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

Ratatouille

I know I’m about a year late to the party, but I have a new found love for this dish after seeing the movie. I even serve this with my bright and sunny lemon linguine. Movie references aside, this is a relatively simple dish that does a great job showcasing the flavors of the fresh [...]

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Bright and Sunny Lemon Linguine

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This simple dish was inspired by Mario Batali’s Bavette Cacio & Pepe. The list of ingredients may make it sound like a boring side, but try a bite and you’ll want to turn it into a meal. I go for a slightly healthier take on Batali’s dish replacing some butter for olive oil and adding [...]

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Cherry Coke Braised Bacon

14 comments

I’m one of those people that associates holidays with certain types of food. Thanksgiving=turkey, stuffing, and cranberry sauce; St. Patrick’s Day = Corned beef boiled potatoes and cabbage. Easter then is… no surprise… ham. There’s a particular recipe I’m actually quite fond of in Nigella Lawson’s Feast: Food to Celebrate Life for a Coca Cola [...]

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Pickled plum and calamari salad (Ume ika somen)

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Whether it’s in an Izakaya (Japanese tapas bar) or a more refined Kaiseki(where 14 courses is the norm) restaurant, Japanese people are into having a variety of small plates. Like Spanish tapas, these aren’t really big enough to be considered a course by American standards and the idea is to order a bunch of dishes. [...]

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Steamed and salt cured uni

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So sea urchin might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I made this the other day and it makes for a simple appetizer. Uni’s creamy, uniformly rich texture makes it a bit like the foie gras of the sea (minus the animal rights abuses). I like to give it two different treatments to add [...]

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Strawberry Buttermilk Ice Cream

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Craving desert, but with no eggs or milk and not enough strawberries to make a sorbet, I thought I might just have to be healthy tonight… Then I spotted a carton of buttermilk! I’ve also been meaning to try using sweetened condensed milk in an ice cream to make it extra creamy, so this seemed [...]

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Crab and Bamboo Rice (Kani takikomi gohan)

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Takikomi Gohan (also known as Gomoku Gohan) literally translates to “cooked with rice”. It’s basically rice cooked in stock with stuff in it, like a pilaf. In Japanese groceries you’ll usually find a whole section of instant packets that you just add to rice before you cook it, but they often contain loads of MSG. [...]

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Kabocha Browned Butter Pasta

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If you’ve never had kabocha, stop reading right now and go buy one. They keep forever and they’re quasi-decorative, so I almost always have a small one sitting on my counter ready to become a side, main course, or desert. Yes, you read that right:-) Its sweet, firm flesh is somewhere between a butternut squash [...]

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