Sesame Dressing

We had only been married a little time before Ryu told me he liked Chinese food also. Wow! Learning to make Japanese food as well as Chinese - I recruited his help. We bought a Chinese cookbook at the 100 yen (Dollar) store and have used it and used it!

This is the Sesame Dressing for one of the dishes (whose name I can't remember or READ!)

The cookbook is Bon Cook #23 Chinese...Something. The recipe is on page 48.

Anyway, this is Ryu's dish to make, but, we are on a chicken eating frenzy, so I am always looking for ideas. The other day I decided to boil a chicken breast, tear it into shreds, steam some green beans and cut them in half, and pour this sauce over it all. We were ALL (meaning, Jun too!) in heaven!

Sesame Dressing

3 Tbsp. White Sesame Seeds - grind these up in a food mixer you can later add wet ingredients too for ease in preparation. (I'm sure you could use black too. We used roasted white ones.)
3 Tbsp. Soy Sauce
1 1/2 Tbsp. Sugar
1 Tbsp. Vinegar
1/2 tsp. Sesame oil
1/2 tsp. rayu (very hot oil. We leave it out when Jun is eating with us - ALWAYS - though we love it!)

After grinding up the sesame seeds, add the rest of the ingredients and blend well. This is the first time I used our food grinder/mixer. Ryu does it by hand. Do as you wish, but I will always use our cheapo frustrating mixer after this! So easy!

This is great over chicken and pork. Also, over steamed veggies like broccoli, green beans or spinach. It would also be great over a salad or chilled tofu! Of course, you can adjust the flavor/sweetness to your liking, too! Try it!

Chocolate Frozen Yogurt

This summer I have been playing with making frozen yogurt. It began with wanting a lemon dessert and having no lemons! I had a small can of lemon pop, mixed it with a small carton of yogurt and froze it! A great sherbet! Even better when I added sugared crushed raspberries!

From there I (and Jun) forged into uncharted territory - for us. The latest recipe-less yogurt was banana, cinnamon, peanut butter yogurt. As strange as it sounds - it was healthy and pretty good.

However, the time had come to start Googeling Frozen Yogurt recipes. And chocolate was the flavor we NEEDED! I found a cooking blog called Chocolate and Zucchini. I like both of those, and, actually, my grandmother used to make wonderful chocolate zucchini bread and it was just like cake, but...I wasn't sure what I'd find here - frozen yogurt with zucchini?

But, no! She has a wonderful recipe for Chocolate Frozen Yogurt.

However, her pantry and fridge are a little more exotic than mine. I would love to try the REAL ingredients, but...here are my humble substitutions.

Good quality bittersweet chocolate - the remaining box of too bitter chocolate in the cupboard supplemented by some of those semi-sweet chocolate chips I am hoarding.

Creme fraiche or heavy cream - Jun kindly allowed me to use some of her milk. It is 3.6% milk fat. That's about has heavy as our kitchen gets.

Raw cane sugar - I suspect I could find this in Japan, but haven't. I used regular old white, cheap, moist sugar.

Good quality unsweetened cocoa powder - I hoard this too, but I used my Hershey's cocoa. That's as good quality as we get here.

Sea salt - Ummm. Not sure where ours came from, but Ryu bought the cheapest he could. Now I have a whole kilo of wet (a pain to use and unable to be shaken) salt. (Actually, now that I think of it, I forgot the salt! Oh well!)

Natural Vanilla Extract - Good old imitation here, though would LOVE some of the real thing!

Greek Yogurt - Well, I have no idea what makes yogurt Greek, and have only seen Bulgarian yogurt here - and I'm sure it isn't Bulgarian, though Kotoshu has been on some of the commercials for it and HE's Bulgarian. Instead I bought the cheapest low fat yogurt at the store. I hate to eat it, but don't mind it in my yogurt concoctions. However, first I drained it (thanks for loaning me your coffee maker/filter, Ryu) to make it a bit thicker.

I used a cooking method I thought was easier. I combined the yogurt and vanilla in the freezer container. I put the dry ingredients in a small sauce pan and made sure the cocoa was lump-free. Then I added the milk and stirred constantly over very low heat. When the chocolate was about 1/2 melted, I took it off the heat and kept stirring till it was all melted and mixed in well. Then I poured it slowly into the yogurt while Jun and I stirred.

The blogger, Clotilde Dusoulier, gives good advice on how to be sure the frozen dessert is sweet enough and how to make it without an ice-cream maker! Good common sense advice!

I made half batch, as we are only three. Each time we stir it, we taste it. And we love each taste so far. I hope there is some left for dessert tonight!

I will be visiting this food blogger often, I think!

Mexican Chicken

My husband commented on my "strong arm" in the arena of cooking this week. This means, I've made some things that he likes and that fill him up!

