One of my favorite restaurants is Kajitsu, as I’ve written a couple of awesome reviews about the place. Chef Nishihara is simply a genius. His creativity and flavoring, using only vegetables (it’s a vegan/shojin restaurant), is just amazing.

I saw an article in last week’s Times Magazine, where Mark Bittman cooked with Chef Nishihara. I was blown away. He made vegan Worcestershire sauce. I’ve made sauces before, from molé to demi-glace to simple dashi. But who knew Worcestershire sauce could be home made??!!

I had to do it. But the original recipe is too much, so I cut corners here and there.

Here is my adaptation.

Soak a piece of kombu (about 6 inch) and 3 large (6 small) dried shiitake mushroom in a cup of water overnight.

They are reconstituted the next morning.

Cut 1 large onion, 4 carrots, 1 stalk of celery, and piece of ginger into small pieces.

Prepare spices:

1 teaspoon cinnamon
6 bay leaves
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ teaspoon sansho peppercorns, Sichuan peppercorns or green peppercorns
1 tablespoon ground, dried sage
1 tablespoon soybean powder (optional)
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ small dried hot red chili

Original recipe says to use fresh tomato, but I bought canned tomato, since the quality of tomato in this season isn’t that great anyways. Puree 3 lbs tomato.

Strain the tomatoes into a large pot.

You don’t want seeds to be in the sauce.

Make dashi. Here I cut corners. Put re-hydrated kombu into 8 cups of water, and simmer for 1 hour (instead of 2).

Add 2 cups of vegetable trimmings. Simmer for one more hour (again, instead of two). The more variety of vegetables, the better.

After two hours of simmering kombu and vegetable together, the stock is now done.

Strain:

8 cups of water is boiled down to barely 3 cups.

For tomato base, add vegetables, and thinly sliced re-hydrated mushroom, and simmer for about an hour.

Add all the spices and simmer for 10 minutes. As soon as you dump all the spices in the sauce, you will smell Worcestershire sauce. This is amazing.

Blend this mixture, then put everything back into the pot.

From here on, the process was a bit hectic, and I don’t have all the pics.

Pour 1 cup of red wine into the kombu/vegetable dashi. Boil for about 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook down pureed tomato base for another 10 minutes.

Pour 1/3 of tomato base into dashi/red wine through strainer. Cook another 10 minutes. And here you have homemade Worcestershire sauce. Color is a lot lighter than store bought kind. The flavor is a lot softer, but you definitely taste Worcestershire sauce.

This recipe made two kinds of sauce, one thin (above), and the other thick (below). In the remaining tomato base, add 1 grated apple, and cook for another 10 minutes. You now have a thick sauce. The recipe didn’t call for it, but I blended it to make it extra smooth. Adding an apple changed the flavor drastically, and it’s awesome.

It was a great experience, especially knowing that you don’t question the ingredients of the sauce. But I don’t think I will make this again, looking at all the mess I created…

I made oven-baked tonkatsu, and this sauce is not your typical Worcestershire sauce, but quite addictive. I also made panko-crusted mahi-mahi last night, and used the sauce (one bite with thin sauce, the other bite thick sauce), and it was very good.

Chef Nishihara is a genius. I haven’t tasted chef’s sauce, but a big difference he told me would be that he saves all the vegetable trimmings (carrots, cabbage, onion, turnips, leeks) and make a large batch of dashi, with kombu. I think the depth of his dashi is far more intense than what we can make at home though.

Good experience nonetheless.

I had the privilege to fly first class to Japan. Don’t ask me why, let’s just say I am a lucky person. Don’t judge me, I am only doing this to show how things are being done up there.

Don’t we all wonder how the privileged few have luxurious full flat seat, all you can drink/eat, three windows per seat, two bathrooms for 16 passengers, while the rest are literally crammed like chickens in coach? I don’t want to sound like an asshole, but once you experience this, it’s very difficult to see the reality of the fourth row from the back of the bus.

Here are how things are done for the selected few at the now-bankrupted American Airlines.

Flight from ORD (Chicago) –> NRT.

Seat: It’s not that wide, but very very long. Once full flat, one can comfortably sleep as if you are sleeping on a sofa. I say sofa, not bed, because it’s still narrow, but totally as comfortable as spending a night at a friend’s apartment.

Amenities: each seat is given a comforter, a blanket, and “bed cover” to put on your seat for more plush. Upon request, flight attendants are supposed to “turn down” your seat, but that’s just what they say. None of American Airline’s mature ladies even talk to you. Actually, the Chicago crews were a lot nicer than the New York crew, which is expected.

Seat operation system: complicated. You don’t want to look like an amateur, so you have to figure out how these things work quietly.

Windows: Yeah, there are three windows per seat. Think about the half windows in coach. This was definitely a luxury.

Pajamas:  Pretty comfortable, but it’s silly to see everyone in first class wearing the same thing.

Drinks: Abundant. You press the call button, and they bring more booze (as they look at you with the face of, “How are you still drinking?!”). Awesome.

Once the aircraft is up 38,000 feet altitude and cruising speed, the meal starts. Since this is noon departure, this is lunch, I guess.

White table cloth on the table.

