Banana chocolate muffin バナナチョコレートマフィン

As we endure the corona virus inspired yeast shortage, my wife has been focusing on quick breads made with baking powder and soda. Both of which, we have in abundance. Also, under "stay-at-home" directives, she has been baking to her hearts content basically making her way through all the muffin recipes in the "Pastries from the La Brea Bakery" cook book. While taking an inventory of items in the freezer, she came across a bag of frozen red bananas which she had prepared some time ago to make her usual banana bread. She remembered that the La Brea cook book had a recipe for banana chocolate muffin and decided to use the bananas in that recipe instead. These muffins turned out to be more like a cake than a muffin but they are certainly good muffins. Since my wife reduced the sugar it is perfectly suited for breakfast.

Ingredients (makes 2 dozen muffins)
3 3/4 cup AP flour
3 cups sugar
2 Tsp baking soda
1 Tsp baking powder
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 1/2 cup of ripe banana, mashed (she only had 1 1/2 cups but went ahead without further adjustment)
5 eggs
1 1/4 vegetable oil

1 Tbs. vanilla

1/2 Recipe (makes 1 dozen muffins)

1 3/4 +1/8 cup AP flour

1 1/2 cup sugar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 1/4 cup of ripe banana, mashed 

3 eggs
1/2 + 1/8 vegetable oil

1/2  Tbs. vanilla

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a bowel mix the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and cocoa powder (# 1). In another bowel mix the bananas, eggs and vegetable oil (#2). Combine the flour mixture with the banana mixture (#3). Using a large ice cream scoop fill a heavily greased muffin tin (#4). Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until the muffins are firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean (#5). Let them cool for a while and remove from pan (#6).

These muffins don't rise so much as spread out. Thank goodness we put a cookie sheet under the muffin tin. Otherwise, muffin mixture would have been all over the bottom of the oven making quite a mess. As seen in #5, the muffins bled together making the tops heavy relative to the bottom so we had to cool them upside down as shown in #6 so the bottoms wouldn't collapse under the weight of the tops. Once they cooled completely, however, the bottoms could "stand up" to the oversized tops. Also, if we make these again we would try using two muffin tins.

These muffins were a mixture between a brownie and chocolate cake. They also reminded us of wacky cake but that may be because the main chocolate flavor came from the Hershey's powder used in both. They had a very chocolate flavor but we didn't taste the banana at all. The top was nice a crunchy. With the ridiculous amount of eggs that went into the batter the inside texture was very tender and the contrast between the crunchy crust and tender interior was very nice.

Puff pastry loaf with roast beef, cheese and potato salad ローストビーフ、チーズ、ポテトサラダローフ

My wife invented this loaf which is a variation of egg and smoked salmon in puff pastry. She already made one variation using smoked salmon, cheese and mashed potato. This time, we were in cleaning-up-leftovers mode. Although we rarely eat beef, one weekend we made a beef roast on the Weber grill with hot smoke. We used thin slices of the roast beef for sandwiches during the week but still had some left over. In addition, I had made potato salad a few weeks ago and a good amount was still left.  (The potato salad is made with rice vinegar and strained yogurt i.e. Greek yogurt in addition to the usual mayonnaise, and these two ingredients act as a kind of preservative. As a result the potato salad lasts a long time but even so there is a limit so we had to use it up). My wife came to the rescue with this dish using roast beef, potato salad and her variation of cheese stuffing. This is like a "pasty", all inclusive--starch, veggies and proteins from the meat and cheese.

Ingredients:
sheet of puff pastry thawed

for cheese filling:
4 oz. feta cheese
3 oz smoked mozzarella cheese
2 oz. Monterey jack
5 oz. ricotta cheese
2 large eggs
sprinkle of red pepper flakes to taste

Other ingredients
roast beef cut into thin slices.
cup of potato salad (or amount needed to top the cheese filling)

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Crumble the feta cheese into small pieces. Grate the mozzarella and Monterey jack cheeses. Mix the crumbled and grated cheeses with the ricotta, egg and red pepper flakes. Roll out the thawed puff pastry on parchment paper. On half of the pastry dough, add layers of thinly sliced roast beef, the cheese mixture and potato salad (shown below).

