Fennel Ricotta Muffin フェンネル リコッタ マフィン

My wife rediscovered some muffin tins and how to fill them to make muffins with generous tops, so now she's into making muffins. Although the freezer space is getting tight, she recently made another wonderful batch of muffins. This is a fennel flavored and ricotta cheese stuffed muffin and is from the "La Brea Bakery" cookbook. (As usual my wife made alterations to the original recipe).

When I saw this cross-section of the muffin I thought my wife had cut the cooked muffin in half and added a layer of cheese but she told me that she just put the ricotta cheese between two layers of batter then cooked the whole thing together.

As shown below this is the result of "over filling" the muffin cups with batter. The tops are touching each other. The large tops, however, create a problem. When removing the muffins from the tin while still warm and putting them on the cooling rack, they started collapsing under the weight of the heavy tops. My wife quickly solved this problem by turning the muffins upside down while cooling on the wire rack. Once cooled, they can withstand the heavy tops without any problem. (According to my wife, although all the recipes say only fill the muffin cups 3/4 full, she thinks this technique results in a perfectly shaped muffin just the right size for breakfast). Also, notice the cream colored portion showing on the top of the muffins in the picture below. That is where the cheese filling partially oozed out while the muffin was baking and added an additional creamy sweetness to the crust.

I ask my wife for the recipe.

Ingredients:

For the batter 
1 tsp. fennel seeds
3 cup AP flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs. plus 1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups yogurt
3/4 vegetable oil

For the filling 
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt

Directions:
Toast the fennel seeds in a pan until they turn slightly brown and fragrant. Grind or crush them into as fine a powder as possible. In a large bowel combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and baking soda. Add the crushed fennel seeds. In another bowl mix the yogurt and oil. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until incorporated.

In another bowl mix the ricotta cheese, vanilla and salt.

Fill a liberally greased muffin tin cup half full with the batter. Top with a generous dollop of the filling and top with more batter to cover the filling and mound up over the edge of the cup. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 18 to 20 minutes.

These are lovely muffins. They are not too sweet and have a subtle fennel flavor. They have a nice moist cake like texture. The filling becomes incorporated into the texture and adds a nice layer of creaminess with a pleasant burst of cheesy vanilla sweetness. These are muffins that make it worth getting up in the morning.

Yamakake variation 山かけバリエーション

This is a variation of "Yamakake" 山かけ. Since the frozen block of yellowfin tuna キハダマグロの冷凍冊 I had in the freezer was getting old, I decided to use it. I divided the block into three portions and tried to make three different dishes. Since frozen yellowfin tuna is not the best quality tuna, I made thick slices and marinated all of them in concentrated Japanese noodle sauce (from the bottle) or "mentsuyu" 麺つゆ. I used to make the marinade myself but I am getting lazy. Grated nagaimo 長芋 (or yamaimo if you can get it) with tuna sashimi "Yamakake" is a "golden" combination.  This variation is based on a recipe I saw on line. I made a sauce (dissolving wasabi in soy sauce) separately and placed it in a small squeeze bottle so that I could add any amount I liked after the dish was assembled.

For greenery, the recipe called for "Daikon" sprouts which I did not have so I just used thinly sliced American mini-cucumber.

Instead of grating nagaimo, I made small chunks by crushing it in a Ziploc bag using a meat pounder. This is called "Tataku". Most frequently, this is done to cucumber called "tataki kyuri" 叩き胡瓜 so that the seasoning will cling better to the irregular surface. For nagaimo, this process gives a nice crunchy texture (chunks) with a grated texture along the edges of the chunks.  We like this combination of the textures very much.

One more additional step was called for in preparing the tuna. After a few hours of marinading, I sandwiched it between hydrated kelp which is called "Kobujime" 昆布締め. This is usually done for white meat fish but as per the recipe I added this step.  I did this for 1 hour. Before cutting the tuna in into smaller cubes.

We really liked this version of yamakake. We are not sure "kobujime" process really added much though. In any case, this was definitely wroth trying again (hopefully with better quality tuna sashimi).

Sous Vide chicken salad with mango for lunch マンゴー入り低温調理鶏胸肉サラダ

I regularly make sous vide chicken breast. Using skin-on and bone-in split breast, sous vide at 140F for 4 hours produces really good moist chicken. Most of the time, I ice it down in the cooking pouch and use it for chicken salad or just for sandwiches. If you do not open the pouch and keep it in the meat drawer, it will last for at least 2 weeks. I did not describe the chicken salad recipe accurately in the previous post. I add some fruit to this curry flavored chicken salad. The original recipe calls for grapes and cantaloupe which makes a wonderful salad. I did not have grapes or cantaloupe this time but had champagne mango, I added to this to the salad and it went extremely well. This was a weekend lunch.

