Shrimp Night

Even though there was a light drizzle in the morning, we headed out for more snorkeling at Hanauma Bay this morning, and were happily greeted by little patches of sunshine once we got out there. We used more energy than usual swimming today (because we didn't bring our fins), working up our appetite for a pretty big lunch at Maguro-ya, one of our favorite Japanese restaurants specializing in fish. After another filling lunch, shrimp rolls for dinner, stuffed with lots of veggies and pork, were a light and refreshing end to the day. A nice warm bowl of shrimp congee rounded out our all shrimp dinner. Finally, we tried some more of our tropical fruit - English name of fruit unknown - but it kind of looks like a non fuzzy kiwi on the outside, and like a small brown peach on the inside, and has a sweet, cinnamony flavor, like a natural dessert. I like it!

Salmon, Ong choy, and Tropical Fruit

We had a pretty active weekend with a lot of sunshine and delicious food. Saturday morning we drove out to Ko Olina on the west coast of Oahu for some snorkeling in the sun (the rest of the island was pretty rainy) and worked up a good appetite for lunch in Chinatown. After we each had big portions of noodles, we wandered the markets of Chinatown and ending up buying a lot of colorful tropical fruit. The noodles kept us pretty full for the rest of the day, so dinner was light, healthy, and delicious: salmon cooked with ginger and soy sauce, and sauteed ong choy. Plus we indulged in some of our pretty fruit after dinner - we tried the bright red rambutans and the little longans. Both were so refreshing and tasty, but the longans were especially addictive - once you started peeling and popping them into your mouth, it was hard to stop until all of the longans in front of us were eaten up. Yum yum!

Glass Noodles with Grilled Pork

Tonight we had another noodle dish: glass noodles sauteed with a fresh and colorful mix of carrots, cabbage, chives, tomatoes, and tofu. The Griddler made another appearance as we used it to grill some pork loin to go along with the noodles. The leftover bánh hỏi rounded out our meal in our continuing Vietnamese culinary adventures.

Congee and Bánh hỏi

Wednesday night's menu: congee with some deliciously fatty fish, and a traditional Vietnamese dish called bánh hỏi. The fish congee was made with a local island white fish that tasted like sea bass, but with a firmer texture. The bánh hỏi is a large sheet of interwoven vermicelli noodles, topped with ground shrimp and green onion. We each took a portion of the bánh hỏi, and ate it with pieces of shrimp cake, ground pork cake, and lettuce, finished with a touch of fish sauce. It's fun to be able to try/eat so many new dishes - you may notice that much of the blog writing for the Vietnamese food is H's work, since I'm not as sure about what I'm describing, but I'm enjoying all of the new sights and tastes.

Roast Duck Noodle Soup

It's not hard to understand why this roast duck noodle soup with veggies has been one of H's favorite dishes since childhood: the fatty and juicy duck is a delicious complement to the egg noodles and veggies in the soup. This warm and hearty noodle soup was the perfect meal to wrap up a gray and cloudy day in Honolulu.

Stir Fry

Last night's menu was pan-fried opah (white Island fish), stir-fried prawns with onions, and tofu cooked with ginger, soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. There was a strong Vietnamese influence from H's mom, as we used fish sauce to flavor the fish and shrimp dishes. Fish sauce is used ubiquitously in Vietnamese cooking, and has a strong, salty flavor with a touch of citrus that works well for seafood. Everything tasted really fresh("as if I had caught everything myself!" says H.)

The Vietnamese Kitchen

The pictures below might be an obvious sign that our kitchen is taking on a new flavor: H's mom is in town! Tonight we had some yummy Vietnamese spring rolls. We wet the rice paper and then put a mix of Vietnamese greens, an egg roll, and some ground pork cake (like a fish cake but with pork) on top, then rolled it up and ate it with a peanut dipping sauce. My rolls started out a little malformed and prone to breaking apart, but my rolling skills improved drastically (maybe just moderately) over the course of the meal. Looking forward to our new adventures in the kitchen with all of the ingredients that traveled with H's mom all the way from Seattle to Hawaii. =)

Mackerel with Leftovers

Saturday night was a simple dinner after a very filling all-you-can-eat lunch: mirin mackerel, leftover soup and kabocha, and chocolates for dessert.