Plates, salt and pepper shaker, and butter are served. And yes, this is all real china, not plastic.

First course, grilled shrimp. They are served from a big platter, and they are actually good.

Not chewy, very plump, and flavored with garlic and herbs. Pretty nice.

Entree: Chicken and pureed squash. Not worthy of anything. This tasted how airline food should taste.

I guess Chicago is famous for pretzel bread? The attendant recommended this out of many choices on bread basket, filled with warm ones. And this was very good. It was like eating a softer version of a pretzel.

I don’t usually have dessert, but they serve a famous sundae that they make with a bunch of toppings. Here you can see some fruit, nuts, booze to pour on top.

Done with the meal, with one more vodka on the rocks, I slept for about six hours without any disruption from a fellow passenger leaning on my seat or anything. Oh, the Bose noise-cancelling headsets that they provide is very nice. They act as ear plugs, and you don’t hear anything.

I was woken up by the scent of the next meal from the galley. Unfortunately, it was extremely disappointing sesame chicken, smeared with a shit load of sesame, and salad.

View from the window.

13 and half hours later, I landed at NRT, then on to next flight from NRT-SYD (Sydney), in row 54, for another 10 hours, back in coach. It was reality, hard fucking reality. At least it was on JAL where the booze was free, and I had enough to be able to sleep and wake up just about when I saw the Opera House from half the window I had access to.

Fast forward my time in Australia and Japan, and to my return flight NRT–> JFK

Flight attendants were so “mature”, and they were not “attending”, more like “doing me a favor by serving food and drinks”. First class was pretty empty on this flight, but during the flight, all the seats were taken up by attendants who were sleeping and actually snoring.

First course: salad with a piece of chicken. Again they were served from a big platter, and everything was fresh and tasted good.

Though I ordered a traditional Japanese meal, they gave me a selection of appetizers from the big platter. Smoked salmon and another shrimp. It’s amazing how the seasonings exactly the same no matter which country you board the plane. The photo is dark, but the only difference on the shrimp is the actual quality of shrimp. Japan definitely has better shrimp than the States.

More appetizer cart with fresh vegetable and slice of meat of some kind.

Here is my Japanese menu. So complicated, I lost interest reading and just waited for the food to arrive.

Hassun, Kobachi, and “Western Dish”:

Below is the “Western Dish”. Good vinegar, crunchy vegetables. Pretty nice. Not so “western”, though. They tasted like regular sunomono, or vegetables marinated in vinegar.

Kobachi was also good. But these two tasted pretty much the same since main sauce consisted of vinegar…

Hassun was ok, nothing special. The egg tasted fake.

Satoimo (taro root) had skins on it. I think it had a decorative purpose, but it was kinda inedible.

Main course: soup, fish, more egg, and mochi-esque dish on top left. I think it was potato.

Oh this is crabmeat and lily bulb paste stuff.  It was tasty.

Fish was too soy saucy and fishy.

Japanese meal was good for what it was, but it’s pretty disappointing to know it was all made in Japan — I expected more. I wonder if this is American Airlines standard or general rule of airline food.

In the middle of the flight, they served pumpkin soup.

I think the airline heating system uses some kind of combustive method where hot is EXTREMELY hot, and the cold is EXTREMELY cold. My soup was piping hot, almost lawsuit hot.

Good though. Spiced with curry, and a bit spicy. Comforting, almost welcoming me back to US land.

Now you have better idea how these selected, privileged people eat during a long flight. I wouldn’t boast the food situation, but the seat, and sleep-ability is extremely luxurious and you can actually function when you land at your destination since you had a pretty relaxed time during the flight.

Happy New Year!  I can’t believe the holiday season passed so quickly, and now we are in 2012.  Soon we will be bitching about the hot summer.

I was in Japan for the holidays, and had quite a few good food moments. I am really thankful to iPhone since I can now take pictures anywhere (and pretty decent quality ones).

Wine in a can.

Top part becomes a glass for your drink — a brilliant idea. But it tasted pretty crappy. I bought this before my flight to Melbourne, after enduring a 13-hour flight from New York to Tokyo, and I went right to sleep after drinking it, so thank you crappy canned wine.

Very pink shabu-shabu beef from Nagano. I think I had four shabu shabu meals during my stay, and every time the beef was extremely pink. I am not young any more, and my doctor warned me that my cholesterol is too high and to avoid beef, but when I am in Japan, it’s just impossible not to eat fatty beef.

People say you don’t need teeth to eat these babies, and it’s very true. They literally melt in your mouth.

MOS burger. The best hamburger chain EVER.

Despite so many selections like pork tonkatsu with cabbage, or teriyaki chicken with crispy lettuce, which are two of my favorites, I ordered the original MOS burger, which has a huge slice of tomato, minced onion, and meat sauce. Heavenly.

For the first time in my life, I went to the Tsukiji fish market. I was not interested in seeing bunch of fish, but I was very much excited about going to a sushi restaurant there. Since they are directly connected to the market, the quality of fish is superb, and prices are very reasonable.

Neighboring restaurants Sushi Yamato and Sushi Dai, are the most famous ones in the area, hence the lines are very very long. I hate waiting in lines, and I asked one of the shop persons in the area for another recommendation and he suggested Iwasa Sushi. We still waited about 30 minutes, but it was SO worth every minute of the wait.

