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I just came back from visiting my children in California few day ago.  As you know I write this blog because of them. I did not teach or force them to cook at home.  Hmm it was considered as bad parenting in Vietnam. Somehow my children love and able to cook some delicious home cooked meals.  My youngest boy who will be graduating from college next year took me by surprise that he has been cooking some recipes in this blog and love them. This recipe is used for pork contained of salt solution at grocery stores.  It has about 1/2 teaspoon salt for each pound of pork. If you are lucky to have fresh pork, increase fish sauce to 2 tablespoons and omit dark soy sauce/ caramel sauce.  Fresh pork will have a beautiful light red/candy color when being grilled. Pork Marinate 1 lb boneless pork loin or pork shoulder/butt, cut into 1/4 or 1/2 inch thick 2 medium garlic cloves, coarsely chopped  about 1 tablespoon 1 Tablespoon finely minced shallot or 2 Tablespoon finely mince yellow onion. 2 Tabl

This is a modification of a Japanese recipe. Japanese really like to wrap cylindrical vegetables in meat or ham. I read a recipe in which whole burdock root or gobo 牛蒡 was first simmered in seasoned broth and then wrapped in thinly sliced pork belly and cooked in "teriyaki" 照り焼きsauce. Since I bought a package of gobo which contained 2 good sized root stalks, I needed to come up with new way of serving it. So, inspired by the recipe I had read I made this wrapped gobo. Since I didn't have thinly sliced pork belly, I used prosciutto as the wrap. This was the first dish for one evening. It went fairly well with the red wine we were having. I used whole gobo cooked skin on. Since I also made my usual " Kinpira-gobo"金平ごぼう , I served it as well. Ingredients (for 2 servings seen above) : Gobo, three 3 inch lengths, skin scrubbed with a vegetable brush but skin not removed. For initial cooking: 3-400 ml of water 1 tbs rice vinegar For final cooking Japanese dash broth a

I occasionally see Japanese pumpkin which is a type of winter squash in our regualr grocery store and when I see it I buy it. This time, I made pumpkin salad with the squash I brought home. I read the recipe somewhere but I could not find it again when it came time to make the salad so I made it from memory.  It came out quite good and its easy to prepare especially since I used the microwave to cook the squash. Since I had a "Kabocha"-shaped "hashi-oki" 箸置きor chopstick pillow that we bought in Kyoto last year, I used it in this picture to complete the Kabocha theme. I added cottage cheese on top (I remember this was a part of the recipe I read). I added freshly ground black pepper. Ingredients : Kabocha pumpkin, half, innards removed and skin shaved off but leaving some (or you could just leave the skin), cut into a bite sized pieces, microwaved in a silicon container for 3-4 minutes or until a bamboo skewer went through easily. Salt and pepper for seasoning while

My wife has been making different kinds of  breads from a bread cook book entitled " Beard on Bread ". This bread is a very interesting bread with pistachio nuts. It is a kind of a sweet bread but not too sweet and perfect for breakfast. You can see pistachio nuts on the cut surface. One morning, we had a combination of the  blueberry bread  my wife made (it was frozen) and the pistachio nut bread. They went very well with a cup of cappuccino . Ingredients for bread  1 Package active dry yeast 1/4 cup warm water 1 Tbs. sugar (to bloom the yeast) 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 cup warm milk 1/4 cup butter softened 2 tsp. salt 3 to 4 cups all purpose flour For filling  1/4 cup melted butter 1/3 cup (additional) sugar 1 cup shelled salted pistachio nuts roughly chopped 1 egg lightly beaten for egg wash Directions Bloom the yeast. In the bowl of a stand mixer with a mixing paddle add the milk, softened butter, salt and 1/2 cup sugar, yeast mixture and stir. Change to a dough hook. Ad

After a great success of making spaetzle using our newly acquired spaetzle maker , my wife made this spinach spaetzle. (What's the old adage, "the right  tool for the job"). She made this basically because we had a bit of spinach left over from another dish. This was light supper and I served spinach spaetzle with meat balls in tomato sauce and green beans. With the spaetzle maker, the size of the spaetzle is just right and it is much easier to make. By-the-way, it may look like there are peas on the plate in the picture above but it is actually the spaetzle as shown in the close-up below. I heated it up by sautéing in a bit of olive oil. Ingredients : 1/2 cup thawed, drained frozen spinach (we used fresh spinach cooked without any addition of water). 1 cup low-fat (1%) milk 1 egg 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil 1/8 teaspoon grated nutmeg 2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon Kosher salt 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, for cooking spaetzle Directions : Bring a large

