Adapted from The Shiksa in the Kitchen
1 English cucumbers
1/4 tsp salt (or more to taste)
1 cup plain lowfat Greek yogurt
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 tbsp fresh chopped mint
1 clove garlic, crushed (or more to taste)
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice (or more to taste)
Pinch sugar
Fresh mint sprig for garnish (optional)
Filed under Sauces and Spices, Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
For me this is the chocolate mousse by which all others are judged. I have paid $10 for desert at fancy French restaurant and gotten something that was not even close to the oral satisfaction of my mother’s mousse.
Before I left home for the first time, I sat down with my mother’s recipe box and wrote down my favorite dishes. I have made a few changes from my mother’s original recipe. The most significant being that I have doubled her recipe and NO! There is no such thing as too much of a good thing! The only other change I have made is that mom always made this desert with Nestle’s Semi-sweet Chocolate Bits. Chocolate snobs that we are, we always make it with high end dark chocolate. Continue reading
Filed under Desserts & Treats, Treats
Adapted from La Fuji Mama
Eilene’s school break ends tomorrow and she wanted sushi for dinner this Sunday. To make a change up from my usual maki and inari shushi I decided to do Chirashi Sushi, scatter sushi. From what I have read, this is what most Japanese housewives serve at home, partly (I understand) because they are intimidated by the Japanese master chefs who can make the cut maki’s cross section look like flowers or fish. Who knew? I just started making maki back when I was 20 because I liked it and didn’t know that I was competing with anyone.
Karl’s Chirashi Sushi
If you scan through my archive of recipes you may find a number base on Japanese cuisine. There is a reason for this that goes back to my early family life. During the Korean War (back around when I was born), my father was a major in
Filed under Main Dishes, Seafood
Miso soup is an almost daily staple of a Japanese diet. In the West many soups start with a base of chicken broth. In Japanese most soups start with dashi. The dried soup base, Hon Dashi, is sold in most supermarkets (at least on the West Cost). I have never been sure how much to use so I think I have been using too little, because if there are instructions on the bottle they are all in Japanese. One of the websites I was on while researching this meal was recommending 1 tsp. of Hon Dashi per cup of water. Since the bottles only contain about three tablespoons, it would take almost a whole bottle to make a soup for the family. See Karl’s Yosenabe for instructions on making it from scratch.
Karl’s Miso Soup
at the bottom
Filed under Soups
This dish has its origin in our time in Chengu, China. We lived in the Foreigner’s Hotel. This was known as “the Panda House” and, yes, with its fenced in garden, it did look just like the Panda House at the local zoo. Many mornings we would walk down stairs to eat at the hotel restaurant rather than cook in our apartment. This was partly because the gas was so iffy – the local children thought it was a great joke to shut off the gas valve to the foreigner’s apartments.
Filed under Pickles, Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
Based on a www.thekitchn.com recipe
In this variation I was reminder of a couple of technique by Nami’s Just One Cookbook. When you are making pickled vegetables you can play with more than just the flavors. If all of your pickles are the same shape it is just boring. The visual appearance of the dishes is a very important ingredient in Japanese Cuisine.
Filed under Pickles, Side Dishes, Vegan, Vegetables
Adapted from Joy of Baking
Peppermint Bark is something I always look forward to during the Holidays. I never made it myself, because it was the Christmas specialty of one of my wife’s coworkers and it seemed like trespassing to make it. Jan has different job now, so this year we decided to have a go at it. My goal was to make peppermint chocolate bark, not peppermint and chocolate.
I knew that I wanted to make two layered bark, because that is what Jan prefers. But for a seemingly simple recipe (melt chocolate, sprinkle on peppermint chunks), I did find variations and techniques on the internet that I decided to include. Stephanie Jaworski’s blog (Joy of Baking) includes a good video of the process of making two layered peppermint bark.
Filed under Desserts & Treats, Treats
Originally adapted from Joy of Cooking
Many moons ago we moved into the house across the street to be near our friends, Peg and Russ. In the back yard was an orange tree, a grapefruit tree, and three lemon trees (there was also an apple tree, three unproductive plum trees and we planted a fig and a mandarin orange tree in the 10 years we lived there). These trees produced a massive amount of fruit every year, far more than a small family could eat as just fruit. My solution to just throwing out all of the excess was to made marmalade to give away as Christmas gifts. Thus a tradition was born.
Continue reading
Filed under Desserts & Treats, Treats
Adapted from Joy of Cooking
Every Christmas Jan, Myr and Eilene make Rum Balls to give to our friends. Originally they followed the recipe in Joy of Cooking, but a few years ago they started to make changes (adding a little instant coffee, rolling them in cocoa powder rather than sugar, using other liquors rather than rum).
This year they went a little over the top, but to wild success. They still maintained most of the proportions of the original recipe, but they did strange things to the ordinarily plain ingredients, like rum infused with coffee or spices, and adding crystallized orange peel.
Filed under Desserts & Treats, Treats
When Safeway had a half price sale on hams after Thanksgiving I could not resist buying one. This is a lot of meat for my three person household, so I sliced it into three ¾” thick ham steaks to freeze and I was left with a large ham bone and the grisly pieces at the end. For me this meaty bit says “Ham and Beans.
Karl’s Ham and Beans
Filed under Main Dishes, Pork, Stews
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Miriam
Jabberwocky Stew 