Koya Tofu and Eggplant (高野豆腐と茄子の煮びたし）

I microwave eggplant and remove all the skin, and soak it into Dashi (Japanese soup stock).

Nuts Curry, Cauliflower Curry, Spinach & Cheese Curry (インドカレー色々）

I made three kinds of curry,  Nuts Curry, Cauliflower Curry, Spinach & Cheese Curry.
Among these three curries, I was especially excited about making Nuts Curry.
I had this one kind of Indian curries I really like in an Indian restaurant nearby, but I have never had it in somebody's place. So I did not know what it is. I could only guess it may have some ground nuts.
I decided to give me a try, and it worked ! I only used ground nuts and regular Indian spices such as mustard seeds, cumin, etc, yet it yields such complicated flavor.

 

Nuts Curry

 

Spinach & Cheese Curry (Palak Paneer)

Cauliflower and Tamarind Curry

Lentil Curry (Darl)

Angel Cake (シフォンケーキ）

This is my favorite cake ! It's called "Angel Cake" in the States, but we call it "Chiffon Cake".
"Chiffon" is a French word which means soft clothes.
This cake is as soft as sponge and heavenly good :)

What you need:

- Angel cake food pan  ( A pan which has hole in the center)
- 3/4 cup of cake flour
- 1 and 1/4 cup of powder sugar or confiscate sugar
- 3 egg yolk
- 4 egg white
- 1/2 cup of oil
- 1/2 of water

How to make:
- 1:  Shake flour into a strainer and keep it in a bowl
- 2:  Separate eggs into yolk and white.
- 3: Make egg mixture.
-- Put egg yolk and 1/3 of sugar into a bowl and beat it till the mixture gets whitish.
-- Add oil and water, and mix.
-- Add flour through a strainer into the egg mixture.
-- Adjust the texture of this egg mixture by adding milk so that it is as dilute as yogurt.
- 4: In a big bowl, put egg white and the rest of sugar. Beat till it forms quite solid melange.
- 5: Put 1/3 of melange into the egg mixture, and mix completely. Then, add the rest of melange, and mix roughly for several times. You still see some chunks of melange.
-6: Put the cake mixture into a angel cake pan. Slightly bring the pan and drop it so that air inside will escape. Repeat this process for three times. Stir the mixture with a skew or chop stick for few times.
- 7: Bake it for 50 min in 325degF oven, and then for 10~15min in 300degF till nothing will stick to a skewer when you poke it into the cake.
- 8: Keep the cake upside down till it gets cool down. (If you don't do this, cake will shrink)

Soup Spagetti (スープスパゲッティ）

My Mom made this when I was small.
As the name of the dish tells you, it's soupy pasta.
It , I believe, is a fusion dish, and not Italian at all, but if you know anything like this in Italian cooking, please let me know.
I first saute bacon and garlic, then add green pepper, tomato, seafood.  I used chicken soup stock to make soup, and added some soy sauce in the end.
After boiling pasta till 80 % in a separate pot, I added it to this soup to finish it up. This way pasta will soak the soup.

Soup Pot Pie (スープのパイ包み焼き）

I cover mushroom soup with pie crust. I tried it with cream tomato soup before, and it goes better with rich pie crust than mushroom soup.

Roasted Ram (ラムロースト）

This is another toaster dish. Just get a rack of lamb, and put it with various kinds of vegetables into oven !

Homemade Udon (手打ちうどん）

My friend suggested me to try to make Udon from scratch, and I finally tried it.
The process itself is quite a fun, and it tastes different from what I can buy from super market.
It should be fun to make it in a party !

Dip it into Dashi !

Savory Egg Pudding -Chawan Mushi （茶碗蒸し）

I had a lot of ingredients from Japanese New Year dishes, and put everything into this savory egg pudding. This is one of my favorite dish, and I can eat it endlessly :)

This is how it looks from outside

Japanese New Year Dish (御節）

Happy New Year of 2011 !
New year is the most important holiday in Japan, and we have special dishes for the first three days of January called Osechi (御節）. We have boxes of small dishes, and rice cake soup（Ozoni, お雑煮）.
Since it is quite pricey to get everything in California, I prepared simple version of it.

