Cooking Like An American

It's been a month and a half since I last posted about food. If I believed in New Years Resolutions, not sucking at blogging would be one of mine. I'd expected to do a bunch of cooking while I was back home and write all about it, but that work out so well. That's not to say I didn't eat much: the 10 lbs gained in 10 days is evidence enough. But forgetting the charger for my laptop pretty much ruled out the writing part and the option to step out of the kitchen and leave it to my Mom to whip up delicious favorites (beef stroganoff, oatmeal cinnamon-chip cookies, ribssssss) was the nail in the coffin.

Being home was also a reminder of just how much I like some white people foods. When I cook, it's almost always Asian-inspired dishes, usually Chinese or Japanese with the occasional bit of Thai or Korean. As good as that stuff is, there is something to be said for a big chunk of meat. Ribs. Roast beef. Roasted chicken. That's quality stuff right there.

For Christmas, I got a copy of Ad Hoc, a cookbook about Thomas Keller's restaurant of the same name. He is probably one of the most famous chefs in America at the moment and the central theme to this restaurant is essentially traditional home cooking, particularly American. You wouldn't believe the number of times here in Japan that I have been asked "What is American food anyways? Hamburgers??" It's a surprisingly difficult question to answer, but this book has helped me get a better grasp on it.

Besides being a beautiful book that I would gladly put on my coffee table (if I had one), the recipes in at are not unreasonable for a home cook. That's not to say they're easy or quick, but they are much more doable than most restaurant cookbooks and that's pretty much exactly what I look for when cooking on the weekends.

Most grocery stores in Japan sell meat cut down to fairly small sizes. Probably the largest you'll find in a standard store is a 1.5 lb pork tenderloin. If you want anything bigger, you probably will have to go to a wholesaler that supplies restaurants. I was lucky enough to find a place that had whole chickens at a decent price (though $4/lb for a roasting chicken is many times more than what it would run you in the US), so I grabbed a 2.5 lb bird to cook for me and Yuki.

Roasting a chicken is often cited as one of those key cooking basics that everyone should be able to do. It's quite simple really and doesn't involve much more than sticking the sucker in the oven and pulling it out when the time rings. But I've never actually tried doing it before, so it seemed like something I should have a go at.

I roughly used the recipe in Ad Hoc as a guideline, but since it called for a 4 lb chicken I had to ad lib things a bit. I put a half dozen cloves of smashed up garlic inside the chicken along with several sprigs of thyme and a sprig of rosemary and trussed up the legs to seal them in, then rubbed the outside of the bird with oil before giving it a healthy sprinkling of salt and pepper. From there I set it on a bad of potatoes, carrots, onions and leeks, which absorbed all of the delicious chicken juices that leaked out as it cooked. A few pads of butter were put on top for the purpose of, I would assume, crisping up the skin.


Ovens are quite rare in Japan, especially as most kitchens are quite small. Instead, many microwaves have an oven function as well. The chicken just barely fit into Yuki's and had to be covered with foil to keep the skin from burning. Unfortunately, this also prevented the skin from getting particularly crispy either. Though the skin was nothing to brag about, the meat itself was ridiculously juicy. I let the chicken rest for half an hour after taking out of the oven, but it was still overflowing with clear juicy chicken goodness when I cut it up.

Roasting just about anything is a time consuming process. This being my first time dealing with a whole chicken before, it was even more time consuming. Instead of the ~1.5 hrs it was expected to take, it was probably more like 2.5 hrs from the time I started chopping up veggies to the time dinner was on the table. Still, it was quite a good dinner and something I think I could get down pat with just a couple more tries, so it will probably showing up on the menu again in the not-so-distant future.

Start the Day Right

Ryan Bouchard's nickname is "Mr. President" for a large number of reasons. He's smart, has leadership and charisma in spades, and is one of the genuinely nicest human beings I've ever met (I don't think there's anyone who has ever met him and NOT liked him). He also happens to be incredibly insightful. If he ever does actually end up running for president, I will vote for him regardless of which party he represents. Because even if I disagree with him, he probably knows better than me anyways.