I am still salivating from looking at this picture.

From left: very sweet squid, aji (horse mackerel), kohada (gizzard shad), fatty tuna, and my favorite of the day, katsuo (bonito).
The katsuo was so sweet, and almost creamy, as was the tai (snapper). So good.

This place  features a lot of different kai (clams), and my friend ordered kai galore. I can’t remember what they were, but they were apparently awesome.

Uni, say no more. When I was in San Francisco, I had very good Santa Barbara uni, but it doesn’t compare to this one.

Shirako, aka raw fish jizz. It literally bursted in my mouth…

It was like dessert.

This is the original Yoshinoya.  I had no idea they started in Tsukiji.

After Tsukiji, I went to Kappa-bashi, which is sort of similar to Bowery Street here in New York. Store after store of restaurant supply and kitchen gadgets. I was in heaven. Look at these food items made out of wax!

The reason I went to Kappa-bashi was because I was picking up my press. I ordered MOTO logo press. How cool is this?

How cute are these coffee cup balconies??

I was done with busy Tokyo, and went back to my hometown. On my way back to rural Japan, I stopped by at a home supply store (I needed to buy scissors to cut nose hair since they were getting way too long), and found bags of fermented cow poop as fertilizer.  I mean we all know animal poop is used to fertilize soil, but I’ve never seen them packaged and sold in bags. Look how happy both farmers and a cow are.

Japan is obsessed with crab meat during holiday season. Holiday season is all about spending money, and Japan is no exception. In the US, the holiday meal is usually turkey, ham, steak, etc., but in Japan, it’s crab or beef. This was a newspaper ad filled with crab meat.

My brother went fishing in the middle of the night one day, and came home early in the morning with super fresh horse mackerels.

He served this fresh sashimi for breakfast.

Unfortunately there was no rice to eat with, so I had a bagel. Bagel and horse mackerel sashimi for breakfast. I usually don’t care too much for small fish, but these were super fresh.

By the way, WTF does “Orange & Lemons said the bells of saint clements” mean on the plate?  Is this a total Japangrish? What an odd mixture of dishes, too. Anders wouldn’t approve of this. Soy sauce on a fake Pooh-print dish? My home is equipped with very odd mixtures of dishes, in sets of 3, since mom, brother and sister-in-law are the only regular residents of the house.

A couple days before New Year, I tagged along with a friend of mine to a fish market nearby. Extremely busy, since everything there was quite reasonably priced. Snappers are also big during the holiday season, and there were bunch of them. Did you know there are various types of squid? Mongo, aori, yari, to name a few, and each has different shapes and texture.

Here are the items I brought back from Japan.

This is one of the fine purchases from the trip. Silicon cooking chopsticks. I wanted dishwasher safe chopsticks since my wooden ones got pretty bent from high heat, yet I refuse to hand wash them.

These are far better than wooden kind since the tip grips extremely precisely. Unlike the wooden kinds, they don’t slip at all.

Do you know what this is?

Slide in a piece of seaweed.

And it punches out smile face. How cute?  There were a couple of different faces. I bought them at a dollar store. I may have to start character bento spree.

These are very convenient — you can now make conbini (convenient store) style rice balls. Seaweed can be stored separately and so whenever you eat it, it’s always crispy.

Japan is filled with cool food stuff.

I don’t miss Japan much as a whole, but I do miss Japan’s high quality food. I went to Mitsuwa market in New Jersey to feel good, and surely I found a lot of good stuff, but Mitsuwa is always very dangerous. $32o, for I don’t even remember what I bought….

Chicken noodle soup, whatever the reason maybe, is often eaten when we are sick. I have no idea why. I don’t think there’s any anti-cold medication in it, nor is it medically proven to cure illnesses whatsoever. I guess it’s simply the comfort of its flavor, clear soup, with healthy vegetables, along with the filling noodles.

I don’t like this soup. When I am sick, I would rather have udon noodles, which I guess is the Japanese comfort food. The other day, Nate had some belly issues, and he requested chicken noodle soup.

What I hate the most about chicken noodle soup is how the noodles gets so soggy, and it absorbs all the liquid, and becomes mushy soup-ish blob.

So I decided to deconstruct it to make the best chicken noodle soup.

For chicken, rub the breast meat with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast in a 375˚F oven for 20 minutes (even if the center is still pink, don’t worry since it will be boiled thoroughly at the end). Once the chicken cools down, cube it up, set aside.

For soup, cut onion, celery and carrots, sauté until translucent, add white wine (about a cup), cook the mixture down. I had leftover napa cabbage so I dumped it in the soup as well.

Then add enough chicken stock. I use store bought stock. People use the chicken for the soup that are used to make chicken stock as well, but I think it becomes tasteless, so I bought stock instead. Cook until vegetables are tender. You can add other herbs here, thyme, rosemary, bay leave, etc. Add salt and pepper.

10 minutes before serving, boil egg noodle (I use yolkless noodles) for about 8 minutes (package says 9, but I always like 1 minute less al dente).

3 minutes before serving, add chicken cubes in the soup.

Here is how you serve it:

First, lay noodle on a soup bowl.

