Awesome Book: Let's Cook Japanese Food!

Back in the beginning of the year, I bought a book called Let's Cook Japanese Food by Amy Kaneko. It's full of amazing imagery and great descriptions of everything you need to make the perfect Japanese dishes. I highly recommend picking it up from Amazon if you enjoy the cuisine and want to make simple meals yourself.

My new favorite thing to cook at home is oyakodon. While I loosely follow the recipe, I find that making my own small tweaks makes it even better.


(Unfortunately this isn't a pic of the oyakodon I made! It's from Flickr user egseah.)

Oyakodon is "parent and child" donburi, since it involves chicken and eggs. Everything is simmered in a sweet sauce containing mirin, soy sauce, sake and rice vinegar. I like mixing my chicken in a bowl with oyster sauce, corn starch, soy sauce and sesame oil first since it helps thicken everything later in the pan.

I definitely recommend experimenting with your own Japanese comfort food dishes!

Off Hiatus!

Hello there, lovely fans. I realize it has been quite some time since my last post but I'm BACK. Now that Lent is over, I'm able to indulge in all things fried once again. This weekend I satisfied my craving for tempura (french bean, to be specific!) as well as french fries (garlic truffle). I'm getting hungry just thinking about all of it.

Rob and I ferried up to Sausalito for the weekend, which was every bit as relaxing and fun as we thought it would be. We shopped, ate, walked through the small town, enjoyed some great Japanese food and played a game of Scrabble right near the water.

Pizza was on the agenda also, which we had with a lovely SF view.

I can't wait to go back to Sushi Ran, which is where we ate on Saturday night. We ate:

scallop-chive dumplings
vegetable taster (fried potatoes, bok choy, ginger eggplant, spaghetti squash)
miso black cod with french beans (insanely good; not sure I can eat fish anywhere else now)
unagi
chicken teriyaki (don't laugh)
french bean tempura
rice
some kind of hamachi dish with grapefruit and avocado

...and a huge bottle of sake.

Good thing I am getting back into running shape!