Avacado Soup

Boil the following in a stock pot for about 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked.

• Kombu Dashi (basic Japanese soup stock used in miso soup)
• Chicken Drumsticks (not necessary but add a little bit of flavor to the stock)
• Mushrooms (I used shimeji and maitake but feel free to experiment, use more if you don't eat meat)
• Water

Add

• 1 Onion, chopped
• Diced Carrot
• salt to taste

Boil for another 2 minutes and add these final ingredients shortly before serving.

• Leafy Greens (I used つるむらさき but napa cabbage works too)
• Avacado, cut into cubes

Credit to 後藤武 (Takeshi Goto) for the recipe via 上野玲奈 (Reina Ueno).

Summer Vegetable Miso Soup

With an abundance of summer veggies and the constant task of feeding 10-15 people in one sitting we get a little creative. I've made this soup a few times and has always been a big hit which is very nice because the soup itself is very easy to make. It also ages very well if you happen not to finish it on the first day, especially the kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) which adds an extra sweetness to the miso which would otherwise get a little sour.


Cut up all your summer veggies into small bite-size (or chopstick pick-up-able) pieces, about 1-2 centimeter cubes. Recommended veggies which I've tried are: eggplant (nasu-なす), Japanese pumpkin (kabocha-かぼちゃ), mushrooms (i.e. shiitake, maitake, etc), onion, carrots, zucchini, cabbage, and anything else that sounds good in a summer soup. Put the longer cooking veggies (kabocha, nasu, mushrooms, onion, carrots, etc) in a large pot and cover with water. Boil the veggies for a few minutes and then add the rest of the veggies (mainly green things). If you like you can also add some instant dashi (Japanese soup base). Then take some of the broth and dissolve some miso in it and add that mixture to the soup.

Serve.

If you happen to have leftovers, it will keep for months some times as long as you remember to boil it at least once a day (although I've been known to neglect duty once and awhile). If it starts to smell bad, throw it out!

Daikon (Japanese Radish) Salad

I`ve been loving the Japanese cooking...once I started I couldn`t stop. So here`s the basic recipe for my version of the Daikon Salad.

First you want to wash and peel the daikon, cut off the stems. Then, julienne it into long thing pieces, I usually cut in half first and then into slices about 2-3 mm wide (I`m just guess there). Then, I cut those slices the other way until you have long thin pieces. If you have carrots on hand you can cut them the same way and mix with the daikon.

The sauce is fairly simple. I like about 1/3 ketchup and 2/3 mayonaise and some minced garlic (if you happen to like garlic, maybe roast it to mellow out the flavor). Sometimes I also add a can of tuna, drained to give it a little more flavor.

Then mix everything together in a bowl and you have a basic daikon salad. But, it`s a recipe that`s meant to be played with. I also add some salt and pepper depending on how spicy they ketchup I use is. Also, some capers or some other kind of crunchy round bean can be pretty.

M&M Bird's Nest Cookies

I went to Target the other day and had a coupon for a free bag of M&Ms as long as it was under 2.99 a bag. I picked up a bag of milk chocolate M&Ms in the shape of speckled Easter eggs in cute pastel colors. The recipe on the bag for the nests was awesome, so I am posting it here. I have made comments as well in italics

M&M's Bird's Nest Cookies

Combine the taste of toasted coconut with colorful "M&M's"® Chocolate Candies for Easter and get Yellow's favorite springtime dessert.

Yield: 3 dozen cookiesBird's Nest Cookies (more like 2-2.5 dozen normal-sized cookies)

1 1/3 cups flaked coconut
2 sticks butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 3/4 cups "M&M's"® Plain, Peanut, Almond or Crispy Chocolate Candies for Easter

What to do:

Preheat oven to 300 F. Spread coconut on non-greased cookie sheet. Toast in oven, stirring occasionally, until it turns light golden, about 25 minutes. Remove coconut from cookie sheet and set aside.

Increase oven temperature to 350°F.
In large bowl, add butter and sugar and whip until light and fluffy; beat in egg and vanilla. In medium bowl, combine flour and salt. Blend into creamed mixture.
Form dough into 1 1/4-inch balls. Roll heavily into toasted coconut. Place coconut cookies 2 inches apart on lightly greased cookie sheets. Make indentation with thumb in center of each cookie. (I put the toasted coconut in a giant measuring cup and tossed the balls into the cup and shook it around to make things a little less messy. I would also suggest chilling the dough for 15-30 minutes because our first batch spread a lot and the "nest" was more like a pancake)

Bake 12 to 14 minutes or until golden brown. Remove cookies and cool completely. (We had to remake the indent for some reason. I held the cookie with two fingers on opposite sides of the cookie and used the thumb of my other hand to reshape the dent in the cookie center) Fill indentations with "M&M's"® Chocolate Candies for Easter.

Original recipe from M&M's


We also made our usual macaroon recipe and turned them into nests as well. The cookies resulting from this recipe are your more traditional macaroons and are very coconutty and dense as there is no flour involved.


