A nice bright salsa to end the summer (never mind it’s been over for a month). This recipe is very simple, and I love the way the flavors and textures work together. I like to serve this with homemade tortillas (or rice or quinoa), avocados, and roasted kabocha tossed with cumin and cayenne.
Category: Quick Dishes
Curried Cauliflower with Tuna
I used to refer to cauliflower as “broccoli’s sad cousin.” Years of veggie trays at family functions taught me that dip does not make raw cauliflower taste good. A month of a “let’s try new vegetables” experiment in high school taught me that no amount of cheese will make me touch boiled cauliflower. (Seriously. There…
Whole-Wheat Ginger-Squash Muffins with Chocolate Chips
One last(?) squash purée recipe for the season! I live in a country where the only cold cereals available at regular grocery stores (Tokyo Metro, you don’t count) are frosted flakes and cocoa puffs.* As a result, I’ve learned to make a variety of breakfast foods. I’m actually not sure how I only ended up…
Cornbread (Bread Revolution Series)
Are you guys sick of kabocha and kabocha purée yet? I never am*, but let’s change it up a bit today. My first encounter with a vegetarian cookbook of any sort was my dad’s copy of Anna Thomas‘s The Vegetarian Epicure, a memento of a few months in the ’70s when he dabbled in meatless…
Baba Ghanoush (Roasted Eggplant and Sesame Spread)
All systems are go on the new hosting! Or they seem to be–let me know if there are any links or pages that don’t load properly. I’ve covered bread here, so let’s move on to sandwich fillings, specifically pita. Hummus or falafel seem like obvious choices and are very easy to make at home if…
Spaghetti-Squash Okonomiyaki
Updated April 2, 2016. While on my squash spree last month, I picked up a spaghetti squash, which has a great name in Japanese, too: soumen kabocha (そうめんかぼちゃ), like soumen noodles, or kinshiuri (金糸瓜), “golden thread squash.” This was my first time cooking this type of squash, and I had no idea what to do…
How to Bake Cookies in the Oven Range and Mini Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies Recipe
Food homesickness is the plague of not just expats but those who move from region to region– for example, Homesick Texan is a food blog about recreating Texan/TexMex cuisine in New York. The way the author writes about food memories and the problems recreating beloved foods when you can’t always find ingredients really resonates with…
Korinky Squash Chijimi
When I mentioned eating all that squash, you didn’t think I’d leave you hanging, did you? Korinky (konrinkî, コリンキー) is a strange little squash. I bought it without recognizing the name, since many orange squashes are more or less interchangeable, and to my horror, I found no information on it in English other than this…
Overnight Cold-Brewed Coffee
Now that we’ve got our summer breakfast situation sorted with overnight oats, let’s move on to that other temperature-challenged staple of breakfast: coffee. I know that hot drinks can help you cool down, but when the mere thought of pouring boiling water from my electric kettle to my French press makes me break out in…
Hot Weather, Cool Kitchen: Overnight Oats
There are two import foods I can’t live without: peanut butter and oats. Let’s talk about oats–I’ll get to the peanut butter later. Sometimes I buy Quaker Oats in bulk from online import stores; sometimes I buy Alishan or Alara jumbo organic oats at Diamond in Omicho Market; sometimes I get Nisshoku oatmeal from the…
Pasta Pomodoro: The Easiest Pasta
Perhaps “The Easiest Pasta” is a misnomer. Perhaps boiled soba in dipping sauce is actually easier, but when you want a new flavor profile on easy summer pasta–i.e., when you spend all summer eating cold Japanese noodles–this is your recipe. The ingredients are easy to find in Japan: fresh basil was in the produce section of…
Broiled Sawara with Paprika
While at Omicho Market a couple weeks ago, I spied a fish-seller with sashimi-grade sawara (サワラ, 鰆), Japanese Spanish mackerel, on sale–for 250 yen, I could get a plate of huge filets much bigger than the ones I usually get at the store–about 500 grams’ worth.* “Two, please,” I told the clerk (the fish monger?)….
I'll Make It Myself! 