We served my potato salad (Instead of Yukon gold, I am using Russet potato recently) and cheesy muffin with prosciutto and chives.

I added thinly sliced cucumber, salted with the moisture squeezed out and lightly dressed with sushi vinegar before mixing it into the potato salad.

I removed the skin and deboned the sous vide chicken breast (I also removed the tenderloin for another dish) then cut it into bite sized cubes. The dressing is the same as before; mixture of mayo, Greek yogurt, mango chutney, curry powder, and lemon juice. Since the dressing included mango chutney, I thought adding mango to the salad may work. So, I added champagne (yellow) mango cut into small cubes.

This worked well. The dressing is sweet and sour with curry flavor (although not hot despite a large amount of curry powder used due to the Greek yogurt and mayo) which is echoed in the taste of mango (more sweet than sour). This was a really good satisfying lunch.

Italian-style octopus salad and more small dishes イタリアンたこサラダ

This is a variation on the theme of Italian-style squid salad イタリアンイカサラダ. To use up boiled octopus legs, I made this salad one evening. The dressing is made with rice vinegar, Dijon mustard and olive oil seasoned with salt and black pepper.

For vegetables, thinly sliced Vidalia onion, American mini-cucumber, finely chopped celery, skinned Campari tomatoes, Kalamata olive on the bed of our home grown arugula. Like squid salad, this is a good combination and a rather healthy starter.

We then proceeded with our usual suspects of small appetizer dishes.

This is cold tofu or "Hiyayakko" 冷や奴. I changed the topping with bonito flakes, finely chopped scallion, "ikura" salmon roe and blanched edible chrysanthemum all dressed with concentrated noodle sauce.'

This is the last of Chinese-style squid salad 中華風イカサラダ (store-bought).

This is Spanish Mackerel simmered in miso sauce サバの味噌煮 I made a few days ago with a side of blanched broccoli. I just warmed them up by microwaving for 15 seconds. Once I make this, we can usually stretch it out for about 10 days storing it in the refrigerator. This is always a good-to-have item.

We still had left over gyoza 餃子 I made and store-bought fish cake. Sugar snaps are blanched, cooled in ice water and soaked in Japanese dashi broth seasoned with salt スナップ豌豆の塩びたし.

We really like to have many small dishes with many different taste and textures.

Salmon and avocado cubes and Yamahai sake 鮭とアボカドの角切と山廃純米酒

Most of the mid-West and Eastern U.S. are having very hot and humid summer days. One of these very hot weekends, I decided to go grocery shopping early in the day to avoid the mid-day heat. At our gourmet grocery store, which opened up just before I arrived, the sushi case had only a few items prepared. One of them was tuna and salmon sashimi. So I got a package intending to serve it for the evening. Both sashimi were rather thickly sliced. Since I happened to have Japanese nagaimo 長芋, I decided make "Yamakake" 山かけ from the tuna (left in the picture below)  and make  a variation of tuna and avocado cubes using salmon cubes (which would make it salmon and avocado cubes) (right in the picture below).

Since the tuna was yellowfin tuna キハダマグロ, I marinated it after I cut it into  small cubes in concentrated Japanese "men-tsuyu" noodle sauce 麺つゆ for several hours in the refrigerator to make it taste better.  I seasoned grated nagaimo or "tororo" とろろ with wasabi dissolved in soy sauce,  and placed the tuna on top after draining the excess marinade. I garnished it with strips of nori (I served more nori on the side). This is, of course, is a very common way to serve tuna and nagaimo and we both really like it. We added more nori as we enjoyed this dish.

Since I had limes, after I cut avocado into small cubes, I dressed the cubes with lime juice to prevent discoloration. Cubes of salmon were also marinated in Japanese concentrated noodle sauce in exactly same way as the tuna. I dressed them with finely chopped garlic, dark sesame oil and soy sauce and garnished it with chiffonade of perilla and finely chopped scallion. Since the salmon was much fattier than the tuna, it did not absorb the marinade as much but, over all, this dish really worked. Both the salmon and avocado had a similar oily texture.

As a third dish, I served  4 items on the small plate. Only one that is slightly new is the chicken tenderloin dressed in soy sauce, yuzu-kosho 柚子胡椒 and finely chopped edible chrysanthemum 春菊 (blanched, which I happened to have). The chicken tenderloin was removed from sous vide chicken breast. This was very good. The chrysanthemum gave a slightly bitter taste and went well with the moist tenderloin and yuzu-kosho flavor.

The remaining three items are "our usual suspects", Japanese dashi-maki omelet 青海苔入りだし巻きwith aonori, sugar snap blanched and soaked in salt-seasoned Japanese dashi broth スナップ豌豆の塩びたし, and simmered taro 里芋の煮付け.

