Persimmon and Chicken Teriyaki

Recipe adapted from Today’s Cooking

My husband’s co-worker gave us persimmons harvested from her own tree…my favorite, Fuyu variety with no seeds. As child, I would climb on a stone fence and snatch one…maybe two from neighbors. Some persimmon varieties are very astringent and inedible yet I knew the way to remedy the problem – peel the fruit leaving the stem intact then string it to dry in the sun. They turned very sweet…where did you get those? I don’t know why my mother bothered asking the question when she already knew the answer? I’m sure the neighbors would have gladly gave us of the abundance of the fruits since they can’t eat them all but perhaps pretending to be a shinobi (忍び /incognito) girl was thrilling…occasional scratches and bruises were part of the occupational hazard.

I like to eat these like an apple, maybe with cream cheese though,  I would like to venture out for savory dish. Again I’m on the internet, search for savory persimmon recipe. Today’s Cooking caught my interest. Luckily, I have almost everything to make it happen and it seemed very easy. I also love the speedy clean-up at the end of the meal!

Ingredients and Instruction for two servings (Print Recipe Here)

Sauce

• 4 Tablespoons soy sauce or tamari soy sauce
• 4 Tablespoons mirin
• 4 Tablespoons sake
• 2  teaspoons sugar

Other ingredients

• 10-12 green beans, cut both ends off, then cut in half
• 300g boneless chicken thigh (about 2 chicken thighs), cut in one inch cubes.
• 1 Tablespoon flour or cornstarch for gluten free version
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• 2 fairly firm persimmons (Fuyu variety recommended), cut in 4ths, peel skin (remove seeds if they have) then slice in 1/2 inch slices so that it will be a triangular shape.
• 1/4 cup shelled walnuts, roughly chopped if they are whole
• Juice from 1 kabosu (かぼす)  Note: I was not able to find this type of citrus, I substituted lime and satsuma orange.

1. Mix sauce ingredients in a measuring cup or small bowl. Set aside
2. Ready ice cold water in a bowl. Blanch green beans in salted (approximately 1 Tablespoon salt to 3 cups of water) boiling water about 1 minute. Drain water then quickly submerge the green beans into the prepared cold water bowl. When the green beans get cold, remove the beans. Set aside.
   
3. Lightly coat chicken with flour or corn starch. Heat oil in large non-stick frying pan at medium heat. Brown chicken until golden in color.
4. Push the chicken to the side of the pan and spread persimmons in the rest of the pan. When browned, flip over to brown the other side, about 3-4 minutes per side.
   
5. Add blanched green beans and walnuts to the pan and stir.
6. Pour in the prepared sauce, simmer at low heat until sauce thickens. It takes only 1-2 minutes so keep an eye on it so as to not let it burn.
7. Squeeze lime and orange juice in. Stir. Serve warm.Voila!

 Other persimmon recipes we tried and  I posted on Instagram(#todaystapas,#todayssweets) are great I think.

Caramel persimmon and banana bread…next time I have to double the recipe and would like to share with neighbors…I follow the Japanese recipe and barely filled 3x5 pan. No-wonder Japanese people are skinny (me not included).

Persimmon Bread by my husband….so many persimmons so little time. Next stop - Angie’s Persimmon Streusel

We like persimmons yet a change of pace was inevitable….oven baked cheesy meatloaf in a kabocha bowl.

My mischievous Shinobi girl days are long gone…I can’t climb any fence over 3 feet tall now.

Crunchy Yakisoba/かた焼きそば

With Seafood

Dishes like this make me homesick…quite resemble to Nagasaki’s sara (pronunce sa-ra)-udon (皿うどん), seafood plus thick sauce over crunchy noodles. Nagasaki Japan’s food scene was influenced by Dutch, Portuguese and Chinese because import business thrived there in the mid 1500s.

Nagasaki’s local cuisine, champon(ちゃんぽん)…don’t call it champion though sometime I feel like champon is champion…I am a champion and you’re gonna hear me roar!…(oops, some words trigger me to burst out singing and dancing)…anyway, other popular noodle dish sara-udon is not really udon. One source says that a noodle shop owner had trouble home delivering champon because of spilling of soup (mind you, this is pre-Tupperware era), and Nagasaki is famous for having hundreds of slopes everywhere… so that the jelly like, sauce was invented…this is more like urban legend to me but…. I see it all, I see it now…

This revised recipe is from Miki Fujiwara, a mega blogger whose blog ‘Fujiwara family’s everyday home cooking’ has a neighborhood of 120.000 people (mind boggling, right?) who access her blog every day.