Then add soup on top.

If you have leftover frozen wonton wrapper raviolis, you can bake them till crispy for additional texture.

This way, the noodles never get soggy!  This is more pasta dish than soup, but that’s ok.

It’s so easy to make, yet taste so gourmet. Since the chicken is roasted, it isn’t dry at all!

Next time you make chicken noodle soup, or any kind of noodle soup where you don’t want the noodles to get soggy, I recommend this method.

I was in Miami for Thanksgiving, listening to salsa music while eating turkey, which was great. Last Thanksgiving, I had a steak in Fort Lauderdale, but this year we had a very traditional Thanksgiving meal, with nontraditional music accompaniment. Since Thanksgiving Day’s meal looks the same no matter how fancy, or tasty it may be, I will skip it.

I’ve been wanting to go to NAOE restaurant for a while after I read about it on a blog a year ago or so. It’s in Miami, but located far up on Collins Avenue, in an area called Sunny Isle. Even though I go to Miami about twice a year, and last time I was there in May, they were closed the entire time we were there. So when we decided to go to Miami for Thanksgiving Day, the first thing I did was to make a reservation there.

According to my information, chef Kevin Cory is Miami born, his mother’s side of the family is from Ishikawa, Japan, and he went to train at his uncle’s restaurant in Toyama prefecture for six months. Upon his return, he researched, studied more, and started the restaurant with his wife. How cute of a story is this? I heard the food is very unorthodox compared to regular Japanese restaurants, yet all the flavors are just top notch. I was very curious, and was very excited to try it.

We went there the day before Thanksgiving, and since they only had 6:30 and 9:30 slots, we left the hotel around 5:45 way in time for 6:30 reservation. What we didn’t know was the traffic the day before Thanksgiving. The road was terribly packed with everyone going somewhere to eat turkey. I frantically called the restaurant, yet unfortunately no human picked up and their voice mail instructs you directions to the restaurant since they know they are located middle of nowhere. Finally we arrived close to 7pm, fearing we lost our reservation. Luckily everyone at the restaurant was very nice, and understanding.

Phew. We sat at the bar counter.

There’s no menu, and basically you eat what chef serves you. This is pretty daring for Miami, since there aren’t that many Japanese restaurants. Despite the fact the city hosts a reputable food festival every year, I think Miami is pretty weak when it comes to Japanese food. Sure, many restaurants are Japan-infused, like my dining experience at Azul in May, but generally there aren’t that many TRUE Japanese restaurant, as far as I’ve heard.

So we were in for the chef’s omakase for the evening.

From all the reviews, I knew they serve kaiseki-style bento box as an appetizer, which includes rice. Appetizer, with rice? Really? Then the dinner is followed by a bunch of nigiri sushi. Very different from how we usually have course meals at Japanese restaurants in NYC, but almost refreshing.

Then came the bento box. Nice wooden box filled with goodies. Chef Kevin explained everything in detail.

Top left: the chef put raw hamachi (yellowtail) in the bowl with yamaimo (mountain yam) and steamed it to perfection. Then, he added starch-thickened dashi on top, with ginko nuts from Japan, mitsuba stems (Japanese parsley), and a dab of fresh wasabi. The dashi was so delicate, very kaiseki-like flavor.

Top right: shirako (they called it “cod milk”, which was the least offensive way to describe it; but here at Umamimart we call it, “fish jizz” which may be a bit too offensive for their customers) simmered in sake and soy sauce, sprinkled with sansho (I think?). Left of the shirako is baigai, which is a small, conch-like clam (which seems to be a specialty of Toyama, where Chef Cory’s uncle works as a chef). It was well-flavored with sake. Next to the clam is smelt and yam tempura, and chestnut with karasumi (bottarga).

Bottom left is shiitake rice. The amount of rice was just right, not too much, and it was a good portion as an appetizer.

Bottom right: cobia sashimi. This was probably the only local fish they have, and it was very nice. Its flavor is a lighter version of yellowtail, but the texture is very chewy or what should I say, almost beef like. Very fresh, and what I like is how he cut shiso leaves into small pieces. Whenever you go to sushi restaurant, sushi or sashimi are served with a bit of daikon radish or shiso, but they are basically more for decoration. I think shiso really adds a great flavor, and sometimes, cuts the fishiness, yet no one eats them. So he had a bed of cut-up shiso underneath the cobia, which I thought was very smart–an untraditional way of serving it, which encouraged people to eat it. Of course all his wasabi is freshly grated.

We are now in for chef’s progression for nigiri sushi. He had the most non-traditional technique for making nigiri sushi. He first made a tiny rice ball, placed it on the counter, added a bit of wasabi, then placed the fish on top. You know how regular sushi chef place rice on palm, adds wasabi and fish, then squeeze them just right? Nigiri comes from the word nigiru, which means “to hold tight, or grab”, but he wasn’t grabbing his sushi whatsoever. Yet, he squeezed it at the end, just enough so that it doesn’t fall apart. Brand new way of sushi making.

First was salmon belly. As I was chewing buttery salmon nigiri, I realized I forgot to take a picture. Here is an empty plate where salmon nigiri was.

