Another satisfying lunch using yesterday's dinner---Katsudon!

This is another case of using yesterday's night dinner for today's lunch.  My family loves tonkatsu which is basically fried breaded slice of pork.  Usually, tonkatsu is served with a side of shredded cabbage and perhaps tonjiru (miso soup with pork).

But what is best is when there is left over.  I normally will make lots of tonkatsu just so that I would have left over.  Because, with that slab of fried meat, I could transform it into a totally different dish such as today's lunch.  In a small pan, I heat up a small amount of dashi (fish stock-can be bonito or anchovy base) seasoned with soy sauce, and throw in some sliced onions and julienned carrots, my lunch is more than half completed.  I sliced up my leftover tonkatsu and added into the simmering dashi and vegetable.  While heating up the meat, cracked an egg and beat it slightly before adding into the meat with dashi.  When the eggs about cooked through, sprinkled with a little green onions and shut off the heat.  In a bowl, scooped some hot steam rice then poured the meat with egg and dashi onto the rice and lunch is served!

So simple and best of all only one pan to wash!

Feeling good morning panini

Spring is finally in full swing.  This morning, it was a great morning.  I cracked open all the windows to let the cool breeze filled the house.  In a distance, the birds were singing and blooming flowers were dancing to the caressing wind.  And my grill pan was warming up on the stove.  I sliced the my home-baked sourdough and slapped a few slices of hungarian style salami together with some roasted pepper I roasted just the night before.  Topped with a few slices of parmesan cheese, the sandwiches were ready for the pipping hot grill pan.  With my handy dandy pan cover, I pressed the sandwiches onto the grill pan to form my panini.  Flipped them over and gave them another squeeze with my cover.

A few minutes later, those crispy hot panini were ready to be served, together with a side of Jewish pickles and homemade coleslaw.  Of course, I didn't forget my usual cup of coffee topped with milk.  Mornings should be like this, at least that was what I thought at that moment.  Now, with my manga on the side, I think I can consider my morning quite satisfying.

Mocha Chiffon Cake

Sometimes we need to indulge ourselves with a soft and fluffy cake.  I made mocha chiffon layered coffee fluffed cream.  Top with a cup of tea, what a way to end the day.  That was yesterday's treat!

I have always preferred cakes that are fluffy and soft, probably because I am asian.  Although chiffon cakes originated from California, USA, but the recipe I have is slightly different the original recipe from Mr. Harry Baker back in 1927.  The difference is baking powder.  For cake that is so soft and light, the presence of baking powder actually gives off a slight chemical taste.  So, personally, if I can avoid it, I usually skip the baking powder.

The recipe I am using I obtained from my Taiwanese friend who is currently residing in Boston.

Ingredients:
7 egg whites
5 egg yolks
160 g cake flour (mix with 20 g coco powder)
80 g sugar
160 ml milk and coffee
80 ml vegetable oil (I use canola)
1 tsp vanilla
45 g sugar (for the egg white)

Preheat oven at 345 F and turn down to 335 F when you slide the cake into the oven.
Cooking time: 40 minutes

Now, in order to experiment with the different flavor, I suggest that you keep the proportions about the same and try out with coco powder, banana, orange, lemon, etc.  If you have more liquid, use less milk or if you use a lot of coco powder, reduce the flour slightly.  You can also adjust the sugar level if you want it less sweet.  But since coffee and coco powder can be bitter, I kept the sugar level at 80g for the egg yolks batter and 45 g for egg white.

You'll need two large bowls.  Crack the eggs and separate the egg yolks and whites into separate bowls.  Leave the additional 2 yolks for other baking or cooking.  In the egg yolks bowl, beat and slowly add the sugar.  Continue beating at high until the color becomes pale.  Then add the oil slowly while beating (just like making mayonaise).  And it'll look like mayonaise too.  Then add the milk (or the final liquid) and vanilla into the batter and mix well.  Set aside.
Using clean whisk, beat the egg white while slowly adding the sugar until soft peak.
Then mix the egg white into the egg yolk batter.  First, add 1/3 of the egg white and mix thoroughly.  Then the rest, and mix gently so that the air from the egg white do not escape too much.
Finally, into the traditional chiffon cake mold (pretty much angel cake mold).  Do not butter or oil the mold!  Then into the oven.
Once cake is done, flip it upside down. You can let the hole in the middle of the pan sit on a bottle.  That's pretty much how I did it.  Once cool you can unmold it.  And decorate as you please like I did with whip cream.

Tea time Biscotti

Biscotti is very good to have in the house.  I found that biscotti can be a good travelling food especially this particular one because it is packed with lots of good stuff.  I think biscotti is a very easy to make and you can pretty much experiment with it one way of the other.  It is hard to fail.

