jkonick

One of my favorite seafoods is eel, and I'm lucky enough to have a few good sources for fresh ones, so I make Japanese and Chinese style eel pretty often. I picked one up today and decided to try cooking it in a non-Asian style, but I don't know of any recipes. Help me out here! Thanks!

Tsukune stuffed with shiso and ume, tongue

Seared with dipped in ponzu or raw as sushi. Mmmmm... nice marbling on that. I can get wagyu in Seattle but the marbling is never that good.

I finally made it up to Pita Star yesterday - wow! Great shawarma, it was exactly like the stuff I had in Israel. Good condiment bar, lots of different pickles to top your shawarma/falafel with. The pitas were great too, in fact, better than some of the pitas I had in Israel. My only problem was the meat - it wasn't cooked on a spit, and it was a turkey/lamb mixture which I think made it a little dry. The falafel was good too, although I'm not a huge falafel fan. Also picked up some rugelach, which was yummy. Pam R - no lemonana, although the woman who worked there told me that there were two places (Sabra's and something like Ovitsky's - I can't remember) that sold Pigat juice in Vancouver, and they make lemonana so I'm crossing my fingers. I'll have to check it out next time I'm up there, which hopefully will be soon...

Thanks again everyone! Hiroyuki: the anko was domestic I think. I like both kinds, just happened to pick up kushi an this time. Sazji: We did try the winter mountain tea. It was great. By far my favorite. hzrt8w: I haven't tried making them before, but they've got to be easier than har gow anyway. Sandy: Arigato gozaimasu! Thanks again. It was a great week, and worth waiting through two months of school and being busy to do.

Alright, it's 12:06 so this is the official end of the blog. Thanks everyone, it's been a great week, and I am now very full! I don't think I'll have to eat for a week now (although I will anyway ). It's been nice to do nothing but eat and cook (and work a little too), and I'm glad to have been able to share all of it with you. I decided this blog should finish with a dessert, and given the Japanese theme, nothing could be more appropriate than wagashi, or traditional Japanese sweets. The ones I made are called yomogi daifuku, or mugwort flavored daifuku. Daifuku are mochi cakes filled with something, usually anko, or sweetened red bean paste. Anko has a great fudge like texture and flavor. I used two different kinds of mochiko (mochi flour) for them: mugwort flavored shiratamako, on the left, and jyoshinko, on the right. I used 1/4 cup jyoshinko, and 3/4 cup shiratamako, mixed with one cup water, stirred together and microwaved for two minutes until it got a sticky, doughy consistency. Afterward I kneaded it a few times until smooth. To make the daifuku, you roll out a little piece about an inch and a half wide, and put a ball of anko in the middle, then close it up by pinching the edges together. It's not so different from the chive and shrimp dumplings I made a few days ago. Dessert is served! Thanks again!

Sandy, those are pretty small, about an ounce each. They're individual servings. Tillamook is great; my family goes to the Oregon coast every year for vacation, and we always visit the Tillamook factory. If you can get your hands on their super old white cheddar, I'd highly reccomend it. Best grilled cheese sandwich ever. I'm pretty we get cabot out here too, I've seen it before. Cheese in an Asian dish may sound strange, but mochi and cheese is a pretty common Japanese combo, albeit a new one. Newer Japanese foods use a surprising amount of cheese, some better than others. I've personally never been a huge fan of fish cakes with a nacho sauce-like brie filling My final meal of the blog, and it's more like three meals, because I wanted this one to count. I made the oden which I showed you earlier this week. Here are all the different fish cakes. I'm not sure what they all are, but there's one potato one that tastes EXACTLY like an oden version of latkes. I kid you not. My personal favorite is the pouch looking one - the pouch is made from deep fried tofu (abura age) and it's filled with mochi. The mochi melts inside as it cooks, and you get a great gooey, melty, fried tofu concoction as a result. Mmmmmm... I also made myself some turnip cakes, which I bought premade at Viet-Wah. All you have to do is pan fry them until they're browned on each side. They were ok. Not as good as Jade Garden's, but for something prepackaged it was a pretty good dim sum fix. While I was waiting for those two to cook, I made myself some udon mentaiko. Udon are thick Japanese noodles, and mentaiko is a mixture of fish eggs and chilies. It has a great spicy/briny flavor, and it's good on udon. I also like it on squid sliced into thin strips with some shiso, or perilla leaves (a Japanese plant in the basil family). This has shredded nori on top. Oden And egg nog straight from the carton, to wash it all down. The blog's not quite done yet... I have one sweet surprise left before midnight.

