Green beans with Japanese sesame dressing

I demonstrated how to cook Japanese green beans with sesame dressing (Ingen no Gomaae) for Nikkei Concern (http://www.nikkeiconcerns.org/seattlekeiro.html) Health fair other day.

I decided to make two types of sesame dressings.  During the process of creating recipes,

I looked up my Japanese recipe books.  My all cookbooks of Japanese basic home cooking include a recipe of green beans and sesame dressing or some sort of sesame dressing. I cook spinach with sweet soy sesame dressing #1 often at home.  I made green beans with sweet and sour sesame dressing #2 at my party and it was popular that several guests asked me about the dressing.

The organizer of the Health fair asked me not to use sugar in the recipe because many old attendants of the health fair have diabetes.  I usually use sugar to make the both dressing. I researched sugar substitutes and all have some problem. (Checkout: http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/are-artificial-sweeteners-a-healthy-substitute-for-sugar-201112304047) I decided to use honey which is natural although the honey contains sugar and have unique flavor. 

I conducted some test making sesame dressing. Honey is sweeter than sugar.  I found the amount of honey which works for the sesame dressing after several trials.

Also to keep beans nice green after boiling, there are two way to parboil them. One way is to cook beans in salted water. Others salt beans before parboiling. The first way is commonly people use. So I decided to use the second method. But if your doctor told you not eat salt much, you can eliminate salt when you boil the beans.  Here is the recipe which I made for the health fair.

Green beans with sesame seeds honey dressings

By FumikoB

 

Ingredients for 4 servings:

8 ounces Green beans (About 32 medium size beans)

Water for boiling

½  teaspoon sea salt

½  teaspoon soy sauce

Dressing 1 ( Goma Ae) 6 Tablespoons Black sesame seeds 2 Tablespoon Soy sauce 4 teaspoons honey * 2 Tablespoon Dashi or water *If using sugar, 2 Tablespoon sugar in place of honey.

Dressing2  (Goma yogoshi) 6 Tablespoons white sesame seeds 1 Tablespoons honey* 2 Tablespoons rice vinegar 2 Tablespoon soy sauce 1 Tablespoon Dashi or water *If using sugar, 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons sugar in place of honey.

Cooking instructions for green beans

1.       Wash green beans and cut into pieces 1 ½ inches long.

2.       Sprinkle sea salt on the green beans and mix so beans are coated with salt.

3.       Boil water, then add beans, boil for 5 minutes. (If you like tender beans, cook longer.)  

4.       Strain the beans using a colander, and the place in bowl. 

5.        Add soy sauce on the hot beans and mix.

6.       Cool the beans.

7.       Mix the sesame dressing with the beans.

8.       Plate the sesame marinated beans and serve at room temperature.

Making Sesame Dressing

1.       Roast sesame seeds in a frying pan over medium heat until nice aroma comes out.

2.       Grind sesame seeds in a Japanese mortar with a wooden pestle.

3.       Mix the rest of the ingredients for dressing in another bowl with the ground sesame seeds.

>>>>>>>Printer friendly Version

  

Holiday bread wreath

I love baking bread. I usually use a bread machine to make dough, shape it and let rise and bake it.
For Nebraskan runza and Piroshki, I kneaded dough by hands. It is very useful to know how to make bread from scratch to teach Hum Bao. Although my recipe of Hum Bao is for my cooking class, I share my holiday bread recipe here. If you don't have bread flour in your kitchen, try with 3 and 3/4 cups all purpose flour instead of partial bread flour. I think the result will still be great.

I got Kitchen aid mixer for Christmas. I will use it to make my bread soon.

Holiday bread made with bread machine

        from Prune Kitchen Seattle

If you have bread machine, try this recipe to make sweet dough. The dough is good for breakfast bread as well as for a holiday bread.

