Talking about Filipinos and Philippines (to be exact, their food), one thing I love the most is Sinigang.  This one goes even further than my days in Manhattan.  I’m sure I asked Ursula, the nanny/cook/cleaning lady of my roommates’ siblings to make sinigang, but she never did.  Maybe because I wasn’t her master, maybe because she didn’t like it, I don’t know.  So the last time (and possibly the only time) I had it was in the Philippines, when I was still living in Tokyo, before I even know that I would be living in the US, so we are talking around 1987.

My friend Rina’s dad had an assignment in Manila, so a few of us decided to visit his mansion in Dasmarinas Villege in Makati, where all these wealthy and influential Filipinos live.  One of their neighbors was Imerda Marcos, or  Aquinos… I don’t quite remember but someone really famous at that time.

One day we went to a restaurant with our friend Seline from IBM Philippines, who had a 2-month assignment in Tokyo where Rina and I used to work together.  She ordered sinigang for us to try, this sour soup with shrimp and vegetables that water my mouth just thinking about it!  As you already figure out, I tend to remember things I ate and the flavor for a long time, even if I forget everything else.  I vaguely remember Rina telling me that you can buy a sinigang mix, I might have bought a packet or two for souvenir, but for some reason, I don’t remember making it.  Maybe it wasn’t so memorable!

Then years passed…  I moved from Tokyo to Michigan, then to Arizona, then to New York, LA and San Francisco.  No sinigang came near me, even at Filipino restaurants nor Filipino friend’s houses, even though I always asked about it.

After I made the large batch of winter melon and chicken soup the other day, I was contemplating what I could transform it into.  All of a sudden, I got my light bulb moment!  Add the tamarind paste and make it into sinigang!

The result was spectacular!   Yes, this flavor!  The only green I had was sauteed pea sprouts, and the only shrimp I had was small frozen shrimps, but I was able to recreate that complex tangy flavor with tamarind and fish sauce without going shopping.  The best part was I already had the soup, so it took me only 5 minutes!

Sinigang

Ingredients: (serves 2)

• Chicken and Winter Melon Soup leftover — 2-3 cups
  • If you don’t have this, quarter and slice daikon or water melon into about 1 inch X 1 inch, 1/4 inch thickness so that it cooks faster.
  • and Chicken stock
• EVOO — 1/2 – 1 TBS
• Garlic, minced — 1
• Onion – sliced about 1/4 C
• Tomatoes — chopped about 1/2 C
• Vegetables cut in bite size pieces about 1/2 ~ 2/3 cup total
  • I used oyster mushrooms and cooked pea sprouts
• Shrimp – if large, 1-2 per person, best if it has head attached.  If small, 1/4 – 1/3 C for two
• Tamarind paste — 2 -3 TBS
• Fish Sauce — to taste
• Salt & Pepper

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan, cook minced garlic in medium low heat, when fragrant, add onion and sweat it.
• Add other vegetables including tomatoes, from those that takes longest to cook first.    Saute until somewhat soft, add the shrimp and coat with oil. Season lightly with salt.
• Add the soup leftover, or chicken stock if you don’t have the leftover.  Bring to a soft boil.  When the soup is hot, mix in the tamarind paste and fish sauce. When the shrimp is cooked through, taste and adjust seasoning.

I tried it three ways — as it is, with some rice in it, with some noodles, as usual. They were all good.  : )  Now I can eat sinigang anytime I want!  I’m a happy camper!

The moral of the story…  if you can’t get something you like, make it your own.  You’ll be so glad you did!

Do you like root vegetables?

As it gets colder, I long for root vegetables.  And we Japanese love root vegetables, including things like gobo (burdock) which many Westerners considers as “tree roots”.  When it’s cooked properly, it tastes great packed with earthy flavor, and mildly laxative, so excellent for your plumbing issues. : )

One of the most typical root vegetable dish in Japan is Nimono, literally means “braised dish”.  The veggies that are commonly used for this are: burdock (gobo), lotus roots (renkon), carrots (something red), green beans or snow peas (something green), dried mushrooms, and yam jelly cake called “konnyaku”. Sometime it has chicken in it.  After sauteing them briefly in salad oil, everything is simmered in soy and sugar based dashi for long time until everything turn brown.  Personally I thought it tasted somewhat old-fashioned, and didn’t like it much as a child, so rarely made it.

This update version I learned from a friend of mine from highschool who’s a renowned chef and Olive Oil Sommelier in Japan cooks much faster, and the flavor of each vegetables shines through.  It’s lightly seasoned, so you can transform this into other dishes easily as well.  Since konnayku is hard to get for most people, I skipped it. Also I happened have white radishes (not the Japanese kokabu, but western kind) that I wanted to use up, so I decided to add it instead of daikon.  The result was easy to make, super healthy, flavorful dish!  You will love it.

