Chawan-Mushi

My mom is a great cook. Her Japanese homemade meals are always healthy and heart warming.
Mom made miso glazed fish and chawan-mushi for dinner the other night. In English, chawan-mushi literally means "steamed in a tea cup". Chawan-mushi is a delicious Japanese savory egg custard dish that most often eaten as an appetizer. It could be served hot or cold. It takes some skill to perfectly steam the chawan-mushi. If it is steamed too long the chawan-mushi becomes spongy and loses flavor and attractiveness. If you steam it too little it would come out watery and ugly. I have yet to master the skill of the Chawan-mushi.

CHAWAN MUSHI RECIPE
(makes 4 cups)
Ingredients:
3 eggs
500cc dashi
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
50 g sasami chicken meat
4shrimps
4 slices of kamaboko
half stalk of mitsuba (trefoil leaves)

Directions:
1. Break 3 eggs add dashi, salt, and soy sauce as you stir.
3. Throw the chicken and shrimp pieces in 4 individual tea cup sized cups.
2. Divide and pour the egg mixture equally into each cup.
4. Place kamaboko slice into each cup.
5. Fill a double-boiler pan (mushiki) half full with water.
6. When water comes to a boil, place the cups and steam.
7. Heat 1-2 minutes on a strong fire, reduce heat and cook for an additional 12-15 minutes.
8. When the chawan-mushi is firm and clear liquid rises it is ready!
9. Garnish each cup with mitsuba.

Chocolate Covered Blueberries

Last week I made a few batches of chocolate covered blueberries. We bought a huge bucket of blueberries at Costco and they needed to be used up quick! So I melted some dark chocolate chips and threw the blueberries in the bowl of chocolate. Next, I put each blueberry on parchment paper and put them in the fridge to harden up. The results... a crispy and crunchy sweet chocolate shell with a soft and cool blueberry filling. A perfect summer snack!

Happy Wedding Cookies

A lot of our friends are getting married, engaged, and having babies lately... I guess we are just at that age where we're all going through life changes.
I'm posting this entry to say congratulations to our friends H&D that just got married! They are a perfect couple.

Today they came by our house to deliver happy wedding cookies. I learned that it is Chinese custom to hand out boxes of cookies to friends and family after a couple ties the knot. This is so that they could spread their "love" to everyone around them.
The grooms parents sent dozens of these gorgeous boxes of cookies to them from Taiwan.
These cookies are so cute and delicious! Thanks for spreading the love!

One Dollar

We've been blessed in Southern California with quite a few great Japanese Supermarkets... but shopping for Japanese groceries isn't exactly cheap. Nowadays one dollar doesn't go very far, especially when it comes to grocery shopping. We've got some great Japanese markets in the area including a few Mitsuwas and Marukais. This weekend only, Mitsuwa is having a special $1 sale where they have a huge selection of groceries all for only one dollar! Hubby and I went crazy at the market yesterday and bought a grip of stuff!
Look at all that loot we got (35 items for $35)! Can't complain~.
We got tons of snacks, crackers, dried noodles, pickles, candy, etc... If you have a Mitsuwa in your neighborhood you should definitely go and stock up your pantry.

Nectarine Madness

We've always had this nectarine tree in our backyard but this year is the first time there's been so much fruit on the tree! Not only are there hundreds of nectarines but they are huge and juicy!
My family members are not the only ones enjoying these fruits... the dogs are crazy for them! We've caught Xabi jumping up to pick the nectarines and he eats dozens at a time. Just look at that picture of him! He looks so guilty stealing the nectarines off the tree! haha.
Sometimes Xabi will go missing for a while and we would catch him over by the nectarine tree. Last year my parents even had to take him to the emergency vet because he was violently puking after hoarding nectarines in the backyard.
Zion was even having fun frolicking under the tree. By the way... hasn't he grown so much!?
Hubby and I decided to go nectarine picking before the dogs got to them all. We had so many nectarines that we couldn't possibly eat them all! So I decided to take on the challenge of making nectarine jam. It seemed the best solution for using up the most nectarines and not wasting them.
HOMEMADE ORGANIC NECTARINE JAM

Ingredients:
8 cups chopped organic nectarines (do not peel)
1.5 cups organic sugar
4 tablespoons fresh organic lemon juice

Directions:
1. Cook all ingredients at a very mild boil for 30-minutes.
2. Skim foam off surface.
3. Ladle into sterilized jars.
4. Process jars in boiling water bath for 10-mins.

Making jam seemed like an intimidating task but it was surprisingly easy. I decided to use all organic ingredients since the nectarines were naturally organic. I didn't want to ruin the pureness with processed and bleached sugar. The jam turned out a pretty rose color and tasted perfectly juicy. I was even able to make 6 jars to hand out to my friends. Hope everyone likes it!

Let Me See That Sushi Roll~

Everybody looks forward to our monthly sushi dinner at home. This month we simply had rice with an assortment of sashimi. Have you heard this joke before? No matter how many times I hear it (or say it), it cracks me up!

Q: What did the Sushi say to the bee?

A: Wassap~ bee!?

Time to Tighten the Waist and the Wallet...

I'm finally getting over my jet lag and getting back into the groove of things at home. I was gone for nearly a month and a half so I've been a little bit out of it. Our wonderful summer world travels have wreaked havoc on my waistline and wallet to say the least...
I love Europe and it's decadent food. I love that no one looks at you like you're psycho if you want to order the triple chocolate cake for dessert. Eating dessert after ever meal is so normal over there! Also the US dollar is monopoly money in Europe so our bank account is running on low at the moment... Of course, I had a blast and would eat every fattening thing and do every expensive thing all over again but now it's time for me to get into gear and tighten that waist and wallet!
So as a solution I'll be focusing on cooking (more) health conscious and wallet conscious recipes for a while.

This recipe is one of my mother's simple creations. Tasty, cheap, quick, and easy... how much better can it get?

CATAPILAR BOWL RECIPE

Ingredients
2 Avocados
1 Package of Unagi (eel)
3 cups of Japanese White Rice
Pinch of Sansho (Japanese Pepper)

Directions
1. Follow directions on package of Unagi and heat.
2. Cut avocados into thin slices.
3. Cut unagi into desired bite size pieces.
4. Lay the pieces of unagi and avocado on a bed of rice.
5. Pour the remaining unagi sauce over everything and top with sansho (Japanese flavoring pepper).
One package of unagi could feed 3-4 people and costs about $10. If you're lucky you could find 2 avocados for $1.
So for $11 this is a pretty health and wallet conscious meal that tastes wonderful!