Ingredients

3 cups Bread flour

½ cup Unbleached all-purpose flour

1 cup and 2 Tablespoons Water

2 Tablespoons Unsalted Butter

1 Egg

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 ½ teaspoons active yeast

½ cup sugar

1 Egg plus 1 Tablespoon of water to make egg wash

Duration: 3 ½ hour

Direction

1. Place all ingredients except egg wash in pan of bread machine.
2. Select dough cycle and make dough. It generally takes about one and a half hour.
3. Meanwhile, cut parchment paper to the size of pizza baking dish.
4. After the dough cycle is completed, dust the flour on a cutting board and put the dough on the board.
5. Divide the dough into 3 pieces and roll dough and make 3 ropes.
6. Mold the ends of the 3 ropes together and braid the rest of dough while stretching the rope.^*
7. Pinch the end of the ropes together to make a wreath.
8. Rise the dough for one hour in warm place until it doubles size. Possibly longer.
9. Preheat oven to 350 degree
10.  Brush the egg wash on wreath dough. Bake for 25-30 minutes.
11. Cool and decorate with frosting made of 1 cup of powdered sugar and 2-3 Table spoon milk. Sprinkle red and green sugar (Optional)

IF YOU KNEAD BY HANDS, use all ingredients above except 3 Table spoons of yeast.  

  ^*Notes: To have nice results, braid the rope loose and gently.

Fumiko's Holiday bread made by Bread machine(PDF printer friendly version)

My favorite American appetizers to cook

I cooked deviled eggs and stuffed mushrooms for Thanksgiving for our guests. They are easy to cook and most people love them. I used mushroom stems for stuffed mushrooms. They are delicious. 

Here are how I made deviled eggs and stuffed mushrooms.

12 Stuffed mushrooms

12 white or brown mushrooms

1 TBSP Vegetable oil

Quarter onion minced

1 clove of garlic minced

Sun Dried tomatoes in oil chopped into small pieces.

1/4 cup Parmesan cheese grated

Take stem off the mushroom and chopped the stems into small pieces

Preheat oven to 375 degree

Heat oil and sauté minced onion, garlic and the mushroom stems until wilted.

Combine Parmesan cheese and sun dried tomatoes with the sautéed mixture to make stuffing.

Stuff the mushroom caps and bake them for 15 minutes or more until mushroom caps are cooked. 

They taste better to be served warm.  

6 Deviled eggs

6 eggs (Use at least 3 days old eggs. Very fresh eggs are hard to peel.)

Water

2-3 Table spoon mayonnaise( Add more or less for your taste)

Parsley chopped for garnish

In a pot, fill cold water to cover the eggs and put the lid on the pot.

Boil the water with eggs over medium heat.

Turn off the heat as soon as the water boils.

Leave the eggs in pot with the lid closed for 12 minutes,

Drain the water and cool the eggs under running cold water.

Peel the eggs in water.

Clean the shell and cut vertically half with sharp knife

Take egg yolk out carefully and clean the egg white.

Mix egg yolk with the mayonnaise

Stuff the mayonnaise mixture in the plastic bag.

Cut the corner of the bag and pipe the egg yolk mixture in the egg whites.

Dish up the eggs and garnish with parsley.

Pizza cooking on 2012 Election Day

My husband and I met two people and cooked Pizza at Prune Kitchen on 2012 Election Day. I prepared dough and tomato sauce ahead. Pizza was the perfect food to cook fast. They are members of my cooking meetup. I was disappointed only two signed up. But it turned out to be very pleasant night. We enjoyed freshly baked pizza and conversation. It was a great way to spend on the Election Day. 

I made pizza dough using Bread machine Pizza dough recipe from Rombauer and Becker version of Joy of cooking book. This is one of my favorite recipe book.

In case that you decided to buy a bread machine to make the pizza dough, here is the simple version of the recipe:

Set Dough cycle on the machine:

Add the flowing ingredients and start the cycle:

2 ½ (3 ¾) Cups of bread flour

½ ( ¾) teaspoon salt

1(1 ½) teaspoon active yeast or ¾ (1) teaspoon quick rising yeast

2(3) teaspoons Olive oil

1 (1 ½) cups water

(Large dough)

Have fun baking pizza.