I thought of waiting and measuring and all that stuff to give you this recipe, but...this is Kantan (simple) Cooking, so - here is the recipe in its simplicity.

I need to add that it was inspired by this recipe for Mexican Burgers that we LOVE and often make in little meatball sizes for obentos and dinner!

Mexican Chicken

2 whole skinless and boneless chicken breasts cut in bite-sized pieces
1 splash of milk
1 Tbsp. or so of taco seasoning - if you have it
1 bag of flavored taco chips. We get them for 100 yen at the convenience store. Crush them up into tiny pieces.

So, take the pieces of chicken, throw them in a bowl. Salt them a bit. Splash with some milk (2 Tbsp?) Add the taco seasoning, and mix it in well. Put it in the fridge if you have time, and let it set for awhile for the seasonings to soak into the meat.

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees. Roll each piece of chicken in the crushed taco chips and toss into an oven safe pan. If they need to be layered - that's fine. If you have chips leftover, sprinkle them over the top.

Bake for 30 minutes or until the chicken is done.

I "garnished" this with well drained yogurt - fake, but yummy, sour-cream like topping, and chopped green onions. I could see some salsa over it as well, or tomatoes and shredded lettuce. If one had cheese in the fridge, I'd sprinkle a bit of that over the chicken before baking and Mmmmm.

Very SIMPLE - but, it's summer, and the hubby loved it, and I don't want to forget about it. My Japanese Mama friends' reaction? Very good and "You COOK with taco chips???" I love to shock them as often as possible.

Mugicha - Barley Tea

When I first came to Japan I was not yet a coffee drinker! Late bloomer, I know! So, when I was offered a nice cold glass of barley tea...I suddenly wasn't all that thirsty after all. My dislike of barley tea was quickly realized and I alone was given a goblet of delicious orange juice with a straw while everyone else drank mugicha out of water glasses. How embarrassing!!!

Well, I learned to drink coffee and mugicha as well. I often made mugicha for my students. I'd get to church and realize students were coming in 5 minutes and there was nothing cold for them to drink. So, I'd throw a tea packet into the pitcher, add water, and shake! The water changed color, but not flavor!!! Gross, but it worked in a pinch. Now our pastor makes sure there is always plenty of mugicha in the fridge! THANKS!

A friend recently taught me a new way to make the "BEST" mugicha. I must confess that I am lazy, so never have followed the recipe to its completion, but...here goes:

One packet of mugicha in a mug. Pour boiling water over it and let it sit for one minute.
Add the packet to a pitcher of water to make one liter of mugicha. Take the bag out after one hour. HA! Then add a bit of instant coffee. Wa la! Excellent mugicha, I'm told. I never take out the bag and have no instant coffee in the house, so... I also like weak mugicha, so use one packet for two liters! However, I do use the one minute hot water method. Much better than shaking!

Last week my friend told me of another mugicha recipe. If you make your mugicha right - it is supposed to be 3:10. 3 parts mugicha and 10 parts milk. Our weaker mugicha works better at 1:1 (half and half). This sounds kind of gross to those of us who take our mugicha STRAIGHT! No sugar and never any milk or lemon. However, this milk mugicha tastes like coffee au latte! Add some sugar syrup, and, a nice no-caf coffee tasting drink!

Any other "strange" ways of doing mugicha???

Cleaned the Freezer - Ended Up With a Cake!

I am, as I assume most people are, pretty good at cleaning out the fridge for a few last meals before going shopping again. After our trip to the US, I fed the family out of an empty fridge for nearly a week!

But yesterday, I cleaned the freezer! And ended up with a cake! I usually at least start with a recipe when I bake. However, yesterday, it was all bits and pieces of leftovers, a quick defrost, a quick stir, and a quick bake! Mmmm.

I started with a cup or so of chocolate chip cookie dough I froze before going home to the US. Just couldn't find it in my heart to heat up the kitchen for the few cookies it would make, so there it sat in the freezer. Then I ran across a 1/2 cup or so of pureed pumpkin I cooked and blenderized when pumpkin was on sale...a while back. There were two halves of bananas - left over from Jun's lunches. Peeled and wrapped in wrap and frozen for a baking day.

As I was mixing this combination up, I noticed that the chocolate chips had mostly melted in the defrosting process, so I now had chocolate cake. Hmmmm. Maybe more chocolate chips? Nope, as I was reaching for the chocolate chips, my hand touched the cinnamon chips! Well, as chocolate goes great with pumpkin and bananas, so does cinnamon go with chocolate, pumpkin and bananas! So, I added a handful of cinnamon chips. Then, as the pumpkin was not sweetened and I had some ginger sugar also taking up space in the freezer, I dumped a bit of that in too.

Turned the oven on to 170, oiled the round cake pan and threw it all in. 25 minutes or so later, we were gifted with the moistest yummy cake!!!

