Some Washoku Dishes

Even though I have grown up eating a multitude of Japanese dishes, like shrimp tempura, miso soup, teriyaki chicken or yakisoba, I appreciate the simple to make, yet complex-ly flavored everyday dishes that Elizabeth Andoh gives us in Washoku. I have a favorite Izakaya in Hawaii, Imanas Tei, and this pub food is what I've been missing all my life! Lovely small side dishes flavored with sea stock, shoyu, sake, mirin and other unassuming ingredients. Stews and soups that are full of subtle flavors, mingling of meats or vegetables that impart the indescribable gestalt that is Japanese food. I can't tell you how worthwhile some of these dishes are. Okay so here are some of the dishes I've tried and loved from the cookbook: Soy Braised Hijiki with Carrot, Asparagus Tossed with Crushed Black Sesame, Gingery Ground Chicken (except I used turkey), Flash Seared Steak with Two Sauces, Temple Garden Summer Chowder. I cooked up the Hijiki and Asparagus dishes this weekend so I have some pics:

A French Dinner Party

Last night, we had some dear friends over, one of my pastors and his wife, actually. So, I wanted to cook up a special dinner for them. Han and I are still in our francophile stage (having just come back from our European trip), so I put together a French inspired menu: Green leaf lettuce, Pomegranate and Almond Salad, French Onion Soup, Braised Chicken with Tomatoes & Olives and Apple Galette. We had a wonderful time, chatting about Europe and travel; everyone seemed to love the food. By the way, our guests brought a Pinot Grigio that worked well with the meal.

Since we had them over on a Friday, I needed to start cooking on Tues! Tuesday night, I put beef bones, celery, carrot, onion, thyme and peppercorns into my crockpot and cooked it for 10 hours, then I put it on overnight, basically cooking it for about 24 hours. The result was a deep rich beef broth. Wednesday night, I started on the French Onion soup, cooking the onions til a deep golden brown, about 1.5 hours, adding garlic, thyme, shiitake mushrooms, then sherry (per a epicurious reviewer's suggestion). I added the beef froth and simmered it for another 1.5 hours. The flavor was still not there, as most of my soups tend to go. On friday, I simmered it for another 2 hours and added a bit of salt and pepper. My guests loved the soup, served in my Apilco lion's head soup bowls topped with croutes, emmental cheese and parmagianno.

On Thursday night, I prepped the chicken and veggies for the Braised chicken. Basically cutting the veggies (tomatoes, olives, onions) including red potatoes and a fennel bulb, adding fennel seeds, herbes of provence, salt and olive oil. I also prepped the chicken with the herb and garlic mixture, placing a lemon and fennel frond in the body cavity. On Friday, all I did was throw everything into our roasting pan. The chicken was tasty and juicy, the veggies rich in flavor.

Ever since I saw the Apple Galette recipe and accompanying video on Cook's Illustrated.com, I have been wanting to try this recipe. It's not a hard recipe, especially with the video that spells everything out.





























I just received two cookbooks from Amazon that I hope to write about soon. I've cooked a bunch of recipes from Washoku by Elizabeth Andoh and they were great, so I had to buy the book! I ordered the beautiful green book, Fast, Easy, Fresh from Bon Appetit Magazine, so I'll be trying some of those recipes soon.

Tabouli Salad

Last week, I attempted to make tabouli but could not find bulghur in the usual stores. At Star, I found a tabouli mix by Fantastic Foods. I followed the directions, soaking the mix (seemed to contain bulghur and dried herbs) in boiling water, adding tomatoes, extra parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, cucumber, s/p. Being a tabouli novice, I took a bite after putting the ingredients together and almost threw the whole bowl away! The herb flavors were so strong and I wasn't used to such a strange flavor combination. Han told me he'd eat it, that it wasn't bad enough to throw away.

The next day after work, I came home hungry and decided to try the tabouli again. It actually tasted good, but still a bit strange. My Moosewood Low Fat Cookbook has a recipe for a yogurt-tahini dressing (nonfat yogurt, lemon juice, minced garlic, tahini, cumin, s/p) that I used with the Cannelini Patties (the recipe that made Han love eating vegetarian). I doused the tabouli with this amazing dressing, and I was hooked.