Fold the other half of the pastry dough over the filling and seal the edges by painting on a mixture of water and flour and pressing the edges using the tines of a fork.  Dock or prick the top of the dough with the fork. (This lets steam escape as the loaf cooks). With the loaf still on the parchment paper place it on a rack and put the rack on a cookie sheet. (This allows the bottom to cook thoroughly). Cook for 25 to 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown.

Again, you can't go wrong with this combination of pastry, meat, cheese and potatoes--its a meal in itself. The potato salad was an interesting addition. It added a slight vinegar tang and the mayonnaise yogurt blended into the cheese mixture adding a creaminess. The onions and carrots in the potato salad were a nice dimension that was not present in previous versions of this loaf. The smokiness of the barbecued beef also added its "voice" nicely. (Although the roast beef was very nice, we decided that maybe we preferred the saltiness of the smoked salmon used in previous versions a bit better). Slices of the loaf heat up well in the toaster oven. This is nice to have after work with a nice glass of red wine of course.

"Rescued" sour cream bread "救助”されたサワークリームパン

Due to the shortage of yeast during the Covid-19 pandemic, my wife has been relying on biga/poolish as the leavening agent for bread. She has experimented with substituting preferments in various of her favorite bread recipes with great success. So she decided to try making sour cream bread based on a recipe in "Beard on Bread" using biga. She made the biga the night before and by morning it had puffed up nicely. She used it to make the dough; making adjustments for the moisture and flour already in the biga. She made the dough in the morning but by 5:00 PM basically nothing had happened. The dough sat sullenly in the bottom of the bowl just basically where it had been in the morning. We consulted each other about what to do with the recalcitrant dough. Should we give it a time out by just putting it into the fridge and letting it spend the night getting its act together and hopefully rising? Then I suggested, "Maybe we should just cook it now like a focaccia". That sounded like a plan to us so I rolled it out on parchment paper. (This is a new technique I read about recently for getting these types of bread in and out of the oven and found it works very well). We decided to top it with cream cheese and black olives.

This is the loaf after it was cooked. It had some rise, at least it wasn't flat like a cracker.

Ingredients:
Biga:
1 3/4 cups flour
2 cups sour cream
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough:
biga
3 tbs. sugar
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda
3 to 4 1/2 cups flour

Directions:

The night before baking mix together the biga, cover it with towels and leave at room temperature overnight. Next day in an electric mixer with a dough hook combine the biga, sugar, salt, baking soda and flour into the smooth elastic dough. Knead on the dough hook for 7 to 10 minutes. Remove from the bowl and hand knead a few minutes more. Put into the bowel and lightly coat with oil. Let rise.

In this case it did not rise. After some consternation and discussion it was decided the bread had been re-designated as focaccia and I stepped up to "center stage". I  took the dough out of the bowl in which it had spent the day and transferred it to a piece of parchment paper (big enough to hold the final rectangle). I stretched the dough into a rectangle shape, then folded all sides inward and stretched it again to make the same sized rectangle. I repeated this 2 times and ended up with the focaccia shape shown above. I covered it with plastic wrap and a towel and let it rise (hopefully) for another hour. Meanwhile I preheated the oven with a baking stone in it to 390 F. After one hour, I pressed the dough with my finger tips like I would do with focaccia bread. I brushed the surface with olive oil. At my wife's suggestion, I put small cubes of cream cheese and slices of black olives on top of the loaf. I transferred it still on the parchment paper using a metal pizza paddle to the baking stone and baked it for 30 minutes.

Surprisingly this bread was very good! The texture was dense and chewy but soft at the same time. The basic recipe was slightly sweet with a slight tang from the sour cream. Those flavors came through and went extremely well with the saltiness of the olives and the creaminess of the cream cheese. This turned out to be a very good breakfast bread that went well with coffee. It is a prime example of how "forgiving" yeast breads can be. We have taken to calling it "rescued" bread.  We wouldn't mind making it again but we are not sure we could reproduce the "mistake" that resulted in this version of the bread rather than the one we were expecting. We think maybe the ratio of biga to flour was not correct and most of the gluten was eaten by the resulting yeast so the bread couldn't rise. (Just a theory. Who knows? We'll be working on this.)