Barely cooked lobster claw. He cooked the lobster in a very interesting and different ways–claws in one way, tails in another. Simply, since their thicknesses vary, they take different times to cook.

The claw was very soft, very sweet.

Iidako (octopus) from Portugal. Not chewy whatsoever, very sweet and very good texture. He poured orange-scented pouzu on top.

I skipped this, but Nate had kumamoto oyster from the west coast.

He added a bit of shiso, plus fresh wasabi. I really like how he incorporates shiso in dishes. Nate said it was very nice.

Fresh scallop. VERY sweet.

Oh, by the way, this is the kinda place where the chef dabs each sushi with home-blended soy sauce, or orange-scented ponzu. It turns out that the chef comes from a shoyu-brewing family, in Kanazawa. No place for Kikkoman here.

Madai (sea bream). He kept the skin on, which is a traditional way of serving this sushi.

The skin added another level of texture. He really knows his fish.

Squid from Boston. He randomly slices it along the top, which was nice, and so sweet.

Aji (horse mackerel). Some of the freshest aji I’ve ever had. With grated ginger on top.

Cobia belly, with white seaweed on top. I am really digging this fish for its meat-like texture.

Uni!! Instead of wrapping it in nori, he placed a couple of pieces on top of the rice. Simple and true.

This uni was from Hokkaido. After tasting these babies, Santa Barbara uni is totally second class.

Here is his specialty. When he trained in Toyama at his uncle’s restaurant, the place featured unagi (freshwater eel), where he learned to cut up the live eel, debone them, and steam them to perfection (like in Kayoko’s post the other  week).

These fresh (not in the pack, from China) eels are extremely different from what you may think of as unagi. So soft, so clean, with no weird chemical flavor we usually taste in the pre-packed kinds. Brilliant. This was steamed, with sea salt sprinkled on top–no sauce.

Last but not at least, eel kabayaki. As we were eating and chatting about food, he kept going back to oven, dabbing kabayaki sauce on the eel, and after like 15 minutes of nicely grilling, he gave the last awesome piece of eel sushi.

Oh, on the left side, you see pickles, which is narazuke, one of my favorite pickles. Japanese melon (cucumber-like gourd) is pickled in sakekasu (sake lees). This is special since it’s been sitting in it for 2 years. Wow, so flavorful, almost boozy.

This was very good. I still don’t know if Miami diners are daring enough to keep up with chef Kevin’s style, but to us, it was so good. He said 80% of his customers are from NYC, no wonder. They have 16 seats, and when we got there, it was half full. I was like, “I thought it was so hard to make reservation here”, and he said, he only takes eight guests per seating. What a luxury. How the hell does he make money??!!

And I found out some great news from the chef. Due to the fact the landlord is bulldozing the current location, they are MOVING TO MIAMI PROPER! No longer do Miamians need to drive for 30 minutes! They will operate at the current location until the end of December, and they will reopen in Brickell, across from Mandarin Oriental Hotel (where we usually stay), sometime in February or March. I can’t wait for the next visit at the new location.

What I also found out was, Naoe is Kevin’s mom’s maiden name. He figured Kevin as Japanese restaurant name wouldn’t make any sense.

If you aren’t afraid of trying Japanese seafood little-known in the States, this is the place in Miami.

I think I’ve cooked turkey for the past 13 years or so. I am slowly starting to break that tradition. Why? A.) I don’t like turkey, it is are too gamey for me. B.) It takes up too much space in the fridge, in the oven, everywhere. C.) More and more people have family obligations on the very day, so our yearly dinner  is always a week (or two) before the actual date, when turkey isn’t easily available yet.  So I decided to host a dinner with turkey-themed, but not turkey breast like last year.

Also I am busy getting ready for my month-long trip to Japan, Melbourne, and Sydney, so creating a menu, and making seating cards totally slipped my mind.

This was the final menu:

Curried carrot soup with crispy pumpkin ravioli
Lasagna rolls with zucchini and turkey bolognese
Roasted kabocha pumpkin stuffed with ground turkey and vegetables
Concord grape tart

Carrot soup was pretty basic. Sauté 1 onion, and add 2lb of chopped carrots, then add chicken stock. Once they are all cooked, blend  until smooth. I added a touch of milk, and 1 tbsp of curry powder, plus about 3tbsp of honeIt was very smooth. I had leftover pumpkin raviolis (in wonton wrappers), and sprayed oil on top, and baked them until crispy.

Soup was very creamy, despite there aren’t that much cream, and crunchy from ravioli added a good texture. The curry powder definitely minimized the strong carrot flavor.

For stuffed kabocha, first cut out the top, and get rid of the seeds. Sauté 1 onion, 2 leeks, and about 3 stalks of celery until tender. Let cool. Process about half a bag of fresh cranberries, mix with 2 tbsp of sugar, and set aside. Mix 1 package of ground turkey, sauteed vegetable, cranberries, salt, pepper and 1 egg. Mix until well combined. Shove mixture inside kabocha.

Bake on 350˚F for about 2 hours, until inside temp reaches 160˚F.

This is not necessary, but I boiled chicken broth with salt and pepper, then added corn starch to serve as a gravy alongside the kabocha.