Just one (albeit trivial) example of this comes from back when we were in high school. Ryan would wake up early before school a couple of times a week and make a real breakfast. Pancakes, waffles, things like that. With classes starting at 7:40am, the rest of us sleep-loving teens thought he was crazy. If only we knew what we were missing...

There are very few self-admitted "morning people" out there. Most people prefer the warmth of their sheets to being up and about. Maybe if they started off the day with a breakfast like these pancakes they would see things differently.


The recipe comes from Baking Bites, one of my favorite sources for dessert and breakfast recipes, and should by no means be mistaken for a healthy breakfast. There's A LOT of sugar in these bad boys. Then there's the maple syrup poured on top... But you know what: indulging yourself like this once or twice a week shouldn't be a big deal. Just think of it as having dessert at the beginning of the day rather than the end.

p.s. Whenever I make pancakes, they come out kind of thin, not thick and fluffy (coincidentally, I am really good at making crepes). My guess is probably just that my batter has too much liquid in it, but I'm not sure. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

Nothing in Moderation

My name is Peter and I am a negligent blogger.

Seriously though, I always mean to put together a post but never seem to get around to it. Honestly, as of late I haven't even been able to find the time to process the pictures I've been taking. Work has been quite busy (I did over 90 hrs of overtime last month) resulting in me often getting home from work after 10pm and I usually spend the weekends wandering about Tokyo with Yuki, so I really have very little free time to sit in front of the computer and manage it all.

A perfect example of my bloggin procrastination is this recipe. The truth is that I made this recipe over a month ago and the pictures have been ready to go ever since, but I simply haven't found the time to get to putting together a post about it.


Simply put, this dish is freakin delicious. In many ways it's all about excess: a ton of garlic, lots of olive oil, a generous dose of lemon, and loads of freshly ground pepper. But I love bold, powerful flavors, so that's totally ok with me. Is it healthy? No, not particularly, but it's not awful and it tastes so damn good that it's not hard to forgive yourself the generous dose of olive oil.


The recipe is based off of The Angry Chef's Garlicky Lemon-Pepper Chicken recipe by The Hungry Mouse, who always does a great job of not only verbally explaining how to make a dish, but also providing a photographic explanation (super helpful for visual learners like myself). I didn't have any of the herbs (that stuff is expensive here in Japan), so I just stuck with the core ingredients of garlic, lemon, olive oil, and pepper (which I was particularly generous with). I also stuffed the gaps between the chicken breasts with potatoes and onions to both minimize the amount of olive oil I needed and turn it into a one dish meal all in one go. It still used a generous amount of olive oil, something like 8 cloves of garlic, the juice and zest of half a lemon, and more cranks of the pepper mill than even a Food Network chef uses. No point in holding back: the flavors just won't be as interesting, so indulge a little bit and go all. This recipe was absolutely awesome and I'll definitely be busting it out again when cooking for others in the near future.

Dinner for Two

This past weekend was “Silver Week” in Japan, the fall counterpart of spring’s Golden Week, with Monday through Wednesday being national holidays. It’s difficult to take time off work at Japanese companies, so people are pretty dependent on holidays to get away from work and I was pleased with the way I managed to squeeze in quite bit. There was a night of drinking with coworkers (complete with late night booze in a park), the arrival of my new 50mm 1.4f lens (it takes gorgeous pictures), a dinner party with the Michigan kids at Mike’s place in Yokohama (always a good time), a day trip to Hakone (obscenely crowded, but the hour spent in the hot springs made up for it), and a night cruise of Tokyo Harbor. It was certainly busy, but that’s fine by me as everything turned out so well.

