One of the easiest appetizers I enjoy serving (and eating) is bruschetta. And let’s be clear that the Italian pronunciation for bruschetta is: brus’ket.ta. Note, the “ch” is pronounced with a HARD “k”, not a “sh”. It drives me up the wall when I ask for brus’ket.ta at a restaurant, only to be incorrectly corrected by a server with a response that goes something like, “you mean, you...
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Mmmmm. I love cheesecake. Cheesecake loves me. I love ANYTHING cheesecake, let me count the ways… There is my favorite childhood blueberry cheesecake cups, Cheesecake Factory’s pumpkin cheesecake and vanilla bean cheesecake, Japanese rare cheesecake from any type of Asian bakery, anything cheesecake (including cream cheese filled pastries) from Amandine Patisserie in Santa Monica, 85 Degree Bakery’s mango cheesecake, Marie...
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As a kid, I never used to like pork much. Especially pork chops. These days, I seem to like pork more, not just because lean pork is lower in calories and fat than beef, but because I like it’s versatility. However, I still don’t make pork chops very often, in fact, I rarely make pork chops although Bebe Dada would enjoy it if I did. Instead, I’ve been using thinner bite-sized cuts of lean pork typically found at Japanese...
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Sumashijiru is a clear Japanese soup and can be made with a number of different ingredients, limited only by the creativity of the chef. Growing up, my Mom often made sumashijiru to accompany our dinners. One of my childhood favorites is a minimalist soup my mom often prepares with nori (seaweed) and tamago (egg) or nori tamago sumashijiru. She often serves this with her homemade gyoza. My mom’s gyoza and nori tamago sumashijiru...
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I decided to neglect the MOUNTAIN of laundry that needs to be folded and quickly draft a post. Do I dare publish this on my blog within *GASP* a week of my last post?!? However, if you don’t want anything to do with our laundry, I recommend you stop reading and quickly jump ahead to the stir-fry recipe below. :) Yes, this post is about boring laundry because I write about whatever is on my mind, and unfortunately THAT is what’s on...
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More clams?!? I just posted hamaguri no saka mushi or Japanese sake steamed clams, and here we are yet again with another clam dish. However, I cheated on the seafood with this dish and there was one short-cut that I regret… More on this later. Spaghetti with clams, or spaghetti con vongole, is one of my favorite Italian pasta dishes. In a former life when I dined out frequently each week, spaghetti con vongole made a regular...
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I like to think that this little dish of hamaguri no saka mushi is my ongoing effort to overcome my fear of cooking with seafood. (Have I mentioned this fear before?) Don’t get me wrong, I love to eat seafood, but cooking it is another story. My Mom cooked quite a bit of fish, squid, scallops, shrimp, octopus, and clams when my brother and I were growing up. Yet all these years I’ve never wanted to cook seafood as it was too...
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Strawberry season at Tanaka Farms, our local organic farm, opened in mid-March. Each year, we anticipate the season’s approach as we plan our strawberry-picking outing(s). Bebe E’s favorite wagon display in front of the produce stand. (April 2011) This season, Bebe E and I were fortunate to go strawberry-picking twice already. Once with “my girls” (best friends) and their families, and a second time with family (for Big...
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