Miso Mackerel

Tonight's photos are still-in-the-pot views of what we ate. Also it looks like we're trying to feed a big family because some of the food is to pack for lunch tomorrow.

I tried a miso mackerel today, stewing the fish in miso, ginger, sugar, sake, and water. The fish was tender and juicy and it had a nice strong flavor, maybe too strong. Note to self: use less miso next time.



My favorite food in the world, miso soup. The main feature of tonight's miso soup, kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), has sunk to the bottom of the pot so you can't see it.



Leftovers from last night's sukiyaki - mostly only veggies now - stir fried together with egg and green onions. I remember my mom often used to make a sukiyaki-with-egg lunch for me like this the day after we had sukiyaki, so seemed like the appropriate thing to do with the leftovers.

Sukiyaki

Another sukiyaki night...because it's almost payday =) Nice hearty way to eat lots of veggies.

Salmon Foil Yaki

A simple but colorful dinner of salmon baked with shimeji mushrooms and shallots, baked purple potatoes, and a cucumber and tomato salad with ponzu and sesame oil.

Sashimi Salad Udon

A simple, fresh, and tasty dinner of salad udon with scallop and salmon sashimi, seaweed, shiso leaves, cucumbers, and tomatoes with ponzu sauce.

Mushroom Night

Tonight's theme was mushrooms - we had:
1) mushroom takikomi gohan - rice cooked with shimeji mushrooms, fried bean curd, soy sauce, sake, and water, with some green onions sprinkled on top at the end.
2) mushroom shigureni - beef, enoki mushrooms, and onions cooked with ginger, soy sauce, sake, mirin, and sugar.
3) leftovers
4) mushroom-colored Kona coffee brownie - to satisfy a huge chocolate craving!

Spinach Shiraae

Tonight we had a veggie-centric dinner of napa cabbage and tuna stewed with sugar and soy sauce, some baked Okinawan sweet potatoes, and my personal highlight, shiraae. Shiraae translates to "dressed in white" and is a dish where tofu is mixed together with various ingredients, hence "dressing the ingredients in white." It's a home cooking standard that my mom makes a lot. Spinach is the most common ingredient in shiraae, and today I also added carrots and sakura ebi (tiny shrimp). Apparently white miso is commonly used for flavoring, but today I just used sugar, soy sauce, and lots of ground up sesame seeds. This was my first time making it, but it came out pretty tasty! Will definitely do again.

A Different Kind of Niku Jaga

Tonight's dinner was niku jaga with a twist - satoimo (taro) potatoes instead of regular potatoes, pork instead of beef, and I sprinkled corn starch over the meat and potatoes to create a thicker sauce, kind of like Chinese stir fry. Actually the recipe I used wasn't even called niku jaga - it was "Satoimo and Pork Teriyaki." Whatever the name, a super hearty meal.

Pork and Vegetable Ankake

Ankake is meat, seafood, and/or veggies stewed together in a sauce(I used soy sauce, sake, mirin, and water) thickened with starch, like Chinese cooking. I packed in pork, ginger, napa cabbage, spinach, carrots, onions, and shiitake mushrooms til the pot was full to the brim. It was a great way to get so many veggies, but I don't think I poured in the starch/water very skillfully, because the starch got clumped and it was more like I made small clumps of transparent noodles instead of making an overall thick ankake sauce. It was still yummy and very warming though.

Mentaiko Spaghetti

Japanese pasta restaurants typically have both "Italian style" and "Japanese style" pasta selections on their menu, and mentaiko (spicy cod roe) spaghetti is a Japanese style standard. It's very simple to make - just mash up the mentaiko and peel off its skin, add butter and a little bit of soy sauce, and then mix it all together with the boiled pasta. I added shiso leaves and nori on top so it's a little hard to see the mentaiko, but it gives the pasta a nice texture and saltiness. Actually today's mentaiko pasta tasted pretty spicy but not as salty as I expected. Maybe next time I will try using tarako, which is salted roe. Tomato-based pastas are still my favorite, but once in a while it's a nice change to have a Japanese style pa-su-ta!

Iri-Dofu

I have been wanting to make/eat my mom's tofu burgers for a while now, but tonight I decided to settle for iri-dofu, which is a simple tofu scramble. The tofu is scrambled together with ground pork, shiitake mushrooms, onions, carrots, and some egg, and seasoned with ginger, sugar, and soy sauce. Today I actually cut the water from the tofu before cooking by microwaving it for 2 min and was happy with the results. Besides the mincing up of veggies into tiny pieces that takes some time, it's an ultra simple and sweetly satisfying dish.

Broiled Shutome

This was the dinner where we discovered that shutome, Hawaiian swordfish, is quite juicy and tasty not just in soup, but broiled, too!

Spring Rolls

Tonight we enjoyed some tasty spring rolls using some of the leftover ingredients from H's mom's visit. When we were about ready to eat, we were dismayed to find that we only had 2 spring roll wrappers left. So dinner was postponed to go buy some more wrappers. But the wait was well worth it - we were happy to have an (almost) endless supply of wrappers as we wrapped the night away!