For the lasagna roll, cool lasagna sheets for about 5 minutes, and line them on cookie sheet (be careful not to overlap, since they will stick). Cut zucchini into about 8th (I did 5th, which was a bit too thick), and cook them until a bit tender for easy roll up.

Make turkey bolognese with ground turkey, onion, celery and carrots. I added regular marinara sauce (out of a jar) to this, with red wine.  Simmer everything down until you reach your preferred flavor.

I made cheese mixture without using cheese. Semi firm tofu is a great substitute here. Squeeze water out of tofu by wrapping it in paper towel, and microwave for about 1.5 minutes. Let cool. Mix it with thawed frozen spinach, salt, pepper, 1 egg, and handful of grated parmesan cheese. Set aside.

Now it’s time to roll the lasagna. Place a sheet of lasagna, add tofu mixture, put zucchini, and add mozzarella cheese, and roll.

Put it on baking dish with bolognese on the bottom. Pour remaining bolognese over the lasagna rolls, and sprinkle cheese (parmesan and mozzarella).

Bake until bubbly.

I overcooked a bit, but the crunch on top was good as well.

For dessert, I’ve made concord grape tart before, but totally forgot how I did it. I know they have pretty large pits, and I can’t remember what I did in the past, so I googled around and decided to follow the most annoying, time consuming method…

Take grapes off the vines. Wash them gently.

Separate skin and fruit.  So annoying.

Don’t you dare throw away the skins.  They are the most flavorful part of this grape.

Cook fruit for about 10 minutes, then sieve through to get rid of the pits.

Mix pitted fruit, grape skins, 1/2 cup of sugar, juice of half a lemon, 2 tbsp corn starch and heat up together.

Looking at this, the color is not right at all.

Thank you grape skins! They totally changed the color and flavor of the mixture to proper concord grape!! After the mixture turns thick and dark red, you are done.

In the future, I will chop up the grape skins a little before making the mixture.

I made the crust the same way when I made blueberry tart, with 1 stick of butter, 1 cup of flour and 1/3 cup of sugar, and pre-baked it for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Pour grape mixture in, and a beautiful concord grape tart is done.

This is more comfort food than a decked-out Thanksgiving Day dinner, but all the dishes were great. Turkey is overrated.

This was better than regular breast meat.

I’ll be in Miami this Thursday, sipping margaritas poolside. Happy Thanksgiving, suckers!

Before I start this week’s post, let’s congratulate Kayoko and the crew for revamping the Umamimart site to a whole new level. Orange is my favorite color, so this is cool, and soon enough, we will be FAMOUS bloggers!! Hooray.

As you’ve seen from my past posts, I’ve made cakes for basically all of my friends birthdays in recent years, and since I made pink Barbie cake for my friend Derek, there’s a lot of pressure now. I have to top each birthday cake with something better, crazier, and funny as hell.

My friend Mike’s birthday was coming up, and I decided to make a crazy cake for him. What shape or flavor should I create? Fun shape, fun flavor, what could I do?  After talking with friends, we came to conclude that it had to relate to his recent injury. He broke his foot pretty badly when he was playing gay football. Don’t ask me about the difference between regular football and gay football, but it has something to do with less protection? Flags or something? Since I don’t follow sports whatsoever, I have no idea when he talks about his “gay football league”.

Anyhow, he is recovering pretty well, and ready to get back to playing, which is good.

So what is broken leg cake? It could be a X-ray photo of broken leg on top of  square cake, but that’s kinda too realistic and gross, so I googled around “broken leg cake”, and someone has made it look like a leg in a cast. Great inspiration.

Knowing that his favorite cake was chocolate cake, I found an interesting German chocolate cake recipe that uses a lot of coffee.

INGREDIENTS

4 cups sugar
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 cup cocoa
3 tsp baking powder
3 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
4 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup butter, melted
2 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups hot coffee

METHOD

Preheat oven to 350˚F degrees.

I used two cookie sheets to make this, just like my wedding cake. My idea was to make a jelly roll.

In the large bowl of a standing mixer, stir together sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add eggs, buttermilk, melted butter and vanilla extract; beat 2 minutes on medium speed.

Stir in the hot coffee.

The batter is soooo runny, and I may use 1 cup of coffee next time. Pour batter in evenly, spread it out and bake for about 15 minutes or so.

The cake is INCREDIBLY soft. Maybe buttermilk, maybe coffee, but whatever it was, this was almost too soft to make shapes. I was suddenly reminded by the horror story from my wedding cake endeavor, and realized rolling them wasn’t an option.

Me being pretty good at improvising, I decided to just layer them. By the way, above recipe makes way too much cake. You basically need half this to create the leg.

Meanwhile, I made raspberry jam-esque stuff using frozen raspberry, sugar and corn starch, to make the filling look like blood. How clever!

Not a great picture, but you can see how much it broke when cutting, assembling this soft cake.

Blood seeping out of flesh, how realistic this is! I know I was covering up with cream, so I let go of my perfectionism.

By the way, where the foot is, I made a large cake ball (mushing cake, mixing with a bit of raspberry jam as binder, and made a large flat ball shape, to fit how a foot may look like in this shape, and stuck it to the bottom of the “leg” part. I also made sure to use bunch of long wooden stick to secure its placement. You do not want “broken” broken leg cake, right?

