Anna N

I debated for all of 3 Nano seconds and then chopped it up and put it on top of the rolls. I happen to love cabbage and I will find a way to use it I am sure. I had hoped to make the cabbage do double duty. I intended to make cabbage rolls and gyoza. Napa cabbage would be better but green cabbage works. But I had become quite bored with this one.

4 to 4 1/2 pound chickens? Small? Up here we called those ostriches.

So the cabbage rolls are made and are in the Instant Pot coming up to pressure. I found it easier to make neat cabbage rolls with the frozen cabbage leaves but found it less easy to shave the central vein. Cold hands and knives are not good companions! I would do it this way again, that is freezing the cabbage, but take it out of the freezer the day before so it has plenty of time to defrost. Working with icy cold cabbage leaves does not rate highly with me. I have only shown six of the rolls but it actually made probably twice as many.

I don’t think the method is designed to do anything more than simply soften up the cabbage leaves to allow them to be rolled. Don’t know much about the science but I believe the freezing breaks down the cell walls and makes the leaves more malleable.

Very similar to a gyoza filling. Definitely your idea of a drizzle is worth serious consideration. I do wish that copyright was not a consideration as I would love to post a photograph of the cabbage rolls served up in the book, Practical Japanese Cooking. Traditional (western) serving of cabbage rolls does not lend itself it at all to being eaten with chopsticks! Tsuji shows it served beautifully sliced and accompanied by julienned snow peas on a gorgeous piece of Japanese tableware.

Lunch was an amazing nectarine. The pit was scraped clean of all flesh while I was hanging over the kitchen sink. List maker extraordinaire.

Production is proceeding at a snail’s pace as I suspected it would. One has to learn to modify one’s expectations as one ages and becomes more decrepit Nevertheless things are proceeding. The frozen cabbage is now on the counter supposedly defrosting. According to my reading and research this should happen within about two hours. Not sure which time/temperature zone that might be in, but certainly not here. The filling is made and has been tested and declared tasty (by me): So tasty in fact that I was tempted to say forget the Japanese cabbage rolls and let’s just have pork burgers! But I do enough squirreling so it’s time to stick with the program. The seasonings include grated carrot, grated onion; minced, reconstituted shiitake mushrooms, soy sauce, salt and black pepper (could not find the white pepper). Of interest to me is that in the “land of rice” none of the various recipes I consulted called for its inclusion. It seems to be pretty standard in European versions of cabbage rolls. A few Japanese versions did call for tomato in one form or another. This went from an actual tomato sauce down to a drizzle of tomato kerchup down the middle of each roll. More relied on some combination of dashi, chicken stock and/or shiitake soaking water. Even Shizuo Tsuji (Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art) has a recipe for cabbage rolls, Japanese style, for those who doubt that the dish anything to do with the cuisine of Japan. His version calls for ground chicken rather than ground pork otherwise his is very similar to the recipe I chose to modify. Edited to add: Not sure if the recipe is in the book I cited. It is definitely in his other book, Practical Japanese Cooking, co-authored with Koichiro Hata. Just in case anyone is madly searching for it.

I certainly do this even noting the number of each item of clothing. Not quite so obsessed with grocery lists, usually. But it depends. Once in a while I catch a serious dose of “I really need to be more organized” and then look out.

Good morning. The sun valiantly tries to break through but I think the clouds are winning this round. Kerry has gone off to rounds in the hospital and then will drive down to work in Wiki for the day. Toasted BLT on white with Hellmann’s of course. (But I have re-added Miracle Whip to the shopping list in the interest of family harmony.) My ambitions are writ large this morning but I don’t think I will share them until I have some reason to believe that they will actually happen. The best laid plans and all that. First, though, I need a 2nd cup of coffee while I write out a couple of lists. Sometimes it seems that if it doesn’t appear on a list, it never happens.

Thanks. New bananas are not ripe enough. Old bananas are too ripe. No Goldilocks bananas available.

This is why we have sous vide! Blade roast sous vided from frozen for 30 hours at 57°C! Grilled romaine lightly dressed with a sherry vinegar vinaigrette.

Tonight’s cocktail: Not A Pompadour! (notice I am doing my share drinking that disgusting rum!)

Definitely takes the sport out of it. I have always found just lifting the punnet off the counter in the supermarket and placing it in my cart is as much exercise as I need to get my share of blackberries or any other fruit for that matter.

I am sure if there were decent cherries we would not have found ourselves with bananas.

Thank you, but two sage averse diners here!

And here’s a photo from last summer. They don’t stay small and cute very long!

Eggs (from Pike Lake Farms) so fresh they were still in utero this morning! 3 dozen should last us a few days. More flour. Lots more flour. And I asked Kerry to grab me 3 pieces of fruit. Fresh fruit was in short supply. Should have told her “bananas don’t count”! But I will doctor them up and between me and Kira (who likes bananas) we will survive. And then there is always banana bread.

Japanese cabbage rolls are right up there and the cabbage is in the freezer awaiting my attention.

Given that we now have in total 5 pounds of ground pork and you sound excited about it, perhaps you could share what you do with it, eh?

Are you kidding me? We are far too polite for such antics.

It would be a stretch for me. I think this might have been the first cocktail I had. I was goody-two-shoes so I was probably in my 30s before I had my first cocktail.

Last Mango in ... ( damn I can’t find a word that makes sense and rhymes with Paris!).

Just barely got dinner finished when Kerry was called back into emergency for yet another fishhook attached to human flesh!

Strangely, blueberries just don’t do it for me. I definitely think they are one fruit that is better cooked than not and even then it must work hard for my attention.

Dinner: de-knuckled, ginger and garlic chicken drumsticks with an asparagus, green bean, bacon and egg salad dressed with a dijon vinaigrette.