Part two of my riveting tale of my climb to cooking glory!
I've been working on making some kind of cheese sauce since I got here. I've used a basic version to make mac and cheese, and the white sauce base for making a hamburger helper type dish. Well today I decided to make philly cheesesteaks. Cheesesteaks have two important ingredients. Steak and cheese. Everything else is just a condiment. Steak? Half off again from the grocery store, big check.
Cheese on the other hand is a harder thing to come by. No processed american cheese in Fuji. No good cheddar either. I had to use some cheese that makes Kroger cheese look gourmet. White sauce, it turns out, is easy to make with just milk and flour. Plus, by leaving out the butter, it's a little bit better for you. Win win. Adding 120 grams of crappy cheese to white sauce doesn't actually turn out a very strong cheese-flavored sauce, but it was all I could find. It was edible, and tasted vaguely like cheese. I sure miss good 5 year cheddar though.
After the delicious cheesesteaks, I decided to make some dip out of what was left. Add a little salsa, you've got nachos. 4 dollar corn chips never tasted so good.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A taste of the Mediterranian
I bought this meat last week. It was beef. On clearance. I thought it was about 1/4 inch thick slices (they sell all kinds of presliced beef and pork here, since they don't do roasting or grilling very often, all pan frying or boiling). It was on its last day yesterday, so I had to do something.
I remembered my mother used to make gyros out of random meat she had, so that's what I decided to do. I wasn't really sure how to make them, and there are a bunch of different styles. I settled on winging it, just making up my own seasoning as I went. I knew that there was rosemary and oregano, that's the base of every gyro I've had. Garlic is a must in greek food, so I added powder and freezedried varieties. I've had a few types that were heavy on the sage, so tossed in a heavy sprinkle of that. Cumin adds a nice flover to them as well, so in it went. I read somewhere to add basil, but the flavor of basil is far too "sweet" for something like this, so I ignored that. I remember tasting a gyro at a greek diner, and it was pundgent, sour/bitter almost. I looked around some more, and found that vinegar is a standard ingredient in traditional greek cooking. And I had my gyros.
They don't sell pitabread where I live, but one store has bread that vaguely resembles hot dog buns. That would suffice for my first attempt. I should've added real garlic, and some sliced onions, but I was feeling rather lazy, and I was trying to get it cooked in a hurry. Next time. It turned out really good. It needed the onions, but Andrea liked it fine for her first try of this fantastic dish. She lived in Lawrence, which has an almost famous greek restaurant, and she never had a gyro, go figure.
Either way it was a success. I just need a coffee grinder to get the rosemary less chunky next time, and to measure my spices so I can write it down and make it again and again. We can't have it all the time, since the meat is expensive ($8-10 per lb) but if its on clearance I can certainly find a use for it. Next time I'm making phily cheesesteaks out of it though.
~
I remembered my mother used to make gyros out of random meat she had, so that's what I decided to do. I wasn't really sure how to make them, and there are a bunch of different styles. I settled on winging it, just making up my own seasoning as I went. I knew that there was rosemary and oregano, that's the base of every gyro I've had. Garlic is a must in greek food, so I added powder and freezedried varieties. I've had a few types that were heavy on the sage, so tossed in a heavy sprinkle of that. Cumin adds a nice flover to them as well, so in it went. I read somewhere to add basil, but the flavor of basil is far too "sweet" for something like this, so I ignored that. I remember tasting a gyro at a greek diner, and it was pundgent, sour/bitter almost. I looked around some more, and found that vinegar is a standard ingredient in traditional greek cooking. And I had my gyros.
They don't sell pitabread where I live, but one store has bread that vaguely resembles hot dog buns. That would suffice for my first attempt. I should've added real garlic, and some sliced onions, but I was feeling rather lazy, and I was trying to get it cooked in a hurry. Next time. It turned out really good. It needed the onions, but Andrea liked it fine for her first try of this fantastic dish. She lived in Lawrence, which has an almost famous greek restaurant, and she never had a gyro, go figure.