I ended up finding fine bulghur at Down to Earth. Safeway had a red large bulghur, which didn't look like the right type. The fine bulghur looks like large couscous when rehydrated.



I used Moosewood's tabouli salad recipe, and went to work, hoping that my homemade version would be better than the box mix. First I rehydrated the bulghur, (1 cup bulghur, 1.5 c boiling water). Added chopped tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, mint, chickpeas, scallions, chives, s/p and lots of lemon juice (1/3 cup). I normally dislike large amounts of raw parsley, but the recipe called for 1-3 cups of minced parsley! I ended up putting a little less than one cup of parsley and a 1/4 c of minced mint. Apparently large amounts of parsley is what makes the tabouli what it is. Moosewood's recipe doesn't call for olive oil, but I added some McEvoy Olive Oil for flavor.



I knew not to eat it right away and to let it sit overnight. My tabouli turned out a little mushier compared to the box mix, but the taste was more fresh and clean (probably due to using more fresh herbs). I enjoyed the tabouli in a pita with curried cauliflower (also from Moosewood's Low Fat Cookbook).



I've scoured a few vegetarian cookbooks so far and many, many omnivorous cookbooks, and Moosewood's Low Fat Cookbook is really something special. Since Han and I are trying to eat healthy and hopefully shed some pounds, I wanted something that was both tasty and low in calories. They've created truly tasty, low fat vegetarian recipes that doesn't make you think you're eating low fat or vegetarian. The cookbook is written with practical supporting information, also providing useful notes and menu suggestions. Moosewood cookbooks have a great reputation, in general. I love their simplicity, while bringing such flavor and variety to dishes that we can enjoy on an everyday basis.

First, Macaroons

Having had some great macaroons in various flavors from Miette at the San Francisco Ferry Building, we were both excited and intimidated at the thought of making these seemingly too-delicate french cookies. Splendid Table's Lynne Rossetto Kaspar had Dorie Greenspan on her show recently, and Dorie described the process in a way that sounded doable and fun. Also, I've been missing my friend Amber who recently moved to San Francisco; she turned me on to the macaroons at Miette. These macaroons are dedicated to her (if it's possible to dedicate baked goods!).

Han and I intended to start our food blog for some time now and I wanted to kick it off with something new, something we've never tried. We've been eating more vegetarian fare lately, trying to do our part to live more sustainably. Since we're new to vegetarian cuisine, I suspect we'll be blogging about some of our finds. I'm loving the Moosewood Low Fat Cookbook now and just borrowed a copy of Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

We wanted something easy, a recipe that didn't create TONS of cookies and we couldn't find blanched almonds, so we used the hazelnut mocha macaroon recipe from the foodnetwork. Our first problem was peeling the hazelnuts, which we did following Joe Pastry's method. It worked pretty well!

We used ghiradelli cocoa powder and hazelnuts from R. Field. Han tasted the nut mixture and said it was pretty awesome as is. We did strain the mixture but had to force the larger bits of chocolate and sugar through the sieve.



The egg white mixture came together very quick with my kitchenaid, faster than 2 minutes. I was worried that they were too stiff.

I don't have a pastry bag and tips so I used a large ziploc bag with the corner cut out. Not exactly elegant, but saved me the trip to a cooking supply store. It was pretty easy to make the cookies this way, although some were not perfectly round. Perhaps with practice, I'll get better.



I didn't realize that the cookies would not spread in baking. I put them too far apart and could not get them to fit on the pans. I had to keep some of the dough in the bag too long and the
subsequent batch came out flatter and more cracked. (The photo below shows our good batch!)



I'm not a huge fan of coffee flavoring in desserts, so we left out the espresso powder. I actually think the recipe would be great with it. The hazelnut flavor would be enhanced. Also, we ended up buying whipping cream instead of heavy cream for the ganache so the filling came out a little more soupy than I was expecting. We used Valrhona chocolate, 61%, not the fancy stuff.

We were still able to fill the cookies and Dorie's recipe on the Splendid Table website says to refrigerate overnight so we'll see if the cookies are more set tomorrow. Of course we had to have a few tastes tonight and they are great. We love our first macaroons. We're excited to try different flavors, different nuts. Tonight, I added some peanut butter to the ganache and created a few special ones for Han since he's such a chocolate peanut butter fan. Check it out, a few of our macaroons looked as beautiful as the Miette ones!