Hihi

I learned from my own trial and error that drying salmon fillets in the refrigerator  for a few days, after salting, before cooking, made for a wonderful crispy skin and flavor. The drying also reduced the messy splatter when the salmon was cooked. I have been doing this for some time when we have salmon. Recently, I read the same technique could be used to  dry chicken thighs in the refrigerator before cooking. I thought, 'why didn't I think of  this myself since I had been doing the same thing with salmon?' So, we tried it. I dried the chicken thighs for two days and cooked them in a frying pan and served them with spaetzle my wife had made and green beans sautéed in butter. Certainly, it is easier to get crispy skin. Ingredients : 4 chicken thighs, deboned, thickest portion cut open to make even thickness, salted and dried for 2 days in the refrigerator uncovered with skin side up. The picture below shows what they looked like after drying 2 days in the refrigerator....

It was a snow day, so my wife was at home and when I came home, she had made cookies and this biscuit which is essentially bread fried in butter in the oven. It has a nice crunchy crust and nice buttery flavor. It may not extremely healthy for you but it certainly tasted good. Ingredients : 1/3 cup butter 2 1/4 cups flour plus more for work surface 1 tbs. sugar 1 tbs. plus 1/2 tsp. baking powder 1 1/2 tsp salt 1 cup whole milk Directions : Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a mixing bowl, then add the milk. Stir slowly with a fork until the dough just clings together. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface gently knead about 10 times then roll out to an 8 X 12 inch rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. (Word of advice: make sure the dough is slightly smaller than the pan in which it will be baked). cut the dough in half lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 16 equal strips. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place the butter in a 9 X 13 inch baking dish. Let it melt in t...

I am currently living in my parents' house to support them, which happens to be at the heart of the Boso Peninsula. Yesterday, I got a yama no sachi (lit. happiness of the mountains; bounty of the mountains) from a neighbor, moso bamboo, as well as an umi no sachi (lit. happiness of the sea; bounty of the sea) from another neighbor, wakame seaweed. 現在、両親をサポートするため両親の実家に住んでいますが、実家は房総半島の真ん中にあります。昨日は、近所の人から山の幸、孟宗竹（もうそうちく）を頂き、 別の人から海の幸、若布（わかめ、ワカメ）を頂きました。   A common way to prepare a bamboo shoot is to boil it in a pot of water plus some rice bran or "kome no togi jiru" (milky water resulting from washing white rice before cooking). Unfortunately, I had no rice bran in the kithen, and I had no kome no togi jiru because I had planned to eat leftover rice the next morning. So, I tried preparing these bamboo shoots with plain tap water. The neighbor suggested boiling them for an hour or so, but I shortened the cooking time to about 30 minutes or so. This morning, I tasted the bambo...

When I made beef tongue stew , I mentioned to my wife in passing that spaetzle ( Spätzle ) may go well with it. So, one day when I was at work and she was home, she made spaetzle. But she did not have the right tool to physically form the spaetzle. She ended up cutting the corner off a Ziploc bag and dropped the batter into the boiling broth by cutting the lump of dough extruded from the bag into the broth, but it made a rather clumsy large spaetzle that looked more like gnocchi. Although it tasted good, the shape and size were not quite right. Recognizing that I was on the receiving end of a good thing I got her an appropriate spaetzle maker in the hope of encouraging the production of more spaetzle. This is her second attempt and the spaetzle came out much better. I sautéed the spaetzle with butter and finely chopped parsley to accompany the tongue stew. After a few days in the refrigerator and reheated, the stew was better and the spaetzle went so well with it. This is the contrapti...

This is an attempt at recreating the beef tongue sandwiches of my wife's childhood. She wanted one made exactly how she remembered . So we made it very simple. No fancy items such as lettuce or cheese. Just mayonnaise and mustard on pumpernickel. I added skinned Campari tomato and my cucumber onion salad on the side. This was lunch on the weekend. I sliced a mid-portion of the tongue thinly and made several over lapping layers. I did not put on the second layer of bread for the picture to show the tongue meat. This wife was very satisfied with this sandwich. She said this was exactly how she remembered the tongue lunch meat from the local PA dutch grocery store. The meat was very tender (due to marbling with fat) and flavorful. I have to admit this was a very good sandwich.

At our Japanese grocery store, I bought this silken tofu called "Sincere silken tofu, just right firmness" 誠実の絹 from "Otokomae tofu" 男前豆腐. This is made from Hokkaido soybeans called "Pride of snow" or "Yukihomare" ユキホマレ. Since I am originally from Hokkaido, I am partial to a product like this. Since good tofu is impossible to get at the regular grocery store (the tofu we get there is pretty bad by Japanese standards but I still make some dishes from it). In any case, I had this tofu from the Japanese grocery store for a few days in the refrigerator. I thought about what kind of dish I could make to enjoy this good tofu. Cold cubes (hiyayakko 冷や奴), warm cubes in kelp broth (yudoufu 湯豆腐) or tofu miso soup (tofu-no-misoshiru 豆腐の味噌汁) came to mind but I ended up making this impromptu tofu and green bean dish with ground pork and miso. This happened because I had blanched green beans and hand chopped pork which was a by-product of when I prepared bone-...

The serving size in this recipe is a little big to Vietnamese in Vietnam but that is how we eat here and now.  It is hard to believe that we had only 2-3 eggs for the family meal at times.  Do not worry about the golden brown here because we all think and know that well cooked egg white will take longer to digest than soft cooked egg.  Maybe it makes this dish really filling?  If you are new to Vietnamese food.  Fish sauce is an acquired taste and used as salt in most dish. I use Three crab brand from Thailand for all my recipes.  The most famous and expensive is Red boat brand from Vietnam.  Feel free to use what brand you have but the level of salt in each branch slightly different may make the dish more or less salty. Ingredients for 3-4 servings For the shells 6 large eggs 1 tablespoon (15 ml) fish sauce 1-2 tablespoon/s vegetable oil For the filling  8 oz ground pork 1 medium tomato, diced 1/2 small onion or 1 large shallot, coarsely chopped ...