Pork-Stuffed Eggplant

This is one of those recipes that's fun to make like an arts and crafts project. The basic idea is to make a partial lengthwise cut through the eggplant so that you'll be able to stuff a thin slice of pork inside. The flavoring is a mixture of soy sauce, vinegar, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and ginger poured over the stuffed eggplants. Then you just cover it up and cook in the microwave for about 7 minutes. So easy! My favorite bento place in Tokyo used to do this dish every so often and I loved it. So happy to know that it's so simple and equally satisfying at home, too.

Clam and Shrimp Pasta

Add together a can of fire-roasted tomatoes to a can of chopped clams with pasta and you get one of our favorite dishes. Such a simple and tasty dish that leaves us feeling so satisfied every time. I don't know why it's been so long since we've had it! The pasta is packed with flavor even with just the tomatoes and clams, but today we also added shrimp, onions, and shimeji mushrooms. The portions were big but it was so tasty, we finished it all off pretty quickly.

Pork and Veggie Ankake

Made this hearty ankake again tonight, this time replacing the spinach with bok choy. The nice thing about this recipe is that with one dish, I can clear out so many random leftovers in the veggie compartment of the fridge - napa cabbage, mushrooms, onions, carrots, and ginger - all gone! Time to go shopping again.

Meal-in-a-Bowl Miso Soup

This used to be my staple food for all seasons: put meat, veggies, tofu or fried bean curd, and rice all in miso soup and make a full meal out of it. I love it because you can stick in anything you want and it's so easy, not to mention satisfying. For dinner we had it with some deliciously soft scallop and sweet shrimp sashimi...

...and then for lunch the next day, we had it with sunomono, a vinegared dish of cucumbers, seaweed, and imitation crab tossed together with vinegar, sugar, soy sauce, and sesame seeds. Refreshing!

Iri Dofu and Butterfish Soup

Last time I did this iri dofu (tofu scramble) recipe it was a little too sweet, so today I tried 1 Tbsp sugar and 2 Tbsp soy sauce, along with lots of ginger, and it was just about right. I like this dish because it's easy to get lots of veggies (carrots, shiitake mushrooms, and onions), plus the tofu and ground meat add some nice texture and volume. Soup with butterfish and napa cabbage yummy as ever.

Wasabi Avocado Bean Salad

Tonight's dinner was an assorted jumble of things: chicken wings, niku jaga leftovers from last night, and an avocado bean salad, flavored with lemon, wasabi, and soy sauce. The wasabi provided a nice kick and reminded me of a yummy wasabi potato salad from RF1 at the SF Ferry Building. Maybe it's time to google some more wasabi recipes.

Octopus Encounter

This was NOT our dinner. Last weekend we visited Maui to meet up with J/N and enjoy some snorkeling there. When we entered the water at the beach by our hotel, we were amazed at the beauty of the colorful, pristine coral, a flavor different from what we usually see when snorkeling on Oahu. And we saw an octopus for the first time! Very exciting. This picture is not of the guy we saw, but one we took later when we visited the Maui Ocean Center, a nice aquarium with lots of Hawaiian fish. The coolest part was a water tunnel you could walk under with huge manta rays flapping/swimming right above you. This greatly increased H's desire to swim alongside manta rays on Big Island, but I think it had the opposite effect for me. The manta rays were very cool but a bit scary...

Niku jaga with more colors

To add some more color and variety to niku jaga with pork, potatoes, and onions, today I also included some carrots and shirataki noodles. Lots of volume and heartiness for lunch tomorrow.

Chicken Salad

Tonight, we baked chicken thighs in the toaster oven with a little bit of sake, salt, and pepper, then threw them on top of salads. I usually tend to cook pork or seafood, but the juiciness and deliciousness of the chicken made me think that I should cook chicken more often.

Unagi Rice

Another rice night, this time unagi rice with leftovers.

Pork-Veggies-Fish cake stew

Somehow I never make it much more than a month without making this recipe again. Usually I stew together pork, daikon, some sort of greens like mizuna, and then sometimes throw in some tofu to add volume. Today I used bok choy for the greens and threw in some fish cake to add even more volume. Now we have lots of leftovers to pack for lunch tomorrow!

Tako Salad

An assortment of veggies to go with yesterday's leftover salmon rice. Tako (octopus) salad with cucumbers, sesame oil, ponzu, and ginger. Yum!

Salmon Oyako Rice

The lovely salmon oyako rice with leftovers.

Marlin

It's been a while since we've used the griddler, so today we griddled some marlin. The texture was kind of like a tuna fillet - it was not bad, but not quite soft and juicy, either. The griddled asparagus was yummy though.

Tofu Steak and Satoimo Soboro

Tonight's dinner was surprisingly satisfying considering that it was almost all vegetarian. The tofu steak is a simple but yummy dish where you just:
1) cut up the tofu and microwave for a couple of minutes to get rid of excess water
2) sprinkle corn starch over both sides
3) pan fry them. we pan fried some shiitake mushrooms too to use as toppings
4) eat with ponzu! we also added radish sprouts as garnish before eating
Yum yum yum. For the satoimo (taro) potatoes, I stewed them with ground chicken, carrots, and ginger in a sauce of soy sauce, mirin, and water. I don't think I stewed them long enough because the flavor didn't quite seep into the potatoes enough. Will be better next time.

Pork Veggie Stir Fry

Tonight we did a simple pork stir fry to use up some leftover asparagus and onions in the fridge. I've also been throwing ginger into everything lately and am loooving it!

Asparagus Pork Rolls and Butterfish Soup

Wrapping veggies up with meat is always fun, with so many variations: thin slices of beef or pork wrapped around enoki or shimeji mushrooms, asparagus, green beans, carrots, etc; stewed in a soy sauce-based sauce or pan-fried with a little bit of salt and pepper, lemon, whatever. Today we just wrapped up some asaparagus with pork, seasoned with salt and pepper, and pan-fried them. They were pretty tasty fresh out of the pan. Tonight's soup featured one of my favorite soup ingredients - butterfish! - with napa cabbage, shimeji mushrooms, tofu, and ginger. Very warming.

Tea Pork Tenderloin with Veggies

Today I did this tea pork tenderloin recipe accompanied by a bunch of random veggies that were sitting in the fridge. This would have made a yummy hiyashi chuka - kind of like a cold ramen salad - with noodles underneath!

Our Favorite Fish

Of all the Hawaiian fish we've tried since coming here, shutome has been one of our favorite...but we still weren't prepared for the divine tastiness of tonight's shutome. We baked it along with some veggies for a shorter time than usual, and the fish just came out so soft, tender, juicy, and flavorful, that we couldn't stop oooohing and aaahing over it as we ate.

Easter Sushi Dinner

Happy Easter! We decided to celebrate by having our own make-your-own-sushi party again. H has talked about wanting to do it again almost on a daily basis since last time. We were a little excited and went overboard on buying the sashimi again. This time we had scallops, salmon, chutoro tuna, and nairagi (striped marlin), that pinkish fish on the top. All yummy, but the scallops especially.

Pork and Cabbage with Bean Sprout Salad

It's been a while since I've done this pork and napa cabbage mille-feuille, so simple yet always so warm and satisfying. Today it was accompanied by a simple bean sprout salad with carrots and lots of sesame seeds.

Halibut

Tonight we baked some halibut fillets, because they were on sale at Foodland =). The fish was lean but nice and soft, and went together well with a little bit of ponzu. Today's salad experiment was cucumbers tossed together with sakura ebi (small shrimp), ground up sesame seeds, sesame oil, and ponzu. Pretty tasty!