mini jam crostata

I first saw this recipe on Ivonne's blog, Cream Puffs in Venice, printed it out and set it aside to try at a later date. Well, I finally got the ingredients together and it is also finally cooler to be baking, so I decided to try it.

The fruit jam that I used was a mixed berry made by an Austrian company called D'arbo, which I found at an up-scale supermarket in the neighborhood.

I think it is also yuzu season here. Yuzu is a citron and sometimes looks like a wrinkly orange. I zested this and put it into my dough.

NOTES: I wasn't sure as to when to use the zest, so I put it into the dough. I also cut this recipe in half because there is only the two of us. This recipe is very easy. I split the dough in half and pressed it into two ramekins--one serving, being 1/2 a ramekin. Since I didn't have walnuts, I topped the crostata with macadamia nuts.

The lemony crust, with semi-sweet jam, matched with the mac nuts and was delicious with some Indonesian Java tea.

easy dinners

I don't know about you, but I like to make meals as painless as possible. That means not too much fuss or steps to follow...

Last night's dinner was a keema-like curry. I couldn't find a recipe that I liked, so I took the type of spices that were in several recipes and came up with this.

150g ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
celery leaves, diced
1 clove garlic
1 tsp. ginger, ground
1 tsp. coriander
1 tsp. cumin
4 grinds pepper
1/2 tsp. tumeric
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/2 tsp. curry powder
1/8 tsp. clove
1 tsp. garam masala
1 can of diced tomatoes

Brown onions, celery leaves and beef. Add spices and then can of diced tomatoes. When everything is heated through, serve on rice or with naan.

NOTES: No matter what curry I make, I always put in a can of diced tomatoes, I saw this technique on a television show here and it has stuck with me ever since. I served this with my rice mixture of genmai (brown rice), haigamai (half-polished rice) and multi-grains. I also thinly sliced carrots, zucchini and potato and baked them in the oven with olive oil, pepper and salt to make my own chips. It doesn't start off too spicy, but has a kick towards the middle.

The other night's dinner was a simple stir-fry. Since I had all these veggies and some roast pork, I cut everything up, and while it was sweating, I added some pepper and added 2 teaspoons of hoisin sauce at the end.

Serve with rice.

NOTES: the hoisin flavor can be strong so don't use too much, the sauce kind of thinned out with the water that came out of the veggies while cooking, which balanced everything out.

furikake

In Japan and Hawaii, we sometimes eat our rice with furikake. Traditionally, furikake are seasoned, dried condiments such as goma (sesame seeds), katsuo bushi (dried shaved bonito), nori (dried seaweed), aonori (dried green seaweed). Recently though, there have been flavored furikake such as kimchee (korean pickles), tamago (egg) and ebi-mayo (shrimp with mayonnaise).

Today, I saw this katsuo furikake in the supermarket and it looked so fresh and kind of fluffy! I had to get it.

It was so good on rice.

comforts of home

On a cold, blustery day, nothing beats mom's cookies.

She would make them for our birthday party goodie bags, Christmas give-aways and exchanges, and recently for church bazaars.

Our dining room area would look like a factory with baking racks on the dining room table and cookie sheets anywhere they could be placed--on chairs, other tables....Of course, when she made her spritz cookies, we would have to help put the sprinkles on them. (At the time, I rebeled helping, but now I look back and am glad to have such nice baking memories with her.)

She had the "gun" like gadget that pressed out her spritz cookies, which I could never get the right pressure to get them out--she had the special touch.

Earlier this year, we celebrated my grandmother's birthday, which I posted about here, I hand carried these cookies back to Japan and put them into my freezer.

Recently, I took a couple out for us to eat, warmed them up in a low heat oven, put some mac nut ice cream on the side and voila! comforts of home!

foodie kind of weekend

It has been raining and windy the past couple of days. Yesterday Satoshi had to work, since he was out of the house, I asked him to bring us home some dessert. Here's what he brought home from a shop that specializes in seasonal fruits, Shinjuku Takano.

A tart with a custard cream-like filling and fig, chestnut, asian pear and persimmon on top.

Mont Blanc, a yellow cake bottom with chestnut cream piping and nuts all around.

A pannecotta with Australian mango diced up top.

And a whole persimmon filled with a custard cream.


Today's breakfast was masala chai, scones and an omlette with sage, basil and parsley in it.