Butterfish Soup and Kabocha Soboro

Tonight was another pretty veggie-centric meal: soup with napa cabbage, lettuce, shimeji mushrooms, tofu, butterfish, and ginger. Also had kabocha pumpkin simmered with ground pork (the pumpkin kind of melted away from oversimmering, but it was sweet and yummy!) and some leftover asaparagus and tomatoes. Tomorrow we are going to an all-you-can-eat buffet for a baby shower, and yakiniku two nights ago felt like an all-you-can-eat-beef experience even though it really wasn't, so we're trying to be good in between all that gorging...but we still had Godiva chocolates for dessert. =)

The Night After

After last night's carnivorous splurge, this was our attempt at a much lighter and healthier meal. A simple salmon steak over a tossed salad, along with some bread...and Godiva chocolates for dessert.

Dotchi??

We sometimes watch this Japanese food show, "Dotchi no ryouri??" meaning, "Which dish (do you want to eat)"? For every show the 2 team captains each choose a dish and try to convince the 7 guests to order their dish over the other one. At the end, each guest has to decide which dish they prefer and the majority wins. Only the winning team gets to eat their dish while the losing team just watches, so there's a lot at stake here.This week's battle was yakiniku-don (beef bowl) vs. mugitoro (mountain yam over barley rice). As we watched the show, we thought there was no way that the gooey, glue-like mountain yam had any chance of victory over the juicy, fatty-looking beef, but amazingly, the winner of the night was the mountain yam! Even so, H and I decided that our personal #1 choice was the yakiniku-don, so we decided that we needed to go have some yummy yakiniku somewhere. We tried a Korean BBQ place just down the street from us, and had enough juicy meat to satisfy all of our meat cravings for a month! They had a nice variety of veggie side dishes, too.

Napa Cabbage and Pork

Used up a lot of leftover napa cabbage today with this simple and tasty mille-feuille recipe.

Introducing The Griddler

This weekend we bought a new toy at Costco: a Cuisinart Griddler, which made its debut at lunch today with some grilled opah (Hawaiian island fish) and asparagus. We'd cooked some opah before in the toaster oven, but today's opah seemed much more moist and juicy. The asparagus was really tasty too! Also made a shrimp potato salad to go along with our meal. By the end, we were happily stuffed. We're looking forward to many more yummy griddled meals!

Costco Steelhead

Since we made our usual weekend run to Costco today, we thought we'd get a nice fish to grill for dinner and decided on a steelhead fillet (looks like salmon but apparently it's a saltwater form of rainbow trout). That along with a salad and some bread completed our simple but satisfying dinner. I always include tomatoes in a salad but tonight I threw in some oranges, too - I realize that for me, the more fruit in a salad, the happier I am to eat it.

Sashimi, Spinach Gomaae and Mochi Dessert

Last night we set up our own little sushi restaurant style dinner at home with a colorful assortment of sashimi from Nijiya, along with miso soup and spinach gomaae (sesame dressing). Our favorite sashimi was what I think was a fatty katsuo (bonito). The gomaae recipe I used (ground up sesame seeds + soy sauce + sugar) was yummy but a bit on the sweet side so I might use half the sugar next time. We ended our meal quite happily with a yummy dessert where we threw together mochi, red bean, and green tea ice cream. We liked this meal - just like eating at a restaurant, but you get to have as much ice cream as you want at the end!

Mackerel and Napa Cabbage Part 2

Tonight was a second try at this dish. Since the broth was pretty salty last time, I used half the miso I did before - but the dish still came out pretty strong. Still yummy though. Next time, if I don't add all the salty juice from the mackerel can, perhaps the third time will be the charm.

Leftover Soup and Tako Salad

Last night we just threw some mochi into the leftover udon hot pot to finish it all off in a hearty fashion. This time for the octopus salad, I added a loooot of ginger which made it taste good (even better on the second day!) I still have lots and lots of ginger left in the fridge. Time to google some yummy ways to use it.