With 5 straight days off, you’d expect that I’d also have been cooking up a storm but I barely spent any time in the kitchen. In fact, I didn’t cook anything particularly significant until the very last night of the break. Yuki and I decided to make dinner together and she happened to have pasta, bacon, and eggs on hand (quite fortunate considering how empty her kitchen is!), so we decided to take a shot at Pasta Carbonara. I picked up some parmesan cheese on the way over and we were pretty much set to give it a go.

The recipes I’d seen called for using the entire egg, but she insisted that one should exclude the white, so we went with that. Personally, I think it would have benefited from having the white in there as it ended up being pretty thick but it was my first time making it, so what would I know. The alternative would be to add some milk or cream, which is the standard here in Japan, but I wanted to try to keep it authentic and wasn’t down for that.

The past couple of times I’ve tried new recipes have been at friends’ houses, all of whom happen to have gas stove tops. Having been cooking on my stupid little IH surface for the past 6 months now, I’d forgotten how much power gas puts out. It just heats up so much faster. Sadly, this lead to significantly over-cooked (read: borderline burned) bacon for the carbonara, as you can clearly see in the pictures, though it still tasted decent enough I suppose. Yuki also threw together a salmon and onion marinade (salmon and onions marinated in rice vinegar and lemon juice) and a quick salad (I played like a champion, eating the tomatoes and giving the olives a shot) to make it a real meal. Dinner was followed by super creamy banana milkshakes. I added a little soy milk to them and, though I can’t say for sure if it would have been any different with regular milk, they turned out absolutely delicious. God, I love milkshakes…

All in all, it was a pretty solid meal. The carbonara wasn’t bad but it certainly wasn’t going to win any awards either, so I’ll have to work on that. It’s a very straight forward dish to make and has potential to be delicious, so I think it’s worthwhile to try it out a few more times to see if I can’t figure out how to make it better.

As this is first and foremost a food blog, I try to keep things focused on food. That being said, I think there is room for exceptions, so I’m going to make one now. You may have noticed a cute Japanese girl showing up a few times on this blog as my primary accomplice in my eating and traveling adventures. Without going into details, I’ll just go ahead and introduce my girlfriend, Yuki.

ミシガン会＠三品んち (Michigan Party @ the Mishina's)

One thing I miss the most about American social life is house parties. No, not the cheap-bear-guzzling-packed-wall-to-wall bits of organize chaos that are the standard for college students, I'm talking more along the lines of a dinner party like proper adults (don't laugh too hard at that one). One of the problems with living in Tokyo is that most people (at least, from the early 20s demographic) don't have a home large enough to host more than 4 or 5 people at a time and, as a result, if you want to get a decent sized group together, you pretty much have to resort to going out.

Lucky for us, our friends Mamiyu and Ayumi are from the Tokyo suburbs and open their house to us on occasion. It's quite a haul to get there (it's actually in a suburb of Yokohama, which is like a suburb of Tokyo) and the last train back is quite early, so they let us crash in their living room. It's amazingly refreshing to kick back and relax with friends without having to worry about how when you have to leave in order to make it home.

Saturday night, Mamiyu, Ayumi, Yuki, Mike, Shunji, and I got together for one such party, with the game plan being that everybody would pitch in something to eat or drink potluck style. Satomi was also supposed, but it turned out that she would be coming later, once her choir practice ended. Satomi is the super cook of our group and we were all pretty much counting on her to make something awesome as the main dish, so it was a bit of a shock when she found out that she probably wouldn't be able to come until 9ish.

Faced with this monster setback to our dinner plans, we threw together a mishmash of dishes that would combine to constitute a meal. Mamiyu had already planned on making a gratin, Shunji pitched in his オムライス (pretty good stuff for a guy who pretty much never cooks!), and they also threw together a quick yakisoba. It was actually quite a solid amount of food...