I made cream cheese and white chocolate frosting, and first crumb-coated it.

Then I needed toes. Thank you marzipan. The color is pretty close to skin, and it was very easy to deal with. I just rolled them, looking at my own toes (this is important) and shape it like one, then press where the nail is with knife, toothpick, etc., to make a dent for nails.

This gives you a great idea for this year’s Halloween cake, don’t you think? I thought, after all, this was for a gay footballer, I need to flame this up.

It gets grosser! I painted the nails with red food coloring, and added a base to attach to cake.

Attach it to the top of the cake ball, and start piping the white cream, so that it looks like cast.

Then with the widest flat tip (898), carefully piped it, and also made sure each layer overlaps to give it a good “wrapped leg” effect.

Since the party was a block from my apartment, I carefully hand-carried it. While I was walking over, people were like, “WTF is that?!!” Then realized it was broken leg cake.

This was a big hit at the party. Sort of gross to say, but marzipan toes tasted quite good as well.

Happy Birthday Mike!

PREFACE
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 1
Battle ReCPY: NYC Umeboshi Project, Pt. 2 

Finally, I finished pickling my ume. All I had left to do was to dry them under sun for a day or two. Being in NYC, I don’t have a gigantic backyard where I can freely dry my ume, so I simply laid them on cookie sheet (since I don’t have bamboo colander either), and left them on a sunny day near my window.

In Japan, you are supposed to do this during the hottest days of summer, so they could get as much of a sun tan as possible. From the feeling of the skin on mine though, I already knew this wouldn’t be the best ume. After all, as I keep saying, Japanese pickling plums are of the apricot family, not plum family, and the skin on these were like a middle-aged woman’s face. It was so tense, and shiny, and didn’t have the matte finish of regular ume.

Look at the skin:

Just like chemical peel, the entire layer comes off easily. Kinda gross.

Anyhow, I left them in the sun, and turned them over once so they could get an even sun tan.

They didn’t dry up the way regular ume are supposed to, but it’s ok. I went for the taste, not the appearance.

I basically had to peel the skin to eat them, but taste wise, it was just like regular ume. They had a slight hint of plum, but the sour/salty ume fragrance was definitely there. Other than the skin situation, some were very tender, but others were still tough.

Next year, I will find some unripened apricot and do this, or get real ume.

I am clearly defeated by the West Coast Ume Project. However, using what’s available here in the east coast, I did pretty well.

My plum wine is doing very nicely. When I open the jar, the aroma was so sweet and plumy. A couple more months and it will be ready to drink them on the rocks.

The Japanese have many dishes that originated somewhere in the world, but recreated it in such a way that fits to their taste. Curry, from India, is a good example. Japanese curry isn’t the same curry as the kind from India. It’s a lot sweeter, and thicker. Hamburger aka humbagu is eaten without buns (very gay, actually, I sometimes order burgers without buns for less carbs). Or how about my last week’s post on turning pasta into ramen noodles?! We are crazy about turning western food into Japanese food. We are very good at copying something that already exists, and making it better, at least in our opinions. Nowadays China is going to that direction.

Anyhow, hayashi rice is something nostalgic for many Japanese. It’s not fancy, very simple, almost a blue-collar type of meal. Definitely comfort food. It’s basically simple thinly-sliced beef and onions cooked in demi-glace sauce.

Why the term hayashi? Apparently, it’s either that someone named Mr. Hayashi created it, or it was a mispronunciation of “hash” (hashed beef) that turned the word into hayashi.

Just like curry, you can buy a precooked roux and all you need to do is cook meat and onion, then add water and the roux.

But where is the fun in that? Another reason I made this is because one of my friend’s got all her meat-related items confiscated at JFK when she returned from Japan with a suitcase full of gourmet curry, gourmet hayashi mix, etc. In her opinion, instant mix isn’t good enough, and I wanted to prove to her that she can make something very good with a little bit of this and that you can obtain here in the US.

One of the weirdest obsessions of Japanese people is demi-glace sauce. This very French sauce is super popular in Japan. Unfortunately, due to various cow diseases, Japanese-made demi-glace sauce isn’t available in the US anymore. Williams-Sonoma carries very expensive demi-glace from France, but it’s all too authentic, and for us Japanese, something is missing. Maybe MSG? Anyhow, I found this demi glace sauce by chef Troy, whoever he is, and I decided to give a try.

Here is the recipe. First melt 4 tbsp of butter in a pan, then add 160g of flour. Cook until golden, or looks like dirt.

This isn’t dirt-y enough.

It takes a while, but be patient. Meanwhile, be careful not to burn this–it will ruin the whole sauce.

This almost copper-like flour butter is what you need.

Add 400ml of red wine, stir very well. I found that it’s almost impossible to lose all the lumps, but it’s ok. We will take care of this later. Then add 1600ml beef stock, or dashi. Original recipe I found said dashi, but I found that beef stock actually adds more depth.

To get rid of lumps, strain through.

Cut up about 4 onions.

Brown thinly sliced beef that you can buy at either Japanese or Korean grocery stores. About 1.5 lb, or how much you like.

Once the meat is browned, add onions, and cook for a couple of minutes. Then add to the sauce base.

