bloggeraid cookbook teaser

If you want to know about the Mamatouille-made-up recipe I submitted to the BloggerAid cookbook project, then make sure you get your own copy from Amazon when it's released at the end of this year! And don't forget - you can submit your own recipe until March 31. Get cookin'!

oyako donburi

I'm co-posting today here at Mamatouille and over at Tribeca Yummy Mummy, at the invitation of the Mama Yummy herself, Tribeca Cate (her cloud soup is what I made the other day). You've got to get yourself on over there right now and check out her gorgeous family photo at the top of her blog and also her cranberry curd, which I'm itching to make someday (as soon as I get my grubby paws on some fresh or frozen cranberries - can't find them here!).

But today's not about cranberries...Come on, let's do the funky chicken!

"Oyako" in Japanese means "parent-child", which is completely appropriate for this traditional Japanese home-cooked dish with chicken and eggs. (Which came first?) "Donburi" just means bowl and is used for any hot meal that's served over rice in a bowl. This recipe came to me on a convoluted route: I got the More With Less cookbook for my American wedding (we had one in the US and one in the UK for all of our peeps to be able to join in), the recipe in the American cookbook is from Obihiro, Japan (a city on Hokkaido - the big island north of the main island), and I brought my precious cookbook with me when we moved here to Japan in 2001. I have served this dish to my former Japanese sensei (and one of my Japanese adopted mothers), and she said it was "perfect". My little yummy bean, Matthew, thinks so, too, and this is the only way I can get him to consume spinach (and it's not even hidden).

Here's the little bean himself, helping Mama wash some dirt off (him or the spinach?)...

And if you think my Japanese kitchen is small, you ain't seen nuthin'! This is gihugic compared to some of my friends' kitchens here, and at least mine has a door and isn't in the living room (seriously).

OK, everybody wash hands and let's get down to this cookin' business.

You'll need:

• 1/2 lb. raw chicken (I use two breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces)
• 5 eggs (yes, really)
• enough flour for dusting the chicken
  
• 1 c. water
• 3 dried mushrooms, diced finely (I just grab a handful of pre-sliced dried shiitake shrooms and chop them even tinier - Matthew doesn't usually like mushrooms but he gulped them down in this!)
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/3 c. soy sauce (I use dark)
• 2 scallions, cut diagonally, or one sliced onion
• 2 c. chopped fresh spinach (sometimes I use frozen if I don't have fresh and I'm really craving this meal RIGHT NOW)
• chopped parsley for garnishing
• cooked rice for 4 people (I do mine in my rice cooker and add a pack of multigrains before cooking)
  

You and your yummy do this:

Oyako (parent and child) - Measure the ingredients and have them sitting and ready. Wash the chopped spinach and have that draining in a colander.

Oya (parent) - Cut the chicken into little pieces if it's not already chopped. I remove all skin, too. (Not my thing.) Combine the mushrooms and water in a saucepan and simmer for 10 minutes, then leave to sit in the water for a few minutes while you get on with the rest of the steps.

Ko (child) - Ask your mama or daddy to help you beat the 5 eggs in a bowl. Matthew's darn good at that - he gets a lot of practice round here.

Oyako - Dust the chicken with flour and dip in the beaten egg (reserving the extra eggs).

Oya - Fry the chicken in a big skillet in oil till brown. Add the mushrooms with liquid, sugar, and soy sauce to the chicken in the pan and simmer 15 minutes. Then add the chopped onion or scallions and simmer 10 more minutes. Add the spinach and while it's still bright green, add those reserved beaten eggs to the skillet and cover it. Cook only until it's set (nobody's worried about salmonella over here and raw eggs are consumed at a high rate - if you're stateside and concerned about that, cook it until you feel it's ready), add some rice to individual bowls, and ladle some oyako donburi into each bowl.

Ko - Scatter some chopped parsley over each serving to garnish. Then enjoy with your Oya and don't forget to mention how "nummy" it is! Or if you want to sound Japanese, say "Oishii!"

feeding mamatouille's baby: kabocha meal

I don't have a picture for this because Joel was hungry NOW and it disappeared so quickly. I just mixed some mashed potato, cooked mashed kabocha/Japanese pumpkin, fresh grated apple, and lemon juice, and it was a smash hit. It's hard to know which meal is the Beansprout's favorite because he hoovers everything, but this seemed a winner. Mama had a spoonful as well and it was pretty darn yummy-licious.

bloggeraid cookbook update

Hey, if you're thinking about submitting a recipe for the BloggerAid cookbook, don't sweat it! I got mine in today but there's just been word that the deadline's been extended to March 31.