Eden: I've actually made aebelskiver in that pan befor,e they turned out pretty well! In fact, when I bought it, my mom asked why I bought an aebelskiver pan.

I pretty much always have rice going in my rice cooker, it's my major form of starch (I can't remember the lasat time I even bought bread). I make miso soup from time to time, but I don't eat it as often. I don't know why... There are some Japanese eating customs that I just don't do, like eating soup and rice with everything. In America, a meal is usually just a couple of main dishes, nothing like rice or soup that always goes along with them, and I think that influences how I eat Japanese food, I tend to eat more in the American style As far as alcoholic dirnks go, I haven't had that much experience with sake, so I can't really say. I prefer European wine to sake, although really good sake that's very smooth and has an almost floral smell to it is great. I like ume shu a lot. I haven't had shochu before though. I'm not 21, which is the legal drinking age here, so I don't have too much experience. I do like Japanese beer too, especially Sapporo.

This week has gone by so fast, it's hard to believe I'm already on the last day of this blog. This morning I met up with some other eGulleteers for dim sum at Jade Garden, which in my opinion has the best dim sum in Seattle. I got there a little late (set my alarm clock for 10 PM instead of AM... whoops), but I caught up pretty quickly Starting from the dumpling on teh top and going clockwise: har gow, which are the same things I made earlier this week, shumai, spare ribs in black bean sauce, cha siu (roasted pork) in flaky pastry, cheung fan, which are rice noodle sheets steamed and filled with shrimp, and tripe with jalapenos. Not pictured are some turnip cakes, which I ate before I got my camera out. This is an interesting dim sum item. It was fried tofu, shrimp and enoki mushrooms wrapped in seaweed. It was pretty good, although it kind of fell apart and I don't care much for the wet seaweed texture. More dim sum (sorry for the dark pictures): tofu and crab wrapped in cabbage, chicken feet and more spare ribs. Seaweed wrap, steamed cha siu bao, chicken's foot and xiao long bao, which is a very interesting dumpling. It's filled with pork and ginger, along with a broth which is in gelatin form when it goes in, so it turns back to liquid when it's cooked and pops in your mouth. These were great. These are the same as the shrimp and chive dumplings I tried making Congee, a Chinese rice porridge, with green onions, pork and 100 year eggs After lunch, we went to a tea place down the street, I think called Seattle's Best Tea (Connie - correct me on any info if I'm wrong here). We tried about ten diffeerent teas and were there for about an hour and a half. It was quite a marathon, and one of my first forays into the world of "real" Chinese tea. If you haven't tried high quality tea, I would encourage you to do so. The differences in types, growing regions and seasons are just as varied and complex as wine, as is the fragrance and flavor. This was a winter high mountain tea, that had just come in. Here's the whole set up - lots of different tea pots for different teas, and all sorts of other tea utensils In between each tea the cups were rinsed out with hot water I forget which tea this was... but it was good! We tried each tea several times, noting the differences in steepings - most teas were steeped four or five times, and the flavor changed each time. Some became more floral after a couple steepings, others more astringent. This is jasmine bead tea. Those little balls are tea leaves that have been infused with jasmine, and they unroll as they sit in the hot water. This is another Jasmine tea that starts off as a big ball. Watch as it blooms into a flower. It's very cool to see; it took about two minutes to fully open. The flavor was interesting - not a heavy tea flavor, very floral with an almost creamy vanilla flavor. This last one was I believe some sort of fermented tea (oolong maybe?). It was very good. It had a burnt/coffee/chocolate smell to it, very rich, and flavor was similar but surprisingly sweet.

I didn't know that! Well, I was a day late so maybe I'll just get one cold anyway