This evening, we tried a new sake (although we had it before in Japan). It is Tengumai but not "daiginjo". This is Yamahai Junmai 山廃純米天狗舞. The label has a formal name of this old way of making sake 山卸廃止酛仕込(やまおろしはいしもとしこみ). Compared to our new house sake Tengumai daiginjo 天狗舞大吟醸, this is a quite different sake. I think we had this for the first time when we visited Kanazawa 4 years ago. This sake is savory/rich and dry and has earthy/mushroomy background flavor. Some sake expert suggested that this sake should not be served refrigerator cold but at room temperature and suggested the taste will change as it warms up. I took this bottle out a few hours prior to tasting for that reason. It has a nice golden hue (as opposed to clear as in daiginjo). In general, we prefer clean, fruity and dry sake (daiginjo profile), but we liked this sake. It has much more characters and is not too yeasty like other jumai sake can be. We got this sake from a new sake-specialized internet merchant called "Tippsy sake". I will post more about this place in more details in the near future.

Zucchini muffin ズキニマフィン

I was not familiar with zucchini when I arrived in U.S. many years ago. (I wasn't the only one who didn't recognize zucchini. When my mother came for a visit and I made fried zucchini, she asked me why I was frying the cucumber). To me, even now, I find it it to be a rather taste-less vegetable. So when I encountered "zucchini bread", I did not quite understand the idea of putting this vegetable in bread. For that matter, carrot cake was also strange to me. Why put vegetables in cake?  But I learned that both zucchini bread and carrot cake are really good. You really do not taste the vegetable (especially zuccchini) but it makes a very moist cake and bread without adding too much fat or eggs. (I also surmise that this would be a good vegetable delivery system for kids since they would be eating vegetables without knowing it). My wife got zucchini and egg plant and I made ratatouille  as per her request but we had one more zucchini left so my wife decided to make zucchini muffins (using a zucchini bread recipe from "Beard on Bread").

If you would like to hide the fact it has vegetables, you could peel the green skin but we did not.  You can see some green zucchini and walnuts. Walnuts definitely add taste and texture in a very positive way.

The picture below shows them just as they came out of the oven and the muffin tins.

Ingredients (for 12 muffins):
3 eggs
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups grated raw zucchini (#1 and 2)
3 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups AP flour
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 cup coarsely chopped (toasted) walnuts

Directions.
Beat the eggs until light and foamy. Add the sugar, oil, zucchini and vanilla and mix. (This appears to be the "secret" of this bread. In effect it is an emulsion of the eggs, sugar and oil--almost a sweet mayonnaise #3.) Combine the flour, salt, baking powder and soda, cinnamon and add to the egg-zucchini mixture. Stir until well blended (#4), add nuts. Using an ice cream scope fill the muffin tin (#5). Bake pre-heated 400F oven for 22 minutes (#6). (For loaf, two 9x5x3 inch loaf pans and bake at 350F for one hour). Let the muffins cool a bit and remove from the muffin tins to finish cooling (#7 & #8)

This is a really great muffin. It is very moist and not too sweet (my wife reduced the sugar). The egg sugar emulsion results in a very nice texture. The nuts provide an additional flavor as well as texture. These are perfect for breakfast.

”Otsumami” appetizer snacks 酒の肴（おつまみ）

This is another rendition of the appetizer snacks we had. I went to our Japanese grocery store the day before which made serving many small dishes easy. I used small lidded bowls and small crane plate we got from Nishiki marker 錦市場 in Kyoto 京都 sometime ago.

We both get filled up quickly so I try to serve small portions. In small bowls from left to right are cold tofu or hiyayakko 冷や奴, grated "Tororo" nagaimo とろろ with "ikura" salmon roe and "Chinese -style" squid salad 中華風イカサラダ

On the black rectangular plate are boiled octopus leg thinly sliced with sumiso sauce タコの酢味噌, my usual dashi-maki Japanese omelet with aonori sea weed 青海苔だし巻き玉子, store bought small fish cake re-heated in the toaster oven.

The gyoza 餃子 I made a few days ago heated up in the toaster oven (skin becomes really crispy) cut in half with a small amount of Ponzu sauce ポン酢 poured into them. This replaces the separate dipping sauce and makes it a bit easier to eat the gyoza.

This store-bought boiled squid salad with Chinese flavors.

This is grated nagaimo (which is called "Tororo"とろろ). I dissolved wasabi into soy sauce and mixed into tororo and topped it with ikura and chiffonade of perilla.

 This is cold silken tofu. I added blanched edible chrysanthemum 春菊. Instead of straight soy sauce I dressed it with concentrated noddle sauce and topped it with bonito flakes かつお節.

We had these small dishes with our house cold sake "tengumai" daiginjo 天狗舞大吟醸. Nothing really new here but very enjoyable.