jalapeño dill lotus chips with spicy honey yogurt

i bought some fresh dill the other day with no idea of what i would do with it. all i could think about was grippo's hot dill pickle chips, an admittedly lesser but still under appreciated member of the grippo's family. i don't know how it works in the rest of the country, but if anyone in louisville, ky (that's america btw) asks you to pick up some bbq potato chips on your way over, you better show up with grippo's. i think about them way too much. yummmm. anyway, hot dill chips--i had some lotus root hanging around, so why not? i whipped up a little yogurt dipping sauce, and it turned out to be a lovely snack.


ingredients for chips
20 cm lotus root, sliced (1)
6 sprigs fresh dill, finely chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp jalapeño powder
salt

ingredients for sauce
2 tbsp plain sweet yogurt
1 tsp sriracha chili sauce
1/2 tsp honey

(1) 蓮根, れんこん

i got the sriracha at yamaya in takaoka. everything else is from e-town in kosugi.

i made this while listening to this american life

let's go!
1. mix olive oil, dill, jalapeño powder, paprika, and garlic powder together in a bowl.

2. i used pre-sliced lotus root, but if you buy it fresh, follow the steps 1 & 2 in this recipe to prepare it. pat it dry with a paper towel.

3. add lotus root to olive oil mixture. toss until fully coated.

4. place lotus root in a single layer on a baking sheet.


5. broil in your fish drawer on high until golden, about 4 or 5 minutes.

6. place on paper towels to absorb excess oil. sprinkle with salt and extra jalapeño powder as needed.


7. for the dipping sauce, strain yogurt (as described in step 1 of this recipe). mix sriracha and honey into yogurt.


enjoy!

soy ginger marinade

i should have added this long ago. we used something like this in a restaurant where i used to work, and i just started putting it on everything. well, not everything, but i know it's good on seafood, tofu, potatoes, and all kinds of veggies. ingredients
200 mL soy sauce
100 mL salad oil (like canola)
50 mL sesame oil
1 tbsp course grain mustard
2 tsp grated ginger
1 tsp garlic paste
1/2 tsp salt

let's go!
put everything into a squeeze bottle and shake well. it'll separate, so you'll need to shake it before using it each time. i like things pretty salty, so i toned it down a bit, but you still might want to play with the recipe. these proportions will give you a pretty strong mix; you can dilute it with a little salad oil if you use it for a green salad.

enjoy!

spicy roasted salmon & cucumber mint raita

it's been awhile since i posted a recipe, so i thought i'd better make it a good one. this is an incredibly simple, healthy, and inexpensive dish to make. silver salmon is definitely my most frequently cooked fish. you can get little fillets year-round for super cheap. i made an india inspired spice rub to coat the fish, and then cooled it down with raita.

ingredients for raita
500 g plain unsweetened yogurt
2 cucumbers, grated
1 bag fresh mint, chopped
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp powdered garlic (or 1 clove fresh garlic, minced)
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

ingredients for salmon
4 salmon fillets
30 mL lime juice
1 tsp cayenne (red chili) pepper
1 tsp turmeric
2 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp cumin
3 tsp salt
4 tsp powdered ginger
4 tsp ground coriander seeds

i bought the cumin at coração do brasil and the turmeric at yamaya in takaoka. i bought everything else at e-town in kosugi.

for added deliciousness, listen to fleet foxes.

let's go!

making the raita
1. strain the yogurt. you can use cheesecloth, but i just put a damp paper towel in a metal strainer in a big bowl. it worked great. i really recommend not skipping this step --it doesn't really affect the flavor, but it does wonders for the both the texture and the visual appeal. you know that little bit of yellowish juice at the top of the yogurt container? well, there's loads more--in about 20 minutes i strained off about 125 mL, and was left with lovely thick yogurt.

2. while you're waiting on your yogurt, combine the rest of the ingredients. if you don't have a grater, you can just finely chop the cucumbers. either way, make sure you leave the skin on. raita is also good with coriander leaves (cilantro) if you can find it or a bit of minced onion.

