Chan's Dining

Banana leaf curry!

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:40:00 +0000

I'm sucker for Indian food.....so naturally Little India became my favorite destination for good food.

Majority of people here are Tamil - so of course Superstar Rajni is popular here too!

We just stumbled upon this restaurant one day and it quickly became our favorite. Later we found out that they have a branch in Sunnyvale and we paid a visit. It was a bit disappointment what they serve there was slightly different though...

So here it is! This is how they serve our favorite "banana leaf" curry in Masjid India branch.

Waiter comes to your table with multiple vegetarian goodies, scoop and dump them on your banana leaf for you.

Tada! Enjoy eating with your hand.

Basically this is "all you can eat" deal - waiter keeps coming back and reload more curry for you. When you're done, fold the leaf like this.

Pulled coffee after the meal. Soo good...

4 years later I'm still dreaming about this wonderful banana leaf curry experience I had multiple times in Malaysia --- no luck finding anything like this in Bay Area though. We need to go back!

Chinese breakfast at Jalan Alor

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:43:00 +0000

Day 2 in KL. The first night in Malaysia we woke up to the sound of heavy rain, then cold water started dripping from the ceiling directly to our bed. Without much sleep, we checked out the hall-in-a-roof hostel and moved to rather conventional hotel around the corner.

Early in the morning, Jalan Alor was still deserted but some vendors were open for breakfast.

Chicken porridge and thousand year old egg

Bah-Ku-Tee: Pork sparerib stewed with Chinese herbs. Way back when I was at school I once cooked this dish without knowing what it really tastes like. Although the name spells meat (bah) bone (ku) tea (tee) in Chinese characters, there's no tea in this dish - I remember I bought a Bah-Ku-Tee mix from Chinese grocery shop which was simply a box full of strong Chinese herbs and kept on boiling the meat with the mix until the room completely stunk up.

After so many years I finally tasted the real Bah-Ku-Tee in Malaysia - and I agree mine was close but it's much better to get them from the vendors.

Travel Itch - Malaysia

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 07:27:00 +0000

After reading about Malaysia and its diverse food culture in SAVEUR magazine, I remembered our wonderful culinary experience in Malaysia back in 2007 and started feeling the travel itch.

Not likely to travel anytime soon (with 15 months old?! nooh), I'm digging my photos of all the wonderful food I had from my archive..

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur on a humid November night. It was close to midnight but the Alor street was still busy and hopping. And this is our first food in Malaysia - rojak, vegetable and fruits marinated with shrimp paste and nuts.

Japanese breakfast for dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 15:36:00 +0000

I must admit I'm not cooking much after I went back to work. I transferred to the new team and I'm not so sure if I like my current work-life balance. Well, actually, I know I hate it. The long commute, learning new things with mommy brain (maybe I shouldn't use that as an excuse....my kid is over 1 year old now..!) and dealing with different kinds of "stuff" and "situations" totally tired me out lately. I think my priority has changed. I don't have much time to take all the BS anymore.

So after the major meltdown, I sorted things out a little bit, and I'm trying to prioritize. Cooking for family, or more like for my own sake, is one thing.

So here it is, my cooking for the first time in last two months: Japanese breakfast food for dinner.

California rice, Miso soup with tofu and wakame (seaweed), salted salmon, boiled spinach with bonito flake, Japanese style egg omelette and tiny tiny sardines boiled with soysauce, Japanese peppercone and other goodies. Those are all 'classic' Japanese breakfast dishes - just like pancake/bacon and eggs for Americans, beans and toasts for British, pastries and cafe au lait for Frenchies. And they are basic dishes of Japanese food - rice, fish, soy bean products, and simple vegetables.

I salt-cured the koho salmon we bought from Whole Foods - make sure to salt more to the thicker part of the flesh, and leave them for two hours to drain excessive water from the fish. It's ideal to cure it for two days in the fridge, wrapping it in plastic wrap, but it's OK if you don't have time. Broil until the skin gets crisp.