Nabeyaki Udon

I love eating my mom's udon hot pot at home so tonight I made it with the same ingredients she always does: pork, butterfish, napa cabbage, shungiku (chrysanthemum greens), enoki mushrooms, shimeji mushrooms, and udon. I wanted to put in tofu too, but the pot was pretty stuffed already, so I decided to minimize the extra volume and just added little pieces of fried bean curd instead. All the ingredients add up to make a very satisfying meal, but I think that the most popular ingredient of the night was definitely the butterfish (H says the enoki mushrooms come in a close second). So soft and buttery and goes so well in hot pot.
Next time: get one of those big clay pots so we can do hot pot on the dining table!

Curry and Papaya Salad

Back to the basics tonight with beef curry with potatoes, carrots, and onions (made by H!), plus a papaya salad. I think that papaya has become my new favorite salad ingredient since moving out here.

Bday Dinner @ Hakkei

Last night we had the pleasure of eating at Hakkei, a restaurant from Japan that specializes in oden - oden is a winter comfort food where various ingredients like fish cakes, daikon, and egg are stewed in a dashi broth. It's so common during the winter in Japan that most convenience stores like 7-Eleven serve a pretty tasty oden with a variety of ingredients.

We chose a nice course menu at Hakkei where oden was one of many dishes, so we got to see and taste a good variety. Not only was everything very tasty, but our waiter who brought out all the dishes was such a friendly and funny guy that we were in pretty good spirits throughout our meal. I forgot to take a picture of the first dish, but here are pics of the rest of our dishes. (The waiter was looking at my pics and giving me advice on how I could take them better, so hopefully they look ok. =)

First dish: Soy milk sesame tofu - so soft and creamy. No picture

Next dish: Assortment of appetizers - crab and chrysanthemum greens (shungiku) with miso paste and goji berry; chicken wrapped with konbu seaweed; pumpkin with octopus and soy beans; salmon roe with mountain yam




Next dish: Red snapper sashimi with veggies(can you tell that the carrot and daikon are bunny-shaped?) and ponzu




Next dish: Grilled managatsuo (pompano), shrimp, and mango sunomono (vinegared dish). We loved the fish, and the mango sunomono was a nice local touch.




Next dish: Unohana - sauteed okara and vegetables. Okara is the left over part when soymilk or tofu is made from soybeans, and is supposed to be very nutritious.




Next dish: Kakiage-style tempura of chrysanthemum greens, Maui onions, and scallops.



Next dish: Oden! For this part we got to go to a big tub near the kitchen filled with different ingredients and choose which 3 ingredients we wanted for our personal pot, kind of like a kid in a candy store. After we warmed up with the oden, they filled the remaining broth with udon noodles so we could enjoy the broth a second time.



Dessert: Black bean haupia. Haupia is a coconut pudding Hawaiian dessert, often found at luaus. I loved this black bean version!

Meat and Potatoes

Friday was another meat and potato night with niku jaga. I think I went overboard on the stewing this time because the potatoes were a little crumbly, but the dish itself was sweet, tasty, and hearty as ever.

Hamachi Salad and Mung Bean Rice

Another soup and salad night, this time with hamachi, the fish that tastes so good whether you eat it raw, cooked, with ponzu, in a teriyaki sauce, whatever. Today we just topped the salad with hamachi sashimi and poured ponzu over it. We also had leftover soup and mung bean rice, which H's mom made for us. I really like the texture and taste of mung bean rice - it's sort of like sticky rice with beans mixed in and it's very satisfying. According to H it's a classic Vietnamese dish. Maybe this is a good chance to start exploring some of the recipes from the Vietnamese cookbook that H's sister left for us.

Mirin Mackerel with Gingery Soup

I really like this mackerel recipe that I just tried! And it's so simple, I'll definitely use it again. Here it is to remember: lightly sprinkle some salt on both sides of the mackerel. Put the 2 fillets in a ziplock bag and add 4 Tbsp of mirin, 1 tsp of soy sauce. Knead the sauce into the fish. Let sit in refrigerator for at least 2 hours (I did overnight), then grill. Because of the mirin, the fish had a sweet and gentle flavor, which went well with the fattiness of the fish.