14 ounces sweetened shredded coconut (basically, a bag of coconut)
14 ounces sweetened condensed milk (if you are trying to cut the fat a bit, use Borden's fat free condensed milk; you really can't taste the difference, I promise!)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract (I use 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 almond extract because the smell and taste is just that much better!)
2 extra-large egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.

Combine the coconut, condensed milk, and vanilla in a large bowl. Whip the egg whites and salt on high speed in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment until they make medium-firm peaks. Carefully fold the egg whites into the coconut mixture. (Ok, if you are like me and you don't have the luxury of a mixer, just beat the egg whites and salt with a fork for a couple minutes. It's a nice arm workout and the cookies come out looking just as good!)

Drop the batter onto sheet pans lined with parchment paper using either a 1 3/4-inch diameter ice cream scoop, or 2 teaspoons. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown. Cool and serve.

(To make nests, we just waited until after the cookies were baked and as soon as we took them out, we made a thumbprint!) Add candies on top and viola! Or, if you are making them just on a random day, I'd suggest melting some nice chocolate on the stove and them dipping the macaroons or drizzling chocolate over them. It's sinful!)

Comfort Foods!

Well, I made homemade naan and curry a couple weeks ago. Here are the results and recipe information:
http://shmai.blogspot.com/2008/02/indian-curry-and-naan.html

I also made sausage gravy and biscuits for the bf.. He says it was phenomenal! Yay! And I think it was great too, especially because it was a recipe published by Bob Evan's, the brand/company that sells the sausage!

Anyway, here is the recipe. I'll upload the picture a little later and update..hopefully.

Sausage Gravy:

1 lb Bob Evan's Original Sausage
2 cups of milk
1 tbsp of butter (my addition)
1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
salt and pepper to taste
a lotta love!

Brown sausage in a skillet or sauce pan on medium-medium high heat. Make sure to break the sausages into the size that you desire (I made it small and crumbly like ground meat). Then add 1/4 cup of flour and let it dissolve. Don't be worried if there isn't enough grease! Then add 2 cups of milk and stir. Keep stirring and it should start to bubble! Then add in the 1 tbsp of butter, which I think you can omit but I added it for shits and giggles. Add salt and pepper to taste. Keep stirring and it should thicken. Note that the longer you cook it, the thicker it will get so turn off the stove when it gets to your desired consistency. Bake up some buttermilk biscuits from good ol Pillsbury, cut them open and then smother them with the sausage gravy.

Serve with some scrambled eggs on the side and you're done! :)

And, this is definitely not a low fat dish. I will try a vegetarian version this weekend since I want some sausage gravy and biscuits now! The plan is to use vegetarian "sausage", skim milk or light soy milk (or a combo of the two) as well as salt and pepper. For the biscuits, I will use the Bisquick heart healthy mix to make the heart healthy biscuits. YUM!


update: I made the vegetarian version. The sausage gravy is the same except the spices from the sausage aren't as bold so I would probably add more sage to it next time. I used fat free milk instead of whole milk and the biscuits were tasty as usual, but if you were secretly trying to make the dish healthier, I would just tweak the gravy and not the biscuits so that it still looks untainted! :)

Anu's Chai Tea

This winter has been about visiting with friends but we're all broke students or recent college graduates so all we really do is sit around and talk. Plus, we've been gorging ourselves all winter while spending time with family over the holidays so no one really feels like eating. Sometimes it's hard to throw together a meal or snacks for impromptu entertaining so I started having 'hot chocolate and chai' nights and it only takes 10 minutes to put together.

For the hot chocolate I use the rest of the Mayordomo chocolate in I brought back from Oaxaca that is a blend of chocolate, almonds, cinnamon, and sugar for a halfway approximation of indigenous flavors from Oaxaca. I boil the chocolate on the stove in half water and half whole milk. For the chai I use Anu's recipe for chai:


Anu's Chai Tea

Grate about 1 tablespoons of fresh giner. Crush 1 cinnamon stick, 10-15 cardamom seeds, 10-15 whole cloves, and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds. Place everything in a large pot and boil in 2 quarts of water for 5-10 minutes. You'll start to smell the spices while they're cooking.

For the tea you'll want to use loose tea leaves. I've found that English Breakfast comes closest but you can also use any black tea or darjeeling. If you can't find any of those you can tear open a Lipton's tea bag and use that but make sure you take the leaves out of the bag.

Add the tea leaves to the pot of water and let that steep for about 2 minutes. You want to make sure it doesn't steep too long otherwise it will get bitter. At this point, if you like it really sweet add sugar, I usually let people add their own sugar to taste. Add about 2 cups of whole milk and bring to a boil. Then, turn off the stove, strain the chai into cups, and serve.

Always a crowd pleaser. Stay warm!

Applesauce Pancakes

Dry Ingredients:
1 cup flour
2 T buttermilk powder
1 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 t salt

Wet Ingredients:
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 T vegetable oil
1/3 cup applesauce
1/3 cup soy milk
1/3 water


flip when bubbles start to form and underside is brown.

enjoy!

Merry Christmas!!