Category: Kamaboko

What's Cooking This Week--Home Sweet Home

3/9/2014

California fresh, I have missed you

After travelmania, I'm very happy to be back home.

And so for Lent, I'm giving up eating like I'm traveling, and hopefully traveling too. This is not a sustainable pattern unless I'm planning on gaining a lot of weight or training to be some kind of Olympic athlete in a sport where middle-aged women can excel.

So here's what's cooking this week.

Meatless Monday
On the Fly Orzo Salad. With 70-degree weather and daylight savings kicking in, we may even eat outdoors.

Tuesday
Chicken apple sausage with red peppers, onions and zukes. I've noticed that Spaniards and Bostonians do not believe chicken sausages. No recipe required.

Leftover curry + tonkatsu = Katsu curry!!

Wednesday
Katsu curry (Leftover Japanese curry stored from the freezer + Tonkatsu), namasu and salad.

Nearly Meatless Thursday
Okonomiyaki with kamaboko and a bit of char siu. Easy comfort food and minimal meat.

Fish on Friday
Simple Salmon baked with rock salt and fresh cracked pepper (no dill this time), rice, and roasted asparagus and tomatoes. I may add some tea rice at the end.

We had the fancy version of this at the Pineapple Room a couple of weeks ago, but it will be nice to have the home cooked simplicity.

Thank you all for keeping me honest with the weekly menu schedule. Your support is much appreciated!

Aloha to all.

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What's Cooking this Week--The Season of "Lasts"

5/15/2013

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The end of the school year torpedoes away in a mad rush of "lasts"--piano recitals, soccer games, concerts, school functions, end-of-the year/season parties, banquets, proms. I think that unless one lives in a rocking singles community, a lot of your life's cadence is based on the academic year. It's a bittersweet time, so what's cooking this week is my personal comfort food.

Busy, bittersweet times

Not Meatless Monday
Chicken, Stuffing and steamed green beans. I LOVE stuffing, and yes, this happened on a work-day. It's an injustice that stuffing happens only when it's cold or during the holidays. Here's how I did it on a Monday.

1) Buy a Costco or Safeway rotisserie chicken, green beans and a small-diameter loaf of very crusty french bread. 2/3 of a complete meal before you even unload the car.

2) If you are really in a pinch, also buy pre-sliced onions, mushrooms and celery. I chose to chop, but mainly for the therapeutic mental health benefits.

3) When you get home, chop onions, mushrooms and celery and cube up the whole loaf of bread. The small-diameter bread means more crust, less chopping, and better texture on stuffing.

4) Make stuffing and dump it into a pan. Turn the oven on and let it go until the bread gets crusty, about 20 minutes. Put the green beans into a microwave-able glass bowl, cover it with a damp paper towel. Go 2 minutes.

5) Eat, be happy and pretend it's the weekend or a holiday.

Take-out Tuesday
L&L Hawaiian BBQ. This is the most consistent plate lunch when I'm not in Hawaii. Game 1 of the Sharks vs. Kings didn't go the way we wanted, but at least we ate well.

Meatless Wednesday
Summer Soba Salad. A good quick full-meal salad.

Thursday
Chicken Divan, with the rest of the rotisserie chicken. Another one of my comfort-foods. When I first started cooking, this was the one of the few things
I could make consistently.

Yep, this was once a fish.

Fish on Friday
Okonomiyaki with kamaboko. No char siu/chashu after last week's literal pig fest.

If dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets are still considered chicken, then kamaboko is most definitely fish.

Good luck to all those students in or approaching finals angst...and to their Very Patient, Always Even-Tempered, Supportive Parents!

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What's Cooking This Week--Stay Dry and Safe!

10/29/2012

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Be safe. The ocean always wins.

What a crazy natural disaster few days. The tsunami alert for my Feeding My Ohana-ohana in Hawaii has passed. To our Feeding My Ohana-ohana on the Northeast, stay safe and dry.

Sandy looks like a bad one, so please take care!

Make sure you have lots of water, canned goods like tomato sauce, black beans and tuna, bread, peanut butter, batteries, band aids and gas for your cars and grill.　Out west, here's what's cooking.

Monday
Korean Egg Meat, using fish. I LOVE egg meat, but since my son doesn't eat cow, I'm using Dover sole. Fish jun is standard for Korean restaurants in Hawaii, so I think it should work, and cooking will be much faster than beef.

A proper Monday meal with musubi, kim chee, kale chips and a new kochojang dipping sauce.

Liking the sound of this already!

Meatless Tuesday
Sweet potato curry. This seems like a very fall kind of dish.

Wednesday--Happy Halloween!
Kamaboko Sandwiches. A childhood favorite of mine that I'm foisting upon my children. They can decide if it's a trick or treat. Not nearly as strange as the kimchee/peanut butter or sardine/onion sandwiches I've also liked and eaten as a kid.