This morning it was very gray and cloudy outside, so I decided to make a wintery warm-you-up kind of soup for dinner (even though it was hot and sunny by the afternoon). I threw in ground pork, thin transparent kuzukiri noodles, napa cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, and lots of ginger. Why does ginger make everything taste so good? Nice soup to warm you up, even in 80 degree weather!

Hamachi and Purple Potato Rice

One of our favorite meals on this blog so far has been the hamachi teriyaki, which was our very first blog entry. So we made that again tonight, along with some miso soup and rice cooked with purple potatoes. The teriyaki sauce seemed to be a little more overwhelming than we remembered, and looking at the old picture it seems that we may have used too much sauce or reduced it too much on the stove. Maybe I also used a different soy sauce before. Things to remember for next time - lighter soy sauce, less sauce in general, maybe try salt seasoning instead of teriyaki sauce. Tonight's rice cooked with purple potatoes was a first try, but I really liked it! The purple potatoes add a nice flavor and heartiness to the rice, not to mention a beautiful color.

Giant Salad and Soup

Tonight we had a simple dinner of miso soup and a gigantic salad. The theme of the night was using up a big box of salad greens from Costco. Yes, we were also using up a box of tomatoes. Time to go to Costco again!

Pizza!

Today H suggested that we take a trip down memory lane and make Boboli pizzas for dinner. To get ingredients, we made our first ever visit to the Whole Foods here, but the guy helping us looked confused when we asked for Boboli pizza crust. So we realized we would have to settle for something else, and we ended up choosing naan. We also replaced pizza sauce with some marinara sauce that we already had at home, which turned out to be more liquidy than expected. For toppings we threw on some cheese, tomatoes, shrimp, and mushrooms before baking the pizza in the toaster oven. The appetizing aroma of pizza wafting through our kitchen made us pretty happy, and we were even happier when we tasted it. The shrimp and mushrooms made especially tasty toppings! Eating our little homemade pizzas made it feel just like we were in college again, though I'm not sure if we ever ate so much salad in college.

Firsts

This was a dinner full of firsts: 1) first time cooking butterfish at home, 2) first attempt to make a purple potato salad, and 3) first time making spinach miso soup. Misoyaki butterfish is very big here in Hawaii - most Japanese restaurants seem to have it on their menu - but I just stewed the fish in a very typical Japanese sauce with soy sauce, mirin, and sugar. Very soft fish and very kind flavor. Will try the miso flavoring next time for fun. I've written before about how purple potatoes are everywhere here and I use them a lot in my cooking. We had a delicious sweet purple potato salad at a luau we went to last month, so I thought I would try my own version. It was a little crumbly, not quite sweet enough, and nothing special. Ideas for next time - look for a more sweet looking recipe, use more mayo, add some shrimp. Finally, the spinach miso soup with fried bean curd and tofu is a combination that my mom does often. I usually lean more towards onions and potatoes, but I was so happy to eat spinach like this today that I think I should do this combo more often.

Happy New Year

In the spirit of the new year, we visited a shrine in our neighborhood to make some wishes for the coming year. We were pretty overwhelmed by the masses of people visiting the shrine, but a pleasant surprise was that the shrine was serving complimentary bowls of ozouni, a Japanese soup with mochi rice cakes traditionally eaten on New Year's. It was a small and simple soup with just mochi, a fish cake, and some greens, but it was tasty.

So when we got home, I decided to make my own version of ozouni with some more ingredients: chicken, daikon, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, mitsuba greens, and ofu (wheat gluten shaped like flowers to make the soup more festive-looking). We toasted the mochi in the toaster oven, making the mochi expand to look like miniature snowmen, as you can see from the pictures. The mochi then went into the soup to complete our homemade ozouni. The mochi were crunchy out of the toaster, but once in the soup they were soft and chewy, becoming the stars of a hearty New Year's meal.