No Recipes – Techniques, inspiration and cooking tips from my Japanese kitchen

Sunchoke and hamachi carpaccio

Inspiration can show up when you least expect it. This dish was actually inspired by a Coconut Pana Cotta of all things. What does a creamy Italian desert have in common with a savory sashimi appetizer you ask? Aside from looking incredibly tasty, pana cotta’s are typically creamy dishes that use a tart sauce to [...]

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Apple inside-out cake

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Mutsu apples are one of my favorite variety. Crisp, green-skinned and juicy, they fall somewhere between a Fuji and a Granny Smith. This makes them delicious to eat and equally suited for baking. I set out to make an apple upside-down cake, with lots of gooey appley goodness on top. It was late though and [...]

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Sunchokes With a Warm Butter Lemon Dressing

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I got some sunchokes at the Greenmarket on Saturday and while I love their crisp texture, I’m always a bit stumped as to what to do with them. Sunchokes (a.k.a. Jerusalem artichokes) are the root tubers that grow on a certain species of sunflower. They look a bit like knobby ginger but have a slightly [...]

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Almost Spring Salad with Honey Roast Garlic Lemonette

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I’ve been craving spring for weeks now, but the weather around here has been a tease at best. Yesterday was the first Saturday with the slightest semblance of spring, so I headed up to the Union Square Greenmarket in hopes of finding asparagus, ramps, and maybe even some fiddleheads… Not surprisingly, I was disappointed with [...]

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Guinea Hen Olive and Lemon Tagine

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After reading an article in the Times last fall about brine curing your own olives, I made a batch in a large mason jar. They’re good, but I’m olived out at this point and I’ve been looking for ways to cook with them. Here’s a 1 pot roast chicken that makes its own sauce which [...]

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What’s in your kitchen?

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When it comes to cooking over at a friend’s place, there’s nothing worse than staring at a pile of potatoes with nothing but a dull carving knife to peel them with. This is why I often go toting a box of kitchen basics along with the ingredients. Some act insulted by the insinuation (they usually [...]

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Chicken Stroganoff

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Growing up, my mom did most of the cooking. On the rare occasion that she didn’t, and my step-father cooked, which meant we were in for one of 2 meals: meatloaf or beef stroganoff. I can’t say that either dish was mind-blowing, but I do remember him fishing out a tattered yellowing 3 x 5″ [...]

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Grilled Sea Bass Donburi

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I had some bass left over from another dish I made, so I dropped it in some all-purpose Japanese marinade and turned it into this donburi. There’s a layer of dashi tamago (japanese style scrambled eggs) between the rice and the bass that adds some sweet richness to the dish and the sansho (a.k.a. sichuan [...]

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