“Thai” Basil Stir Fry

One of our favorite Thai dishes was the inspiration for this meal, except that we used regular basil instead of thai basil – the kind that everyone has tons of right now that screams caprese salad or pesto. Well, we wanted to do something a little different with ours. We found it was the perfect [...]

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Asian Meatloaf with a Sweet & Spicy Glaze

I have to admit I was more the souf chef for this one. Dustin comes up with the greatest recipes. I’m proud to have a husband who enjoys being in the kitchen! I had an idea a few weeks ago about making some sort of Asian flavored burger. He was thinking along the lines of [...]

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Chili-Lime Shrimp Stir Fry & (our best yet) Miso Soup

Finally. FINALLY! We are back! Since I last posted, I joined the world of twitter. Immediately I thought of the episode of The Daily Show, where reporter Samantha Bee makes fun of the “tweet” frenzy. But nevertheless we’re jumping on the bandwagon. If you aren’t already, please follow along here. (You can also view our [...]

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Vegetable Lo Mein with Salmon

Our bowls and chopsticks often inspire me to make dinner. Each one tells a different story and conjures up a different time and place. These bowls were hand-crafted at a local artisan shop downtown and were given to us as a wedding gift 3 1/2 years ago. I love that they have little indentations on [...]

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Spicy Peanut Noodles with Fresh Vegetables

Yesterday it was 75 degrees. My cousin Nikita, Dustin, and I were in the backyard wearing short sleeves, enjoying pints of Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Company beer, BBQ-ing Cornish game hens to accompany spicy peanut noodles, and listening to the screams of delight that waft up the hill from people riding the Giant Dipper at [...]

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Ma-Po Tofu

We enjoyed this dish several times in Japan. Ma-Po Tofu is to Japan what maybe Kung Pao Chicken or Chicken Chowmein is to America. In Japanese supermarkets you can buy an instant version of it in a box. You cook the pork and tofu and then squeeze in the little packet containing the flavorful sauce. [...]

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Spinach & Pork Wontons

Folding wrappers over a filling and pinching the edges closed is fun, especially when there’s two of you so you can converse while you’re doing it. My Mom and I made these wontons the other day after she was inspired by the recipe in Food & Wine. Since we couldn’t find fresh wonton wrappers at [...]

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Chicken Satay with Peanut Sauce

We’ve been having unusually warm weather for January! Last Sunday we pretended it was summer (although it wasn’t that hard to pretend when it was 70 degrees at 5:00 in the evening), fired up the BBQ, and invited some good friends over for appetizers. They brought rounds of polenta (both regular, and sun-dried tomato) topped [...]

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Dustin’s Garlic-Pepper Pork & Green Beans

This was a really tasty dish that uses familiar ingredients that you might already have at home! We love to just throw stuff together around here, instead of following an exact recipe; that’s why our measurements aren’t very specific. Just have fun with the seasonings, and then serve with some steamed rice and a bottle [...]

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Spicy Garlicky Stir Fry

Stir fry is one of those great meals that doesn’t require a recipe. We make it so often, and it changes depending on what veggie looks fresh and what kind of protein we feel like throwing in, but I thought I’d write down our basic guidelines for this simple, delicious dinner. The only consistent thing [...]

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Miso Soup Take Two

Ahh … as you lift a bowl of miso soup to your lips, and the smell of the steam meets your nose, there’s a short moment when you feel that everything is going to be alright. We love the taste of red miso. Its flavor is a little richer and earthier than white miso, which [...]

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Teriyaki Chicken & Miso Soup

It’s about time we made two of the most well known Japanese dishes. The chicken teriyaki is best made with chicken thighs, but we used these skinless chicken breast strips instead. We were really happy with how the teriyaki sauce turned out. It actually tasted like the “real thing,” with just a [...]

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Raw Tuna & Leek Salad with Ginger-Soy Sauce

A few weeks ago one of our students, an old man in his 70s, handed us a small paperback cookbook called Japanese Favorites. Finally, some guidelines for making a few of the things we’ve tasted and enjoyed while living here. What I love about Japanese cooking is that the ingredients themselves, their colors, [...]

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Roll Out!

It doesn’t get much simpler than fresh raw fish. Add crisp nori, fresh lettuce leaves, a bowl of sushi rice and a variety of sliced vegetables and you have temaki-sushi: a typical weekday do-it-yourself dinner for many Japanese families. Unlike other Japanese meals, it’s ok to use your hands. In fact, it’s [...]

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Crispy Chicken Wontons with Sweet Chili-Lime Sauce

We present to you Irresistible crunchiness paired with an addicting sauce. Wontons are one of our favorite appetizers to order in a restaurant, so we decided to make them ourselves! The weather is starting to warm up, our colds are (almost) gone, cherry blossom season is right around the corner, and spring break [...]

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Something Like Tom Ka Gai

We definitely can’t claim that this is the traditional way to make the famous Thai soup, but we enjoyed the challenge of creating something that tastes pretty close, using the ingredients that were available to us in Japan. This recipe serves 2 with enough for seconds. On a side note, it’s been snowing all day [...]

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Seared Spicy Tuna with Honey-Soy Glaze

Once again we picked up a pristine steak of tuna from the sashimi section, but this time with no recipe in mind; just the intention to wing it. This meal had so many different flavors going on: sweet, spicy and salty. What’s not to like?

Season a tuna steak on both sides with salt [...]

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Seared Wasabi-Sesame Tuna with Avocado Cream and Maple Soy Sauce

We laughed at ourselves as we picked out the tuna in the supermarket today. We got it from the section that sells top-quality fish for sashimi, bite-size slices of fish, eaten raw with only soy sauce and wasabi. We predicted that we were the only people in the store who were buying that [...]

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Asian Chicken Salad with Crunchy Ramen Noodles and Honey-Sesame Cashews

Today was one of the first hot days of summer in Osaka. We rushed home from our evening kids’ classes and felt like something that was fast and refreshing. After looking over a few recipes for Chinese Chicken Salad on allrecipes.com this is what we came up with. The addition of the [...]

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