For Japanese omelette, use three eggs combined with 50cc of dashi broth. You can add sugar or soy sauce a bit to add more taste. Making the perfect square shape (just like the one on top of sushi) requires some skill and right tool (square pan), which I haven't mastered yet.

Felt good to be back in the kitchen, and back to the basics.

What?! We have one year old???

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 01:50:00 +0000

OMG!!! We only have 17 years to go before she leaves us for college. That makes me cry already...

No big birthday party for her this year since we spent some time in Hawaii during her birthday week - but I made her a birthday "cake"

Chirashi-sushi cake for starch loving baby!

Chirashi means "scattered" in Japanese. If you order Chirashi in any Japanese restaurant it's most likely assorted sashimi on top of sushi rice, but in Japanese homecooking it's more like sushi rice + boiled and seasoned vegetable mix with various toppings - nori, shredded thin egg omelette, fish eggs, shrimp, etc, etc...The pink stuff in this picture is denbu, dried fish flake with pink food coloring.

Torre Pellice

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 23:02:00 +0000

Torre Pellice is a small town/village located in Piedmont, near the French border. It's about 2.5 hour drive from Milano, probably about an hour drive from Torino. It's a center of Waldensians church - protestant movement happened way way before Martin Luther. The wedding took place in the church in this village.

About 4500+ people are living here, but if you walk around for 15 minutes, you will see pretty much everything.

On the same weekend while we were there, there was a gathering of veteran alpini celebrating 80 year anniversary of their division. The marching of old alpini with distinctive hats and local nuns (they are nurses at local hospital) in the town center was almost like watching very old Italian movies. Too bad I forgot to take pictures!

The best meal of my life.

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 07:46:00 +0000

...and now, the ultimate food porn part.

After the wedding ceremony we walked to the restaurant called Ristorante Flipot - a sister restaurant of the ristorante we went a night before.

I think I will shut up and keep the explanation minimum. It was simply, one of the BEST meal I ever had in my life.

...and it's good that I brought the menu home so even two years later I know what I had!

Insalata di Erbe di Campo, Mele Golden, Funghi Porcini all’Olio di Noci
Wild herb, apples, porcini mushroom with walnut oil

Sformatino di Erbe di Campo e Petali di Topinanbour alla Fonduta Dolce di Toma d’Alpeggio
Small flan with some kind of herb, with sliced Jerusalem artichoke on top.

Cipolla Cotta nel Sale Farcita ai Tre Arrosti ed Amaretti
This simple onion dish was just....AMAZING. When I was deciphering the menu two years ago I couldn't figure out what the Amaretti biscuits are doing here, then recently I learned from another Italian recipe about using amaretti crumbs for cooking.

Raviolini di Guinca e Punte di Ortica al Timo Serpillo di Montagna
Small ravioli stuffed with...something. Other Italian guests at our table couldn't figure out what exactly it is even in Italian - then somebody mentioned it is poison ivy. Well it turned out to be stinging nettle. Almost the lost in translation moment...

Cosciotto di Agnello cotto el Fieno Maggengo
Patate arrostite alla Cenere
Grilled lamb legs - this is local specialty from Piedemonte and the signature dish of this restaurant. The lamb is wrapped in straw then grilled.

And the meal's not over yet! Look at these beautiful cheeses!!!!!

The groom's father, who's a cheese lover made a special request to have the cheese plate at the banquet. Thank you F's dad!!!!!

Wow, even the cheese's wrapped in straw!!

Couldn't figure out which is what, but they are all from Piedemonte. Some are mild, some are stinky and strong. We had them with local honeycomb.

...and I lost count how much we drunk.

Amazing food, and amazing people. Thanks to Bet's arrangement we sat down with English speaking Italian crew during the banquet and had very fun, drunk conversation about everything from history, politics, culture and food....Even guests who did't speak much English came to me to say hello, telling me that they've heard a lot about me from Bet. I really wish I could speak Italian....I just loved everyone I met during the wedding.