It was so fun to try something crazy for a dessert when I usually only do it for "meal" food!

Preemio Award

My friend, Abigail, gave me the? a? Preemio Award the other day. Recipients are supposed to write seven things about themselves. As this is a cooking blog, I will attempt to entertain you with seven silly things about cooking/food and me!

1. Carrots - WHAT is it with CARROTS here in Japan??? First, they are kind of short and really big around. Second, they go bad in my fridge in a day or two - ROOT VEGETABLE!?!??! Third, according to my husband, they should not be cut into rounds (wagiri), but should be cut into the equivalent of short carrot sticks. This makes them sweeter he says...the crazy thing is - it does. I don't even really LIKE carrots - but, don't tell Jun or Ryu!
2. Ginger - I am a GINGER freak, I think. This last trip to the US, I caught a terrible cold. AND...had NO candied ginger to fend off the germs! As I was getting well, I found some ginger candy at a health food store. And, was introduced to this website - the Ginger People.
3. Strange - I LOVE strange RECIPES. For me, STRANGE is a reason TO make something new, not to avoid it. Sue just posted a recipe for body powder. Vicki posted a recipe for soda bread you cook on the griddle. Abigail posted recipe for okonomiyaki made using top ramen. How STRANGE - to me, at least, and FUN! (I made the soda bread and okonomiyaki!)
4. Spurts - I cook things in spurts. I am currently in the Granola Making Spurt. I made up two recipes - Peanut Butter Granola, and Gingersnap Granola. Too yummy. I am in the process of making a Chocolate Granola recipe. I bought some healthy flours to put in granola while I was in the US this trip. I can really FEEL all those fiber things cleaning the cholesterol out of my veins. Really. I'm serious! SCRUBBING!!!
5. Lettuce - I didn't grow up on lettuce. We were a canned/frozen corn, peas, and green bean family with some broccoli and carrots thrown in for good measure. I do remember the occasional beet, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts - YUCK! But, we weren't adventurous vegetable eaters. Ryu isn't either. Lettuce - adventurous? Well, I seem to not like raw veggies all that well. We have thrown away more heads of lettuce than probably any other veggie! But, I bought some again yesterday. We'll see.
6. Cookbooks - Jun and I like to read Cookbooks. Not to find something to make, but, because they are interesting. I especially like old ones with old fashioned recipes. Jun especially likes my cookie ones with pictures! I USED to collect cookbooks. Now I live in a tiny tiny apartment, so we read and reread the good old ones!
7. CONFESSION - the REAL reason I started to cook - as a kid - was because in our family we have the Golden Rule that is THE BEST! If you cook dinner, you don't have to do the dishes - nor clean the kitchen. I HATE to do dishes - so cooking was a wonderful golden trade off. My mom was happy too, as she was happy not to cook, and had two other kids to do the cleaning! HAHAHA!

I'd like to tag the following three women because I enjoy their blogs and wonder what THEY cook on a weekday night.

1. Tammy in Ukraine
2. Sue at Living and Learning
3. CG at Okaasan Mommy and More

Furikake - Sprinkles for the top of your white rice!

My husband likes furikake. Actually, furikake is the savior of many Japanese housewives, or housewives of any nationality, or I guess anyone at all, who make obentos. These sprinkles add so much flavor, color, fun to the white rice part of a lunch.

We have been buying furikake for years. It has yellow chunks that are supposed to be egg. Hmmm. And dried seaweed - nori. Well, I hate the stuff. I think all the yellow chunks are are lumps of sodium with no health benefit at all.

So, when I was at church last week, and a lady was showing me the furikake she had made and said it was easy - my ears perked up. Her suggestion, my friend Kaoru's help, and an idea or two from the internet turned into this furikake. The hubby loves it! YEAH! It is NOT cheaper than the purchased sodium, but, it is worth it.

Furikake

50 gm. tiny white fish (raw, not dried)
1/3 cup sesame seeds
1 cup bonito flakes (not packed!)
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
3 Tbsp. mirin

In a dry frying pan, "dry" the fish out. Then add the sesame seeds and bonito flakes. When the sesame seeds start popping a bit, add the mixture of soy and mirin. Then, stir over low heat till all the moisture is absorbed/evaporated. Won't take long. Store it in an airtight container in the freezer! It doesn't get hard, even when frozen, and lasts a long time - or not - if you serve it on lunches every day!

I also heard you can use dried radish or daikon leaves. I just got a batch today to try. I will also cut up some of the tons of dry seaweed sheets we have been given and add that next time I make it. Hubby also bought some dried shrimp he wants in a furikake. A friend just told me she cuts up konyaku and uses it in furikake. So, I guess the ideas are endless. And, though the fish is a bit expensive (we paid 350 yen for 50 gm. of fish), the other ingredients are CHEAP! I might even dry out some scrambled eggs for my own version of the purchased stuff!