Thursday
Christine's Clam Chowder. Feeding My Ohana's Virtual Food Drive kick-off day. We will be matching donations again this year.

Friday
Seared Furikake Ahi Salad. Something new and light to go with Halloween candy.

Extras from the bakery
Butterscotch pumpkin bread
Banana-Nutella bread, from last month's issue of Cooking Light

Eat Well. Be Well. Stay Safe!!

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What's Cooking This Week--Japanese Food

5/3/2011

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Kamaboko & Green Onion Okonomiyaki

Mostly Japanese food, and pretty light on meat. We go through periods where our vegetable consumption wanes, so I'm focusing on adding more vegetables to complete our dinners.

Monday--Okonomiyaki, with just cabbage, kamaboko and fresh green onions from our garden.

Tuesday--Shabu Shabu. Another all-veg meal using tofu and the other half of the kamaboko from yesterday's dinner. Shabu-shabu got canceled awhile ago because we were out dipping sauces. Now I've started working on making the sauces from scratch.

Wednesday--Kara-age fish, but using chicken. Fish was not looking very happy this week. I think the swap will work. With the first harvest of Romaine lettuce from the garden, kim chee and hot rice.

Thursday--Stir-fried Lazy Wraps, for lack of a spiffier name. Take a package of sausage. Smoked Brats, Chicken Apple, or Portuguese are the household faves. Slice them and toss them in a non-stick pan. Slice an onion, 2 red peppers and some mushrooms. When the sausages are almost brown, add the onion, then peppers and then mushrooms. When everything is cooked, heat up some tortillas and make wraps. Add salsa if you like.

Maruchan Fresh Yakisoba

Friday--Misoyaki Butterfish with steamed broccoli, another fresh head of lettuce and rice.

Bonus Saturday--Yakisoba, made by the husband. Use Maruchan *fresh* and *not instant* yakisoba. He adds green beans, carrots a bit of pork, chicken, or kamaboko and red pickled ginger (kizami shoga) as a garnish. Fresh yakisoba is in the refrigerated section of most Asian grocery stores as well as in some Safeways.

Eat Well. Be Well.

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What's Cooking This Week--Cold Nights Mean Soup and Spicy

1/31/2011

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Yes, it's California. So it's not the painful, freeze-your-hair-while-walking cold that I remember from college in New England. After all, it's 19 degrees in Providence, RI and 49 degrees in San Francisco. However, it's 72 degrees in Honolulu, so 49 is feeling cold enough for soup.

Here's what's on tap this week, in case anyone wants to come over.

Monday--Teddy Bear Chicken Soup, just for my 'baby' boy, who is under the (cold) weather.

Tuesday--Poulet Grandmere and a good crusty bread

Wednesday--A new and hopefully easy recipe for Hot Sour Soup with Pork and Tofu. It looks a little tame (i.e., not too spicy) and doesn't really include tofu, so stay tuned for major tweaking.

Thursday--TBD fish (again all new)--thinking about braised salmon with shiitake, salmon in grape sauce, or crispy salmon on tangerine/bacon spinach. Which one sounds best?

Friday--Number 1 Udon (to use up the last of the New Year's kamaboko) or a new recipe for pan-fried noodles.

Saturday--Benefit Spaghetti Dinner at church. And of course, bingo.

I wanted to add Korean Chicken Soup too, but the bok choy were not looking too perky at the market today. Oh well, next week will still be "cold".

And to all of my ohana living in really, truly cold weather in the Midwest and Northeast, stay warm and be safe!!

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New Year's Traditions 1: Super Kamaboko

12/29/2010

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Kamaboko with matsu (pine) design

When I was a kid, we went to church on Christmas, then to my Grandma's for lunch, which always included ham, teriyaki meat, some kind of fried chicken, sushi, sashimi, and Aunty's snowball cookies.

However, Christmas really seemed like the signal to start cooking for New Year's. Like most "mixed plate kids" we knew that 'calendar' New Year's was for mostly Japanese food, while "Chinese" new year was later for mostly Chinese food. Either way, it was good eating.

While I still don't cook the New Year's foods (thanks to a friend who has taken on this responsibility/honor), we do keep a few traditions.

First--New Year's means fancy kamaboko. Kamaboko is steamed fish cake. It's about 9 inches long, half cylinder and comes on a wooden block. For New Year's, there are 'special' kamaboko like what you see here--sho-chiku-bai (pine, bamboo, plum). These represent the virtues of inner strength, longevity and resiliency, and beauty and optimism in adversity.

Kamaboko with ume (plum) design. These are available only during New Year's

More New Year's traditions as the week goes on.

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What's Cooking This Week--Home Sweet Home

What's Cooking this Week--The Season of "Lasts"

What's Cooking This Week--Stay Dry and Safe!

What's Cooking This Week--Japanese Food

What's Cooking This Week--Cold Nights Mean Soup and Spicy

New Year's Traditions 1: Super Kamaboko

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