Ingredients and Instructions for Crunchy Yakisoba - 4 servings (Print Recipe Here)

For sauce

• 4 cups of water
• 1/2 teaspoon grated ginger root  Note: I used fresh but you could use tubed grated ginger.
• 5 Tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• 2 Tablespoons oyster sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Chinese chicken soup base (granule)
• 4 Tablespoons potato starch (片栗粉)

Mix sauce ingredients except potato starch in a 4 cup glass measuring cup for easy pouring or in a medium bowl. Whisk to combine well. Put potato starch in a small bowl and add about 1/4 cup of just mixed sauce and dissolve starch with fork or chopstick. Put the whole thing back in the sauce mixture and stir well. Set aside.

• 8-10 cut dried shiitake, if the shiitake comes in whole then you need only 3 (cut in 4-6)
• 4-5 dried kikurage (black fungus/黒木耳) optional, tear in small pieces…skip it if you don’t like this stuff.
• 10 Tablespoons vegetable oil divided.
• 450g (roughly) fresh yakisoba noodle, divided in three bundles 
• 1 carrot peeled and cut in 2 inch lengths about 1/8 inch thick
• 1/4 of small cabbage roughly chopped
• 1/2 of onion thinly sliced
• Seafood of your choice or approximately 2 cups of frozen seafood mix, available at Korean market for reasonable price, defrosted if frozen.  I used shrimp, octopus, baby scallop
• 4 young corn from can, drain and rinsed, cut in half…I don’t care for it but I included it for the sake of my blog.
• 12 hard boiled quail eggs from can, drained and rinsed…next time I will hard boil them myself.
• White pepper, salt
• 1-2 teaspoons sesame oil 

1. Soak dried shitake and kikurage (if using) in a prepared sauce. Set aside.
2. Heat 3 Tablespoons  of oil in a large non-stick frying pan at medium heat. Loosen –up the first bundle of yakisoba noodles and spread onto the pan. When the bottom turns light brown, flip over and cook the other side until brown. Using tongs, lift and turn the noodle several times until the noodles get crunchy and golden brown. Place onto a plate with paper towel to absorb oil. Do the same for other two bundles. Set aside.
3. Quickly clean the same pan with a paper towel. Add the last Tablespoon of oil and heat at medium heat. Sauté the onion and carrot until soft. Add cabbage, continue to sauté until cabbage is limp, then add seafood.
4. Mix one more time (make sure that sauce is not separated) the prepared sauce before adding to the pan (step# 3). Cook until it thickens.
5. Add young corn and quail eggs, pepper and salt to taste. cook for 1-2 minutes stirring often. Pour sesame oil around the edge and stir to combine.
6. Place the yakisoba noodle on a large platter and pour the sauce over the noodles. Serve immediately to enjoy the crunchiness of the noodles.

I bought a large can of quail eggs, then put the leftovers in the dill pickle jar…this would be nice snack.

Guess what I found? My husband brought a yellow rose still alive in all the rain we had in our tiny rose garden. He made a olive bread, cleaned the gutters, carved the pumpkin and got ready for Trick-or-Treaters, it was busy day…thanks honey!

Last Saturday was very gloomy due to heavy rain. There was no good light to take the Today’s Tapas (#todaystapas) picture. This is just a ham and cheese sandwich but Halloween style. I made the face with pickled grapes and avocado.

I made this Mango and Avocado salad with Pomegranate and Dukkah from Angie’s Recipe. Guilt free and refreshing!

Can you believe it’s November already?  Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh…don’t you love this song by Katy Perry?

Chicken and Mushroom Sweet Rice

鶏ときのこの炊き込みおこわ

White rice was valuable and hard to obtain long ago in Japan. Putting ingredients in a stone pot along with seasoning added to the rice cooking method was welcomed because you could use less rice. It has evolved since then and hundreds of recipes are available now days but my favorite still is the five ingredients rice(五目ご飯), because I get nostalgic about my late mother…she made the best seasoned rice…my complaint was that she only made it on special occasions; 1-2 times a year.

It tastes great even if it gets cold, plus no need for side dish…maybe some pickle or salted plum(梅干)?…clear broth is not too bad a combination either…mmm…baked egg(卵焼き), I must add.

Ingredients and Instruction  for 3-4 servings (Print Recipe Here)
Revised recipe of Masahiro Kasahara

Necessary equipment –rice cooker

• 2 cups (rice cooker cup) sweet rice (もち米)
• 1 package shimeji mushroom, cut off ends, separate
• 1 package enoki mushroom, cut off the ends, cut in half then separate
• 4 shiitake mushroom remove stems, chop cap into 4-5 pieces
• 2 chicken thighs, boneless, skin on, butterfly the chicken so that the chicken is mostly flat.
• Combined seasoning (3 Tablespoons soy sauce or tamari, 2 Table spoons each of mirin and sake) mixed in a measuring cup.
• 2x4 dried kelp sheet, clean the surface with moist paper towel
• 1-2 stems of mitsuba/Japanese parsley (optional) roughly cut leaves.

