"Wrapping" up Feburary

This is the last post I have planned about Keizo's visit back in February.  Seeing as life has totally moved on, I would like to as well--but the following was one of the best things "we" made.

I arrived home from class one Monday evening to the aromas of garlic and ginger and found Keizo in the kitchen with a big bowl of minced pork, cabbage, and green onions a.k.a. the filling for gyoza (potstickers).

We had bought won-ton wrappers at the grocery store, and worked together to get them filled and ready to pan fry.  I cheated and used a little handheld crimper, but Keizo relived his childhood and folded them expertly by hand.

He then put the gyoza in the oiled frying pan, about 8-10 at a time, added some water and covered them to cook.  The filling made a ton of gyoza!  My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think we had about 60 won-ton wrappers, which we divided over two meals, making about 30 gyoza at a time.  

The first time we used vegetable oil in the pan; the second time we tried coconut oil and I thought the difference was incredible.  The coconut oil tasted slightly sweet and much lighter than the regular vegetable oil.

I probably could have made a meal out of the gyoza alone, but even when he isn't exercising twice a day, Keizo's appetite is much larger than mine, so we made some pad thai on the side for our first meal, and whipped up some tasty okonomiyaki for the second.

These meals reminded me I don't cook nearly enough Japanese food on my own!  Perhaps I should get a copy of this book for inspiration...

Leftovers no more

I have finally finished my leftovers from last week! It seems like they have been around for a lot longer than that though.

Leftovers can be wonderful. I definitely don't have the energy nor the inspiration to cook every night; so in that sense, they are completely necessary. However, when I had them for two meals on Sunday and still wasn't quite done, I was approaching the end of my rope.

At least one of the repetitive meals was super photogenic. Soup and salad featuring week old greens and even older cabbage (in the soup).

For the soup, I halved this recipe and added a bunch of things from the fridge/freezer. The soup base is a can of diced tomatoes and half a can of refried beans with 1-2 cups of "stock" (water with all purpose seasoning...that's basically what bullion is, right?) plus frozen veggies, cabbage, and meatless crumbles topped with tortilla chips and some parmesean cheese. Quite good, and ready in about 15 minutes. Tough to beat...at least the first time around.

Salad is old greens from giant tub I thought I would have no trouble finishing before it got soggy (early in the summer, I did eat a Costco sized tub of spinach pretty much all by myself while my parents were out of town for 10 days. Not so much this time and I can't explain it) plus diced peach, pecans and fresh herbed cheese drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The cheese really did the trick, as it should for $7. I can't help it if I have expensive tastes!

Family Affair

Much to my mother's delight, both my brother Andrew and I have developed an affinity for experimenting in the kitchen. I tend to do more baking, but Andrew has really taken the metaphorical cake with some of the dinners he has prepared for us during his breaks from school.

Over the weekend we enjoyed turkey chorizo burgers and Baja inspired fish tacos, both of which were accompanied by Andrew's signature guacamole.

The fish tacos consisted of fresh baked tortillas topped with breaded tilapia fillets, "Baja" sauce (mayonaise, sirracha hot sauce, jalapenos, onion and cumin), cabbage and guacamole.

Andrew breaded the fish with a mixture of cornmeal, chili powder and salt and pepper for flavor, then pan-fried it. The preparations took a while, but the actual cooking time in this recipe was quite minimal, easily less than 15 minutes.

Delicioso! I wish he made it home more often.

On a Roll

Being at home means having a spacious, well-stocked kitchen to work with. While I don't think that Keizo's apartment is lacking anything essential, we certainly don't have one of these:

Neither of us had actually used a slow cooker before, but it seemed like a fun thing to experiment with. We looked through an ancient cookbook of my mom's and settled on a recipe for cabbage rolls to serve to my friend Teri and my parents.

We got started assembling the rolls right after our late breakfast, since the recipe said they needed 7-9 hours to cook. While Keizo prepared the filling; ground beef, cooked rice, onion etc, I did my best to remove the outer leaves from a head of cabbage without shredding them into pieces. Some came out better than others, but we were able to use all of them without much difficulty. Next, the cabbage leaves got a nice hot bath in boiling water for 3 minutes.