Pickled grapes with Japanese style curry ブドウのピクルス添え日本風カレー

In order to use up some cooked pork tenderloin before it went bad I decided to make a Japanese style curry but I did not have any commercial Japanese style curry roux. So I "winged it" and made my own curry roux. In addition I also didn't have the usual Japanese curry condiments, so continuing the "winged-it" theme I made "pickled" grapes and served them on the side.

The pickled grapes have a sweet-sour taste with cardamon flavor which really made the whole thing special.

To make the dish a bit more decadent, I topped the curry with a sunny side up fried egg (using pasteurized egg).

Pickled fruit (This is from Milkstreet magazine).


Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups rice vinegar (unseasoned)
3/4 cup white sugar
1 tbs kosher salt
6 wide strips of lime zest plus 1 1/2 tsp lime juice
4 wide strips of lemon zest plus 1/4 cup of lemon juice
3 white cardamon pods

Directions:
I did not have any lime so I did not use it. Put everything in a pan and heat to boil and dissolve the sugar and salt. Cool it to room temperature.  I only added grapes but  the original recipe also suggested the following fruits could also be pickled; apple, melon, pineapple, plum, and strawberry. Leave the mixture at room temperature  for 48 hours then refrigerate.

Japanese curry (my short cut method, makes about 4 small servings)


Ingredients:
Cooked pork, cubed (whatever amount you have, this is leftover control).
1 medium onion, small dice
1 clove garlic, finely minced
1 small piece of ginger root, peeled and finely minced
2 parsnips, peeled and cut into bite-sized cubes (or more traditionally potato)
2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into cubes
10 green beans (I happened to have blanched green beans), cut into 1 inch segments
1/4 cup of AP flour
2-3 tbs olive oil
2 tsp Garam Masara
Salt to taste
2-3 tsp Japanese curry powder (I used S&B)
2 cups chicken stock (or more depending on the thickness of the curry)

Directions:
In a pot on medium flame, add the olive oil, onion, garlic and ginger and sauté until fragrant and onion slightly caramelizes (5-7 minutes). Add the flour and sauté until the bottom of the pan develops a brown crust, add the curry powder and keep sautéing for several more minutes. Add the chicken broth and using a silicon or wooden spatula, mix well trying to dislodge the brown crust on the bottom until, the sauce thickens. Add the pork, carrot, parsnip and simmer (This is usually cooked in a broth, before adding the curry roux, I am taking a shortcut). Simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Just 4-5 minutes before serving, add the garam masala, season with salt and pepper and add the green beans.

To make it more luscious, I topped this with a sunny side up fried egg with runny yolk (using pasteurized eggs). For a quick shortcut curry for leftover control, this was pretty good. The pickled grapes also added, a sweet and sour tang with a subtle but lovely cardamon flavor which really made the pickles something special.

Brined pork chops with homemade BBQ sauce ブラインドポークチョップとBBQソース

I usually do not get pork chops but, one day during the Covid19 pandemic, I could not find any other cuts of pork, so I ended up with fairly thin bone-in pork chops. After some thought about how to cook it, I decided to brine the pork (although we are not a true believer in brining). After brining I cooked the pork in a frying pan. My wife made her BBQ sauce to go with it. We served cooked baby red potatoes and sautéed green beans on the side; a classic American meat-and-potato affair.

Ingredients

Three bone-in pork chops (what I got was thin -1/2 inch-probably thick chops would be better).

For brine
2 cup water
1/3 cup Kosher salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 sprigs of rosemary, leaves removed and finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

Mix the above ingredients in a pan, boil to dissolve the sugar and salt and let it cool down to room temperature.