The very nice thing about hayashi rice is that there’s no need to simmer it to cook everything down. But I like the hayashi thickened, so I cooked this for about two hours. I added about half the jar of demi-glace sauce, then some ketchup, some tonkatsu sauce, and some Worcestershire sauce. For this part, it’s really difficult to tell you the exact amount. Just like everyone’s individual curry recipe, you have to play around with a bunch of stuff to make it to your liking.

While you are cooking it down, put 4 tbsp of sugar on non stick pan, and heat it all up.

Yes, you are basically making caramel.

Once all the sugar melts and starts to caramelize, add the liquid from the hayashi sauce (try not to get any meat or onions in it). It will bubble up so be careful not to burn yourself.

Add enough liquid to melt all the sugar. Once the sugar melts, put this mixture in to the sauce base.

It adds a golden color to the sauce.

After about 2 hours, it cooked down quite a bit.

Serve with rice.  You can also add mushrooms, and sprinkle green peas on top for color.

This is very comfy, and the caramelized sugar added depth to it, plus American-made-demi-glace-for-Japanese-suckers-like-me works very nicely. I bet chef Troy’s wife is Japanese. Sure it takes longer than using instant roux, but being patient and browning the flour butter is definitely worthwhile.

By the way, my recipe makes a large potful, so you can definitely halve the ingredients if you prefer small portions.

Ramen, as some of my fellow writers have observed, is totally taking over North America. People are obsessively eating, finding new shops, and eating more. New chains from Japan are opening like once a month here in New York City.

Funny thing about ramen is it used to be really difficult to find recipes, but thanks to the internet and this ramen boom, I can find recipes even in English. Ramen is America’s new sushi.

Even though you can make ramen from scratch at home, it takes forever to make the stock, and you need access to various bones. Sure, chicken carcass isn’t too hard to find, but pork bone is a bit more difficult. Plus it’s always challenging to make the noodle, because you need kansui to make it yellow, which also gives it its elasticity. What is kansui? Here is explanation on Wiki.

Most noodles are made from four basic ingredients: wheat flour, salt, water, and kansui, which is essentially a type of alkaline mineral water, containing sodium carbonate and usually potassium carbonate, as well as sometimes a small amount of phosphoric acid. Originally, kansui was named after the water from Inner Mongolia’s Lake Kan which contained large amounts of these minerals and was said to be perfect for making these noodles. Making noodles with kansui lends them a yellowish hue as well as a firm texture. For a brief time after World War II, low-quality tainted kansui was sold, though kansui is now manufactured according to JAS standards. Eggs may also be substituted for kansui.

I heard some Chinese grocery stores sell them, but noodle-making is always a task. I do have a pasta-maker, which will ease this process quite a bit, but still, after spending hours simmering the soup base, it’s too much of a bother.

One day I was Googling around for new methods, and I came across something very interesting: adding baking soda while cooking pasta supposedly turns it into ramen noodles. WTF?! I was so intrigued, and tried it for myself. It’s AMAZING.

Spaghetti is a bit too thick, so cappellini is the best choice here.

Package directs you to cook it for four minutes for al dente pasta.

After 2 minutes or so, it’s still pasta.

The original Pasta de Ramen recipe post (on Cookpad from Japan) said to add baking soda after 4 minutes, but I was too impatient and added a table spoon of it at 3.5 minutes.

Baking soda ratio: if you are making a box full of pasta, I would add 5 tablespoons of baking soda. Think 1 tablespoon per serving.

Holy bubble! VERY IMPORTANT thing to remember is to use a big enough pot so that you can avoid a mess on your stove.

Cook for an additional 2 minutes. Boom, something in the cooking liquid turned regular pasta into ramen noodle!!

You HAVE to try this, because it starts to smell like cooking ramen noodles as well. The color also changes, turning a darker yellow, which is just like ramen noodles.

Can you see it’s a bit more sticky than regular pasta?

Doesn’t this look like ramen noodles?

Just to give you an idea, this is regular pasta. The color is definitely very different.

I made yakisoba with the noodles. It gets very sticky, so I rinsed it with water once, then made the yakisoba. This was actually better than using packaged yakisoba or ramen noodles since it didn’t get soggy at all.

Yep, the stove is a mess.

Scientifically, kansui is Na2CO3 and baking soda is NaHCO3. I have no idea what this means, but apparently by adding baking soda, it acts as the kansui, and turns pasta into ramen noodle.

I am not saying this is the best, but for amateur cooking at home, this totally is a GREAT method, especially things like hiyashi-chuka (cold ramen) And it’s definitely cheaper than the packaged noodles.

Please try this for yourself, so we can share the jaw-dropping moment of “Holy shit, it smells like ramen!” just around minute 4:30. When you buy the cheap ramen noodle packets, why don’t you leave the noodles, and make Pasta de Ramen instead, with the soup powder? I always gets grossed out eating cheap instant ramen since the noodles are fried, but this method will totally kick things up a notch!!  Sure you need two pots, and it beats the “instant” element (plus you will be probably too drunk to care), but this will make a gourmet instant ramen.

Wouldn’t it be weird/fun to find penne in ramen soup that tastes just like ramen?