I found " Assorted Japanese Junk Food for Sake" at the Amazon website through a 3rd party vendor.  The advertisement said, "Japanese junk food to go with Alcohol"--a somewhat literal translation of the more polite expression  "drinking snacks". Somehow, for Japanese, "Junk food" or drinking snacks may not have the same negative connotation it has for the U.S. audience. In general Japanese don't drink without eating something, so at the very least, such a snack is a "must have" to go with sake. In any case, this product on Amazon is "known as "Kawaki-mono" 乾き物 or "dry drinking snacks". This type of snack or "otsumami" おつまみ is widely sold in Japanese convenience stores and stand-up drinking joints called " Tachinomi-ya " 立ち飲み屋 or "Kaku-uchi" 角打ち. Digression alert: On our last trip to Japan, in the evening, when we had a several hour train ride from our site seeing destination bac

I again got silken tofu labled "Sincere silken tofu, just right firmness 誠実の絹" the last time I made a dish on a whim without following any recipe . This time, I used 1/4 of the tofu in mackerel ball soup . I decide to use up the remaining tofu the next day. This is based on the recipe but with some modification. It is sort of a soup with tofu, deep fried tofu, shiitake mushroom and seasoned with miso and sesame. Ingredients : Silken tofu 3/4 (this tofu come is a smaller package)which is roughly equivalent to 1/2 for regular size tofu) Fresh Shiitake, 3, stem end cut away, stem torn along it's length in thin strips and the caps sliced in thin strips. Deep fried tofu pouch or abra-age 1/4, cut into small strips. Japanese dashi broth, 400ml (I made this from my usual dash packs) Miso 2 tbs Roasted sesame seeds, 3 tbs, dry roasted in a frying pan and ground with a Japanese pestle and mortar or suribachi すり鉢. Egg, medium, beaten Directions : Add the mushroom to the broth and s

This is another contribution from my wife. This is a dill onion wheat roll. Although this is a whole wheat roll, it is soft and moist with nice flavors of dill and onion. This roll can be eaten on any occasion but we really enjoy it for breakfast. Although, we put in lots of chopped fresh dill, you cannot see it in the cut surface yet the flavor is unmistakable. Since it is so soft and moist with lots of flavors no need for butter. Ingredients : 2 package of active dry yeast 1/4 cup warm water 1/4 cup honey 2 cups cottage cheese 2 Tbs. grated fresh onion 4 Tbs. butter melted 1 cup dill weed 3 Tsp. salt 1/2 Tsp. baking soda 2 eggs 4 - 4 1/2 cups whole wheat flour Directions : Put cottage cheese, honey, onion, butter, dill weed, salt and soda in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using a paddle beater mix thoroughly. Add the eggs and continue stirring. Dissolve yeast in warm water with 1 tsp. sugar dissolved to bloom. Add the yeast to the other liquid ingredients. Switch to a dough hook and add

This is the last of the salmon sashimi we defrosted for hanami . I served it with small baby arugula, tomato, and red onion salad. Just for variation, I made one portion as "Tataki". I seasoned the small block of salmon with Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper and using a kitchen torch, I seared one side and sliced. This treatment works well with oily fish in general and added nice flavor and texture. This was quite good and finally we finished the frozen salmon sashimi.

My wife really likes mackerel simmered in miso sauce or "Saba-no-misoni" 鯖の味噌煮. So,  every time we see fresh whole Spanish mackerel for sale at the near-by Whole Foods store, we get it to make this dish. This time we got two good sized mackerels. I had them gutted with heads off. I filleted them myself. If I do this myself, I can save more fish meat and I can scrape any remaining meat from the bone using a spoon. I also removed the meat from the tip of the tails since it is too narrow to make into "misoni". Using these scraps, I made fish meatball soup or "saba-no-tsumire-jiru" 鯖のつみれ汁. This was a lunch on one weekend. In addition to the fish meatball soup (lower left), I served blanched rapini with scrambled eggs (upper left), mackerel simmered in miso sauce with broccoli (upper right), and butter and soy sauce rice (lower right). I made clear soup with mackerel meatballs, silken tofu and sliced scallion and added (frozen) yuzu zests just before serving.