winey baked apples, the mamatouille way

We were having friends round for dinner and I needed a dessert I could make quickly and easily - and I had apples in the fridge! I remembered reading in a Japanese cookbook ages ago about cooking apples in red wine, so I just made my own sauce with:

• red wine
• margarine
• a bit of brown sugar
• a bit of honey
• cinnamon
• raisins

I mixed this and poured it over 2 big apples I'd quartered but left unpeeled, and after they baked and were soft, I made a yogurt sauce with:

• plain natural yogurt
• cinnamon
• nutmeg
• honey

And I spooned that over the apples in individual bowls. It was just a last-minute decision to throw it all together, but it turned out to be a keeper!

horse sense

Just read the label on the Japanese jar of "vegetable cream stew" I bought for Baby-Beansprout Joel as an emergency meal, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the kanji (characters) for horse meat (baniku)!

Anybody ever had horse? It's a delicacy over here, and my husband loves basashi, raw marinated horse meat. Can't say I go for it myself.

Also, if you buy canned "corned beef" over here, chances are that it's horse meat in there. I don't indulge, though sometimes I get my egg at Denny's with corned beef - I just don't ask what's in it. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Neigh!!!!!!

bloggeraid cookbook

Don't forget to get your recipe ready to send to BloggerAid for their fundraiser! All of the proceeds will go to The World Food Programme, and the deadline is Feb. 12, so you still have a few days...I'm working on mine at the moment...

And you don't have to have a blog to do it - anybody can send one in.

lemon sour cream monsters

OK, folks {sigh of regret over wasted precious ingredients}, if you're ever, ever, ever tempted to make Recipe Zaar's lemon sour cream muffins, just take my word for it and DON'T. I read all the raving reviews and thought, hey, that sounds great. But the batter turned into what-the-heck-this stuff-is-carbonated-and-fizzing-out-my-nose, and the first batch turned into ")#($')()"#'$)"('&$%#$%#$&"&-I-now-have-to-clean-my-oven-because-they-morphed-into-Godzilla-and-they're-taking-over-my-house muffins. I added less batter to the next pan, but they didn't rise and the texture was just crazy. It seemed like my big bowl of batter was ever expanding to fill every tin I owned, including two muffin pans, two mini-muffin pans, and a mini-loaf pan as well (and the recipe says it makes TEN muffins - my eyeball). I've made quite a few muffins in my day and I've never experienced anything like this, people.


I even used up some of my preciouses dried cranberries (which I first boiled in orange juice to soften up). What a disappointment. Even the finished product tasted like wacky lemon soda with a bit of flour. The cranberries didn't do one bit to help.

The mini loaf was the only semi-edible bit of all of the mess, though even that was a sad, sad shadow of what I expected it to be.

At least all of you can learn from my mistake, and I leave some muffin wisdom with you for the weekend: If you have some lemons and sour cream that you need to use up pronto, you're better off juicing the lemon, drinking it straight, and spooning the sour cream out of the container straight into your expectant gob.

Now go get that juicer and spoon ready. Pucker up and happy Saturday!

gingered tofu and noodle soup

My Saitama friend, Kim, sometimes has a book giveaway, and recently I inherited her Reader's Digest One-Dish Meals: The Easy Way. I adapted this gorgeous soup the other day from it and will never, ever, ever look back. It's a keeper.

The Japanese have a word, sukkiri, that means something like cleansing/refreshing/satfisying, and all I could think about was that word when I was devouring bowl after bowl of this stuff. I usually hear sukkiri in the context of someone eating something cold, like watermelon, in the hot, humid summer, but this soup, man oh man - it's warming and refreshing and enlivening and comforting all at the same time. The ginger is enough to give it a special kick, and I added some cayenne pepper as well to heat things up a bit more. It's so thoroughly blanketing on a winter's day, no matter what the weather's up to. If it's sunny outside, this will just enhance the brightness, and if it's dreary, just one bowl will be enough to chase any blues away. I'm fortunate enough not to have this problem, but I bet if you've got a sore throat this soup would be just the ticket.

You'll need:

1 package (8 oz. or 200 g) fine egg noodles (I used angel hair pasta, but I'm sure any thin Asian noodle would work well, too)
2 T. olive oil
5 scallions, including tops, sliced diagonally 1-inch thick (I used 2 leeks)
3 T. minced fresh ginger
5 cups chicken stock (I used 5 c. water and 4 chicken bouillon cubes)
1 small head cabbage, finely sliced (I used 1/2 Japanese cabbage and it was plenty)
12 oz. firm tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1/4 t. salt
1/8 t. black pepper

I also added 1 chopped chicken breast and several dashes cayenne pepper.

