A delicious and fancy summer meal!
Category: Recipes
Whole-Wheat Pita (Bread Revolution Series)
More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour. “Pita pockets” didn’t excite me as a kid. Toted as a kid-friendly food, the charm of stuffing sandwich fillings into a bread with a pocket was lost on me. I rediscovered pita–fresh pita–in university at Middle-Eastern diners and as (store-bought) hummus became more mainstream. In Japan, I sometimes…
My Favorite Bamboo-Shoot (Takenoko) Recipes
Early May means fresh bamboo shoots are in season again here in Ishikawa, and I received not one but three lovely shoots from my friends and coworkers this year! 2012 is apparently a bumper year for bamboo in the forests and in my kitchen. Whether you purchased or received fresh bamboo, one large shoot can…
Flour Tortillas (Bread Revolution Series)
More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour. TexMex/Southwestern/Mexican foods were something I purchased from the grocery or at restaurants in the US, missed sorely in Japan, and was convinced I couldn’t make it myself. If I found salsa in a jar, I couldn’t find chips, so what was the point? Avocados weren’t something I could…
Easy Whole-Wheat Pizza Dough (Bread Revolution Series)
More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour. One thing that always amazes me when I return to the US is the sheer amount of choice one has about food. Order a pizza in the US and you can usually choose whole-wheat or white crust (sometimes even gluten-free); thick or thin crust; marinara sauce or white…
Bread Revolution: Flour
More Bread Revolution and Guide to Flour. One of the biggest challenges–and triumphs– for me during these 2.5 years living in Japan has been creating bread products I could easily purchase back in the US: pitas, tortillas, flatbread, pizza dough. I experimented (usually disastrously) with a few things in year 1, namely pizza dough, which…
Roasted Vegetables and My Obsession with 安納芋
Orange sweet potatoes, ubiquitous in the US, are often nowhere to be found in Ishikawa. Depending on where you are in the prefecture, you can usually locate some in one brief part of late winter in the local-vegetable section of the grocery store with the Noto- and Kaga Yasai (heirloom vegetables from Noto [northern Ishikawa]…
Kabocha-Stuffed Okonomiyaki
Every food blogger with an interest in Japanese food is required by law to have a post on okonomiyaki, so today, I’m going to show you how to make my favorite version, which is stuffed with my favorite vegetable, kabocha squash. Okonomiyaki (henceforth not italicized) is sometimes described as a savory pancake or as a…
Flexitarian: Spicy Fava Beans and Pork Stir-fry
Cheruko over at Hokuriku Expat Kitchen sent me Mark Bittman’s New York Times article “We’re Eating Less Meat. Why?” the other day, and we were both pretty excited to see the new term he had coined for people like us: flexitarians, those who eat vegetarian most of the time. That is, my diet is based…
Cookie Exchange
Although my friends and I all seem to be pretty adamant about making very specific Thanksgiving dishes, I’m much more flexible about my Christmas meal as long as it’s good. Last year, my friend from Wakayama visited me, and we made a small Christmas dinner at my place: stuffed chicken breast, canned chunky cranberry sauce…
Spiced Persimmon Cake
桃栗三年柿八年 (momo kuri sannen kaki hachinen): it takes time to reap the fruit of one’s actions (lit. [It takes] three years for [planted] peach and chestnut trees, eight for persimmons [to bear fruit]) (ことわざ学習室） In late autumn and early winter (mid-Nov. to New Year), Omicho Market is awash in reds and oranges: strawberries, crabs, mikan,…
ベーガル革命: Whole-Wheat Bagels
もちもち (mochimochi): springy (texture) Back in my language-school days at Midd, a New-Yorker foodie friend got on my case for eating the dining-hall bagels, telling me, “That’s not a bagel. That’s a piece of bread shaped like a bagel.” It’s probably for the best that he doesn’t find out what sort of things pass for…
I'll Make It Myself! 
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