Seattle food blogger’s at Vermillion

My husband and I went to my first Seattle food blogger’s event held at Vermillion of Capital hill which is very nice art gallery with bar and restaurant. I brought home-made California rolls and Tempura. I met fellow members of Seattle foodies and exchange our business cards. We had a lovely time talking about food, blogs, and etc. Karen Brown who organized events asked us to vote for bar food contests and most of us got some prize for our snack food. I received Strangest bar Snack prize for my California rolls, The Greek Gods Yogurt. I look at Japanese bar food recipes. It is true that Sushi is not listed in the book. Tempura is in the book though.
I posted three photos in this blog, our bar food, Vermillion Sample menus, and my photo with Greek Gods yogurt guy. He told me he was from Greece and surely he was speaking in some other language to other Greek Gods worker. This was taken at Seattle Women’s show at Quest field last spring and I never had opportunity to use it.

Sushi-Making Week

Since last Saturday until this Saturday, I made Sushi 4 times.
On last Saturday I taught 4 students how to make Sushi rolls. They made a California roll, a Seattle roll, and a Japanese roll. They were happy to take home their Sushi for their family. They told me they had a great time producing nice looking Sushi rolls and their family loved them.
Tuesday, at ARCS’s club bamboo I showed fellow assistant cooks how to make California rolls and tuna salad rolls. Although I failed to cook rice correctly and rice was hard, the customers at Club bamboo seemed to like Sushi served with Miso soup and spicy Nappa cabbage salad. One of fellow assistant cooks told me that her husband loves Sushi and she will make some for him soon. Another told me that she learned the reason why Japanese restaurant charges so much for food. It is because Japanese dishes uses so many ingredients and requires a lot of work. I admit that there are many ingredients on my kitchen counter when I make Japanese food.
Wednesday, my friend asked me to make 3 Japanese rolls, 2 Seattle rolls, and 12 pieces of Inari Sushi. Inari Sushi is made of Sushi rice stuffed in deep fried Tofu pouches. I finished all Sushi and brought to my friend’s house around 11:30am. The most of the guests were Japanese wives and they loved my Japanese Sushi and Inari Sushi. I was happy to please these Japanese ladies.
Today, on Saturday, I made Japanese Sushi rolls for Japanese school’s New Year’s potluck and Seattle rolls for my husband’s friend’s moving party.
My family had to eat Sushi after my class and to take Tuesday’s lunch. I think we eat Sushi more often than my parents who live in Japan. Generally speaking, Japanese people eat Sushi for special occasions such as family gatherings and serving for special guest. Some Seattleite loves Japanese food and they buy Sushi at grocery store and have it once a week.

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.

Club Bamboo

<-Photo is one of the fellow kitchen helpers and my lunch.







I started volunteer work at Club Bamboo yesterday. Club Bamboo belongs to ACRS (Asian Counseling and Referral Services) in Seattle and serves lunch to the employees and guests.
I arrived at ACRS around 9:00am. At the Club Bamboo, I met two ladies who were bit older than me. I introduced myself to them and joined their conversation until Chef Alice arrived. The kitchen at the Club Bamboo was new and clean. Chef Alice showed me around the kitchen and told me where things were kept. She announced that today’s lunch menu was Chinese style spicy chicken, roasted root vegetables and cooked rice. She told us to start peeling and chopping root vegetables. We peeled and chopped carrot, sweet potatoes, celery roots, and parsnips. There two ladies were Filipino and I am Japanese. All of us saw celery roots at some store before, but we didn’t know what they were. They smelled like celery but don’t look like celery. We wondered if celery roots were Asian vegetable. According to wiseGeek website, celery roots are from Europe.
After all roots vegetables were chopped, the two ladies chopped ginger, garlic, and chilies. I cut chickens to small pieces with another helper who came later and spoke Vietnamese. Chef Alice set a rice cooker ready for rice after she started roasting large portion of the roots vegetable in oven.
All chicken ingredients were chopped. Chef Alice told me to mix corn starch with the chicken. She heated large Wok to fry oil and all spices and took out all spices from Wok. Then she added more oil and fried the chicken until done and added egg white to the chicken. Meanwhile, rice was cooked and vegetables were roasted. My job at this point was to wash and to sanitize all bowls, knifes and cutting boards.
The first guests arrived. Chef Alice dished up the spicy chicken on a piece of large lettuce leaf, roasted root vegetables and cooked rice. It looked colorful and nice. She told the guest to add some pine nuts and chopped green onion over the chicken if she like. Several guests arrived and had their lunch. Around 1:00pm, Chef Alice told us that it was our lunch time. I dished up my lunch as other guest. The chicken was spicy, little bit hot and was good with rice. The root vegetables were sweet and tender. The meal included protein, vegetables and carbohydrate. It was healthy. After filling my stomach, I washed more dishes.
I left the club bamboo around 3:00pm. I had fun working with interesting ladies and helping Chef Alice.
Fortunately Tuesday was not busy day at Club Bamboo. It was good for me to start today instead of Thursday which is supposed to be busy. I am planning to work two days a week for three months and hopefully Chef Alice let me try out my Japanese recipes to the customers before my three months term ends.