For BBQ sauce (my wife made this)
2 medium onions coarsely diced, sautéed in olive oil until soft and caramelized (15-20 minutes).
1 cup of ketchup, added to the pan and cooked,  until the sugar in the ketchup is caramelized (the color will change from red to more dull brownish color).
 2 tbs  rice vinegar plus 1/2 cup water (or chicken broth),
1/4 cup lemon juice,
1/2 tsp paprika powder,
1 tbs Worcestershire sauce,
1/2 tsp salt,
2 tbs brown sugar
1 tbs mustard

Mix the above ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes.

I brined the pork for 5 hours in the  refrigerator. Just  before cooking, I took them out of the fridge, rinsed and patted them dry. Using olive oil and butter, I cooked the pork chops few minutes on each side. At the end I added some of the BBQ sauce to the pan and continued to sauté for a few more minutes until the sauce covered the meat.

I think the chops were too thin to make good brined pork chops. The sauce was good but the chops were just so so. Later we cooked the leftover cooked pork chops with chicken drumsticks in the BBQ sauce in the oven in a covered casserole dish for about 1 hour or until the meat was tender. I then removed the meat from bone and hand shredded it to make something like pulled chicken and pork.

This preparation was pretty good. The tang of the BBQ sauce permeated the meat and the meat was very tender. This is probably how we would prepare pork chops in the future.

Vermont "Aigamo" rice バーモント産合鴨米

Our friend who moved to Vermont some years ago, gave us a special organic Japanese short-grain rice which was raised using the "Aigamo" method. "Aigamo" 合鴨 is a type of domestic duck (cross between white domesticated duck and wild mallard). These ducks are released as hatchlings in the rice paddy to eat weeds, snails and churn the water to prevent other weeds from taking root thus organically tending the rice. These ducks are depicted on the package shown below. This rice came from Boundbrook farm and their site described in more detail how the "Aigamo" method works. I was familiar with this method of organic farming in Japan but never ate rice grown this way before.

According to the website, they sell both brown and white rice. We got brown rice.

Our rice induction cooker has a "Brown" rice setting since brown rice needs more water. I first washed the rice and then added it to the cooker with the appropriate water level. I added a pinch of salt, and soaked it for about 6 hours before cooking.

I let it steep for 30 minutes after it finished cooking. It had the nice smell of freshly cooked rice plus a nutty smell of brown rice.

We enjoyed the rice plain at first to enjoy its full flavor. It has a very nice nutty flavor. My wife really likes to add butter an soy sauce to hot rice. So this time even I succumbed to her method. We also had it with a seasoned nori sheets. Since this was the ending dish or "shime" for the meal, we did not have anything else with the rice.

Because of the "aigamo" organic method, the price of this rice is substantially higher than regular rice but if you consider "organic food" is important plus the wonderful nutty flavor, this is worth the expense.

Hot cross buns and cheese buns made with biga ホットクロスバンとチーズバン

As the Covid-19 pandemic started to unfold we decided to prepare by buying in basic food ingredients such as flour, sugar, rice and fresh "winter vegetables" such as potatoes, carrots, cabbage, and squash which would keep for some time. Our reasoning was that if food shortages developed  we could live on these basics by baking bread and cooking the stockpile of veggies. (Shortages did develop, for example, eggs were not available for a while and many of the shelves in the super market were bare. One week we bought the last two bags of rice at the Japanese grocery store). Feeling smugly well prepared, my wife was horrified to realize that we only had one 4 oz. jar of yeast much less than we thought. We still had baking powder and soda, so we could make quick breads but the lack of yeast put a serious wrinkle in our well laid plans. We were further horrified to discover that in addition the the shortages mentioned above, there was a major shortage of yeast. It was not available anywhere. Apparently, other folks had the same strategy we were employing. The yeast shortage was soon followed by shortages of flour and sugar. Luckily, we had bought in plenty of those items but we had to come up with something to deal with the yeast shortage--"enter biga, stage right". My wife remembered a Pantone recipe she made some time ago that used a sponge called biga and required much less yeast so she looked it up and began substituting it in the breads she made, with remarkable success.

The picture below shows two breads my wife made for Easter and served on her favorite Easter bunny plate. The one on the right is a hot cross bun that she made before the yeast shortage so it was not made using biga. It didn't have a frosting cross on top instead my wife cut the baked bun in half and put the cream cheese icing used for the cross inside. The bun on the left is a cheese bun made with biga.