3. mix all all the ingredients into the yogurt, cover, and refrigerate. for best results, start the raita a couple hours before you want to eat, or even the night before. it will taste better if you allow some time for the flavors to blend.

making the salmon
1. mix all the spices together. these proportions will make a medium spicy mix. adjust the cayenne (red chili) pepper to your tastes.

2. coat the fillets first in lime juice, and then the dry spice rub.


3. put fillets in the broiler on an oiled baking sheet, skin side down. cook for about 6 minutes on medium high heat, until flaky.

enjoy!
i served the raita over the salmon with onion chutney i made from this easy recipe and rice mixed with cashews, raisins, and a briyani spice packet from yamaya. it was awesome!

omurice with béchamel sauce

i only started liking omurice yesterday. i think my aversion to omurice was due to the fact that it's full of ketchup. i've never been a huge fan of ketchup--it just seems to overpower everything. so i never even thought of making it at my house until joshie was telling me about how delicious his omurice turned out. i made a white sauce instead of using ketchup, and i think it turned out quite nicely. i only made enough for one serving because reheated eggs are not tasty. actually, there was a little too much filling and sauce, but i just ate it over rice in the morning, and that was a pretty good breakfast.


ingredients for the béchamel sauce
25 g butter
25 g flour (1)
200 mL milk
pinch salt
pinch nutmeg

ingredients for omirice
2 large eggs, beaten
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
1/4 small yellow onion, chopped
130 g chicken
clove garlic, minced
pinch salt
pinch dried red pepper
rice
vegetable oil

(1)フラワー

the nutmeg was here when i moved in. i got the dried red pepper at daiso. everything else is from e-town in kosugi.

i listened to gang starr--daily operation while cooking this dish.


let's go!

making the white sauce
1. béchamel sauce is really important because you can use it to make lots of other sauces. it's basically scalded milk thickened with roux. traditionally, an onion studded with cloves is used to flavor the milk, but i don't know where cloves are, so i wasn't too worried about it.

2. first, the roux. melt butter in a sauce pan. when it gets bubbly and frothy, add the flour.

3. mix the flour in with a wooden spoon. the goal is smooth and very thick with no flour chunks. keep stirring over heat for a couple of minutes, and then set aside.

4. bring the milk almost to a boil. add it to the roux while whisking vigorously. if your sauce gets too thick, you can add a little hot liquid (if you don't have any more milk, you can use a bullion cube dissolved in some hot water). add the salt and nutmeg.

making the omurice
1. cut up the chicken into small pieces. marinate it in oil, salt, garlic, and dried red pepper. i love the dried red pepper rings, and this time i followed seth's advice and used kitchen shears to cut them up.

2. sauté the chicken, onion, and bell pepper in a pan or wok over high heat.

3. turn the heat down a little. mix in the rice. ok, i really have tried to go metric here, as i am now living in the rest of the world, but how do i measure cooked rice? anyway, i used enough rice to fill up one of those ridiculously tiny beer glasses you get at enkais.

4. mix in about 50 mL of béchamel sauce until it all kind of sticks together.

5. in a separate pan, heat up enough oil to coat the bottom of the pan. pour in the eggs. spread the egg around, and make a thin omelet. put a couple ladles of filling in the middle, and fold over. carefully slide on a plate . it was all a little fast to take pictures, but i pretty much did what this guy did, except for the part where his comes out perfectly.