1. Wash rice and soak in plenty of water. Cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 3-4 hours. If you are using regular white rice then soak just 30 minutes.
2. Put all mushrooms in a non-stick frying pan. Dry sauté mushroom at low- medium heat until the volume goes down to about half and it becomes aromatic, about 3-4 minutes. Set aside.
3. Heat another pan (or quickly clean the same pan used in step #2) at medium-high. Place chicken skin side down to brown the skin only, about 4 minutes then remove from heat. When the chicken is safe to handle, cut in chunks. Set aside.
   
4. Drain the rice and put in the rice cooker, add sautéed mushroom, chicken, mixed seasoning, 1 cup water* and push kelp in the liquid. Cook as normal (if you have a ‘Quick’ feature in your rice cooker, you may opt for that). * if you like softer rice, add another 1/4 cup of water.
5. When it’s done, remove kelp, stir to combine with rice spatula, top with mitsuba and serve.

 

Some of my Today’s Sweets instagram post (#todayssweets…do not confuse with Today’s TAPAS) – Soy milk pudding with dark brown sugar syrup…not bad!

Some of my Today’s Sweets are store bought. This fruit tart from Saint-Honoré French pasty shop in downtown Lake Oswego. I liked it!

Speaking of French, oui, oui, we dined at Cocotte – Fried frog legs! Son goût comme le poulet (It tastes like chicken)!

Our Anniversary and my birthday were both last week. I received bouquets of flowers, a plant and some chocolate from my husband, friends and neighbor. I’m flowered…I mean, floored with gratitude!

Frozen Tomato Pasta

Fast, Easy and Vegan

Sun-ripe tomatoes are flavorful and are great for snacking almost daily…I wish I could say that we grew them but these beautiful tomatoes are from a friend’s backyard…I’m a bit envious!

I had a planned to make Angie’s ‘Oven Baked Chicken with Italian Seasoned Tomato Sauce’ (looks fabulous, right?)…wait, no chicken?  We’re planning a trip very soon so we are limiting the number of grocery shopping trips lately…just buy the bare necessities…
Look for the bare necessities…
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities…
Old mother Nature’s recipes that brings the bare necessities of life!

What?…no song necessary?… I was about to dance….Anyway, I would like to introduce you to this very minimalistic dish so let’s put the candle…I mean tomato in the freezer!

Ingredients and Instruction for two servings (Print Recipe Here) Modified recipe from cookpad.com (recipe #3328313)

• 1 large ripe frozen tomato (put in the freezer overnight)
• 2 –3 cloves of garlic minced
• 2 Tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• Spaghetti noodle or angel hair pasta (I used about 200g/8oz)
• 5-6 basil leaves tear by hand plus 3-4 whole leaves for garnish
• Salt and pepper

1. Put the minced garlic in a microwave proof bowl along with the olive oil. Microwave for 2 minutes at 60% power. Let it cool. Set aside.
2. Cook the pasta 2 minutes longer than the package direction. Drain and soak in icy cold water until pasta is cold. This is my way of cooking pasta – put pasta in a skillet, cover with water then cook at medium heat.
3. Grate the tomato, skin and all ( I advise to wrap the tomato with paper towel… it is very cold).
   
4. Mix the cooled garlic with olive oil, grated tomato and basil well in a bowl. Salt and pepper to taste.
5. Drain the noodles and shake off the excess water. Combine well with tomato sauce (#4). Garnish with basil. Add more salt and pepper if you like.

A not-vegan arrangement: Add cooked bacon and grated cheese

My favorite way to eat tomato is actually oven-baked tomato…yum!

We have seedless grape vines in our back yard which wild birds love…Hey, leave some for us!I made grape clafoutis and posted the pic on Instagram (#todaystapas). It’s French but resembles Dutch Baby pancake.

I saw a Watermelon Shark on the internet and I wanted re-create but my watermelon was round not oblong…I had to improvise…right?

The haze (from the wildfires) is gone for now… we’re grateful that we had some rain in the last few days.
This photo was taken two weeks ago when it was still hazy. My husband and I are leaving for Japan to see our newest grandchild. I hope I’m able to resume my blog when I get back though I just would like to say to all my readers ‘Thank you’ You’re truly my inspiration.