Bok Choy flower is delicious

I planted Bok Choy in my backyard.  There were too many of them and started blooming. I found that the flower of Bok Choy is edible. I boiled it and mixed with soy sauce and sesame oil. I served it when I invited my Japanese friend to lunch. The boiled Bok Choy was delicious. She and I liked it. They tasted bit like Chinese broccoli. 

Here is the recipe:

Boiled Bok Choy with soy sauce and sesame oil

Ingredients

A bunch Bok Choy flower with stem(4-5 inches long)

1 quart of water (Less water is OK)

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 Table spoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1.       Wash and clean Bok Choy flower with stem. If stem is too large, it may be too hard to eat. Leave the small tender stem and cut of the rest.
2.       Boil water and add the salt
3.       Add Bok Choy flower
4.       Boil 3-5 minutes or stem is tender. Take out the larger stem and pinch it to test it.
5.       Take Bok Choy out and drain the water. Cool it for 5 minutes.
6.       In a medium size bowl, mix soy sauce and sesame oil.
7.       Cut the boiled Bok Choy into 1 ½ inches long.
8.       Put Bok Choy in the source bowl and mix.
9.       Dish it up and serve warm.
(NOTES) Adjust amount of soy sauce and sesame oil. Possible addition is black pepper and chili powder.

Japanese Breakfast Cooking Together

I hosted Japanese breakfast cooking and eating for Pacific Northwest Cooking Recipe meetups at my new kitchen.
4 members and my husband attended the cooking event. I set the menus, bought ingredients and directed them to cook. Here is the menu
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Menu:
Rice
Miso soup.
Baked Halibut
Panfried Tofu with grated daikon and ginger
Natto
Sautéed Burdoc and Carrot(Kinpira Gobo)
Boiled Spinach with Bonito flakes and soy sauce
Toasted and seasoned seaweed (Agitsuke Nori)
Pickled vegetables (Tsukemono)
Pickled plum(Umeboshi)
Sesami kelp(Goma Konbu)
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In addition to these, because my friend had given me Matsutake mushrooms yesterday, I made Matsutake rice.
All attendants learned bit of Japanese cooking and happy eating delicious Japanese breakfast.I am including recipes of 3 items from this breakfast.
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Miso soup(4 Servings)
1. In the bowl add ½ cup of water and 1 tsps of Dried seaweed (Wakame).
2. Cut 1/8th of Tofu into small pieces.Chop green onion.
3. In the pot, add 2 Dashi packs and 4 cups of water and heat to boil. Boil for 5 minutes to make soup stock. (I used all natural Dashi pack which looks like teabag. )
4. Remove the Dashi packs and add Tofu
5. Heat the soup and add Soy bean paste (Miso) 1/8cups and more as needed.
6. Before the soup boils, turn down heat to keep warm.
7. Seaweed will be hydrated by this time. Drain and squeeze the excess water of seaweed.
8. Add the seaweed and green onion into 6 portion to add it in the bowls.
9. When other food is ready, pour the Miso soup into each bowl.

Sautéed Burdock and Carrot (Kinpira Gobo)
1. Peel Burdock (Gobo) and cut into Julienne. Soak the Burdock in bowl of water with 1tsp of rice vinegar to avoid browning.
2. Peel carrots and cut it into Julienne.
3. Heat a frying pan, add 1 TBSp oil.
4. Add Burdock and carrot and fry
5. Add ½ tsp Chili flakes.
6. Add 2TBSP water 1TBSP Sake, 1 TBSP Mirin, and 2SBSP Soy sauce.
7. Cook until all liquid is evaporated.
8. Add 1tsp sesame oil and 2 tsp of Sesame seed.

Boiled spinach with Bonito flakes and soy sauce
1. Wash spinach well.
2. Boil water and add spinach.
3. Cook the spinach until the stem is tender
4. Take spinach out and put it into the iced water
5. Squeeze the excess water and cut it into one inch length wide
6. Dish the spinach and serve with dried bonito flakes and soy sauce(Add Dashi to make less salty).

