bambucha

Rainy season started Wednesday and it rained all.day.long.

Tuesday night though, we had this...globe zucchini stuffed with pearl barley, quinoa, parmesan and a tomato meat sauce.

I had seen others cooking with this type of zucchini online but this was my first time to actually find it at the market and try cooking with this.

I wasn't too sure if the ones I found were large or small...but think it was quite large.

This year, we sure have had been lucky with bambucha (huge) produce...here, here and here.

I hope to come across these again at the market...

Have you cooked with this type of zucchini before? How did you cook them?

deconstructed lettuce cups

Satoshi and I really like minced pork with lettuce cups. It was an appetizer we used to order at a bar we used to often go to in Hawaii. (Ryan's Bar & Grill, I wonder if it is still on the menu?)

Last year, after finding hoisin sauce here, I made this using minced chicken and posted about it here.

Since I had some water chestnuts left over from our foodie staff parties, I decided to make minced pork with lettuce cups.

I was a bit disappointed with the lettuce though, they were so puny! (Must be due to the weird weather that has been occurring around Japan.) So instead of using the leaves as cups, I tore them up and made it into a warm salad of sorts.

It still hit the spot.