If you're interested in any of the specifics of Japanese dishes I've posted in this blog, check out this cookbook, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art, which is where most of my recipes come from. it's probably the best Japanese cookbook in English out there. This is what went into the korokke, satsuma imo (Japanese sweet potatoes) and kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) Mackerel preparation #1: marinated in soy sauce, sake, mirin and grated ginger then deep fried. As you can probably tell, almost all Japanese foods and sauces are based around only a few flavorings: sake, mirin, soy sauce, dashi and miso are some of the most common. The thing I love about Japanese food is that it has so few ingredients, yet it takes advantage of all of them, letting everything shine through in its simplicity. Sweet potatoes and kabocha are done cooking, and have been mashed up with butter and a little milk. They are then coated with egg and panko, and deep fried Kabocha preparation #2: simmered in soy sauce, dashi and mirin. In Japanese cooking, a lid is often put over food while simmering that doesn't cover it all the way, but rests on top. I don't have one, so I made an impromptu one out of tin foil. Here are the two finished dishes, with my fanciest presentation (although really how fancy can korokke be?? ) I like to keep a little of the skin on the squash, because it's edible, and it adds a nice color and texture contrast. I don't know if it's traditional or not, but I also like tonkatsu sauce on my korokke. I love the sweet and salty combo, hence why I also love kabocha korokke. Here's the mackerel. One is deep fried, the other is salt grilled. Sprinkled a little salt on it and let it sit for about 20 minutes, then washed it off. Broiled for about five minutes on each side. Served both mackerels with ponzu, a citrus/vinegar sauce/dip/dressing... thing. Whatever it is, it's great with mackerel

Here are some pictures of my takoyaki grill in action with some mochi cheese takoyaki, but from a couple months ago actually: This batter, as you can see, had tenkasu (those little tempura batter balls) in it, the lumpy stuff

Ok, picture catch up time. Last night I decided not to make the soon dubu, but made some nasu dengaku, or eggplant with miso sauce. Dengaku is the method, used with other things like tofu, of spreading a miso sauce on top of something grilled, then broiling it with the sauce. Sometimes there is a flavoring added to the miso sauce. For mine, I added some of this seaweed and mushroom paste that I picked up on a reccomendation from Shalmanese. It gave it a nice subtle seaweed flavor. This is the sauce. It has miso, egg yolks, mirin (sweetened sake, traditionally made from glutinous rice, but now mostly made synthetically and sweetened with corn syrup), sake, dashi (Japanese seaweed and fish shaving [same stuff that was on the okonomiyaki] broth) and a little sugar. I added in the seaweed paste at the last minute. All put together Now for the takoyaki. Like I said, I like mine with mochi and cheese, cut up into little squares and put in the middle. Here they are naked, fresh out of the pan Can you spot them beneath all the toppings? Same stuff as okonomiyaki, plus beni shoga (the red stuff, pickled ginger). This morning I went to Salumi for lunch, a place which has probably been featured in every Seattleite's food blog. They make some of the best cured (and non cured) meats in the world, and today was their last day open before Christmas. They open around ten or eleven, and at one o'clock, the line was still out the door. When we left around 2, it was still just as long. Specials of the day Usually this case is full of all sorts of hanging meats, but as you can see, most of them are boxed up and ready to be shipped out as gifts. Specials of the day, and a few last lonely meats. I meant to get the rum cake, but in my excitement over the hot meat plate, I forgot... This was my lunch, the hot meat plate. From right to left: meatballs, cotecchino which is, according to Salumi's website (www.salumicuredmeats.com) "A traditional product of Emilia Romagna and Northern Italy. This is made from pork meat and the skin of the Pig - flavored with salt, and spices including vanilla." It's also delicious , grilled lamb and porchetta, one of my favorite things at Salumi, roasted pork. Also came with bread and a roasted red pepper. Somehow, I managed to finish the whole thing. Eden had the porchetta sandwich, which I didn't get a picture of, but it's the same thing as my porchetta but with more bread. I also had a Limonata, not pictured here. On my way back I stopped at a grocery store in Chinatown (Salumi is on the outer edge of Pioneer Square, which borders on Chinatown) and picked up a can of Thai tea. This brand is my favorite, it's the most creamy and has the best flavor. Plus it comes in these giant cans I just got back now from a five mile run, and I think I've sufficiently attoned for my porcine sins. After some last minute Christmas shopping, I'm going to make dinner, two ingredients four ways: kabocha steamed and made into korokke (Japanese croquettes) and mackerel with ginger and salt grilled.

Ok Finally got the pictures figured out. Here's the bulgogi (sorry if this + others are a little blurry, I'm borrowing my parents' camera and I'm still getting the hang of it) Second, and more successful attempt at har gow. I need a rolling pin though (I just used the flat side of a cleaver to smash them down). Ethiopean lunch. I don't know the names of all these dishes, but the rolled up thing on the left side is injera, the big thing in the middle is fish, and going from top to bottom, the stews are collard greens, miser wot I believe, okra, yellow lentils and more collard greens or some other type of greens at the bottom. Here's a lamb rib stew. SheenaGreena, what does this remind you of? The minute I saw it, I thought "hey! Ethiopean kalbi!" Shalmanese with said bull parts Now I'm off to meet up with Eden for lunch at the famous Salumi...

