Category: Cook

Tonight I’m making one-pot comfort food: chicken and brown rice. I rarely stray from these three types of rice when cooking: sushi, Arborio, and short-grain brown.

This weekend I’m cooking with ingredients I’ve never used before. Today: Thai eggplant. Tomorrow: oxtail.

Picked up gai lan, Chinese broccoli, from an Asian supermarket. My new favorite vegetable has a stronger, slightly more bitter taste than regular broccoli. We stir-fry the stalks for a while, then add the rest. We might include garlic, fresh ginger, sugar, shoyu, and fish sauce.

Today: The Arrival of the Reamer. It replaces a chipped glass juicer left behind by a roommate in 1976.

Satisfied a craving for comfort food on a snowy day: made a somewhat rustic meatloaf with my new, favorite, secret ingredient: Asian fish sauce. The glaze is not-so-secret: all-American ketchup.

I baked a big pot pie, he cleaned up, more pot pie for dinner on Tuesday.

Leftover mushroom risotto reappeared as patties, elevated by a salad from warm places.

I’m staying in, giving my brain a rest for a few days. Today’s excitement: the final countdown, just under five hours to go, 28-hour tonkotsu (pork bone broth). If I can’t go to Japan, then Japan can come to me

Walked home, avoiding puddles, with ingredients from an Asian supermarket. Most Americans would throw out some ingredients, but I’ll use them for three days of slow cooking a chicken bone broth, then carnitas, then a pork bone broth. We are not in a hurry.

Traveled to Japan via Hawaii with Spam musubi for lunch: sushi rice with rice vinegar, fried Spam with a shoyu/sherry glaze, nori, and sprinkles of furikake. The journey started in Austin, Minnesota, also known as “Spam Town USA,” home of Hormel