Each of the 12 leaves got a 1/4 cup of filling and then I rolled them up and stacked them inside the crock pot.

Then I covered them with a mixture of tomato juice seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper etc, put the lid on and turned it on low heat and let it sit.

As the dinner hour approached, I made a green salad and garlic toast (a dinner staple.)

Our meal:

The rolls were tasty, although next time I think I would add some more seasonings and maybe some garlic to the mix/sauce. I think it would also be interesting to try making them with tofu and maybe some minced roasted vegetables. Oddly the leftovers we ate for lunch the next day tasted even better, as if 8 hours stewing in a pot wasn't long enough for all the flavors to meld. A delicious culinary mystery.

Pre-Departure Panic

Maybe you noticed in the last post that there seemed to be a lot of "cleaning out" going on; unearthing long forgotten ingredients from the back of the freezer and adding all sorts of vegetables to the nabe pot that might not usually make it in there. Very observant of you! With rugby finished and my tourist visa expiring in a few days, Keizo and I will be relocating to Arizona for a while, thus requiring us to eat like rabbits (i.e. lots and lots of fresh vegetables) in the days leading up to departure.

Hosting a going away party last Sunday hasn't made matters any easier. Most of the food served was from Costco, which made set up a breeze; however, even half a dozen rugby players are no match for Costco sized portions, meaning we had quite a few leftovers.

Exhibit A: The lettuce garnishing the antipasto tray. The tomatoes and meat slices were gone by the end of the night, but the olives and other greenery lingered on. Time for a salad!

A very large salad! The white bowl is the largest mixing bowl in the kitchen. It could easily hold a basketball, or in this case a head of lettuce, apples, red bell pepper, raisins and almond slices.

Exhibit B: Potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and cabbage (actually not from Costco) turned into a delicious creamy soup made with some of the leftover sour cream (definitely from Costco...and still lingering in the fridge.) I was extremely pleased with how the soup turned out, considering there was no recipe and all of the ingredients were already in the kitchen and needing be used up.

Exhibit C: The only new ingredient we bought was a baguette so we could make some garlic toast. This did use up some of the shredded cheese from the fridge though.

Exhibit D: The complete meal. The garlic toast disappeared of course, but there is one serving of soup and a few helpings of salad left to eat today. Speaking of which...it's getting to be lunch time!

I already have some ideas for things to make in Arizona. Stay tuned...

Hot-n-spicy

On Wednesday, Keizo's day off, we spent the afternoon in the Kurume tax office, trying to get my pension refund straightened out. An hour of paper work, one follow up phone call and some copies of my passport later, it should be on its way. Anyway, after dealing with all the bureaucracy, it was an especially nice treat to head to Naoko-sensei's house for a delicious dinner and some calligraphy practice. It was also very nice of her to send us home with some left over curry and pickled cabbage, which we put to good use for dinner the next day.

Real curry, made with a mix of spices rather than the cubes of roux that I always use. Mmmmm!

On the side, pan-fried eggplant and renkon with minced chicken. Keizo picked these up pre-assembled at the farm stand/travel stop near his practice ground. They were good, but needed some sort of dipping sauce to make the flavors really stand out.

Side #2 was some of Naoko-sensei's pickled hakusai and some store bought kimchi to zest it up a bit. Not as quite good as the authentic Korean kimchi she served us, but still yummy mixed with the pickled cabbage.

Even with the food all gone, it made for a colorful meal!

Andrew's visit

After roughly 30 hours of traveling, including a sprint through the San Francisco airport and 8 hours in Tokyo, Andrew arrived in Fukuoka to spend Christmas with me and Keizo. I had a great time while he was here, and hope that my tour guide skills were better than my photo journalist efforts, as the following photos are pretty much all I have from the week he was here. I forgot my camera a few times and the other times I felt like I already have more pictures of Japanese temples and shrines than I can ever possibly make sense of, so why bother. I do wish I had taken a few more with us in them though...oops.

After we picked him up at the airport and grabbed some lunch, we headed to the Fukuoka Aquarium, a.k.a. Marine World. Overall, it was much better than I expected. I really enjoyed the dolphin show that featured 3 dolphins and a whale that tried its best to keep up with the much quicker dolphins, and the sea lion exhibit. Of course, after visiting an aquarium, what could possibly be better to eat for dinner than seafood!