I had seen this post on Jasmine's blog, Confessions of a Cardamom Addict, earlier this year for Masala Chai. Her recipe calls for the spices to be whole then lightly crushed. I only had these spices in the ground form, so I had to ad-lib a bit...

Masala Chai adapted from Jasmine's recipe : serves 2
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 star anise
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
2 grinds fresh black pepper
2 scoops of Darjeeling tea
3 g sugar (1 sugar cube)

Lightly crush star anise and put all the spices and tea into a disposable tea bag.
Add 1 cup of water and bring to a boil, add the tea bag and allow to steep to desired strength.
Add milk and sugar.
Strain through a fine sieve.

Enjoy!

NOTES: I really enjoyed this chai! Not sweet like the ones served at Starbucks and LOTS of flavor! Gosh, I wonder how it would be if I actually crushed my own spices...


Tonight's dinner was pizza. I had wanted to make a better crust since the last time--it was quite bready. I used the recipe on the yeast packet box, and found a recipe for the topping in a book my brother gave me called "The Essential Baking Cookbook". The topping is a potato, onion, capers and cheese pizza, no sauce, just olive oil.

NOTES: I pricked and pre-baked the crust, and it still poofed up a bit, I put the topping on and baked it for 20 minutes. The recipe called for goat cheese, but I couldn't find any, so I used camembert. It was still a bit bready, so I'll have to figure out if I should cut the amount of dough used for the pizza. Other than that, it was delicious!

Hope you have a great week!

odds & ends

A new blog friend, Nate, of HwnPakeOkinawa, is a newcomer to blogging. He emailed me to give him advice on starting a blog. Living in Okinawa, he often craves foods from home (Hawaii) and found that the only way to get them, would be to make them. If you are from Hawaii or interested in Hawaii, you gotta check out his blog, "ono" (delicious) stuff on it. UPDATE: the author passed away and this blog is no longer public.

Last year, I wrote about this Japanese sweets shop that is in our neighborhood, Korakudo, which I posted about here. Well, it is nama-choco daifuku season and also kuri daifuku (chestnut with a soft rice cake around it and sweet bean paste). Today, I wanted to get some kuri daifuku, but they were out, so I got their inaka manju with kuri inside (steamed bean cake with chestnut inside) instead. This was really good, hardly any outer rice cake, lots of sweet bean paste and a huge chestnut in the middle.

Since finding my precious bottle of hoisin sauce, which I posted about here, I decided to make another favorite of mine, the dressing for Chinese chicken salad. I often make another version which doesn't call for hoisin sauce and usually use it for green salads without the chicken topping.

Tonight's dinner was gyoza (pot stickers), nira (chive) gyoza and ebi (shrimp) gyoza (which I bought), with a spicy dipping sauce made from shoyu (soy sauce), vinegar and rai-yu (chinese chili oil), a salad with the chinese salad dressing, a mixture of genmai (brown rice) and haigamai (partially polished brown rice) and rakkyo (pickled shallots).

Chinese Salad Sauce: from "Recipes Please..."
4 tablespoons catsup
2 tablespoons vinegar
4 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons sesame seed oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon Ajinomoto
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
Dash of pepper

1. Boil all ingredients together.
2. Cool and refrigerate

Serving suggestion: use any type of veggies: lettuce, cucumber, cabbage, watercress. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seed. Garnish with meats such as char siu(Chinese roast pork), shredded chicken or even crushed won ton chips. Can be served as a main dish.

NOTES: I left out one ingredient from the recipe, Ajinomoto. Ajinomoto is MSG (monosodium glutamate).

Also, since I don't like to fry too much--makes the kitchen too messy and stinky, I found this chip that tastes really close to won ton chips called Kirazu Age or fried okara. Kirazu is another name for Okara and is also known as Unohana--this is the lees that form when making tofu (soy bean curd).

I smashed up the okara chips and sprinkled them onto my salad. You can also make your own won ton chips by frying up the won ton wrappers--Just slice the wrappers to the width of chip that you want, and deep fry until golden brown.

Enjoy the weekend!

bead stitch

Today was bead stitch class. I've been working on a needle case using the peyote stitch and finished it today...gosh, it was a toughie!

The wooden cap is quite tight--so you don't lose your needles, but this makes the beaded cover fall off, which makes it VERY hard to put back on....

3 weeks until the next class...onto the next project...