Do this:

Cook the noodles according to package directions, drain, toss with 1 T. olive oil, and set aside. In a large pot, heat 1 T. olive oil over medium heat for about a minute, then toss in the chopped chicken, scallions, and ginger and stir-fry until the chicken is no longer pink. Add the stock and bring to a boil over high heat, then add the cabbage, reduce heat to medium, and cook for about a minute or two. Stir in the cooked noodles and the tofu, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper. (The book says this serves 4 but these proportions made a huge amount of soup, probably close to ten bowls worth.)

Lift your bowl as close as possible to your gob, use chopsticks to shovel in the chunky bits, and slurp the broth straight onto your taste-buds-of-happiness.

Sendin' this on over to Kahakai Kitchen's Souper Sundays...

feeding mamatouille's baby: tomatoes

My friend Ako taught me this trick: Just slice off the tops of some tomatoes, stick 'em in a microwave-safe bowl, blast 'em for a few minutes till soft, wait for them to cool a bit, then they will peel easily. At the time, Ako was feeding her one-year-old, so she left the tomatoes pretty chunky, but Joel is still eating pureed foods, so that's what I do for him.
After you peel them, you can mush them up a bit with a spoon, and either leave them as is, or puree in a food processor or with an immersion blender (I don't de-seed).
Then freeze what you don't need at the moment, and you're good to go! Joel had some tomatoes last night with some couscous (I cooked it with chicken bouillon and olive oil) and some peas and carrots, all mashed together, and he seemed to enjoy it!

oatmeal question

Anybody have any suggestions for getting extra protein (besides the milk) into oatmeal for a toddler's breakfast?

feeding mamatouille: yuzu yogurt

A mama's gotta feed herself to keep everybody going, and I recently discovered that one of my favorite drinks, yuzu cha (citron tea), is also great when converted into a yogurt topping (I used plain, natural yogurt - no flavorings, no sweeteners).

Citron tea is similar to marmalade, with an extra limey/bitter kick (YUM!) from the citron peel, and to make it, you scoop out a spoonful and stir it in a mug of hot water. I first had it on a trip to South Korea in spring 2005 with my Japanese sensei, Kazuko, when we went to visit our friends John and Sheena (who are from the UK and at that time lived in Seoul). I made Sheena take me to a mom-and-pop grocer to buy a jar to bring back to Japan with me, and since then have found it in Japanese stores here. Lucky me!



Two of my favorite photos from my Seoul trip:

Namdaemun market...
Grandpa and grandbaby...

you gotta try this cloud soup

If you haven't tried Tribeca Yummy Mummy's "cloud soup" (aka leek and potato), then do so immediately. I made it for dinner tonight and it was a big hit - along with star and airplane cheese toasts for the Bean (to go with the "clouds") and floating hearts for his daddy. I had ordered some leeks and potatoes from the co-op last week (delivered yesterday) to make leek and potato soup, but I usually use a different recipe. I found this one after I had already done my co-op ordering, and I liked Yummy Mummy's idea to use white wine, so I went for it.

I didn't have freshly ground nutmeg or pepper, so I used the already-ground stuff, and my white wine I had on hand was sweet and not dry, but other than that, I pretty much went exactly by the recipe.

Her soup was more cloud like and fluffy, and she called for 5-6 cups of water, so I used 6, but next time I'll add quite a bit less. The soup was thinner than I imagined it would be, so we dunked our cheese toast in it for some extra bulk.

It was yummy, Mummy, and I heartily recommend it.

bloggeraid

At the invitation of my blogging friend Ivy (from the great Greek food blog, Kopiaste), I just joined BloggerAid the other day and I'm looking forward to helping raise awareness about the growing problem of hunger around the world.

BloggerAid is making a cookbook soon and 100% of the proceeds will go to support The World Food Programme (WFP) - I'm hoping to submit a recipe myself. Anyone can submit, even if you don't have a blog, so go here to find out how. The cookbook will go on sale on Amazon in about November/December time, and I'll post a link here then.

feeding mamatouille's baby: kiwi fruit

I love this little Japanese contraption and use it every day for my little Beansprout. You can unsnap the spring, leave it open, and use it like scissors to cut food, or...

You can snap it shut and use it as a musher...like for kiwi, banana, or other soft foods...

Joel loves kiwi on its own, though he gets a little sour surprise every time, and he also likes it mushed up with banana. Yum. Kiwi's one of my favorite fruits, so I'm glad to pass on that gene (both my boys devour it).