Kabocha Thai curry

My life has been hectic. I haven’t written my blog for while. I will write more what kept me busy later.
I resume my blog and try to write more.
I joined Pacific Northwest cooking and recipe meetup group and attended “Your favorite Recipe Share and Tell Pumpkin and Apples” meetup. I thought Japanese way to cook Kabocha but it may not be popular among the attendants. I thought curry may do well with pumpkin. I decided to select other Asian curry rather than Japanese. I searched my collection of Indian then Thai recipe books. I found one which I could imagine to make tasty curry. I changed quite bit from original “Sweet Pumpkin and Peanut curry” in Thai the essence of Asian cooking by Judy Bastyra.(There are many good recipes and nice photos in this book.)
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Kabocha Thai Curry Recipe
Kabocha is Japanese pumpkin. It is dark green. It is smaller and sweeter than large yellow pumpkins.Original version uses peanuts,regular pumpkin, garlic and chicken stock, no meat, no zucchini. I used Kabocha and boiled them before adding them to curry soup.
Ingredients
1 large Fresh ginger cut into julienne
1 Shallots chopped small pieces
½ Kabocha peeled and cut to chunks
Zucchini ¼ inch sliced
Fresh Mushrooms sliced
Chicken ½ inch cube
Oil 1Tbsp
13.5 oz can of coconuts milk
Fish sauce 1-2 TBSP
Yellow Thai curry paste 1-2TBSP
Cooking instruction
1. Boil Kabocha 5 minutes. The Kabocha is halfway cooked
2. In a large stew pan, heat oil and stir ginge and shallots.
3. Add chicken and cook until done.
4. Add the curry paste, mix and stir.
5. Add coconuts milk, fish sauce, Zucchini, mushrooms
6. Cook until the vegetables are well cooked
7. Add pumpkin and cook until pumpkins are tender.
8. Serve with toasted Pumpkin seeds.
(Notes)This curry is very satisfactory itself without rice. Make it vegetarian by eliminating chicken and adding nuts or beans.

Irish Soda Bread

I made loaves of Irish soda bread from BBC website. I loved the results and friends who tried approved its taste. The bread was delicious with butter. However, Karen who is from Ireland told me it is wheaten bread not soda bread. According to her, north and south of Ireland people make soda bread differently.
I found a website about Irish soda bread: http://www.sodabread.us/
Real Irish may not call this soda bread. Still I like this recipe. Here is the recipe website :
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A23502908

Japanese Curried Rice at ACRS

At ACRS again, Chef Alice was nice to assign me to cook Japanese curry with rice on Tuesday’s lunch. I brought two boxes of curry sauce mix from home. I was planning to make usual my Japanese curry which includes meat, onion, carrot, and potatoes. However, Chef Alice had a better idea. Ground beef and eggplant curry! The curry tasted better than my usual one and looks good with tomatoes and green peas. Unfortunately I didn’t take photos of curry. Alice even prepared nice cucumber salad with Miso dressing and mandarin orange served with curried rice.
Here is the recipe.

Ingredients
I lb Ground beef
3 cloves of garlic
1 large onion
3 Chinese or Japanese eggplants
3 cups of Water (Add less for thick and more for soupy curry.)
¼ cup Frozen green peas
1 tomato
1 box of Japanese curry sauce mix 7oz (Or you can fry curry powder and flour in butter and add chicken broth. You need to adjust thickness and taste. By using sauce mix, you can make tasty curry easily.)
Cooked Japanese rice(Calrose )

Cooking Instructions
1. Peel, cut half onion and make them thin slices.
2. Peel , and mince garlic
3. Cut eggplant halt vertically and slice them to a half inch thickness
4. Heat frying pan and add oil
5. Fry onion until they are transparent and caramel colored. Do not burn.
6. Take onion out and add more oil and fry eggplant. I fried them until well-done. However, since the eggplants will be cooked in the soup, you can quick fry the eggplant.
7. Take eggplants out and fry ground beef with garlic
8. Heat stew pot with 3 cups of water and add cooked onion, eggplants, and ground beef.
9. Boil it and take out dark bubbles floating the surface to the soup.
10. Cook until eggplants are done.
11. Turn heat very low and add curry sauce mix into the soup.
12. Stir until the sauce mix is completely melted.
13. Cook low heat for 20 minutes or more. Stir as necessary.
14. Slice tomato and add them and frozen peas into the curry and cook for 5 minutes.
15. The curry is ready to be served. Serve the curry over the steamed rice.

