Apple Pie as Something Good Approaches

Well, I finally got around to taking a photo and actually posting it! Apple Pie! I have to admit I ate most of it myself...but I think such allowances are necessary when pregnant. Eating seems to have become a full time job now, as I am always hungry! That's a wonderful change of pace from the spring, when I couldn't even look at food! Ah, hormones.

The pie uses Red Delicious apples with the skin left on for fiber and colour. The result is that the filling has a pretty rose hue. I used cornstarch as a thickener because I eventually had to freeze some leftovers. If you use flour as a thickener and then freeze the pie, the results will be watery when defrosted. Cornstarch on the other hand, does not lose its thickening power after being frozen. Just something to keep in mind. I did cheat a little, as the crust is store bought. ^_^; I am really craving Banana Cream Pie now, so we shall see how long it takes me to make it.

I'm back! Sort of...

After being out of commission for sometime, I am slowly getting back into the kitchen. As my previous posts implied, I am pregnant with our first baby (a boy!). Now that I am almost at the end of the second trimester, I am crawling back into the kitchen and actually cooking food again. I was quite sick for the first 5 and a half months.
I have cooked some things, but have not had the energy to take photos (that and the camera needs a battery). Last night I made simmered pork ribs which was a real treat. I have taken a dislike to rice since I've been pregnant, which is hard when your primary food is Japanese! I have been told it is a common and temporary aversion. Let's just hope so!!!
So in short, I am trying to put something together, but it may be less frequently for now. By the way, I am due in November and it can't come soon enough! ^_^

Hiatus

Though I will be updating in the future, this blog is temporarily on hiatus due to the fact I cannot stand to be around food right now. Can't smell it, can't cook it and have trouble eating it. Until this phase passes, I likely won't be updating. I figure in a month or so I should be back. Thanks for waiting! ^_^

Yaki soba

Yakisoba is Japanese fried noodles. However, it doesn't actually use soba noodles (buckwheat). Yakisoba uses, well, Yakisoba noodles. My husband prepared this dish, seeing as he is going to be doing a lot more cooking in the coming months. I guess he is practicing for those days when I am utterly unable to go near food, for reasons I am not quite ready to share. In Japan, Yakisoba is kind of 'fast food' but if you break it down, it is quite healthly. Lean pork is used, as well as cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts. The sauce is either Bulldog brand or a generic yakisoba sauce that comes bottled. The garnishes are powdered seaweed and pickled ginger. It is absolutely delicious! To make things easy, you can purchase yakisoba kits at asian grocery stores. It comes with both the noodles and sauce (sometimes in powdered form). Very easy! ^_^

Wafuu Pasta

The Japanese often take Western dishes and make them their own. This type of cooking is known as 'Wafuu'. Examples of wafuu include Curry Raisu, Hayashi Raisu, Omu-raisu and Hamburger Steak among others. One of the most popular types of wafuu though, is Japanese style spaghetti. Ingredients most westerners would never even dream of adding to pasta become gourmet fair in Japan. For instance, a very popular spaghetti dish mixes spicy pickled cod roe and mayonnaise. Called 'mentaiko' is is my husband's favourite spaghetti dish and it is actually delicious. Some of the more daring recipes for spaghetti use squid's ink, resulting in, you guessed it, black spaghetti.

My above pictured dish was not quite so daring as squid's ink. I have mixed chicken thigh, shimeji mushrooms, shiitake, and green onions with spaghetti. It is garnished with sesame seeds and nori. The base flavour is 'mentsuyu' which is a soup mix for soba noodles. I added just a touch of mentsuyu because the flavours of the mushrooms and chicken are the real stars of this dish. The result was something wonderful that I hadn't tasted since I ate a Saizeriya restaurant in Japan. Oishi! ^_^

Pork three ways

Nimono in Japanese simply means 'simmered dish'. It is a very popular and flavourful method of cooking, where ingredients are simmered in a small amount of broth with various seasonings. Throughout the course of cooking, the broth is reduced to almost nothing and the ingredients absorb the flavour. Often a drop lid is used to preserve the umami (deliciousness).