Here are the cross sections. The cheese roll has, of course, cheese stuffing that was baked in the bun. The hot cross bun lost the cross but the icing was sandwiched in the muffin after the muffin was baked.

Although we posted the hot cross buns before, the cheese rolls are new. My wife started making "biga" (or "starter" or "sponge") to conserve the yeast we have. Although it takes overnight fermentation, it has the additional benefit of much better flavor. I asked my wife for the recipe.

Ingredients:
Biga: (Hers has more liquid than  traditional biga. So, this is a cross between biga and poolish)
1 3/4  cups flour
2 cups buttermilk
1/8 tsp yeast

Dough:
biga
3 tbs sugar
2 tsp salt
3 tbs butter
2 1/4 cups flour as needed (to make a total of 4 cups including flour in the biga)
1/8 additional yeast (optional) it will result in a quicker rise.

Cheese filling
4 oz. feta cheese crumbled
5 oz. ricotta cheese
2 oz. smoked gouda, grated
2 oz. monterey jack, grated
2 oz. double Gloucester, grated (other cheeses could be substituted such as smoked mozzarella)
1 egg
sprinkle of red pepper flakes (to taste)

Day 1: in the evening mix together the ingredients for the biga (#1) cover the bowel with plastic wrap and several towels and leave out overnight. Picture (#2) shows what it looks like next morning.

Day 2: Make the cheese filling by adding the cheese ingredients together and mixing until blended then set aside (#1). Make the dough using the biga and dough ingredients. Let rise in a covered bowel (#2). (The rise will be very slow. I made the dough at 8:00 AM and formed the rolls at 4:00 PM).  After the first rise punch the dough down. Cut into 2 1/4 oz. pieces. Using a small ice cream scoop put a scoop of cheese in the middle of the dough (#3) and using the dough cover the cheese (#4). Put the muffin into a heavily greased large pyrex baking dish and let rise again (#5). (This rise will go much faster). Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until golden (#6). Remove immediately to let cool. As the picture shows some of the filling leaked out as the muffins cooked but plenty was still left inside.

These muffins were not as fluffy as the same recipe made with commercial yeast but the flavor was just incredible; very rich with depth. The texture is also a bit more chewy but still a wonderful mouth feel.   These buns were made with much less yeast. The original recipe made with commercial yeast would have used 4 1/2 tsp yeast while this recipe used a maximum of 1/4 tsp yeast. The thing we noticed was that as the dough was rising it gave off a pleasant strong yeasty smell that was wonderful and not something we noticed when we made the muffins using commercial yeast. Also, the smell while the buns were cooking in the oven was stronger than usual adding to one of the basic pleasures of making bread; the smell as it cooks. The combination of the flavor of the dough with the cheese filling was really wonderful. We couldn't get enough of it. So although the use of biga was born of necessity (a shortage of yeast during the corona-19 outbreak) it has opened up a whole new dimension of bread making that we would not have tried otherwise. Once having tasted the wonderful flavor of this bread we will be using biga as much as possible.

Hanami 2020 #3 with Uni and tuna from Catalina ３日目の花見、カタリナの刺身

After we had our first hanami celebration meal of Tako Grill take out, we received some shashimi items from Catalina Offshore products. It is rare now-a-days that they have gold uni from California but they had it and I ordered it with Pacific bluefin tuna loin, salmon and "ankimo" Monkfish liver. The fish arrived Saturday and we had our second hanami of tuna sashimi and a half of uni that evening. The other items contributed to the third continuation of hanami. I prepared half of the uni as "shio-uni" 塩うに or salted uni. The uni arrived in this plastic container which works much better than traditional wood tray.

The uni was nicely formed (not fragmented or dissolved). It was a nice orange color. Its been a while since we had uni from Catalina. We have been getting some uni from Maruhide but this one was pretty good.