Ahhh!!! Still no go on imagegullet, so use your imaginations here folks. MarketStEl - no problem, you're welcome! The restaurant actually hasn't been around too long - only since March. Our oven is wood fueled only, and we use apple wood. I don't know too many other specs, ask me if you have any other questions though. MizDucky - glad to give you a taste of your old stomping grounds. And ok ok, I like latkes... maybe matzoh ball soup. But come on, kishka? Borscht? Blech. It's true though, we Ashkenazis love our Asian food. My obsession is in part to the numerous dim sum trips with my Jewish side of the family I had as a kid. I too have ignored largely Seattle's Ethiopean restaurants, but living up the street from a few, I've got to take advantage. Miser wot, a red lentil stew, is one of my favorite foods. I could eat it for days. Don't forsee a Thai Tom trip though, I don't make it out to the U District when school's not in session. I went over ot my parents' house again tonight to help wrap Christmas presents, and ate a fair amount of peanut butter fudge in the process. A few peppermint nougats too. I'll take pictures but I'm not going to upload them until later, but I'm about to make some soon dubu (still no kimchi, sorry SheenaGreena!!) and takoyaki. Soon dubu is a kind of Korean tofu soup (dubu = tofu in Korean). It is mainly tofu, broth and red pepper powder, and people usually add seafood or meat in too. I don't have any of that, so mine's just plain. I also like to add a little kochujang - Korean fermented hot sauce - in for an extra level of spiciness. Takoyaki is sort of similar to okonomiyaki. The batter is more or less the same, and so are the toppings, but instead of being a pancake, it's cooked in a special pan with half circle indentations, to create little things that look like donut holes. Instead of cabbage, there are pieces of octopus inside (tako = octopus in Japanese). However, I like my takoyaki with cheese and mochi in the middle instead, it's a nice gooey combo. So I guess it's chiizumochiyaki?

For some reason imagegullet isn't acknowledging that I uploaded any new pictures so you'll all have to go with just text updates for now. This morning I remade the har gow, this time using both tapioca starch and wheat starch. The recipe said the tapioca starch would help make sealing the dumplings easier, but I didn't notice much of a different. I rolled them out thinner this time, so the consistency was better but I"m not sure whether or not that had to do with the additon of tapioca starch. For lunch, I met up with Shalmanese, and we went out to an Ethiopean restaurant in my neighborhood called Saba. For those of you who haven't had Ethiopean food before, it's pretty similar to Indian food - a lot of heavily spiced stews and curries, many based on lentils. Collard greens are also used pretty often, as is lamb and beef. When we went they had a buffet set up, with three different kinds of lentil stew, an okra dish, a lamb rib dish, a spicy baked whole fish thing, and a raw beef dish. To eat along with it, we got injera, which is a kind of Ethiopean bread that is somewhat sour, and very thin, almost like a crepe. It is used to pick up the food instead of utensils. After lunch we headed over to Viet-Wah to look for various things, where we found a bull's penis and testicles (don't worry - there are pictures). Then another trip back to Uwajimaya to pick up some more things I probably didn't need. I still don't have everything I want together for the shawarma, so I don't think I'll be making that in this blog, but when I do get around to it I'll post on the Middle East forum. I have a few things up my sleeve planned for dinner tonight, so hopefully I'll have enough room in my stomach for all of them.

Nope, I learned on the job. My only previous restaurant experience was Subway

Lifetime are great, they're probably my all time favorite band. Hello Bastards is a near perfect album. Ok, enough off topic music talk. Abra, I have tried one of those three (the salad at Green Leaf) and it is indeed great. I'll have to try the other two - I love the szechuan whole fish at 7 Stars, I'll have to try the crab. Tonight was back to work, and I took some pictures. Here's something I bet you don't miss, sazji, the rain Here's a quick intro to the staff. Martin and Derek, pizza cooks Alex, the GM This is our oven, which is fueled by applewood We do more cafe business during the day, here's the coffee stuff and menu The dish pit and walk in. These are the only things in teh back of the restaurant; we have an open kitchen, which is pretty small. Beware of the office... Four nights a week, for seven hours a night, this is my home. Welcome to the pantry station This is one of our pizzas, the Pinocchio. This one was a little burnt so the staff got to eat it This was my dinner for the night, the cheese plate. Prosciutto wrapped pears, gorgonzola cheese, marcona almonds, chevre and arugula, parmagiano reggiano with reduced balsamic and olive oil, and fresh mozzarella. It was a busy night and I got tired so I decided to take a nap on some towels... Tossing dough Catching dough Whoops, missed that one... And that's an average night at Mioposto. When I got home, I made myself some bulgogi... I got a picture but I'll upload that tomorrow.