Pictured above is pork simmered with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, garlic and onions. The broth is a standard Japanese flavour combination of dashi, sugar, mirin, sake and soy sauce. The tofu is on the bottom so you can't really see it... The orange powder on top is called 'shichimi togarashi' or seven flavour chili pepper. It is a very popular condiment in Japan. Obviously it contains seven different ingredients, the main one being ground chili pepper. Added to this is usually mandarin orange peel, black sesame, poppy seed, hemp seed, nori and sansho (another type of pepper). Other recipes may use yuzu peel, rapeseed, shiso and ginger. It is quite powerful and only a little is needed for flavour.

This dish is pork simmered with ume boshi (pickled plum), ginger, garlic, onion and carrot. The broth is the standard Japanese mix, but added to this is rice vinegar and of course the ume boshi. The pink pickled plum gives the pork a distinct pink hue. It also preserves the meat and makes it perfect for leftover lunches. This recipe was originally intended for fish nimono, but it works just as well with pork or chicken.

Here we have pork stir fry with enoki mushrooms, carrot and green onion. It has been lightly flavoured with shiso ponzu sauce. The enoki mushrooms stay rather crisp and chewy, making for an interesting texture. If you can find some, I highly recommend trying them in soup or a stir fry. If you enjoy nabe hot pot, enoki goes well in there too.

Shimeji Mushroom and Chicken Rice

A really easy one-pot meal in Japan is mixed rice. That is, rice cooked with seasonings and other (usually seasonal) ingredients. For example, chestnut mixed rice is popular in the autumn because chestnuts are most plentiful during that time. The mixed rice version I made, contains primarily shimeji mushrooms and chicken thigh. There is however, a bit of carrot and fried tofu in there as well. The garnishes are sesame seeds and nori seaweed. Mixed rice can be made with any type of meat or fish, as well as any type of mushroom and almost any type of vegetable. The only seasonings I used were black pepper, a dash of soy sauce, a dash of mirin and a pinch of sugar. The ingredients are really the main flavours.

First I washed the rice (1 cup) and set it soaking in water with the seasonings. In a pan I fried the chicken (cut into tiny pieces, two thighs), the mushrooms (one packet), carrot (1) and deep fried tofu (just two squares). I tossed on some pepper and just a slight dash of soy sauce. When it was fully cooked, I placed it on top of my rice in the rice cooker. Then... ON. That's it! So simple! When the cooker is finished, the rice and ingredients simply need to be gently mixed.

There was a delightful restaurant in Niigata that my husband and I often went to which served only mixed rice. I brought my parents and brothers there for supper one evening when they came to visit. There were so many different kinds of mixed rice, plus the seasonal specialities. One of my favourites was the chestnut and mushroom rice. Fantastic! If you were feeling wealthy, you could order the matsutake mushroom rice. Matsutake mushrooms are highly prized and super expensive, but quite possibly the most delicious mushrooms on the planet! A soup made of matsutake mushrooms is likely what they serve in heaven. ^_^

Kabocha, the Japanese Pumpkin

In Japan it is rare to find what we would think of as a pumpkin. The giant orange vegetable used for Halloween is usually only found in Tokyo around October, sold in a few large stores as a gimmick--the Japanese don't use this pumpkin for cooking. Canned pumpkin is also rare and naturally, so is pumpkin pie. However, there is a species of pumpkin that is immensely popular (especially with the ladies), called 'kabocha'. The very sturdy outer shell is green (even when ripe) and the inside contains a very dense orange flesh with a small amount of pulp. Kabocha is naturally sweet and creamy when cooked. It is not watery at all and has the consistancy of mashed potatoes. Do not compare it to a yam...the texture is much creamier.