I enjoyed half as sashimi and prepared the other half as "Shio uni" or salted uni. I read that this was a very usual preparation in Aomori prefecture 青森県 which is the norther most part of the main land Japan, "Honshu"本州. Most of the recipes (all in Japanese) call for 100 grams of uni and 12 grams of salt. Place the uni slightly apart in a flat sealable container lined with a paper towel, and sprinkle with the salt (see below). I put on the lid and placed it in the refrigerator for three hours. After three hours, moisture came out and was absorbed by the paper towel. Since we were going to consume the uni the next day, I just move the uni to a smaller sealable container. If you use a sterilized container (a glass jar sterilized  in boiling water, cooled and dried), the uni should last at least 1 week in the refrigerator).

In any case, I forgot to take a picture when we had this the next day. To serve it I made a bottom layer of thinly sliced mini cucumber on a plate and put the salted uni on the top. We folded the cucumber and uni into single serving seasoned nori sheets 味付け海苔 and enjoyed the combination of flavors. The uni became bit more creamy with more intense flavor. Definitely I will use this technique to preserve and enhance the flavor of uni in the future.

In any case, we had the remaining tuna two ways; one is tuna cubes with avocado 鮪とアボカドの角切り(seasoned with finely chopped garlic, sesame oil and soy sauce).

Another was just straightforward tuna sashimi with blanched broccoli with sesame dressing ブロッコリーの胡麻和え, salt broth snap peas スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, Japanese omelet 出汁巻 and "asazuke" 浅漬け of cucumber and daikon.

In any case, we had a very good 3rd hanami.

Hanami at home 2020

This is the small "Somei Yoshino" 染井吉野 cherry tree we planted to replace the 30+ year old cherry tree destroyed in a nor'easter in 2018. It is still fairly small but it is in full bloom. Another older, larger tree is just 80% in bloom and the third small one blossomed early and now the flowers are gone. Because of the Covid19 pandemic, all restaurants in our area are closed or only open for takeout. So, one weekday, I placed a takeout order for sashimi and sushi from Tako Grill and picked it up on the way home.

Tako Grill was running with minimal staff, Terry at the sushi bar, his wife managing the floor and one cook in the kitchen. Shown below is our sashimi takeout. They had toro, hamachi, uni with squid and Japanese "tai" snapper cured on kelp ("Kobu jime).

Since the little cherry tree was in full bloom and we had a lovely sashimi/sushi takeout, I put together the plate shown below and declared an impromptu  hanami, .

We also got out ususal line up of sushi (toro and hamachi), and California roll (with real lump crab).

The small cherry tree only reaches just above the railing of our deck but it is still beautiful. The sashimi was great. Even the uni was from Maine, it was especially good.

We really enjoyed this and when the sashimi plate was empty we moved on to the sushi without missing a beat. In these trying times, little moments like this are especially cherished and appreciated. We sincerely hope all restaurants and other business can weather this and will soon be open for regular business again. In the meantime, thanks goodness for takeout. Stay safe!

Salmon cake サーモンケーキ

When it comes to what we eat and how we prepare it, we sometimes find ourselves in a rut. For example, almost every week I get a filet of salmon weighing 1 and 1/2 lbs; "the portion of the filet close to the head, please". I scale and remove the belly portion, and make 4 filets with the rest. I salt and dry them in the refrigerator with the skin side up for few days before cooking. This preparation results in really wonderful crunchy skin when the salmon is cooked. We snarf up the cooked skin from all the filets like potato chips and eat them along with 2 of the filets. We use the remaining filets for salmon salad which we then eat over the next week. To break this rut, I attempted to make salmon cakes from the dried cooked salmon. Since the salmon was cooked, I needed some kind of binder to make the salmon into cakes. I decide to use raw shrimp paste. The cakes held together and came out nicely. Interestingly, however, they tasted primarily of salmon without a hint of shrimp.