Either way it was a success. I just need a coffee grinder to get the rosemary less chunky next time, and to measure my spices so I can write it down and make it again and again. We can't have it all the time, since the meat is expensive ($8-10 per lb) but if its on clearance I can certainly find a use for it. Next time I'm making phily cheesesteaks out of it though.
~
Friday, April 11, 2008
Mastering the Craft I
I'm going to call this series, "Mastering the Craft." It will follow my journey of perfecting my cooking skills. Everyone knows that I'm no amateur in the kitchen. I would love to believe that I'm above average, but I know that some days I'm worse than others. I'm always learning. I follow several food blogs (slashfood is my favorite ^_^) and am constantly looking for new recipes to try (even if I have to hold the recipes until I get a real oven).
Today I was making my infamous meatball subs. I've never used a written recipe, just whatever feels right. Every time I make the sauce a little bit different, because I've never been able to get a really good tomato sauce for pasta/everything else. Today I managed to get it perfect. Now I just have to figure out what I did so I can do it over and over again.
I fell in love with an organic tomato basil sauce that I bought at a regular grocery store. It was the perfect blend of tomato and spices, albeit short on the spiciness department. I haven't really been able to recreate it in a way that I enjoyed, until today. Lots of oregano and basil. A teaspoon of garlic powder, a large pinch of sage and a small one of crushed red pepper. 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 small onion, 2 large cloves of garlic, 1 jar of tomato sauce (I think that would be equal to 1.5 cans of sauce in the US). 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and a pinch of salt. The secret? 1.5 teaspoons of sugar. I was amazed at the difference.
I cooked the onions and garlic in some olive oil with a little salt an pepper, then added just the diced tomatoes and all the seasonings. Cooked until the liquid was gone and it was basically a thin paste. Turn off the burner and let it cool. Toss it in a food processor and grind it a few times so the onions, garlic and tomatoes are just chopped up a little bit more. Toss it back in the pan, add the sauce and the sugar. I usually end up adding a little bit of water to rinse out the jar of sauce, maybe 1/2 cup tops. Cook it to get rid of the excess water, serve over anything.
I'm not a master, but I'm getting there slowly. It's fun to experiment and hopefully you'll get to see a lot more of these entries as I try more and more new things.
Today I was making my infamous meatball subs. I've never used a written recipe, just whatever feels right. Every time I make the sauce a little bit different, because I've never been able to get a really good tomato sauce for pasta/everything else. Today I managed to get it perfect. Now I just have to figure out what I did so I can do it over and over again.
I fell in love with an organic tomato basil sauce that I bought at a regular grocery store. It was the perfect blend of tomato and spices, albeit short on the spiciness department. I haven't really been able to recreate it in a way that I enjoyed, until today. Lots of oregano and basil. A teaspoon of garlic powder, a large pinch of sage and a small one of crushed red pepper. 1 can of diced tomatoes, 1 small onion, 2 large cloves of garlic, 1 jar of tomato sauce (I think that would be equal to 1.5 cans of sauce in the US). 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and a pinch of salt. The secret? 1.5 teaspoons of sugar. I was amazed at the difference.
I cooked the onions and garlic in some olive oil with a little salt an pepper, then added just the diced tomatoes and all the seasonings. Cooked until the liquid was gone and it was basically a thin paste. Turn off the burner and let it cool. Toss it in a food processor and grind it a few times so the onions, garlic and tomatoes are just chopped up a little bit more. Toss it back in the pan, add the sauce and the sugar. I usually end up adding a little bit of water to rinse out the jar of sauce, maybe 1/2 cup tops. Cook it to get rid of the excess water, serve over anything.
I'm not a master, but I'm getting there slowly. It's fun to experiment and hopefully you'll get to see a lot more of these entries as I try more and more new things.
Thursday, April 10, 2008
7 dozen cookies in a toaster oven
That right. 6 at a time. 8 minutes per batch. I spent the better half of tuesday making these cookies for Andrea's english club at school. They were having a demonstration to gain more members. They did cookie decorating and egg painting.
