The Yum Yum Factor

First of all, what is onigiri, you ask?

This is my first attempt at using one of my own recipes for the sous vide cooker and I am kind of going rogue with the technique which is probably why it was a mix of mainly success with some bumps in the road. I have been wanting to make another asian flavoured meatball like my Vietnamese meatballs but with a nod to Japan for a long time now. We LOVE our little Vietnamese meatballs made with chicken or pork but it's really easy to bake them just a smidge too long and dry them out. Now, with sous vide, they never overcook so, like the sausages, all they require is a little kiss with a hot pan afterwards to brown them up.

Last week I went to Momofuku with my friend, Alice,  for ramen at long last. I have been putting this visit off since it opened because it seemed like it was nearly impossible to get a seat at lunch but we happened to be working at the Shangri La Hotel all day so I couldn't not go. More or less living up to the hype, the soup was pretty damned fabulous but the thing I couldn't stop thinking about afterwards was the poached egg they add to it. We get a soft cooked egg in our ramen all the time but it just comes to the table with the egg already in there and I have always just assumed that they poach them the same way I poach them. I bring a pot of water to a simmer, stir the middle to make a vortex - DAMN YOU WINTER VORTEX- and gently slide in an egg that I have cracked into a small bowl. I simmer that for about 3 minutes and gently remove with a slotted spoon and then drain on another paper towel lined slotted spoon. It's not brain surgery but it requires your full att...

It's September and school starts in two days so all of sudden, I have ten months of packed lunches looming ahead of me. I am fortunate that my kid will eat just about anything I make for him so I can have a bit of fun with his lunches, use up bits of leftovers and not get all stressed out about it. If that wasn't the case, he would totally be packing his own lunch by now but because I still enjoy doing it, I will continue to feed him during high school. I am combing through all of my old posts for inspiration and found  this one which was originally posted on NoReEats, my year long experiment of never repeating a recipe. This recipe was posted in August of 2011 on that blog and I have updated the photos and tweaked the recipe a bit to put it here. One of The Kid's favourite snacks is something called onigiri and it is a great thing to send in his lunch. I can make it before bedtime and pack it up the next morning. For this batch, I had some leftover curry c...

Takikomi gohan is a traditional Japanese dish consisting of a bit meat or seafood cooked together with rice in dashi with some seasonal vegetables. In other words, It should translate to The Kid's Perfect One Dish Meal. I wanted to make some  takikomi gohan in my new Zojirushi rice cooker but I wanted to adapt it to what i keep in my pantry. Although I love Japanese food, I don't really keep gobo and konnyako lying around the house if you know what I mean and I don't think they are EVER considered a seasonal vegetable here in Toronto. Again, lazy me also doesn't really want to travel all over the city looking for it either so I used what I already had. I also added a bit of miso, which is not traditional but we like miso and we aren't actually Japanese so I thought it would be okay. In the future, I can see throwing in some frozen peas, or julienned carrot and maybe switching the chicken for some frozen shrimp. I will report back. As far as what kind of rice t...

I have one of those weird kids who adores salad. He especially loves the salad dressing that they serve at one of our favourite local sushi restaurants. It is really light and sweet, has grated apple, carrot and ginger, doesn't appear to have much oil and, unfortunately, I have never been able to replicate it. Over the years he has come to love the various Japanese dressings we are served in the japanese restaurants we frequent - the weird beige dressing that I think is a sesame seed dressing, the weird orange one that I think is the sesame seed dressing with some ketchup added to it and pretty much any other variation of an asian tasting vinaigrette. This makes my quest a bit easier because I no longer  have to replicate the original beloved dressing to get him to eat a dressed salad. (He used to eat his salads dry in protest) I have read a million versions of dressings that have ketchup in them and even if I think he will love it, I am not emotionally prepared to go that ro...

What to do with leftover sushi rice? Make sushi pizza, what else! Okay, you could also make onigiri but I don't want onigiri today. I want something crunchy and crispy. I made sushi for Little Shack's lunch and made way too much rice. I also happened to have leftover salmon from the previous evening's dinner so it made perfect sense to plan on sushi pizza for dinner. You can pile anything you want on a sushi pizza. You can throw on some raw fish, cooked fish, leftover fish, pickled vegetables are good, kimchi is great if you like kimchi. If you are vegetarian, you can just throw on pickled veggies and sauce, avocado and whatever else you would normally like to eat in a sushi roll. It really couldn't be easier: Heat a frying pan over med to med high heat. With wet hands, grab a baseball sized ball of leftover, cold sushi rice and pat it down into a patty, much like a hamburger patty. Mix up soy sauce, sesame oil and a bit of water (I do about 2 tbls ...

Soup. Today is one of those days where I really want someone to make ME soup. I don't feel all that great and I don't want to get dressed or go out or cook one bit but I do need a couple of things so I guess I am going to have to do it anyway. I made salmon last night so I could make Little Shack salmon sushi rolls to take in his lunch today so I have leftover salmon AND leftover sushi rice and that means sushi pizza for supper! fresh japanese wheat noodle