Ingredients:
3 small salmon filets, cooked and skin (removed) (eaten previously while still crispy after salmon was first cooked). Crush them in a Ziploc bag to make small flakes.
6 frozen raw shrimp (I used Argentinean red shrimp), thawed, shelled, and made into a paste by chopping them finely with a chef's knife.
1/2 onion, finely chopped and sautéed in olive oil until transparent, let it cool.
1 tbs chopped fresh dill
Salt and pepper for seasoning

For dredging
flour, egg water and Panko bread crumbs

Oil for deep frying

Directions:
Mix the ingredients. I was not sure if I would have to add more binders such as flour and egg but the shrimp paste worked well and I could make small cakes (#1) without much difficulty. I dredged them in flour, egg water and Panko (#2). Deep fried for a few minutes turning occasionally until golden brown and cooked through (the only ingredient that needed to be cooked was the shrimp paste) (#4).

This was a sort of proof of concept but the shrimp paste really worked well as a binder without adding strong flavor of its own. Making salmon cakes this way may be a bit of work as compared to using uncooked salmon or making salmon salad but it is another good way to use leftover cooked salmon. Drying the filets intensifies the flavor in a very good way. The cakes reheated nicely in the toaster oven making a very nice appetizer. Great snack to start the evening.

Six "otoshi" appetizers お通し6種類

Although I secretly aspire to come up with 6 appetizers to start a meal like we enjoyed at two special izakayas, "Suiko" 酔香 or "Shuhai" 酒杯  in Japan, my appetizer count usually falls short. But one evening I found I could fairly easily come up with a set of 5 appetizers.  After giving it some thought I realized I could make one more for a total of six. Yay! The extra dish, however, did not make the group pic. Its portrait is, nonetheless, shown below.

The upper row from left to right are Chinese-style squid salad (store-bought) with my sugar snap in salt broth, grilled fish cake (store bought) with blanched broccolini dressed in mustard soy sauce, Russian marinated salmon (leftover from the previous evening). (It had been marinading for 2 days by then). The lower row from left to right are octopus leg, cucumber slices and Campari tomato dressed in sumiso sauce and "mizuna" oshitashi 水菜のお浸しtopped with bonito flakes.

Although it missed the group picture, the sixth appetizer was; salmon sashimi and avocado cubes dressed in soy sauce, sesame oil, chiffonade of perilla and finely chopped garlic. The salmon was leftover from the prior evening. I made a slight modification by salting one side and searing it with a kitchen torch before cutting it into cubes. This added an additional grilled flavor and slight crusty texture.

The dish shown below is Chinese-style squid salad 中華風イカサラダ  bought at our Japanese grocery store. The variation of this appears to be available at Catalina offshore products as well.

Below is a small deep fried fish cake which is almost always available at our Japanese grocery store. This appears to be locally made and is pretty good. We heat it up in the toaster oven. I dressed blanched broccolini florets with mustard soy sauce (I now make several Japanese sauces in small squeeze bottles and store them in the refrigerator for instant use).

This was leftover Russian marinaded salmon I made the night before. This marinaded a total of 2 days and was almost completely "chemically" cooked but the onion was better now (marinating just overnight,  the sweet onion was a bit too raw). I topped this with salmon roe and garnished it with perilla.

The dish below came about due to a mistake I made. I thought I got a bunch of edible chrysanthemum 春菊 but instead it was Japanese mizuna 水菜. I blanched it very quickly for 20 seconds, drained and cooled it down by fanning and squeezed out the moisture (I did this in the morning and kept it in a Ziploc bag in the fridge.) I made this to "ohitashi" お浸し("hitasu" in Japanese is to "soak", I made the sauce with equal parts Japanese dashi and concentrated noodle sauce and  "soaked" the mizuna) and topped it with bonito flakes. My wife preferred edible chrysanthemum but this was different and nice in its own right.

We still had the tip portion of the octopus leg left over. I just cut it up into small chunks and mixed the pieces with vinegared cucumber slices and quartered Campari tomato and dressed in sumiso (from the squeeze bottle I prepared earlier).

So with the help of store-bought and leftover items from the previous evening, I finally made a set of 6 appetizer to start the evening--mission accomplished!

Squid fritters イカのすり身揚げ

This recipe is from "The real Japanese Izakaya Cookbook". This dish is featured on the cover. I ended up, by necessity, having to modify the recipe. Despite the modification, this dish turned out to be very good. I served it, as per my wife's suggestion, with a wedge of lemon rather than "Japanese sauce" as the original recipe suggested. I served it with my usual sugar snaps and Campari tomato.

