Pan-Fried Red Trout Fillets with Mizuna-Mango-Manchego Salad & a Simple Mango Cocktail

After weeks of writing about Swedish food and travel adventures, it feels both strange and comforting to once again be blogging from our own kitchen! This is a meal that we made a few days after returning home, but it had to wait in line until now! My cousin Nikita came over to cook dinner [...]

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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 Shrimp Caesar Salad with Tortilla Crisps

If you love Caesar salad, you’ll be a fan of this one. I first came across this recipe while watching TV in Japan. I used to watch the Japanese version of the food network called “Foodies TV,” my favorite place to learn the Japanese words for boil, steam, grill, etc. Other times I would laugh [...]

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Halibut & Cannellini Beans In Tomato-Rosemary Broth

Halibut!? Why did we have that? Just for the Halibut!! Haha. Sorry. Bad joke but a delicious fish! This meal was lighter than we were expecting, but it was warm and comforting on a cold night. It definitely needs to be accompanied by lots of sliced bread to soak up the extra broth [...]

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Barbequed Trout with Herbs & Potatoes

When I was a little girl, I refused to eat seafood. It’s really unfortunate because I must have missed out on a lot of delicious experiences. For example, in Felton, a small town outside of Santa Cruz, there is a restaurant called The Trout Farm Inn where you can C.Y.O.T. (catch your own trout) in [...]

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Tempura: Out of the frying pan and into … my mouth

Hands down, tempura is my favorite Japanese food. And yes, I cheated below and used a picture from our lunch in Kyoto two weeks ago. My student Mieko and her husband Koichi invited us over for a Father’s Day dinner last Sunday, but we were so enthusiastic about eating the tempura hot out of the [...]

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Coconut Shrimp

First things first, I’d like to say a very enthusiastic “Happy Mothers’ Day!” to my amazing Mom, my favorite cook who has continually inspired me to explore all things culinary! Second, Oh how we love these crispy shrimp with a tropical flair. This is one of our favorite recipes when we want something [...]

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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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Beer-Battered Salmon Tacos with Zesty White Sauce, Guacamole, and Shredded Cabbage

Friday night fish tacos was Dustin’s brilliant idea. Our supermarket was out of cod by the time we finished class at 7pm, but they had salmon so our recipe was quickly adapted! These reminded me of some fish tacos I ate from a little stand in Ensenada, Mexico about 8 years ago. [...]

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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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Sizzling Hot Shrimp

You can control the amount of chili that you add to this dish, but we recommend adding enough to make you sweat. In this cold weather, it feels better. This dish is based on a recipe for shrimp pil-pil that I recently came across in a Rachael Ray Magazine. It originates from [...]

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Tuna & White Bean Salad with Pesto Crostini

I spent a few hours on Christmas day sitting in front of the fireplace with my new 12 Best Foods Cookbook. Now that we’re back in Japan, it’s been a fun challenge to think of new recipes that use these foods. Of course before we got the book we used tomatoes, broccoli, blueberries, [...]

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Coriander-Cumin Salmon with Sauteed Green Beans & Mushrooms

We finally made it back to Japan after spending 4 “lovely” days at the San Francisco airport trying to get on a plane after the 1st one was canceled due to torrential rain in California. At least after the whole ordeal we got to experience business class for the 1st (and probably last) time [...]

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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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Crisp Salmon with Lemony Potatoes and the Kitten’s Parsley

Japan isn’t really known for its space, and our balcony is no exception. Nonetheless, it’s our only place to enjoy the fresh (?) city air. So we recently cleaned out the junk that was being stored there by the last tenants, bought some planters, and plated some herbs — basil, parsley, and sage, [...]

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A Birthday Dinner at the Tree House

We have the best of both worlds up in the Santa Cruz Mountains: Ten minutes from the ocean, yet surrounded by communities of redwood trees. My cousin Nikita turned 21 on August 11th, so we had a family birthday dinner at my parent’s place; aptly named “The Tree House.” These were some of my [...]

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Nostalgic Greek Salmon

Nothing beats the simplicity of fresh salmon, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese, and sweet basil, tied together with the flavors of lemon, olive oil, and oregano. This was the perfect light summer dinner. We intended to make it with shrimp, but when we found that our grocery store was sold out, we had to [...]

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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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Lemon-Butter-Garlic Shrimp with Rice Pilaf

I refuse to eat things that have eyes. The fish section in our grocery store is plentiful (as one would expect in a country that’s surrounded by water), but when everything is looking at me, it creeps me out!! When we were in Greece for our honeymoon, I was equally disturbed when I [...]

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