....and here comes the wedding cake.

Even though Bet mentioned that it was something different from they originally ordered, it was the best wedding cake I ever had. I was so stuffed but I could go for another.

Bride and groom went around the tables to give wedding favor to the guests - sugar coated almonds.

...and more desserts came! At this point I was 120% stuffed and couldn't touch any of them (and I still think I should have).

Great food, great company. It was definitely the most memorable, best meal of my life.

After I came back to the States I learned that this restaurant got two stars from Michelin. Wow, no wonder! And interesting side note: As Bill Bufort wrote in his book "Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany", there are tons of chefs coming to Italy to become "kitchen slave" - a free, often times illegal apprentice chef working in the kitchen to learn Italian regional cuisines - and not surprisingly many of them are Japanese. With further research I found there were several Japanese chefs who came all the way to Torre Pellice to work in this restaurant! Now one of them is serving the signature straw-wrapped grilled lamb leg in his own restaurant in Japan. I even found a Japanese newspaper article talking about the dish (it even comes with recipe). Ahh Japanese people. We're so obsessed with good food.

The party went on and on... There were no first dance, no bouquet toss, but lots of impromptu speeches and tons of "bacio" calls. Everyone was happily drunk, and it was such a warm, molto delicioso experience.

My evil twin's wedding

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 05:25:00 +0000

I met my evil twin Bet in 1998, during our internship in New York City.

Although our backgrounds and personalities are different, me and this blonde girl from Italy had a strange instinct just like real twins. Somebody started calling us evil twins and that was it. For the next three months, me and Bet cruised around this vast organization called the UN during the day time, and the big city called Manhattan at night together.

And now, more than a decade later, I came here to celebrate my evil twin getting married.

...with my flute playing.

I watched the ceremony from the musician's seat upstairs in the back of the church. During the ceremony I was almost choking having all the flashbacks of our time in NYC, our very short meeting in Roma few years ago (we met on my way back from Sardinia, but my ferry from Sardinia to Roma got delayed almost half a day. I cried when I saw her sitting at hotel lobby) and 9 page long letter I received from her right after she met her now-husband. There were so much warm emotions, and so much stuff I wanted to say to my evil twin, but I really didn't know how to put those in words.

Memorial Day Weekend BBQ

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:24:00 +0000

Escaping from chilly San Francisco weather, we had a nice family BBQ at Momo and Doug in East Bay.

Contribution from our kitchen: cherry tomato tart

and homemade sausage by S

Grilled fresh vegetables from East Bay farmer's market.

Grilled green onions....just like what Tony Bourdain had in Spain!

Heirloom carrots and golden turnips. The carrots almost had consistency of potatoes.

Fava beans

Nice Monday afternoon with four babies - it's just nice to see our kids growing up together.

The tomato tart recipe is from The New Comfort Food - Home Cooking from Around the World - a cookbook published by our favorite food magazine Saveur.

Shape the frozen puff pastry sheet into square, then lightly bake it

Using chana dal for weight...

add Parmigiano Reggiano then bake again.

cherry tomatoes are mixed with olive oil, salt, pepper, chopped anchovy and broiled beforehand. Sprinkle lots of fresh oregano, parsley and chives then bake again.

It's simple but it takes time since you need to use oven three times (pre-bake the pastry sheet, broil tomatoes then bake the whole tart again), but it's worth the trouble. The combination of crispiness of the pastry, slight saltiness from cheese on the bottom, fishy flavor from anchovy and sweet tomatoes is just great for any type of summer BBQ or picnic. Only issue is cherry tomatoes could be pricey since the recipe asks for a lot of them. I will try with Roma tomatoes next time to see how the flavor changes.