Pork Daikon Stew

Such a comforting and satisfying dish every time, which is probably why I make this so often. It's definitely one of our favorites.

Mirin Mackerel

More fish with this simple recipe that makes the soft and juicy mackerel, marinated in mirin and soy sauce, taste quite yummy.

Grilled Moi and Oysters

A couple of weeks ago we discovered how much we liked moi when we steamed it, so this time we tried grilling it. Almost equally tasty, with the grilling giving the skin a nice crunch. We also slightly broiled some oysters and had them with a drizzle of ponzu. We love seafood!

Sashimi Salad and Purple Potatoes

After overstuffing ourselves the night before, we had a light and simple dinner: salad with scallops and onaga sashimi on top, plus miso soup and rice. The onaga took some effort to chew, but the scallops were melt-in-your-mouth soft and tasty. For dessert we had some baked super sweet Okinawan purple potatoes. Yum!

Monk Fish Udon

Udon again, this time with monk fish, aka "poor man's lobster." True to its name, the fish has a nice firm, dense texture and was a nice complement to the udon.

Dinner @ Hoku's By H

Tonight, M and I celebrated a special occasion, so we had dinner out at Hoku's, a restaurant at the Kahala Resort. We prepared for their extensive tasting menu by exercising in the morning and having a light lunch, but the 5 course meal was still daunting! The first course was an amuse bouche of seared salmon on a cucumber salsa.


The next appetizer course was a trio of oysters - From left, oyster with osetra caviar, baked oyster Rockefeller, and tempura oyster sushi. We both agreed the tempura oyster was the best of the three! Really clean tasting while preserving the natural oyster flavor.

The third course was a deconstructed salad of mixed greens with burrata cheese and figs with a crostini. We've never had burrata cheese before, but it was soft and chewy like mozzarella with a creamy flavor. The best part was the fig, which was slightly warmed before serving.


The fourth course was pan seared Chilean sea bass served on artichoke risotto and topped with a truffle foam. I thought this fish was endangered and not available anymore, but guess not. This is my favorite fish of all time, and we were happy to see it on the menu. The truffle foam made this course really savory, and the fish was cooked perfectly.


At this point, we were getting full and could have stopped, but then the main entree arrived. Pan roasted Colorado veal chop served with a side of Maine lobster with asparagus and potato confit. I always like a good surf and turf entree, and this was great. The veal was tender and perfect.


We're usually never too full for dessert, and this was no exception. We were served a really unique white chocolate - lilikoi fondue. Lilikoi is otherwise known as passionfruit outside of Hawaii, and added a really fragrant, citrus flavor to the white chocolate. We only used about a third of the chocolate fondue, and we debated on whether to ask for the remainder in a doggy bag before letting it be taken away.


There was an additional post-dessert dessert of a few little pastries. The best by far was the red guava-flavored gummy. But by this point, we were sort of limping to the finish line.


And finally, a congratulatory post-post-dessert. We couldn't eat this, but instead took it home to enjoy the next day. Overall, a really great and epic dinner, and we got to enjoy it all with an expansive ocean view with the setting sun. We'll come back again one day, but may skip lunch beforehand next time!

Temaki

Tonight, H and I had a 2 person make-your-own-sushi party. Yes, doesn't the picture look like it could feed more people? The rice is not pictured by the way. We weren't sure if we could eat all of the sashimi at first but after about 5 minutes, it was clear that we were on track to finishing it all off pretty quickly. In H's words, "a super luxurious but economical meal!" Today's miso soup made with kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), onions, and carrots may rank among my favorite combo of miso soup ingredients ever.

Seafood Pasta

After our tasty clam linguine dinner from a couple of weeks ago, we decided to try a mixed seafood pasta this time. The frozen seafood medley looked pretty good when we bought it, but by the end of our meal, we were reminded that the fresher the ingredients, the better! Next time we'll get fresh clams again.

Mackerel and Veggies

Last night's fish was mackerel, again in a miso stew with napa cabbage, again a little too salty...but surrounded by lots of fresh yummy veggies.

Hokke

Tonight's fish was hokke, or atka mackerel, a fish that I like to order sometimes at a Japanese restaurant we go to often. We happily discovered that we can have just as tasty an experience at home, and way cheaper too! It's a lean fish, but still soft and tender.

Salmon Rice and Tuna Belly Salad

Another fish-centered menu with salmon and ikura (salmon roe) rice, and tuna belly salad. We decided that tuna belly always looks yummier than it actually tastes. It's kind of sinewy and hard to chew. Next time we'll stick to salmon, hamachi, or some white fish sashimi.

Shutome Udon

Last week we enjoyed having J and B in town - visiting Hawaii in the middle of their around-the-world trip! - and ate out a bit, then H and I finished off the week with a very large and meaty meal at a Korean BBQ place right by our house. So this week's theme is: less meat, more fish and veggies, less overstuffing ourselves...We started the week with udon with shutome, or Hawaiian swordfish, a fish we discovered when H's mom was in town. The shutome is quite tender when cooked and we like it in soup!