Since the squid legs were only coarsely chopped, you can see them in the cut surface which gave texture to this dish.

Actually, I made a soup using the squid mixture as per the original recipe. As I dropped the mixture into the broth, I realized the squid balls were not sticking together as well as I expected. For the soup, this was not much of a problem but I did not want the squid balls to fall apart in the hot oil. So, I had to modify the recipe by adding more "binders"(egg, more flour and panko bread crumbs).

This clear soup was made of dashi from my usual dashi pack, sake, mirin and light colored soy sauce. I made "quenelles" using two teaspoons and dropped them into the simmering soup. They did not maintain a quenelle shape but mostly stayed together. I added silken tofu and chopped scallion to the soup. Just before serving, I added frozen "yuzu" skin to the soup bowls. Despite the fact the squid mixture became a rather amorphous blob this was a pretty good soup.

The squid balls in the soup were based on the original recipe. When I saw how they cooked in the soup I realized I had to alter the recipe to make sure they did not dissolve when I put them in the hot oil. The instructions below are for the squid fritters and include my modifications.

Ingredients (This is my modification):
1lb cleaned squid, tentacles and body, half and half (the body hand chopped into small pieces , #1 and the tentacles cut into small chunks, #2).
2-3 tbs Panko Japanese bread crumbs
1 egg
2 tbs flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

For frying
Flour, egg+water, panko
Peanut oil for deep frying

Directions:
Mix all ingredients well and make small oval patties. Usual frying process; dredge in flour, dip in egg water, and coat with panko crumbs (#3)
Deep fry for 4-5 minutes turning occasionally (maybe because of the egg, the fritters puffed up into a ball (#4)

I think the reason I had to add more binders (flour, bread crumb and egg) is because the body of the squid was not chopped finely enough (to paste). Next time I will use a small food processor and make it more the consistency of mousse.  It is not easy to hand chop squid.

In any case, the end result was pretty good. We think just lemon is better than Japanese Worcestershire sauce for these rather delicate tasting squid fritters. During the week we heated up the remaining fritters in the toaster oven for a week night appetizer and that worked out very well.

My wife found the daffodils in the front yard with large buds on them. She brought two inside and put them in a Japanese style flower vase. A few days later it bloomed beautifully. Spring is coming!

Cheesy spinach squares

My wife is into making small cheesy appetizers--particularly green cheesy appetizers. This recipe fulfilled both conditions and she had to make it.

The cheese squares were fairly easy to make but despite all the cheese and other ingredients that went into it, we felt, in general, it was pretty bland. The spinach gave it a green color but didn't add much flavor. To jazz it up a bit we tried it with my tomato sauce which was made from skinned Campari tomatoes. The addition of the tomato sauce added more flavor and really helped.

My wife was on the look-out for other ways she could improve the cheese squares and one evening when she was frying up some scrapple for an appetizer she decide she would fry up the cheese squares the same way since she had peanut oil in the pan and it was hot  .

She dredged the squares in flour and fried them on all sides until they had a nice brown crust as shown in the picture below. This was an improvement. The crust had a nice crunchy toasted flavor and the inside was soft with a slight cheesy flavor.  It was okay but not outstanding.

Ingredients (#1 in the composite picture):
1 cup flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
1 and 1/2 cups grated cheddar cheese
2 eggs, lightly beaten
4 tbs butter, melted
1 cup chopped fresh spinach (original recipe calls or 1package or 9oz frozen chopped spinach).

Directions:
Mix all the ingredients (#1 in composite picture) together (#2 in composite picture) . Place the mixture in a greased 9 inch square pan lined with parchment paper and greased again. (This makes it easier to get out after it is done.) (#3 in composite picture)  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 30 to 35 minutes. Loosen the edges from the sides of the pan as soon as it comes out of the oven (#4 in composite picture) . Let it cool slightly before cutting.

This wasn't bad and certainly went together quickly. It was quite edible but not exciting. If we make it again we will have to make some significant alterations.