Recipes & Cooking : Japanese Recipes
I have gone Japanese food crazy lately. It all started after my recent trip to Tokyo. While I always have food crushes, this time it’s more substantial. I am motivated to learn more about Japanese cuisine and to understand the basic techniques of making Japanese food, precisely Japanese home cooking. My current love affair with Japanese food has gotten me…
Near the Sensoji temple in Asakusa, Tokyo, where many street vendors set up stalls to sell various snacks and street food, chicken karaage (唐揚げ) is one of the popular offerings. A quick walk around and you can find many vendors with a big wok/pot of boiling oil, deep-frying their chicken karaage to golden perfection. I had my first real taste…
A few nights ago, I met up with my friends at Izakaya by Katsu-Ya in LA. We ordered many delicious Japanese dishes, two servings of chilled sake and chatted our night away. We had such a wonderful time! One of the dishes we ordered was a Japanese izakaya classic—steamed asari (manila) clams with sake or asari no sakamushi, a personal…
I am not sure what it is, it could be the heat outside, but I just don’t have much of an appetite lately, especially for lunch. Lunch is tough because I am definitely not a sandwich and salad type of person (I frown at the very thought of them), but Chinese food and Malaysian food with rice, stir-fry’s, curries and…
How do you turn a bucket of plain old vanilla ice cream into something exotic and lickylicious without having to splurge US$3 per scoop? Easy. Very easy! I learned this trick recently and thought I would share it with you, especially now when it’s sizzling hot outside with temperatures pushing the 90′s or even 100′s Fahrenheit in the United States….
I love Nobu’s black cod with miso, but it’s not easy to find fresh black cod in the market, at least not in my neighborhood. So I used Chilean sea bass instead. I love Chilean sea bass–the flesh is always so moist, tender, silky, and sweet. I also love the texture and the mouth feel of Chilean sea bass…it’s absolutely…
My cheekbones have gone missing. I have been looking for them in the mirror–during day time under natural sun light; indoor under soft tungsten light; in the office with bright fluorescent light–but they are nowhere to be found. They have indeed gone missing. What I see in the mirror–and most evidently from my travel pictures–are fats, or fat cells, as…
I can’t seem to find anyone who doesn’t like Miso soup—the ubiquitous Japanese soup that is commonly served with Japanese lunch combos (bento boxes) in the United States. I am a big fan of miso soup. It’s light, invigorating with the simplest of ingredients (no scary animal fat floating at the top of the soup!) I love slurping Miso soup—especially…
I am writing this from Beijing (yes, Beijing again!). The local time is 10:30 AM and the sky is grey and very overcast (or is it pollution?). Back in the United States, summer is in full bloom now. The sun is scorching hot, all flowers blossom, young senoritas are strutting their stuff in short shorts, but most evidently, everywhere you…
What do you cook when you need to impress your guest(s)? Well, for me, I made this mouthwatering, succulent, and juicy baked sea bassthat screams “I am a catch!” A couple of weekends ago, my buddy Melting Wok came to my house. Prior to her visit, I was thinking hard about the dish I was going to make–a dish that…