My version of biscotti has a combination of nuts, dry fruits, oats and even ground flax seeds, which made the biscotti very healthy snack.  I often bake them when my family are travelling far.  These elongated shape cookies are like energy bar considering rich ingredients.  And even if they broke into pieces, just pour them into a cup/bowl and add milk.  The kids have cereal now!

Today, I made biscotti not for breakfast, or travelling, but for tea time.   This is another of my family's favorite.  These crunchy cookies are definitely far from the original hard biscotti.  Actually, my version of biscotti is closer to crispy cookies than twice cooked bread.

Hearty Biscotti

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour

> 1/2 cup Sugar

1 tsp Baking Powder

1/2 cup Rolled Oats

2 Tbsp Ground Flax seeds

1/2 cup Toasted Walnuts (coarsely chop)

1 cup Raisins/Cranberries (or both)

8 oz Butter

1/4 tsp Salt

2 large Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

Oven preheated at 350 F

Steps:

1.  Melt butter.  

2.  Prepare dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt and baking powder, oats, ground flax seeds) and put aside.

3.  Add beaten eggs and vanilla into cooled melted butter and mix.

4.  Toss in toasted walnut and dried fruits.  Mix.

5.  Add the dry ingredients.  Mix.  This will take a little time for the flour to absorb the butter.  Make sure they are well combined.

6.  Divide into two logs by rolling with hands.

7.  Put logs on parchment paper lined tray.

8.  Bake for 25 minutes.

9.  Let it cool slightly before cutting into the traditional biscotti shape (less than 1 cm apart).  Lay them back on the tray and bake for 10 minutes.

10. After 10 minutes, turn them over and put them back on the hot oven without the heat on.

11. Once cool completely, they are ready to serve.

24 little madeleines in four straight lines

I am sure many of you may have thought of the 12 little girls in two straight lines from the famous children book, Madeline.   I cooked the little madeleines in mini cupcake molds since I didn't have the infamous shell shaped molds.  Those things can be quite costly.  At least, that was what I found when I check out William Sonoma.  Anyway, little muffin shaped madeleines work just as well.

These little sweet devils will be today's "oyatsu" for the kids (and adults!)  Oyatsu, literally tea break snacks usually serve with tea (or juice whatever kids prefer).  Usually, when the kids get home they are so hungry, I thought these little snack is just perfect to tie them over till dinner time. (Maybe).

The batter for madeleines are very similar to genoise or sponge cake but I think making madeleines are much easier.  I got the recipe from Martha Stewart site.  For today's batch, I made a little change, that is by adding orange zest in it.  I smelled wonderfully citrusy.

There are a few variations, but I have yet tried them all.  For now, this recipe seems to work well.  Please try for yourself!

After meal dessert

Have you read the news about a teenager eating packet ramen for the last 13 years...and she is still alive!  That was my first thought.  Amazing...apparently she cannot even handle salads and fruits, but she can do with at least two packets of ramen per day.  And to top it all, her mummy buys boxes after boxes of ramen packets to satisfy her cravings.  Now, there is something wrong there.

You must be wondering what has packet ramen to do with maccha cupcakes?  Well, after I read the news, I thought there must be something wrong with mothers who encourage their kids to eat only ramen packets.  Then I realized, I fed my kids ramen packets too, two days in a row because I didn't have time to make snacks for them...ahhhggg...what a bad mother!  So, today, with quite a lot of effort and time, I squeezed in baking while preparing for dinner.  There was just too much...I made soup, baked parmesan chicken stuffed with garlic butter, asparagus rolled with ham, italian style cold slaw, and macha cupcakes, all in 3 hours...phew!  By the time we finished dinner, it was already 8:30 pm.  Yuta only ate half of the cake and was too tired to finish the rest.  Oh well, I guess he can have it for tomorrow's breakfast!  Hahaha!

You know, back to ramen packets...I always have some around (sort of emergency food!)  I think sometimes mothers get carried away because we get busy.  I was too busy working on taxes the last few days and didn't have time to prepare proper after school snacks.  So, I crank up the stove to heat a pot of water and throw in the ramen.  That is how easy it is to cook packet ramen.  And the kids love them.  But, I know it is not good to always rely on process food as such.  In short, I must try harder and make effort to make balance meals and healthy snacks for my kids!!!  Don't want them to become that teenager whom expert claimed that she is malnutrition and has IQ issues.

Anyway, in time, I'll try to link the recipe that goes with the picture.  So, give me some time before I do all that web jazz!

Tonkatsu and Miso Katsu

In my family, tonkatsu (see picture above) is one of the most well received dish.  Everyone loves it and it is a good food to have for bento.  Tonkatsu is basically breaded pork.  There are many variations if you were to try it in Japan.  Here at home, I have only made two to three variations---that is, instead of a slab of meat coated with flour, egg and panko, I thinly sliced it and add cheese or shiso in between the meat then coat the layered meat. Sounds like a lot of work, and yes, it is a lot of work but I don't do it as well as the professionals.  And my thinly slice---well, is not exactly thinly sliced.  And sometimes, I'll bread the meat with parmesan mix with the panko (bread crumbs) to make it more of a Italian flavor.  But this too, I don't always do.  I guess, it is also possible to transform that into pork parmasiana.