Ozoni has chicken, carrot, snow pea, bamboo shoot, and kamaboko (fish cake)

 

Osechi has fish cake, sweet omelet, and Koya Tofu.

Spanish Potato Omelette - Tortilla de Patatas (スペイン風ポテトオムレツ）

When I was small, I did not like to go to church on Sundays except for one thing.
That is this Tortilla de Patatas sold in the melinda in the church.
Even though it was in Japan, some of sisters of the church are from Spain, and they made unforgettable Tortilla.
Now I can make it by myself, and it turns out to be pretty good !
The key to make tasty tortillas is to use a lot of olive oil without any hesitation.
Potato needs to be boiled in oil which is almost like frying potatoes to get that sweet flavor.

Baby Buk Choy and Ham Soup （青梗菜とハムのスープ）

This is very simple, yet has a unique flavor.
The combination of baby buk choy and ham already bring up soup to a certain level, so you just need to add simple soup stock you like.

Chili Shrimp (えびちり）

This dish is one of the most popular Chinese dishes in Japan.
We call it Ebi-chilli, and it's basically hot and sweet shrimp with tons of green onion.
You can add some red chili, but I prefer not so spicy.
Sweetness comes from sugar and ketchup.

Truffle Oil Pasta (トリュフオイルのパスタ）

I've got a bottle of truffle oil as a souvenir from France, and I've been thinking about how to use it for a while. Truffle oil is flavored extra virgin olive oil with black truffle. Sometime you don't see the truffle inside, but it has very strong flavor of it. These day, olive maker in California started making truffle oil as well, and I think it's equally good compared to French ones.
The problem is truffle has so strong flavor that it dominates the dish completely, so I  need to use it carefully. I made very simple pasta dish with cabbage and string bean, and drizzle truffle oil in the end. It worked out very well !

Tofu Hamburg （豆腐ハンバーグ）

I was used to eating meat every meal before, but nowadays I don't feel like it after I started hanging out with vegetarian people. The problem about vegetarian dish is, it's very hard to make main dish out of merely vegetables. Tofu is made out of soy, and has good volume to be main dish. I made pate with tofu and egg, and baked it like normal hamburg.
I added sweet and sour sauce on it, and it was a hit !

Potato Gratin (ポテトグラタン）

This is a standard menu of home cooking in Japan. Many western dishes are converted to Japanese style from Meiji (late 19th) to early Showa(early 20th)  period.
Other popular Japanized western menus are hamburg, cutlet, croquette, omelet, spaghetti, etc.
Typical potato gratin has layer of white sauce, potato, and meat sauce which is potato version of Lasagna.

Fennel and Orange Salad (ファネルとオレンジのサラダ）

Fennel is a vegetable with licorice flavor to it. I sliced it very thinly using Japanese slicer, and make salad with orange and a bit of olive oil. The key is not to add so much salt.

Salmon with Lemon Butter Sauce (鮭のレモンバターソース）

This recipe is inspired by Jacque Pepin & Julia Child show.
Salmon is just boiled in water and white wine which I substituted with Sake.
Then make a quick sauce and put on it.

How to make:
1: Boil Salmon with boiling water and sake. You can add some herb to it.
2: Keep salmon on serving plate, and clean up the water which is used to boil salmon with a strainer. Just try as much as you can.
3: In a sauce pan, melt butter and add lemon juice. When it's mixed up well, add flour and whisk. Reduce the mixture with the water from 2, and complete the taste with salt and pepper.
4: Put sauce on salmon. Potato goes well with the sauce as well.