6. spoon some sauce over the omurice.

enjoy!
the sauce worked well with the omurice. my omelet wasn't as pretty as i hoped, but it was my first time, so hopefully i'll get better. it was really delicious though. i think it would have been good with some spinach, mushrooms, or tomatoes inside, too. i definitely want to experiment with different kinds of fillings in the future.

bubble & squeak with mushroom cheese sauce

i've had niko staying with me for a few days already, and i invited max to stay over friday night for dinner and a movie. i'm not a huge breakfast person, but i thought having two hungry boys at my house in the morning would be the perfect time to make some bubble & squeak. when i worked at the pub, i used to eat it with cheese on top, which was super yummy. i had some mushrooms, so i thought i'd make some mushroom cheese sauce to put on top, too.


ingredients for bubbles
6 potatoes
40g butter
100 mL milk
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper
2 green bell pepper
1 medium yellow onion

ingredients for sauce
2 eringii mushrooms (1)
10 grams butter
250 mL milk
200 g shredded or grated cheese (not mozzarella)
pinch of salt
dash of pepper

(1) エリニギ

i bought all these ingredients at the jusco in takaoka.

for added deliciousness, listen to morcheeba--big calm while cooking.

let's go!
bubble & squeak
1. after doing some googling, i'm fairly certain this is not the traditional way of making bubble & squeak, but this is how i learned to do it, and also it's delicious so let's not argue about it. when we made bubble & squeak at the pub, we used mashed potatoes from the night before. unless you usually have mashed potatoes lying around at breakfast time, you're going to have to think ahead and make some up the night before.

2. peel and quarter the potatoes. boil for about 45 minutes. when the potatoes are done, you should be able to easily crush them with tongs.


3. drain and mash the potatoes. if you don't have a masher, you can use a fork, a whisk, or one of the beaters from an electric mixer. add the milk, butter, salt, pepper and garlic. you can tweak the amounts on these ingredients according to your tastes; however, i would advise you to hold back on the milk and butter as too much of these things will make your bubbles fall apart.

4. chop the bell peppers and the onion. sauté in butter until tender--the onion will start to become translucent.

5. you should let the mashed potatoes and the onion-pepper mixture cool overnight. in the morning, mix these together. use your hands--it feels funny.

6. use the mixture to make patties about 2 or 3 cm thick. i made 6 big ones out of my mixture, but in retrospect, i think i should have made 8 or 9 medium sized patties. you probably don't want the diameter to be bigger than the width of your spatula.


7. it's probably a good idea to go ahead and make your sauce now and then come back to finish up the bubbles.

8. melt about 20g of butter in a heavy skillet. brown bubbles on both sides. ok, so that sounds really easy, but here's the deal--the bubbles are going to stick to your pan. you will have a lot easier time if your bubbles are small enough to fit on the spatula. also a plastic spatula doesn't seem to cut it--use metal. if you have a second spatula, big wooden spoon, a okonomiyaki spatula, or a rice paddle, use that to kind of hold the bubble in place while you scrape from underneath. hopefully, they will stay in one piece with nice brown circles on both sides, but check out this picture.

9. yikes! i mean, the one on the top left isn't too bad, but what happened to the poor little guy on the bottom? yeah, i messed up. i think it was one of these things: i forgot about the butter in the veggie mixture and put too much in my mashed potatoes, i made my patties too big, and i tried to use a plastic spatula. anyway, if your bubbles look like this, don't worry. you'll be covering them with sauce, and the boys both agreed they were very delicious anyway. so, speaking of sauce...

mushroom cheese sauce
1. chop the mushrooms and sauté until tender. turn off the heat.

2. add the milk slowly while stirring quickly. heat up to just before a boil, and then turn off the heat.

3. stir in the cheese. i used a cheddar type mix that had a picture of omurice on the package and a little leftover summer comté, shredded. you could also use parmesan or shred those little baby cheese squares. whatever you do, don't use the ubiquitous pizza cheese. it will clump up and you will be left with hot milk with a ball of gooey cheese.