Somewhere along the way it was decided that, in Satomi's absence, my dish was to be the main one. Considering I was planning on trying a dish I'd never made before, that was a good bit of pressure, but I'd put some serious thought into planning it. I'd originally wanted to do mussels (especially as I expected I would just be making an appetizer for Satomi's food), but Mamiyu had checked in advanced and said that none of the nearby stores had any. So instead I went with a recipe for Greek shrimp that had popped up a few months ago on one of the blogs I follow. It didn't look terribly difficult from a technical standpoint, though it did call for a couple ingredients that aren't so easy to find in Japan. Basil is hard to find but not impossible, mint is quite rare, and feta cheese is almost non-existant. Fortunately for me, the grocery store in the basement of the Kita Senju Marui came to the rescue again, with both types of herbs at reasonable prices and a special cheese shop that just happened to have feta (though you had to ask as it wasn't in the displays). The feta was a rather ridiculous $20/lb, but I only needed 1/4 lbs. and sometimes sacrifices must be made in the name of good food.

Garides Tourkolimano (Greek shrimp)
3/4 lbs. shrimp
3 tbs olive oil
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 red chilis (one deseeded), minced
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1.5 cups white wine (I used a Cabernet Sauvignon and didn't actually measure)
4 green onions (green part only), sliced
2 cups basil, ripped up
1 cup mint, roughly chopped
115 g feta cheese, chopped into small blocks
1/2 cup parsley, chopped



First, I gave the shrimp a quick shot in the pan, just until they started to turn pink, then set them aside. I added a couple solid slugs of olive oil the the pan and let the garlic and chilis get all aromatic and delicious. Next went in the tomatoes and wine, which I brought to a simmer and let be for a few minutes until the tomatoes started breaking down. Back in went the shrimp, along with the green onions, for another minute or two. The whole boatload of basil (seriously, it was a ton) and mint got dumped in next and stirred into the sauce. I tossed in the feta and gave all a good mix, though I left it for a little long and the feta melted a bit. A quick sprinkle of parsley and it was off to the table, along with some slices of crusty bread for wiping up extra sauce.




The dish was pretty straight forward to put together and got great feedback, so I'll definitely add it on my list of reliable recipes. I bought pretty good quality ingredients and it still only ran me about 2500 yen (~$25) to feed the 6 of us, which is quite reasonable. If I'd doubled the amount of shrimp it probably could have stood on it's own as a main course and would only just barely have broke 3000 yen. I'd worried that ~100g of feta wouldn't be enough, but I think it ended up being just the right amount. The only thing I think I would change next time is I'd go with just one chili or deseed both, as it was a little spicier than it needed to be.



It felt really good to turn out something that everyone liked, especially under pressure. It was also nice trying a recipe that wasn't Asian, as that's pretty much all I ever make and it's probably a good idea to round out my personal recipe list a bit. All in all, a top drawer party, so pats on the back all around!

Something Different (Thai Curry)

Today I'm going to try something different: I'm going to try to keep this brief. A lot of my entries have been far too long and, as I was reading through the updates of the food blogs I follow, I realized that I don't really like reading epically long entries. Most of the ones I enjoy most tell a quick story, get to the point, and call it a day. I'm not so good at that (this introduction is already getting long), but I'll give it a shot anyways.

I took the day off from work today, only my second day off in my more than 10 months of employment. I had no plans for how to spend the day and, to be completely honest, I didn't really do anything of significance, but it was nice to not have to go into the office all the same.

Usually when I have a good bit of time on a weekend evening, I like to try to cook something more difficult and demanding, since I can spare the time required. I was planning on making Red Curry Mussels, a dish I fell in love with at Ray's Boat House in Seattle, but the mussels weren't looking so awesome at my usual stores today, so I skipped out on that idea and settled for regular Thai red curry.

One thing I quite like about soupy-brothy type dishes like curries, mabo tofu, and the likes is that you can put pretty much whatever you want into them and it will be totally fine. Today, I loaded up my curry with onions, carrots, bell peppers, eggplant, and tofu. I've got a bunch of meat in my freezer that needs eating, but wasn't on top of my game enough to actually have any of it defrosted in time for dinner, hence the vegetarian-ness.



