit and chat because of all the running around, we still had a nice time.

Here's a little peek at the goodies we received from my host-brother, host-sister & host-mom.

From my host-brother--A moist cake called kuromame king made by Morinaka. Inside is a whole chestnut and the top are plump sweetened black beans. The cake is similar to a moist pound cake. This cake won the Monde selection for 2007. Monde selection is a Belgian award given to foods and beverages with International quality around the world. The Japanese really line up for stuff like this.

From my host-sister--Assorted cookies from Alsace. These cookies were very crisp and delicious.

From my host-mom--an assortment of sweets from Konigs Krone. These cakes were very moist and not too sweet.

Sunday was spent watching a recently released movie and just hanging out. I also picked some of our strawberries they are a little bit bigger than the first time and still very sweet.

For part of our dinner, I roasted 2 cloves of garlic then whizzed them in the food processor, added about 200g of cream cheese, some parsley and pepper. It tasted really good on Ritz crackers and toasted French bread.

This cup was so cute, it was the utensil and napkin holder at a little cafe we had breakfast at before the movie. When you turned it around it had "Bon Jour, cava?" written on it which I think meant "Good day, how are you?"

Hope you have a nice week.

bagels (part 4)

My student Yoshimi gave me a little tub of cream cheese at our lesson on Wednesday. (Thank you!) With my newly acquired cream cheese I wanted bagels for breakfast so after our lesson, I went to a bagel shop nearby, but to my disappointment, they were closed.

Since I couldn't buy bagels, I made bagels yesterday. I previously tried making bagels and have posted my adventures here, here and here. This time, the bagels came out great except for it sticking to the parchment paper that I had put them on while baking.

Here is the translated recipe if you'd like to try making them.

From "Bagel & Bagel Book 1" makes 4 bagels.

For bagels:
250g flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt
15g sugar
140ml water

For kettling:
2 liters water
2 tablespoon honey

Bagels:
Add the flour and make a well. Add the rest of the dry ingredients into the well. Add the water (in winter, you may need to use warm water).
Knead the dough for 15 minutes.
Divide the dough into 4 (about 100g) pieces
Make into balls and let rest under a dampened cloth for 10 minutes
Get a pan that you can rest another pan into
Form your bagels by rolling them between your palms and the board--cylindrically. Form a ring and overlap the ends a bit and pinch to seal--it should look like a bagel.
Sprinkle some flour and put your finished bagels into the smaller pan and then fill the bigger pan with hot water (30-40C (86-104F)) and cover with a dampened towel for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes kettle bagels as follows.

Kettling:
Add honey to water, bring to a boil
Put bagels in and cook on each side for 1 minute.
Wipe off and place on a baking sheet.
Bake at 190C(375F) for 15 minutes.

Also in this book are recipes for different kinds of cream cheeses. I usually like to mix a jam like blueberry jam into cream cheese, but the two recipes that intrigued me were a bit different and Japanese-y: matcha & azuki.

Here are the recipes for each:
Matcha (green tea) cream cheese
55g cream cheese
5g honey
1/2 teaspoon matcha (green tea)powder

Azuki (adzuki bean) cream cheese
35g cream cheese
25g sweet azuki bean paste (smooth or chunky)

If your cream cheese is a bit stiff, leave it out for a couple of minutes before mixing. Mix each well and slather on your bagels!

NOTES: Since I was following this recipe given in the book and everything was listed by weight, I used a scale to measure everything out. I think I needed to dry the bagels better before putting them onto the parchment paper.

The honey mixed in with the cream cheese and green tea balance the bitterness from the green tea and tartness from the cream cheese. And the pre-sweetened azuki paste mixed in with the tart cream cheese are a great match. Both spreads are great on bagels and they aren't too sweet.

black bottom cupcakes

Since I had some cream cheese leftover, I wanted to find a recipe to use it up.

I found a rather simple recipe on Leite's Culinaria, called Black-Bottom Cupcakes by David Lebovitz.

Here is the recipe: Black-Bottom Cupcakes from David Lebovitz' book, "The Great Book of Chocolate". Makes 12 cupcakes.

For the filling:
8 oz. cream cheese, regular or reduced fat, at room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg at room temperature
2 oz. bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

For the cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
5 tablespoons natural unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup unflavored vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Method:
Make the filling:
1. Beat together the cream cheese, granulated sugar and egg until smooth. Stir in the chopped chocolate pieces. Set aside.

Make the cupcakes:
1. Adjust the rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350F (175C). Butter a 12-cup muffin tin or line the tin with paper muffin cups.

2. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together the water, oil, vinegar and vanilla.

3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients, stirring until just smooth. Stir any longer and you will over mix the batter and end up with less-than-tender cupcakes.

4. Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Spoon a few tablespoons of the filling into the center of each cupcake, dividing the filling evenly. This will fill the cups almost completely, which is fine.

5. Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown and the cupcakes feel springy when gently pressed. These moist treats will keep well unrefrigerated for 2 to 3 days if stored in an airtight container.

Notes: I don't think I had 8 oz. of cream cheese because my filling was very liquidy--either that or because it had been in the freezer, maybe the consistency changed after defrosting. Anyway, I ended up with a marble-y top, not the cream cheese filling in the center.

Another thing that I made a mistake with was the cocoa powder.
The only one I could find was a dutch processed one, Droste. (the nun/nurse on the package is quite scary looking...)

For the coarsely chopped chocolate, I used Dagoba New Moon bar which was a 74% cacao and because it was exactly 2 oz.

Also, I baked the cupcakes for about 30 minutes.

Still, the cupcakes came out moist and delicious! I'll definitely have to try this recipe again!