Making Tamales

Last month, I was invited to a tamale party. I didn’t know how to make Tamales before this party. The party was fun and tamales were very tasty. I took video and learned how to prepare tamales. I practiced making tamale at the party. I wrapped cooked and minced turkey and cheese on corn paste into corn husk. I made much tamales.
The following week of the party, I bought all ingredients for my first tamale and roasted whole chicken. It was not as good as the ones made by tres Tamarelas at the party. When the corn husks are unwrapped from cooked tamale, the center parts which are meat or vegetable and cheese should be completely wrapped with corn paste. In my first tamale, cheese was out of corn filling and stuck to the corn husk. I realized that I was wrapping tamales wrong way.
I made Tamale with ground pork with cheese 3 days later. At this time, they looked perfect and were delicious.
Please view the YouTube video of Tamale Making Party to learn how to make your Tamales.

Japanese soy sauce company near Seattle

The other day, my elderly Japanese neighbor told me about a local Japanese soy sauce store in Bellevue which is a 30 minutes drive from Seattle. I love to have Japanese soy sauce from a small producer. I asked her to take me to the store. The maker is Kamada Soy sauce or Kamada America. Unfortunately we found out the store portion was closed. I decided to knock the door to the office to find out if we can order the soy sauce today. A Japanese lady opened the door for us. My neighbor told her that she learned about their soy sauce from her friend who owned a good Japanese restaurant and used to buy their soy sauce before. She loves their soy sauce and was disappointed to find out the store was closed. The lady from the Kamada America was apologetic that orders need to be made by fax or internet. She gave us order form. I asked if we can fill the order information and pay it today. She was kind to accept my proposal. I ordered Koikuchi Soy which includes 7 small boxes(200ml) of original soy sauce and Gourmet set which includes Dashi soy, Ponzu and Salad soy. Dashi is concentrated version of Japanese soup, Ponzu is generally made of citrus fruit, vinegar, Japanese soup and soy sauce, and Salad soy seems to be soy sauce based salad dressing. It is costly ($15.75 +shipping for Soy sauce set 1400ml ) comparing buying soy sauce (less than $10,for 1000ml) made by major company at the grocery store. My neighbor told me she only uses this soy sauce and Dashi for the special occasions.

My orders were arrived yesterday. I poured Dashi soy sauce over my fried tofu and made teriyaki fish with original soy sauce. Kamada's koikuchi soy sauce or original soy enhanced the tofu taste and fish was delicious. Only thing that I may warn some people is that Dashi soy sauce contains MSG as most Asian soup does. Kamada’s Original soy sauce is darker brown than one made by a large soy sauce maker. Its ingredients of the soy sauce are Soybeans, wheat, water, salt, and alcohol. According to the box, it was made of organic soybeans and produced using Japanese traditional method. Although I need to test this fancy soy sauce for my various recipes, so far I love using Kamada soy sauce and convenient Dashi to my cooking.

Fresh tofu

I recently found Tofu factory with Chinese restaurant near my house. I drove in front of the place often and have never known I could buy such a delicious freshly made tofu there until someone mentioned to me that she always buy tofu when she was near by. It was much inexpensive than buying tofu at any other store. I wrote my review with photos to Yelp. Then I realized someone else posted his review of the same place with different name. So there are two review pages for the same Northwest Tofu inc.:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/northwest-tofu-inc-seattle
http://www.yelp.com/biz/house-of-tofu-seattle

I decided to buy tofu every Monday morning after I drop off my son at his school one block from the Tofu factory. Yes. I will be there 7:50am in Monday morning.