I had the task of making the cookies and the frosting. I've never baked cookies in a toaster oven. I've never thought it would be a good idea. Toaster ovens are uneven, and finicky devices. they're best for toast and pizza. Even more so when they are giant easy-bake-ovens(the heating element is essentially a special light bulb, the same thing is used in electric heaters here). I've been dreading the day when I would finally have to give in to Andrea's requests to make some cookies (she's been wanting peanut blossoms, but hershey kisses are 3x as much here). So in an act of kindness, I acquired the ingredients and the tools required for such a task. I settled on the standard sugar cookie.
I used the recipe found here. It was fairly simple, but looked massive for what I needed and wanted to make, so I halved the recipe. The other fantastic part about living here, and having US measuring devices, is converting certain measurements. Butter here doesn't come in 1/2 cup sticks, solid blocks or 8 gram pieces. So I had to convert the weight of the butter to grams, but for some reason that didn't seem to match the metric measurements the website offered. I think I went with my measurement. I made the cookies probably 1/2 the size that they expect you to, since with a half sized recipe, I ended up with more cookies than the recipe said I would get for a full batch.
Cooking them was actually much easier than I thought it would be. 4.5 minutes at 200C was enough to slightly brown the edges and cook them to a nice soft consistency. I used "cake paper" from the baking section of the 100 yen store. I was hoping it was parchment paper, but it was more like wax paper. Either way it worked fine, as I didn't have to work about cookies sticking to the pans. I had to let the cookies cool on the paper, then peel it off and cool them a little bit more.
The icing came from the same site, here. I don't think I mixed it long enough because it was still pretty grainy. I added a lot more milk to thin it out as well, hoping that would help. It didn't. Either way it came out fine, and was ok enough to use for japanese highschoolers who had never iced sugar cookies before. When I went to add the food coloring I bought for the icing I was stunned. It was powder. Colored powder instead of drops. I know they have that kind of thing in the US, as well as high concentration gels, but I was still surprised. It even came with a tiny spoon. It mixed fine and created some nice pastel colors for decorating. For some strange reason they don't sell the 3 primary colors; blue, yellow, and red. Everyone does this in the US because you can mix the food coloring to make ever color in the rainbow. Not in Japan. Here they have green instead of blue. Unfortunately, they're the same word here as well. So people would look at you funny if you didn't want green and wanted blue. Oh well.
In the end it was a good experience to have. I will always cherish my oven when I get home, nothing beats cooking 20 cookies at once.
On a side note, one of Andrea's teachers invited us over for dinner sometime in May. I'm excited and scared all at once. Homemade food is usually far better than store food, but I will be unable to refuse a dish because of my fear of seafood. We'll see how it goes.
I had the task of making the cookies and the frosting. I've never baked cookies in a toaster oven. I've never thought it would be a good idea. Toaster ovens are uneven, and finicky devices. they're best for toast and pizza. Even more so when they are giant easy-bake-ovens(the heating element is essentially a special light bulb, the same thing is used in electric heaters here). I've been dreading the day when I would finally have to give in to Andrea's requests to make some cookies (she's been wanting peanut blossoms, but hershey kisses are 3x as much here). So in an act of kindness, I acquired the ingredients and the tools required for such a task. I settled on the standard sugar cookie.
I used the recipe found here. It was fairly simple, but looked massive for what I needed and wanted to make, so I halved the recipe. The other fantastic part about living here, and having US measuring devices, is converting certain measurements. Butter here doesn't come in 1/2 cup sticks, solid blocks or 8 gram pieces. So I had to convert the weight of the butter to grams, but for some reason that didn't seem to match the metric measurements the website offered. I think I went with my measurement. I made the cookies probably 1/2 the size that they expect you to, since with a half sized recipe, I ended up with more cookies than the recipe said I would get for a full batch.
Cooking them was actually much easier than I thought it would be. 4.5 minutes at 200C was enough to slightly brown the edges and cook them to a nice soft consistency. I used "cake paper" from the baking section of the 100 yen store. I was hoping it was parchment paper, but it was more like wax paper. Either way it worked fine, as I didn't have to work about cookies sticking to the pans. I had to let the cookies cool on the paper, then peel it off and cool them a little bit more.