But for lunch today, I decided to go with miso katsu.  Basically, tonkatsu soaked sweet miso sauce.  The sauce is a mixture of miso, sake, sugar, mirin, and some tonkatsu sauce (optional).  After the tonkatsu soaked up the sauce, sliced it up and served it on top of steamy hot rice.  Then you add a little more of the sauce on top of the meat and rice, and garnish green onions and sesame.  That really hit the right spot in the stomach.  I just finished eating my miso katsu don....now, I'm going to brew myself a cup of green tea.

Jam filled cream cheese cookies

I personally think that it is really hard to resist cookies.  I borrowed the recipe from doing a search in the Internet, "Raspberry filled cream cheese cookies".  Let me tell you, they are delicious.  The kids love them the most.  The only drawback, aside the calorie, is that the dough is extremely sticky--- Need to stick it in the fridge to harden slightly before rolling and cutting into shape.  This is not a one hour prior guest's visit type cookies.  It is more like, prepare dough in the morning and bake it in the afternoon type cookies.  I even made the jam to fill.  This time I used blueberries.  So, three steps for me: 1. Prepare jam in the morning  2. Prepare dough late morning  3. Roll out cookies.  Or you can spread out in a few days, I guess.

This is definitely not a good midnight snack.  It had 1 cup of butter and 8 oz cream cheese packed in those scrumptious cookies.  But life is too short to worry about that...so, I'll eat and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.  Hahaha!!!

Yesterday's dinner, today's lunch

I tried a new dish yesterday, peppered pork braised in yoghurt.  It is a recipe I found from home (Malaysia that is).  However, as usual I altered the recipe due to many reasons, mainly lack of certain ingredients.  Anyway, the actual recipe calls for mutton, in which lamb would be a better substitute, but all I had was pork.  Pork in the US has a STRONG smell, unlike the ones in Japan or Malaysia.  I am not sure why, perhaps it is the process of butchering the pig...hahaha!!!

This recipe uses a a few different spices such as cumin, cloves, cardamon and of course black pepper.  I figure with such spices, I will surely get rid of that smell from the pork.  And since I ran out of cardamon, I had nothing to substitute, instead I altered the taste by using coriander powder instead.  I set to work and got all the ingredients together and marinade the pork in the fragrant spice mix and yoghurt right before I had to pick up the kids from school.

Anyway, I braised the meat together with the yoghurt and a little chicken stock (for extra flavor), and then pan fry them with some butter.  This dish turned out alright, though I think mutton/lamb would have tasted great.  Nevertheless, the kids ate it just fine, which is a good indicator.  Haruka was hesitant in the beginning because she doesn't like hot-spicy food.  But this dish is spicy but not hot.  Yuta loves spicy food, so I knew he'll be OK with this dish.

But of course, I usually make more than 4 servings so that I'll have something for lunch (talk about lazy!)  Since my husband is a stickler on not having the same thing twice in a row, I transformed it in to a fried rice....hahaha!!!  Actually, I think the fried rice tasted pretty good.  For dinner, I had paired the peppered pork with saffron pilaf with raisins.  That was good too.  But like many other spicy food, the second day usually tastes much better.  I think it is because the spices and meat had a chance to marry!

All these because I was inspired after reading a manga title Chef of Nobunaga.  It is a good food manga. Lots of good food and substitutions used in the manga (no peppered pork braised in yoghurt).  Of course, the manga is fiction but some of the food prepared are definitely mouth watering.

Almond cookies with chocolate custard

Both my husband and I had this as our late night snack.  I know, I know, it is probably not a good idea to eat this right before bed.  Hahaha...but the kids were asleep and we were just craving for some sweets.

Actually, the almond cookies were really derived from macaroon recipe from America's Test Kitchen.  I made small alterations, but essentially the recipe is the same.  Plus, I didn't have the proper tip to pump dough out, so, I decided to make it into a spiral cookie (basically a flat macaroon--see picture).  Usually, the we just eat the "cookies" by itself.  The crispiness and nuttiness makes this cookie a perfect pairing with afternoon tea.  But this time, I added chocolate custard just because I had some leftover in the fridge (from previous day eclairs).  I forgotten to take picture of the eclairs because everyone was too excited to eat...hahaha!

Now, the best part of this cookie aka macaroon is that it is relatively low fat.  There are three main ingredients which are almond meal, sugar (of course I cut down the sugar!), and egg white.  And almond is good for those who have high cholesterol (in appropriate quantity please).  Ssshhh...this is also why I allow my husband to have it as late night snack, though he really ought to be watching his weight!