Bear's wine cellar

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sun, 29 May 2011 08:17:00 +0000

I noticed I haven't finished posting all the food porn shots I took in Italy and write about all the wonderful experience I had there. It was the last international trip I made before I get pregnant, and I'm still dreaming about the wonderful food I had, great people I met and the beautiful cities I walked around.

After spending a week in Milan, we met up with G and A, friends of my long time friend Bet, my lovely Italian evil twin sister. They gave us a ride to Torre Pellice, a village in Piedmonte where my evil twin's getting married.

When we got there it was already dark & raining, and the center of the village was pretty much deserted...

While Bet's running around to get prepared for the wedding, G&A took us to this restaurant called La Crota dl'Ours (means Bear's wine cellar) for dinner - a cozy restaurant serving cuisine from Piedemonte.

I don't remember what time we got there, but felt it's pretty late since the village was so dark and looked abandoned. Now I wonder where those customers were coming from...

THE BEST PROSCIUTTO, EVER. It was too good we finished the plate in a split second. The guy who served us saw that and he was nice enough to bring us extra.

According to him this prosciutto is hard to get - the person who makes this wonderful ham is such a difficult person, he won't sell his product to everybody. Basically you gotta know him really well before you can get your hands on this...

We had lots of wine from Vietti while we're in Piedmonte. I'm such a feather weight drinker with embarrassing Asian flush, but for some reason I could drink their wine. A lot. And I was totally fine!

Sliced squash with stuffing

Tajarin with herb sauce. Tajarin is a type of pasta from Piedmonte. It's like tagliatelle but much thinner.

S had lots of meat dish - this is cold tongue (forgot which kind).

Gut and fat. He was happy.

We were so stuffed so decided to order something light...and here's what we got:

It was not our first visit to Italy - our first was in Sardinia to attend another friend of mine's wedding several years ago. There S learned amaro drinking after dinner. Since then he asks for amaro every Italian restaurants we go - so naturally he had amaro here as well, a really good one.

Over amaro we started discussing drinking amaro vs grappa as digestif - then the restaurant staff brought chamomile infused grappa for rest of us.

They poured us so generously at the end of the meal we became so loud and happy bunch. And it felt mighty good.

"Mediterranean Summer" meal

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 18 May 2011 07:27:00 +0000

Just finished reading a book "Mediterranean Summer - Season on France's Cote d'Azur and Italy's Costa Bella" by David Shalleck, an American chef who spent a summer cooking for a super rich Italian couple on their yacht. His only mission on the yacht is to satisfy every single need and demand of this super rich couple a.k.a La Signora and Il Dottore - while cooking for the crew and giving a hand on sailing at the same time.

The couple requires him to prepare dishes made with fresh ingredients bought from the local markets.

Sounds fair.

The menu must reflect the local taste, and never repeat the same dish again.

well...okay.

No meat. Don't serve pasta often. Always be prepared for sudden guests which could be anything between 10 or 100.

...WTF, are you kidding? on this freaking tiny kitchen on the boat? (...prelude to disaster...)

It is always inspiring to read stories written by chefs. His working conditions are brutal, he's not necessarily in a happy state, his clients are too demanding - but he still creates those wonderful dishes based on the combination of tradition, his inspiration and whatever is available in the markets and the yacht's pantry. It made me even envious. Yeah, he screwed up sometimes like serving La Signora pâté which she called "dogfood," but he also made the "miraculous" acqua pazza. It was just fun to follow his thought process coming up with the menu of the day, and how to prepare them in the tiny, not well ventilated nor not well equipped kitchen on the yacht. And even though he stuck himself in the kitchen, he's sailing in Italy! In the book the yacht goes to the coastal cities where I'm familiar with, and finishes the journey in Sardinia where I wined and dined like crazy at my friend Monica's wedding long time ago. Memories... Argh, why I'm stuck in this foggy drizzly San Francisco right now?!