We went to a restaurant near Keizo's training ground and each got a giant tray full of tiny plates featuring everything from the standard rice and miso soup, to sashimi, tempura and best tofu Andrew had ever eaten.

The next night, Andrew brought a bit of Tucson to our kitchen with a giant batch of fajitas! Despite the slightly brown guacamole (my fault...all 5 Costco avocados decided to go bad all at once and I didn't know what else to do but mash them up and freeze them) the overall meal was delicious!

On Christmas Eve, Andrew and I set out to explore Fukuoka City. We did some light shopping, had lunch at one of my favorite pasta places, saw two art exhibits and walked what felt like miles in some brutal wind. Around 4 PM, I really wanted to warm up with a snack, so I dragged Andrew with me to Starbucks. I don't go to Starbucks much at home, but now that the closest one is an hour away, I feel like I should visit it every chance I get. It is also nice to be somewhere familiar in a strange land every once and a while. Andrew had a cookie and I ordered a hojicha latte and a holiday cake. So cute and festive, I had to take a picture.

Christmas Day was also spent in the city, where we met up with our cousins and uncle for lunch at Canal City's Ramen Stadium before heading to Keizo's rugby game. While researching where we should have lunch the night before, I discovered that my favorite ramen shop from Kurume, Tatsunoya, had an outpost in the stadium, which meant there was no doubt in my mind about where we were going to eat. Luckily the others cooperated. Andrew said it was just a good as he remembered, and I agree.

Following a rather frustrating rugby game in the cold, we all made our way back to the Fukutsu apartment to share "Christmas Dinner." The menu featured a Japanese style hot pot with beef, cabbage, mushrooms, and noodles called sukiyaki. Diners choose their favorite ingredients from the large communal pot and dip them in raw egg from their individual bowls before slurping them down. Delicious!

And for dessert, a cake from the bakery up the street. Not only was it the cutest, fashioned in the shape of a yule log, but it was also the only chocolate one. Nice. It didn't last more than 36 hours from the time we picked it up.

Before he left, Andrew also got to experience the joys of conveyor belt sushi and yakiniku with Keizo (I was there too, but grilled meat is much more their realm of expertise.) The week went by quickly and I was sad to see him leave, but I didn't have too long to mope as New Year's Eve was rapidly upon us, and the apartment was crying out for osouji.

As you wish

One of my favorite foods from my first stint in Japan was okonomiyaki, a thick pancake like concoction with a variety of different add ons. The name itself loosely translates to "as you like grill" and fillings range from pork and seafood to kim-chi, mochi and cheese. It's most popular in the Kansai region of Japan, but you can find okonomiyaki restaurants down here in Fukuoka, and the mix is sold in just about every grocery store.

In an effort to use up the last of the now sort of wilted cabbage, we brought out the table top gas burner and grilled up some okonomiyaki for dinner. I admit that it doesn't look like much in the photos; it's one of those foods you have to eat to understand.

Cooking right at the table! You can sit down and prepare dinner at the same time!

Hot off the grill with all the necessary condiments: okonomiyaki sauce (brown), nori flakes (green) dried fish flakes (light brown) and some mayonaise (do I really need to say what color that is?)

Up close, ready to dig in.

While the mix made four pancakes, Keizo and I were uncharacteristically reserved and only ate one each. This left room for dessert, so we tried a recipe for baked apples from the tajine cooker recipe book. Sliced apples, butter and sugar cooked over medium heat, then topped with ice cream and some cinnamon. An excellent way to end the meal.

Taste of home

I am happy to report that the amount of cabbage and hakusai in the fridge has diminished considerably. We've been using it in almost every dinner for the past two weeks; steamed, in salads and cole slaw and in my mom's delicious HEARTY STIR FRY.

Her recipe easily makes enough to feed eight hungry people. When combined the pasta, cabbage, apples, sausage and cheese barely fit in the largest pot we have in our kitchen. Despite the fact Keizo ate three ample servings, we still had to split the leftovers between two different Tupperware containers. Fortunately, it's just as good reheated as it was the first time around. Thanks for the recipe Mom!