The icing came from the same site, here. I don't think I mixed it long enough because it was still pretty grainy. I added a lot more milk to thin it out as well, hoping that would help. It didn't. Either way it came out fine, and was ok enough to use for japanese highschoolers who had never iced sugar cookies before. When I went to add the food coloring I bought for the icing I was stunned. It was powder. Colored powder instead of drops. I know they have that kind of thing in the US, as well as high concentration gels, but I was still surprised. It even came with a tiny spoon. It mixed fine and created some nice pastel colors for decorating. For some strange reason they don't sell the 3 primary colors; blue, yellow, and red. Everyone does this in the US because you can mix the food coloring to make ever color in the rainbow. Not in Japan. Here they have green instead of blue. Unfortunately, they're the same word here as well. So people would look at you funny if you didn't want green and wanted blue. Oh well.
In the end it was a good experience to have. I will always cherish my oven when I get home, nothing beats cooking 20 cookies at once.
On a side note, one of Andrea's teachers invited us over for dinner sometime in May. I'm excited and scared all at once. Homemade food is usually far better than store food, but I will be unable to refuse a dish because of my fear of seafood. We'll see how it goes.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Spicy noodles
Ate lunch in the Lusca building in Hiratsuka on saturday. Andrea and Travis had pizza, I decided to branch out. I had a (more than likely) korean inspired spicy garlic noodle soup. Hot as hell. My eyes were watering and my nose was running. It was delicious. I also had a melon soda float. Melon soda, ice, ice cream. Yes, ice. For some strange reason they leave it in their floats at that shop. Maybe it's a japan thing, I'm guessing it is, but I haven't had a float anywhere else yet.
We also went to the import shop. Who knew doritos tortilla chips were worth 4.50. Me, because corn chips don't really exist here. Unless you want them to taste like corn. Oh and look out families, we found some of those chips and they will be on their way. $10 for kraft parmesean cheese. $8 for johnsonville smoked brats. 2.50 for a can of cream of chicken soup. Its all very brutal. It's a good thing we don't live near those stores (there isn't one for at least a 45 minute train ride).
Pizza spring rolls failed, but I know why. Too much beef, no pepperoni. As far as I can tell pepperoni isn't in stores here, so it is unlikely that I can remedy the situation. Also the sauce tends to leak out into the frying oil and makes it unusable for any other frying. Yes I save my cooking oil, it has more than one use you wasteful people!
Japanese bacon hasx failed me again, and for the last time. It doesn't cook right, it just burns. There's no smokey flavor or aroma. It is just plain bad. So for reference to bacon lovers everywhere, don't come to Japan, you will be without for the period of your stay. Unless you stay at the sheraton, they have bacon with their breakfast.
Banana and green tea are the flavors of the season. Pocky has banana. Fran has both. There is green tea caramel corn and a variety of cookies. I hope this phase passes quickly, I despise both flavors.
We also went to the import shop. Who knew doritos tortilla chips were worth 4.50. Me, because corn chips don't really exist here. Unless you want them to taste like corn. Oh and look out families, we found some of those chips and they will be on their way. $10 for kraft parmesean cheese. $8 for johnsonville smoked brats. 2.50 for a can of cream of chicken soup. Its all very brutal. It's a good thing we don't live near those stores (there isn't one for at least a 45 minute train ride).
Pizza spring rolls failed, but I know why. Too much beef, no pepperoni. As far as I can tell pepperoni isn't in stores here, so it is unlikely that I can remedy the situation. Also the sauce tends to leak out into the frying oil and makes it unusable for any other frying. Yes I save my cooking oil, it has more than one use you wasteful people!
Japanese bacon hasx failed me again, and for the last time. It doesn't cook right, it just burns. There's no smokey flavor or aroma. It is just plain bad. So for reference to bacon lovers everywhere, don't come to Japan, you will be without for the period of your stay. Unless you stay at the sheraton, they have bacon with their breakfast.
Banana and green tea are the flavors of the season. Pocky has banana. Fran has both. There is green tea caramel corn and a variety of cookies. I hope this phase passes quickly, I despise both flavors.
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