4. add salt and pepper.

enjoy!
i served the bubbles with scrambled eggs, wilted spinach, and pan fried tomatoes. i just poured the sauce over the whole thing. it was pretty delicious--we ate everything and then laid around in a dazed food coma.

shitake & bell pepper gyoza with chevre cream sauce

goat cheese is so amazingly delicious, but at 800 yen for 110 grams, it's not something i often indulge in these days. i was in e-town the other day and spotted some goat cheese with half-off stickers. score! the limited selection and high price of cheese does suck, but i can't complain about the mushroom situation. the produce section always has a nice selection of mushrooms that are relatively cheap. i went with good old shitake this day. anyway, on with the cooking.

ingredients for gyoza
1 pack (20) big round gyoza wrappers
1 pack (6 or 7) shitake (1)
1/2 red bell pepper
2 tbsp scallions, chopped (2)
50 mL balsamic vinegar
50 mL olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1/2 tsp salt

ingredients for cream sauce
110 g goat cheese
200 mL milk (or cream)
200 mL white wine
2 tsp butter
2 tbsp scallion, chopped fine
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt

日本語：（１）しいたけ、（２）にら

the balsamic vinegar is from marushin in takaoka. the white wine and olive oil are from jusco in takaoka. the red pepper is from from daiso in kosugi. everything else is from e-town in kosugi. just ignore the egg in that picture. i did.

let's go!
gyoza
1. mix olive oil, salt, garlic, and red pepper. when i first came to kosugi, i bought a big bag of dried red pepper rings at the 100 yen store. these pack some serious fire (to sprinkle on ramen, maybe?), so i've barely made a dent. i crushed them with a mortar & pestle, but you could just chop them very finely. using the mortar & pestle makes me feel like a mad scientist, so i try to use it whenever i can. anyway...

2. rub the oil all over the shitake and red pepper. let it marinate for a bit.

3. while that's marinating, you can chop all your scallions. go ahead and put the scallions and balsamic together in a bowl.

4. put the shitake and bell pepper in your fish cooker on low heat. if you don't have a fish cooker, you can wrap them in foil and put them in a toaster oven on low, or cut them into pieces and saute. cook until tender and juicy.


5. cut the shitake and pepper into little pieces and mix together with the balsamic and scallions.

6. take one gyoza wrapper and rub the edge with a wet finger. spoon a bit of mixture in the middle. fold in half and press down on the edges to seal. you should make about 15 gyoza.


7. you will need to have some steamer setup. as you can see below, my setup is a bit ghettto, but it works. you will need a wide pan with a lid to boil water in. you will also need some sort of metal rack that is on legs or has some way to hold the food over the water. those crazy steamer pans that have the folding spiral layers are not good for steaming gyoza, but it is possible. be creative. anyway, get some water boiling in your steamer.

8. now, if you have timing issues when you're cooking, may i suggest that while waiting for your water to boil, you go ahead and knock out the sauce? just skip to the sauce recipe, and come back to the gyoza when you're finished, or if you have the skills (and 2 burners), you can do both at the same time. this will give you maximum warmness and freshness for both parts of your dish.

9. when your water is boiling, place the gyoza in a single layer (not touching) on the wire rack. put the lid on and let them steam for 5 minutes. you might have to do two batches. when you pull the gyoza off the rack, they will be really sticky. if you pull the rack out of the pan and let them cool a minute, it will be much easier.


10. ok, i didn't actually do this step because i like my gyoza just steamed and not browned. but here's how you do it. melt some butter in a skillet on medium heat and place the gyoza in a single layer in the pan. they should take about five minutes to brown on one side; keep an eye on them.

sauce
1. i have electric burners, which suck for making sauces and eggs. i now have a portable gas burner, the kind used for nabe. it rocks. i used a gas burner to make this sauce.

2. melt the butter in a skillet. throw in the scallions and cook until limp.


3. add the wine and reduce until it's kind of thick--it won't get thick like maple syrup, but it will definitely be thicker than wine.

4. add the milk (you really should use cream here, but milk is just easier to find). now here's the deal--the butter/wine mixture can get very hot. make sure that you use low heat, that you add the milk slowly, and that you mix the milk in quickly. if you don't, your sauce will break. it will be edible, but ugly. so just be careful. cook on low heat for a couple of minutes.

5. add the cheese, salt, and pepper. stir until the cheese is mixed in well.

enjoy!
serve gyoza with sauce spooned on top. i sauteed some asparagus and the other half of the bell pepper that had been marinated in the the same oil as the shitake. it went really nicely with the gyoza.