The recipe is based off of a basic red curry recipe from Rasa Malaysia, though as usual I didn't particularly stick to it beyond the rough ratios for the broth. I pan fried the tofu until it was golden brown (ok, that's a lie: I made one side a beautiful golden brown and thoroughly burned the other), then made sure the carrots and eggplant were cooked long enough to properly soften up. My mom will probably feint upon hearing that I voluntarily ate eggplant, but I've come to realize that it doesn't taste like much on it's own and absorbs other flavors quite well (making it great for a curry) and getting some extra veggies in my diet certainly doesn't hurt.

I love spicy foods, with much of what I cook lately coming out bright red from all the chili-based ingredients, and I tried to be generous with the red curry paste this time, but it didn't have much affect. I don't know if the base recipe is just quite mild, if it's the curry paste I'm using, or a combination of both, but this definitely could have done with more heat.

How to Make People Think You Are Awesome (aka Gyoza)

Though I'm glad that I've finally got some time to write another entry, the feeling is tempered a bit by the fact that it's only due to a complete lack of plans on a Saturday night. I'll take comfort in knowing that I've got lunch and dinner plans with friends on Sunday, so it's not like I'm a total loser.

Right, on to the food. Gyoza is one of my favorite things to take to parties and the like. Everyone is always amazed by the fact that you made them yourself, rather buy them (sad commentary on the current state of people's dietary habits, but that's another story), like you had moved a mountain or something. You will be praised to know end and people will tell their friends about it, but the truth is not only are they so easy to make it's stupid, they're pretty much impossible to mess up. If you have the core ingredients and don't use crazy ratios, they are almost guaranteed to turn out well.

I will admit that I sort of cheat on one thing: I buy the wrappers. It's not that they're terrible difficult to make, just a combination of flour and water, but buying them guarantees that they are the same thickness, so you don't have any that are too thick and end up undercookeded or too thin and break while cooking. Since they're just flour and water anyway, there's no worry about crazy artificial ingredients in the store-bought ones, so that's worth points in my book. If I had a pasta machine, I would probably use that and make my own, but I don't own one so that's that.

Anyhow, things you pretty much have to include in your filling: ground meat (what kind is completely at your discretion, though I imagine chicken would end up a bit dry), green onions or nira (chinese chives), ginger, and garlic. To be honest, you could get by without the last two, but gyoza are way better with them. My personal opinion is that you should use more green onions/nira than you think you should, at least close to 1:1 with the meat, if not more. It will keep your gyoza from being just a hunk of meat in a wonton. This time, I opted to throw in some minced onions as well, just because. Tekito? Yes, but delicious too.



So what do you do? mince up everything you're going to use in the filling. Add some salt and pepper as you see fit. Give it a little shot of soy sauce if you're in the mood, or whatever kind of seasoning sounds like a good idea at the time. Mix it all together really well and drop roughly a heaping teaspoon or so in the middle of a wrapper. Dip your finger in some water and paint the edge of the wrapper with the water (this is what makes it stick together). Fold the wrapper in half, pressing out any air, and add some crimps to the round side. I used to be too gentler when pressing the crimps in, but the real secret to getting sexy looking gyoza is to give it some tough love to make sure it really keeps its shape.


For cooking options, there are 4 ways you can go. The most common is to pan fry them, which gives you a somewhat crispy wrapper with a juicy inside. The second is to steam them, which will highlight the filling over the wrapper. You can also boil them for a more velvety wrapper or deep fry them for a crispy one. Since I usually pan fry them, I decided to steam this bunch, giving them 6-7 minutes per batch in the steamer, though I pan fried a few just because they taste so damn good that way too. Be careful not to overcrowd the steamer or they'll stick together and you'll have to risk ripping the wrapper to separate them



That's all there is to it. Chop some stuff up, mix it together, fold a wrapper in half and cook. Yet somehow that's enough to have people singing your culinary praise. Just smile and soak it in.

p.s. I hope everybody notices the fact that I am indeed holding that gyoza with chopsticks LEFT HANDED. Since you can't really work an SLR with your left hand and I don't have a tripod, I had to bust out my supreme skills to bring you that picture. Enjoy it and bask in the deliciousness of the food.