It is Chinese cabbage. What kind is normally used? From what I've seen in pictures I thought that was the norm. I totally forgot about the beni shoga, I don't know how. Too many toppings! I usually put tenkasu in the batter (is that wrong? most of my knowledge of making okonomiyaki comes from the pictures on the back of packages, since I can't read Japanese), but I was all out this time Sheena, I think you've inspired me to make some takoyaki in the next few days. Also, try okonomiyaki with kimchi, it's good and sort of Korean.

Today it's okonomiyaki for lunch, since several people have seemed interested in it. For those who don't know, okonomiyaki is a kind of Japanese cabbage pancake (that doesn't sound very appealing, but among the numerous things it's been called or compared to in English, I think that's the best) filled with basically whatever ingredients you want (okonomiyaki literally means "whatever you want/like grilled), and topped with okonomiyaki sauce, a thick worcerstershire based sauce, katsuo-bushi, which are shavings from dried bonito, and ao-nori, a kind of seaweed. I remember someone asking a few pages back why theirs was so dense - it's probably because one of the ingredients in okonomiyaki that makes it so fluffy is a kind of Japanese yam that's grated into the b atter. Personally, I just use a batter mix that already has it in it, and that works pretty well. You also have to be sure not to use too much batter - I've found that using just enough to coat the ingredients well is enough. Here's what went into mine: mochi, kabocha squash, an egg, cabbage, okonomiyaki mix and pork Here's the mix pre-cook With the pork on top. Usually some kind of fatty pork like bacon is used, but I didn't have any so I just used this really thinly sliced pork. And the toppings... The stuff in the bottle is tonkatsu sauce, which is similar enough to okonomiyaki sauce, and all I had. The green stuff is ao-nori seaweed, and the other stuff is the dried bonito shavings. Usually people also put mayonnaise on it, but I hate mayo so none for me. Sans toppings With a fried egg, yolk uncooked so it can get all mixed in with the rest of the ingredients And now with the rest of the condiments I'm off to work in an hour or so, where I will take lots of pictures and you might even be able to see me tossing some pizza if you're lucky...

For dessert tonight, I had a piece of lemon cake and something my little sister made - a popsicle dipped in apple sauce (I give her credit for originality anyway) Now I'm eating a few pieces of fudge, which my mom makes in huge batches every year to give away as gifts, and finishing off the last of the lemonana.

Sheena - you've been approved. Once you get a handle of facebook you'll realize its superiority. Little ms. foodie - I actually prefer Saigon Deli, but I had tons of groceries and about a mile to walk and Bahn Mi 88 was closer Tonight was latkes at my parents' house for dinner. Here's my perfected lemonana - lemons and limes, sugar and a few stalks of mint leaves. It was good, but the mint flavor wasn't quite strong enough... I think I'll try the blended version, that seems like it would be mintier. Latke mix - two onions, six potatoes, four tablespoons matzoh meal, a little salt and pepper and two eggs. I delegated my brother to peeling duty. As my mom would say, it's a "Christmas mitzvah." Shmaltz, sweet shmaltz In they go! This picture's kind of hard to see, but it's a menu my seven year old sister made. Tonight's special: lotcase. Finished latkes staying warm in the oven Lighting the menorah And to finish it off, a true Konick family Christmakkuh: watching A Charlie Brown Christmas in the light of the Christmas tree and menorah. After about six latkes I'm not sure what the har gow redo future is looking like tonight, but I'll be up late so you never know...

As an aside, I made a group on facebook for eGullet, so if you're on facebook, you can join here: http://washington.facebook.com/group.php?g...24322207&ref=mf

Fun to see you blogging jkonick, and to see more about a part of town I don't know as well! If you didn't find schmaltz I can testify from recent experimentation that duck fat works really well for latkes, we liked it even better than bacon fat ← My mom said she was going to the Albertson's over on Mercer Island (which carries tons of Jewish foods, as there's a large Jewish population there) so she picked up a container of shmaltz for me. I actually did have some duck fat but I just used the last of it up a week or so ago.