Do you make your bread or buy it from the store?

<-On the left my successful bread.

I love my bread-maker. It is convenient to make dough. In less than 2 hours after I dump all ingredients in it, the bread-maker mixes them, knead and raise the dough while I am doing something else. After testing various recipes and making hard or dry bread several times and, I now can make edible tender fresh and tasty bread. Recently I often bake my own bread to save money and save trip to the store. The bread from large bakery doesn’t taste good as home-made except some expensive healthy and artesian bread and one from small bakeries. I found a package of days old store bought bread. It is 12 Grain bread from major bakery. I looked closely at the package. On the package the letters says, No cholesterol, Low in fat, the good bread. I guess it doesn’t say delicious or tasty.
This bread was left on the counter top in my kitchen more than a week and there are no sign of mold or being old. My home made bread would be hard or moldy in 2-3 days after it was baked. Let’s look at the ingredients on the package. There are so many ingredients listed. They are many kinds of flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamin mononitrate, Riboflavin, folic acid, water, High fructose corn syrup, …. , dough conditioner(sodium stearoyl lactyate monoglycerydes, calcium sulfate, enzymes, ammonium sulfate, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide),….calcium propionate(mold inhibitor), soy flour, nonfat and dry milk. The bread doesn’t get mold because it include mold inhibitor. Does it change the taste of bread? How about dough conditioner? What is dough conditioner?
I agree this bread includes some healthy ingredients such as soy flower and brown rice among many unknown ingredients. I am not sure all these ingredients are natural and healthy though.
My plain home-made bread usually made of, flour (Un-breached enriched white, bread flower, wheat, barley, or such.), milk or water, oil or/and butter, sugar, salt, and active yeast. Some times I add sour cream or yogurt. Comparing with 38 ingredients listed above( see phtos) my bread only contains 6-10 ingredients. Pizza dough can be made of only bread flour, olive oil, salt, water, and active yeast. Making my bread is time consuming even using bread-maker. It will take 3-4 hours. When I need to include bread in the menu and didn’t have time to bake one, I buy bread. I often look at the label to find out the ingredients of the bread.Some bread from stores doesn’t contain suspicious ingredients or some chemical compounds and are natural, healthy, and delicious. I buy some bread from Costco bakery. I sometimes buy bread from a local Italian bakery which bakes their bread with traditional way although their bread doesn’t taste as good and gets dry the next day. Healthy bread such as artesian bread or Italian bread made of only natural ingredients are available but they are costly, Inexpensive way to serve healthy delicious bread is to find a failsafe recipe and bake my own bread. Also I feel safe to know what are in the bread.

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FumikoB’s wheat bread using bread-maker

Ingredients:
1 1/8 cup Milk or water
2 Tbsp sugar

1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
3 cups of flour (any variety of flour will do but more bread flour does better. Ex: 2 cups Bread flour and 1 cup of wheat flour.)
2 tsp Active yeast
2 TBSP sour cream(Optional but this will make bread moist.)
Cooking instruction
Add all ingredients to bread pan in bread maker.
Set dough setting and make dough.
Take dough and punch down.
Divide the dough into equal two pieces.
Roll the dough into large balls and place into the loaf pan.
Raise it the warm place until double in the volume.
Preheat oven 375 degree.
Bake bread until top browned for about 30 minutes.