The Japanese like to barbeque thin slices of kabocha or use it for tempura. Another popular method of serving this pumpkin is to cube it and simmer it in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar and mirin. Occasionally a cream soup is made from kabocha, which is the method I am demonstrating today. I used the same soup base as I do for cream corn soup--a roux made of butter, milk and chicken stock. The cooked and blended kabocha is added near the end of cooking time, as well as sugar to taste (you don't need much!). This soup is delicious and creamy due to the vegetable itself. As a bonus it is a super source of Vitamin A. If you can find one at your asian grocery shop, I highly recommend it--it's a sure thing the ladies will like it! ^_^

My splurge and my sacrifice

My husband and I do not often buy ourselves treats as a general rule. Money being what it is, we spend it on necessities--rice, milk, eggs...you get the picture. Today, however, was an exception to the rule. Today, was a good day. While purchasing the basics at our local asian shop, we came across a rare sale on Japanese sponge cake sandwiches--that is, swiss roll cake shaped like a sandwich. If you have ever had the pleasure of indulging in a Japanese swiss roll cake, then you will know there is nothing quite like it. The moist and decadent spring of the cake, combined with the rich whipped cream is pure heaven. Sometimes the roll cake is made in sandwich form and wrapped, as you can tell from the photo, in the same packaging as a regular sandwich. It is as convenient to eat as it is delicious. With my craving for chocolate that can rarely be satisfied, we made the splurge and sacrificed a carton of tomatoes. Before you condemn me, have pity in that I do not do this very often. By the way, the cake on the left is coffee (for my husband) and the right is chocolate (for me).

For supper we shared a nabe pot of mushrooms in chicken broth. We had one drumstick each and a cube of tofu in the pot, as well as a bit of daikon radish. Naturally a bowl of rice accompanied this feast. The mushrooms included are enoki, shiitake, shimeji and eringi.

I do feel like I splurged today and I have no regrets in sacrificing the tomatoes. I can say, as I approach a very nerve shaking week, that today at least, was a good day.

Variations on chicken...and some beef

On the lighter side of cooking, we have here a chicken salad with sesame dressing. For those of you who questioned the merits of my deep frying, this is for you ~_^. The chicken is simply poached in water and then sliced. The vegetables can be whatever pleases you or you have on hand. The dressing is a little something my husband whipped up. It contains, among other things, ground up sesame seeds, peanut butter, soy sauce, sugar and miso. It is actually a protein laden dressing that tastes very fresh. I do think it is necessary to use natural peanut butter which contains nothing but peanuts (no sugar, salt, etc). You will be glad you did.

This little dish is lemon chicken. It goes well on a bed of onions and red peppers, but since I did not have either of those on hand, broccoli became the partner. The chicken breasts are lightly dusted with flour and then seared until brown. They are then simmered in chicken broth and lemon juice with dash of salt and pepper. Cornstarch is used to thicken it up near the end of the cooking time. I threw in a bit of garlic as well. If you have fresh lemons on hand, I recommend added some of the zest to the sauce.

I have posted gyudon before, but here it is again--the delightful beef bowl. Who can resist the strips of beef and sliced onion cooked in a salty sweet broth? It is always a treat! The side dish shown above is a spur of the moment thing. It consists of sliced berry tomatoes with pepper cheese. It was melted with a mini kitchen torch.

Now for the record, it is not what you eat, it is how much. I am of the opinion that you can eat any type of food you want....in moderation. Portion size has been ballooned into proportions unheard of in other parts of the world. For instance in Japan, fried food is eaten (ie tempura) but it is not eaten everyday and only one or two pieces at a time. The most tempura I have ever seen served to one person in Japan was four. The vast majority of Japanese people are thin. This I think comes from portion sizes and daily exercise...not in the form a of gym, but rather from everyday walking and biking. They walk A LOT. Goodness knows, A LOT. And did you know that Japanese women love love love their sweets? Cakes, mochi, cookies, you name it! But again, portion size! They don't typically buy entire cakes, but rather, one piece. One piece of cake! Something to think about, isn't it? ^_^