The characters, La Signora and Il Dottore were also inspiring. Sure they are demanding, but they're nothing like those bitchy, irrational, a-hole type American rich celebrities. They are elegant, multilingual, articulate, know what they want and know how to manage people with dignity. They are not warm but at the same time they treat you as if you're the only person working for them, which is a super important skill to build any successful relationships. They're just successful upper class Europeans who happened to own 9 houses and 3 yachts, and their own helicopter to commute for that reason(sigh).

The book comes with recipes from the chapters. On a not so sunny San Francisco spring weekend, I tried two recipes which sounded easy enough.

Spuma di Tonno

Tuna mousse. We got nice Italian tuna in a jar. Throw them in the food processor along with soy sauce, lemon and balsamic vinegar. Then add unsalted butter and keep on whipping. At the end add double cream.

As you can imagine it's very, very rich. And very addictive. I served it with celery sticks as an appetizer. The book says it became La Signora's favorite and he ended up serving this repeatedly. It's kinda funny the person who was very strict about serving local food only loved the dish made with sauce from the orient so much.

Insalata di Ceci e Ruchetta

Marinated chickpea and arugula salad. Red wine vinegar, chopped garlic and red onions, sea salt and olive oil are used for dressing. Chickpea is mixed with grated carrots and chopped Italian parsley. It sounds simple but recipe asks to mix the dressing and chickpea/carrots/parsley then refrigerate them for 2-3 hours before adding arugula. Usually I won't follow such instruction and mix everything up and serve immediately. But this time I followed every single word of the recipe - and I think it made difference indeed. The recipe is posted on the author's official site here.

...and my husband made tomato sauce pasta, using a recipe from "Technique" episode of Bourdain's No Reservation. Our little daughter had her very first bite of pasta too!

Teriyaki burger

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 11 May 2011 07:59:00 +0000

We missed buying teriyaki burger at cherry blossom festival - so instead I made one for dinner at home!

For teriyaki sauce - just mix 1:2:2 parts of sugar, mirin, soy sauce, boil them a bit then add a little bit of corn starch and water. That's it!

See the shiny, shiny meat!

Teriyaki burger I used to have in Japan comes with no tomatoes. Instead, it has mayo and LOTS of lettuce. Add many layers of lettuce as possible and enjoy the combination of sweet flavor of the sauce and crispness of the lettuce. I ended up covering up the meat with more lettuce after taking this picture.

Bourbon pecan pound cake for Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 01:06:00 +0000

Hi friends in bay area! My friends are organizing another charity event this weekend called Creators for Japan @New People in Japan town. They are selling cool and cute crafts, arts, jewelery and of course, some baked goods. So come over!! Check out their facebook page for some photos of the item they are selling.

I'm planning to donate more muffins, and did test-run a new recipe for the bakesale: bourbon pecan pound cake.

It's from my favorite "Minami's Cake Note," an old recipe book I brought from Japan which has a good collection of both French and American style cakes. (Other cakes I made from the book are - "La Mer," a pina colada mousse cake, and Oreo cheese cake, inspired by the dessert menu served during Gorbachev's visit to New York City in 1988).

It's quite a rich cake with tons of bourbon in it! The recipe suggests serving the slice with bourbon sauce mixed with bourbon, egg, sugar and cream - makes even richer! I think I will hold off making the sauce, but hope people will like it.

Creators for Japan

4/31 Saturday

5/1 Sunday

12pm - 6:30pm

New People 1st Floor

1476 Post Street San Francisco

http://www.facebook.com/creatorsforjapan

Bake sale for Japan

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 06:00:00 +0000

It's been more than a month since it happened. And it's not quite over yet. On my personal front all my families are OK, but some of my immediate family members are still voluntary evacuating and we don't know how long it will be like this. It's been a tough and frustrating time for Japanese in overseas. We worry so much but couldn't do nothing but sit in front of TV watching the news. I ended up spending first two weeks helping crisis response related tasks at work, but it didn't made me feel any better - actually it just made me feel so isolated from rest of the world around me. I spent most of March feeling withdrawn. But at the same time, I ended up connecting and spending lots of time with my Japanese friends in Bay Area, sharing our thoughts and trying to keep our heads up. We're in the US physically, but our hearts are in Japan thinking about our friends, families and the country.