A Day at the Beach + Mabo Tofu

Today I met up with the Michigan crew and spent the day at the beach. The weather was absolutely perfect, in the low 30s and sunny, and it was a great way to relax after a long week at the office. We met up down near Kamakura late in the morning and staked out a spot on the beach. We'd picked up some juice and tea on the way and I'd brought pineapple and grapefruit, so we started off with some of that. The beach is lined with little shacks and bars selling food and drink, so everybody grabbed a bit from there throughout the day as well. I tried to be fairly diligent with the use of sunscreen but alas, as always, ended up burning. I take some comfort in knowing that even the asian kids I was with, who are far less prone to sunburn than I am, ending up looking pretty red. The sun really is a different beast here and it will rock you if you aren't careful...













As I mentioned, this past work week was a long one and not a good week in food for me. Work was crazy busy, with the earliest day ending a little after 10pm and racking up almost a months worth of overtime, so I didn't cook a single proper dinner the whole week. I often packed a lunch to eat as dinner while I was at the office and often had a granola loaded smoothie as a meal substitute. I wasn't particularly ever in the mood for eating (it happens to me sometimes) so I didn't eat very much over the course of the week and I'm pretty sure I lost some weight. Sadly, most of the muscle mass I'd built up during the earlier part of the summer has fallen off during the past few weeks and I'm pretty much just skinny now. Hopefully I can get myself back into the habit of regular exercise again and get back in shape.


After such an unimpressive eats, I felt the need to make up for it this weekend. I had some tofu in the fridge that was in need of eating soon, so I went for one of my staple dishes that's not terribly difficult to make but tastes so damn good: mabo tofu. Really the only problem I ever have with the dish is that it's so easy to make too much and so hard to not eat it all. Fortunately the ingredients are all cheap and for what honestly couldn't cost me more than 5 dollars tops I made enough to comfortably serve 2-3 people. I always am generous with the chili sauce because I like it spicy, but this time I also tried added some garlic and black bean sauce which I thought worked out really well. The meal comes together fairly quickly and honestly doesn't require much attention. To be honest, if you put in most of the main ingredients in reasonable proportions, you're pretty much guaranteed to end up with a delicious dish.

Mabo Tofu
~15og ground pork
200g firm tofu
1.5 tbs toubanjan (chili sauce)
1 tbs garlic and black bean sauce
2 tsp ginger, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4-5 stems of green onions, minced (save about a tbs of the green part for garnishing)
1 Japanese long onion, cut on the bias (it's a lot like a leek)
1 tbs tenmenjan (sweet black bean sauce)
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs shao xing rice wine
salt, pepper, and sichaun peppercorns to taste
1.5 tbs cornstarch disolved in 3 tbs water

Saute the pork, toubanjan, and garlic & black bean sauce until the pork is mostly cooked. I don't use any oil since there tends to be enough fat in the ground meat already. Add the ginger, garlic, long onion, and most of the green onion and saute for another 30 seconds or so. Add the tenmenjan, soy sauce, and shao xing then stir everything until well combined. Stir in the salt, pepper and sichaun peppercorns, then add the cornstarch and mix thoroughly. I usually drop the heat a bit before adding the cornstarch to help buy some time to mix it in evenly before it thickens too much. Otherwise, you might end up with some kinda goopy bits and that's just not fun. Let it all simmer for a bit until it's close to the desired consistency (I like it fairly thick) then gentley stir in the tofu. Give it another minute after that to make sure the tofu gets completely heated (a bite of cold tofu in this dish would just be weird), sprinkle with the saved green onion and a bit more sichaun peppercorn, then serve.