Pepper Corn Chicken (鶏肉と粒スパイスの炒め物）

I've got a new non-stick fry pan, and it does make a lot of difference compared to the old ones.
Today, I wanted to have a Chinese dish but without using any Chinese sauces, and something which has a kick to its flavor.
I remember fried calamari in Chinese restaurants have almost raw onion and whole pepper corn with calamari, and decided to apply this to chicken.

 

How to make:

1: marinate chicken with salt, pepper, and corn starch

2: Put oil and pepper corns ( or other spice corns such as coriander corn ) in a pan and heat it up till you smell spices.

3: Add chicken to the pan, and fry it till it's almost cooked.

4: Add onion and green pepper, and cook till they are still crunchy.

Spanish Garlic Soup, - Sopa de Ajo (にんにくスープ）

My mom, who is of course Japanese, makes this soup since I and my sisters were small.
Recently I've found that this is Spanish soup.
It can be smelly even in the next day ;p

How to make:
1: Saute chopped garlic and bacon in a pot.
2: Add water, soup stock, pepper and salt..
3: When the water boils, slowly add beaten egg.
4: Add relatively big pieces of bread ( can be old bread), and chopped parsley.

Tofu and Green Onion Soup (豆腐と長ネギのあっさりスープ)

My digestion system is not very strong, and I want to have something very light sometime.
Japanese soup stock and Vietnamese chicken soup stock are very light ones.
You can get them as powder from Asian grocery stores.
I added Tofu and green onion to the soup, and garnish with a  lot of sesame seeds.

Cucumber Yogurt Salad (きゅうりヨーグルトサラダ ）

This is middle eastern style salad.
Mix pealed sliced cucumber with yogurt, salt, pepper and lemon.

Cod and autumn vegetable soup (鱈と秋野菜のスープ）

I've got small pieces of cod and decided to make soup.
In Japan, we have cod hot pot during winter, and I wanted to make small version of that.
I added snow peas, carrots, and Maitake mushroom.
Don't boil it so much. It will get fishy smell.

Toaster Dinner - Roasted Chicken (トースタでローストチキン）

I started using my toaster oven in stead of regular oven to make dinner so that I don't need to waste energy by turning on whole oven.
My toaster oven was somewhere around $10, but it's so powerful that it can burn a piece of bread in 30 sec !  So, it's rather good to be used as oven rather than toaster anyways.

How to Make:

1: I put some butter underneath of chicken so that the skin gets crispy.
You can put some herbs, salt and pepper as well.
2: Put cooking paper or aluminum foil on toaster tray, and put chicken first. Cook for 30min.
3: Put potato to the tray, and cook for 10min.
4: put asparagus and mushroom. Cook for another 7min.
5:  Garnish asparagus with feta cheese and almond.

Shabu shabu （しゃぶしゃぶ）

Crab and Avocado Salad (蟹とアボカドのサラダ）

I mixed canned crab meat with avocado.

Shiratama Mochi and Roasted Buckwheat in Red Bean Soup (白玉と蕎麦の汁粉）

Scallop and Mushroom Ceviche

I made half Scallop and half Eringi mushroom ceviche.

Stewed Sausage in Tajin Style (タジンスタイルのソーセージのシチュー)

I wanted to make something goes well with Couscous. In France, I had stewed chicken with olive and something sweet which was served with couscous, and since then I wanted have it again.
I made something like Ratatouille, and add sausage and apricots.

Green Peas Soup (グリーンピースのスープ）

I've got fresh green peas in a market, and I was very excited to make this soup because I've been thinking about having really fresh green soup without cooking and wasting freshness.
so I hardly boiled this green peas, and blend it. I added a little bit of milk to dilute.

Sweet and Sour Soup- Suan La Tang (酸辣湯)

I want to have sweet and sour soup when I don't have so much appetite or I have sore throat.

How to make:
1: Boil vegetables such as sliced carrots, bamboo shoots, and mushrooms.
2: Add Chinese black vinegar, vinegar, Chinese white pepper, soy sauce, and chicken soup stock.
3: Mix cone starch with water, and put it slowly to boiling soup till it becomes good consistency.