Pumpkin, pumpkin, everywhere

Photo below was taken in Kent,WA

I wonder that how many pumpkin Americans consume and how many were curbed to lantern.
I didn’t eat pumpkin bread or pumpkin pie before coming to Seattle. In Japan, I cooked pumpkin with say sauce, sugar, and sake in Japanese soup stock to make Nimono as we do for other vegetables like potatoes and green beans.
I harvested several pumpkins from my garden. These pumpkins look like Kabocha pumpkin. However, it is hard to tell they are Kabocha or other ordinary pumpkin because some seeds are from large yellow pumpkin to be curbed and from composed Kabocha pumpkin seeds which were extracted before cooking and dumped into my composed bin. My father in Japan who is part-time farmer told me that pumpkin can be stored for a long time and pumpkin will be added sweetness several days after the harvest. I had Kabocha pumpkin in last summer in Japan from my parent’s garden, it was cooked Japanese way. It was very sweet and light. In Seattle my Kabocha like pumpkin didn’t taste as good as one in Japan when I cooked it by Japanese way. The reason may be something to do with the number of Sunny days and temperature in Seattle.
I made pumpkin bread from one of Kabocha like pumpkin and it was success and popular among my family and friends. My pumpkin bread recipe is drived from “Joy of cooking” 1997 edition but changed to meet my families taste.

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FumikoB's pumpkin bread

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups all-purpose flower
1 tea spoons ground cinnamon
1 tea spoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 cup Cooked and pureed pumpkin
1/3 cup milk
3 Table spoons melted butter
3 Table spoons vegetable oil
1 cup sugar ( half brown )
2 large eggs
Cooking instructions:
Preheat oven 350 degree. Grease loaf pan or muffin pans.
Mix the first 7 ingredients above together.
In food processor, blend well the rest of the ingredients, pumpkin, eggs, milk, oil, sugar and butter.
Add wet mixture above into the flower mixture. Beat and mix well.
Pour butter into the pan and spread evenly.
Bake until a tooth pick inserted in the center clean about 1 hour for loaf pan, 30-40minutes for muffin pans.

Japanese curry using Sauce Mix

I was little bit hesitant writing and posting food blog for a while I have been posting more Japanese blogs which is not food but my experience around Seattle. Please bear my English writing skills.

Now I decided to write some of my modified version of recipes from my favarite cook books, website and sometimes from the box or the bags of the ingredients.

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JAPANESE CURRY

This is Bretzke family’s favorite recipe. You can make your curry from curry powder and chicken soup stock. However, it will require several hours to make tasty curry. By using ready-made curry sauce mix from the box such as S&B Golden curry, you don’t worry about adding any other spices and make your curry in about one hour. I added garlic to this recipe. If you use pork instead of chicken, I will recommend you to add chopped ginger in addition to the garlic to enhance the flavor. I used S&B Golden Curry here.

Ingredients for 4 people

2-3 Chicken Breast or Thigh
1 whole Onion
1 carrot
4 small potatoes
1 clove of garlic
Curry sauce mix such as House Golden Curry (A half of 8.4 oz)Cooking Oil

Cooking Instructions
1. Peel and cut onion crosswise and chop into small pieces. Peel and chop garlic into small pieces. Peel carrots and cut into bite size. Peel potatoes and cut into 1 inch cube.
2. Heat large frying pan, add cooking oil, and sauté onion slices and garlic above with low heat until they are transparent and started browned. It will take for 15 minutes.
Caution: Do not burn them. It will be bitter if it burned.
3. While onion is sautéed, cut up chicken into about 1 inch square cube. Peel potatoes and carrots, and cut them into similar size pieces.
4. After onion is cooked, add chicken and sauté with Onion with medium heat until chicken is fully cooked.
5. Add potatoes and carrot into the pan and sauté for 5 minutes.
6. Add 3 cups of water into a large stew pot and add sautéed meat and vegetables.
Notes: The amount of water can be varied by the brand of the sauce mix and your preference. If you like thick sauce, add less water than the instruction of the box.
7. Cook the pot with high heat and boil. When grayish bubbles float on the surface of the soup, remove them to clear the soup.
8. Turn the heat down to medium when no longer grayish bubbles form. Cook it until the vegetables are tender. Over cooking the soup will cause potatoes breaking down.

9. Turn off the stove, break down sauce mix into small pieces and drop them into the soup.
10. Melt sauce into the soup completely. If the sauce mix remains on the bottom of the pot, it will cause the curry to be burned easily.
11. Cook and simmer the pot over medium heat stirring constantly to avoid burn. Longer cook this, more delicious it gets. Usually the left-over curry next day tastes better than one you just cooked.