Now there are tons of charity events happening in Bay Area to support Japan. I'm exceptionally grateful to see that many events are organized by people not directly related to Japan! One such event we joined was Bakesale for Japan - a nationwide bakesale which raised more than $124,000!

I baked green tea icebox cookies and redbean & milk muffin and brought them to SPQR in Fillmore, one of the bakesale location.

Some photos from the bakesale - lots of them are from professional bakers and local restaurants.

First dinner as a mommy

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 00:12:00 +0000

It's been a while since my last blog post. I've been a mom almost for nine months now. After 6 months of being a stay-at-home-mom (busy but fun time!) I went back to work in January which gave me less and less time to update something online. Everyday life is pretty much like commuting between daycare, work, then bedtime at nine with the baby, then woken up by her at 3am. I will be lucky if I can cook once a week. Hello takeout food....

This is my first dinner I had at the hospital after I delivered my daughter. We were at our friends wedding at a night before and my water broke right there (well not in the middle of the dance floor, thank goodness) and next day without much sleep/rest from the party, we started our parenthood. I guess it's obvious how the dinner tasted like from the picture, but at least it was a sit-down dinner which didn't happen sometimes during the first several months!

Herbert Keller's Burger Bar

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 07:00:00 +0000

Point Reyes Baby Moon 2

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 05:50:00 +0000

Point Reyes Baby Moon

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 14:42:00 +0000

Little Chan's first fancy dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:44:00 +0000

My company gave us a special bonus that we can spend 100 bucks for nice meal, so we went to Fleur de Lys.

The main dish was Wagyu Beef Cheek, lightly crusted with pretzel and spätzle on the bottom, served with sauce made from Anchor Steam beer. Our baby especially loved the meat, she was dancing and kicking all the way while I was eating them!

Chef Keller was actually in the kitchen that night, and we saw him walking around the restaurant floor - our baby's already having a fancy dinner made by him! What a lucky baby she is!

Indian cooking at home

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sun, 30 May 2010 01:31:00 +0000

When I was growing up my dad often brought home food from his favorite Indian restaurant in Tokyo. In late 80s early 90s, ethnic food started gaining popularity in Japan, but it was still a rare opportunity for average kids in suburbs to enjoy such spicy delicacies - and I really went crazy for their tandori chicken, lamb kebab and their home made mango chutney.

During college I started collecting Indian spices (not knowing what they are, sometimes my mom ended up throwing some away) and started cooking Indian food at home. Now in San Francisco, I'm still using my very first Indian cook book I bought (written by Ms. Renu Arora, an Indian lady who is teaching Indian home cooking in Japan) which has pretty much comprehensive and authentic recipes beyond chicken tikka masala (actually the book doesn't have recipe for that - it's almost like general Tso's chicken for Chinese food).

Corn and onion curry, specialty from Punjab - pretty spicy but it goes well with sweetness of the corn

Cashew and lamb curry - it's fun to combine different types of spices, and among them, ground coriander plays crucial role providing creaminess and base flavor. Only problem of this spice is that it needs long time to be cooked otherwise it just tastes plain bitter. To shorten the cooking time, restaurants use ground nuts for certain recipes instead, just like this one. Served with turmeric and cauliflower rice.

cucumber raita - cold and refreshing

I guess my family has weird nostalgia and fascination with India and Indian food. Before WWII my grandpa used to station in Calcatta as an official trading rep. When I was little I remember I was playing with tiny stone-carved, Ghandara style head of Buddha obviously from India which was randomly stashed by my parents along with other stationaries in a drawer. We inherited some broken Hindi words and funny episode of living in colonial India at that time. I'm really hoping that one day I will visit there, just to see our old family history.

おうちでインド料理。子供の頃、父がよく都内のインド料理屋さんから持って帰ってきてくれるタンドリーチキンやシシケバブ、そして手作りのマンゴーチャツネが大好きでよく食べていました。世の中エスニックブームが始まった頃だと思うけれど、まだ郊外に住む子供が普通にこういうものを食べられるような時代では無かったような。なかなか強烈な記憶です。

大学生になると、スパイスを自分で集めて家でインド料理を作ってみたりするように（なんだかよく分からない粉だと母親に捨てられちゃったこともあったけど・・・）。サンフランシスコに住んでいる今も、おうちでインド料理を作るときは当時手に入れたレヌ・アロラさんのインド料理の本を使っています。かなり正統派本格的なレシピが満載。

最近作ったのは、パンジャブ地方のコーンカレー、カシューナッツとラムのカレー（カリフラワー入りターメリックライスを添えて）そしてきゅうりのライタ。

戦争前、まだインドが植民地だったころ祖父がカルカッタに駐在していた事もあり、なんとなく我が家にとってインドは気になる存在のようです。当時のインド面白話や、ちょっとしたヒンズー語など、我が家に伝わるエピソードもあったり。そういえば小さいころ、明らかにガンダーラ様式の、石にほられた小さな仏頭で遊んでいた記憶があるなあ（なぜか文房具と一緒に家の引き出しの中に転がっていた）。おじいちゃんの足跡を辿るという意味でも、いつか行ってみたいところです、インド。

Mackerel Pike

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sat, 22 May 2010 23:23:00 +0000

Samma, samma

Bitter, is it not, and salty
Taking samma with hot tears sprinkled on it!
Eating samma thus which country's custom is it?

Alas,
How nice to know . . .

Haruo Sato, Song of Samma (Mackerel Pike) , 1923

Autumn is the best season for mackerel pikes (samma), and we usually grill it without gutting - the bitterness of the gut is the part the delicacy, and tastes really good with grated daikon and sudachi (Japanese citrus fruit) juice. The problem of grilling samma is since it's so fatty, it makes whole kitchen smoky - it's not the best way to cook in the American kitchen with hyper sensitive smoke detector installed!

Although it's not the right season for the fish, I could get hands on samma at Japanese market, so instead of grilling I decided to boil them with tons of shredded gingers, soy sauce and sugar. The fish gives rich flavor to the sauce, it tastes even good by pouring some of the sauce on top of the rice.

さんま苦いかしょっぱいかと叫んだのは佐藤春夫さん。ちょっと季節ではないですが、秋刀魚が手に入ったので、たくさんの生姜と砂糖・醤油で炊いてみました。

At Cherry Blossom Festival

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:51:00 +0000

Japantown is not quite like real Japan, but strange interpretation of old (in terms of 1950s, 60s) and modern Japan in San Francisco. It kinda makes me comfortable and uncomfortable at the same time.

Teriyaki Burger

Spam Musubi

froyo!

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:29:00 +0000

Growing up in Japan, when you say "Frozen Yogurt" that pretty much meant it's tart, yogurt flavored icecream - so after coming to the States I was so disappointed to find out that so called "frozen yogurt" is a low-fat version of regular icecream...but not anymore! This place is my most favorite froyo place so far...

amateur food porn shot at friends

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:09:00 +0000

One night Aya and Paul cooked us great southern food - super tender pulled pork, delicious biscuits, nice rice, great okra dish and Bobby Fray's coleslow. Too bad we didn't take pictures! It was so good that we simply dived into the face first.

For dessert - chocolate roll cake from Japan and Guinness beer....no, not a glass of milk. A perfect dessert for adults.

Roasted piggy @ Solano Cellars

noreply@blogger.com (Marichan) — Wed, 19 May 2010 02:59:00 +0000

It's already more than half year ago, before I found out about my pregnancy, we had a great wine tasting at Solano Cellars in Albany.