Sauteed Root Vegetables Japanese Style

Ingredients:

• Small white radishes – 8
• Carrot, medium – 1
• Lotus root, small – 1
• Green beans, 1/2 cup
• Shiitake mushrooms, medium, 4 -5
• Extra Virgin Olive Oil, 2-3 TBS
• Soy Sauce, 1 TBS
• Mirin (Sweet Rice Wine), 1 TBS
• Sake, 1 TBS
• Salt and pepper – to taste

Method:

1. Boil water in a medium pot and lightly salt it.  Peel carrots and lotus roots.  Cut all veggies into bit-size pieces, then parboil each vegetables except shiitake.
2. In a hot skillet, heat EVOO and saute all the parboiled vegetables and shiitake, and add soy sauce, mirin, sake.  Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and pepper.  Add extra EVOO and mix gently at the end if desired.

You can double or triple the recipe because the leftover will be great chopped up, and transformed into soups, mixed rice dish, etc. later in the week.  Or add mayo and cooked shredded chicken to make healthy salad or sandwich fillings, or saute it with ground meat, season with miso etc. and top on tofu, or rice…. Or drizzle some ponzu and bake it until golden brown, serve with shaved bonito flakes or even Parmesan cheese on top…  Yum!

As you can see this is a super easy way to increase vegetable intake in your daily diet.  A plant-based dish like this is the reason why the Japanese dishes are considered so healthy, and their obesity rate is so low compared with many developed countries (3% vs 13~34% of other countries including the US among the highest).  Plus this updated version has about 1/3 of sodium and 1/8 of sugar of the traditional version — you should definitely try it.

So what’s your favorite root vegetable dish?

Have you ever ended up with tofu leftovers?  What do you normally do with it?

Do you want to know my secret?  Crumble with a fork, cook in microwave, then you can add to practically anything. For example, soup — not only for miso soup, but also other Asian style soup, mix with ground meat and make a healthier burgers, scrambled tofu, stir fry, stuffing for gyoza, with rice. You can even add it to smoothie or make desserts, if you use the kinu-goshi (soft or medium-soft).  You can also do this to extend the life for a few more days, when you have a fresh tofu that’s about to expire. (Tofu can be frozen in the pack or with water, yet the texture changes compeletely.)

And yes, in case you are wondering, you can make this first, and make the tofu scramble I shared with you on my last post.

Scrambled Tofu Base

1. Crumble a tofu with a folk and place it on the microwavable plate lined with a paper towel. Microwave high for 4-5 minutes.
2. Leave until cool to handle,  transfer to a tupper ware lined with paper towel. Store in the fridge.

One recipe I want to share with you today is called Shiro-ae. Literally means mixed with whites.

Shira-ae

Ingredients:

• Scrambled Tofu mix – 1 cup (about 1/2 block of tofu)
• Nerigoma (sesame paste), ground sesame seeds, Tahini or peanut butter – 2 TBS
• Sugar – to taste
• Soy sauce – to taste
• miso (optional) – to taste
• Salt – pinch
• Greens – 1 1/2 – 2 cups

Method:

1. Mix tofu, sesame paste, sugar, soy sauce and salt.
2. Steam or boil greens, shock in ice water, and squeeze water out well.  Chop in bite size pieces. Or just use leftover vegetables.
3. Mix 1 and 2 right before eating.

Note: My favorites are broccoli or spinach, yet other vegetables such as carrots and sea vegetables especially hijiki can be used for this dish.
What’s your favorite way to eat tofu?  Please share as comment below.

What dish speaks to you “HOME”?

For me, it’s iri-dofu, Japanese tofu scramble. It’s one of the most typical Japanese home-cooked dish, and you probably won’t see it served much at restaurants (unless it’s more casual “Izakaya” type place.)  With a chopsticks full (?) of this fluffy tofu and tuna mixture with steamed rice, I breathe in the delicate scent of soy sauce, green onion, and sake, and am  immediately transferred back to Tokyo.  This version is a bit different from what I ate growing up with julienned vegetables, but it combines my other childhood favorite of tuna and green onion, and it’s more flavorful and easier than more traditional version. It only uses 4 main ingredients of widely available products (for some people, always on hand), and not much chopping.  If you don’t have sake, use very dry white wine.

Iri-dofu 　いり豆腐 (Tofu Scramble)

Ingredients (Serves 2-3 as main dish, 4-6 as side dish)

• Tofu (Momen, in the US, use medium or medium firm)  1 block (about 400g)
• Tuna 1 can (6oz 170g), packed in olive oil kind preferred, DO NOT DRAIN OIL
  • If its in water, drain water well, use 2 TBS Olive Oil in step 3.
• Eggs 2, beaten
• Green onions, sliced 1/2 c (about 3)
• Sake, 1 1/2 TBS
• Soy sauce, 1 1/2 TBS
• Kosher Salt, pinch (optional.  If not using, increase the amount of soy sauce to 1 ts to 1/2 TBS)

Method:

1. Drain water from tofu in a strainer for 5-10 min.  To make the next step faster, I scramble tofu loosely and put in a microwaveable container with a lid and a plastic strainer to collect water. Microwave for 3-4 minutes on high.   If your container doesn’t have a plastic strainer, create a bridge with two chopsticks, and place whole tofu on top, so that the water will drain.
2. Heat a pan or skillet with relatively wide bottom and short sides (to allow the water evaporate faster), then scramble the drained tofu with a wooden spoon on high  until water is evaporated.
3. Add the entire can of tuna with olive oil from the can.  If using the tuna packed in water, add the olive oil to tofu before adding the drained tuna.   Mix well and continue to cook to coat the oil well with tofu.
4. Add Sake, Soy Sauce and sliced green onions.  Continue to stir so that it will not burn.
5. Add a pinch of salt in beaten egg, and pour it around the tofu.  Stir the tofu quickly with 4-5 chopsticks until egg gets firmer.  Serve hot.

Note: A note about the microwave:  As many of you know, the more powerful your microwave is, the shorter you need to cook.  Ours rotates, but is a very small one, the type that barely fits a dinner plate. So, if you have a newer, powerful microwave, please start with half of the time suggested, and add time little by little to obtain desired results.

Variations:

• Vegetarian version:
  1. Instead of tuna, use 4-5 small dried shiitake mushrooms soaked in water for about 30 minutes to 1 hour. To quicken the process, remove the stems, break it in half, soak in water with a pinch of sugar mixed with right side up, and top it with a small plate so that mushroom will submerged in water.  Microwave for 2 min.  When the shiitake are soft, squeeze the water out, and slice them thinly.  Save the juice for later use since it adds a lot of umami (savory flavor) to many Japanese dishes.
  2. Slice other vegetables such as carrots and snowpeas/green beans (for color and vitamin A and C) thinly and about 1 inch long. The total amount should be about 4 oz.
  3. At step 3, add oil and vegetables instead of tuna.  You may want to add a little more soysauce and some sugar (about 1/2 TBS) to add more flavor.
• You can also use soaked and squeezed hijiki seaweed with other veggies.
• For crunchiness, also try gobo (burdock root) or renkon (lotus root).  They oxidise easily, so as you cut, release them in water mixed with a bit of rice or white vinegar.
• Instead of tuna, try ground chicken (or you can add this to vegetarian version.)
  1. After step 1, heat oil in a pan or skillet, cook ground chicken until well crumbled.  Then add carrots, vegetables and saute briefly.
  2. Add tofu and follow the directions, 2, 4 and 5.

So what’s your favorite home-cooked meal?   I look forward to your comment.  : )

As promised on the last post, here’s my other favorite Laab Gai, Spicy Thai Chicken Salad.  This is also easy to make, especially if you already have the same sauce from the eggplant dish on hand, and/or toasted rice powder in a small jar.  I recommend just toast about 1/2 C of rice, so that it will last for a few times. I can guarantee this will become another of your favorite, you won’t regret it.

The first time I had it was over 15 years ago in New York at this Thai restaurant where we used to host a new graduate welcome lunch for our graduate school Thunderbird.  We didn’t order it, but the friendly owner wanted us to try it.  We all loved it.  Every time I have this dish, I think of these friends and good old days (and some other crazy stuff from the life in New York.)

The problem was,  because we didn’t order it, I didn’t know how it was actually called. I’m sure I asked the owner how its called (so that I can order again), but a Japanese girl trying to decipher Thai dish name is not the easiest.  After I moved from New York to California, I was looking for it, but it was nowhere to be found.  This is a Northeastern Thailand specialty, so if the owner or chef is not from that area, they normally don’t put it on the menu.

As for any other my food quest, I finally found it! at a Thai restaurant on someone’s table. I asked the name, and the rest is the history.  I even got the recipe, so I can easily cook it at home.

This is traditionally made with chicken, but you can also make it with other meat or seafood.

This recipe is adopted from the recipe I cut out from San Francisco Chronicle years ago.  My version will allow you to use the sauce made in advance.

Thai Chicken Salad (Laab Gai)

Ingredients – serves 3 – 4:

• Ground chicken 1/2 lbs or chicken pulsed in food processor until coarsely chopped
• White rice 2 TBS
• Garlic  1 ts, grated (optional)
• Red onion or shallots  1/4 C, thinly sliced
• Lemon grass 1 TBS, minced
• Lime zest, grated (optional)
• Onion, thinly sliced, 1/2 C
• Green or red chili  1-2, seed removed, and thinly sliced, or red pepper flakes
• Sugar 1 -2 ts
• Fish Sauce 1 1/2 TBS
• Lime juice 2 TBS
• Water or lime juice 1 TBS
• Cabbage (white, red or napa) julienned
• Cilantro 2-3 TBS chopped
• Mint leaves

Directions:

1. Dissolve the sugar, fish sauce, lime juice.  Taste and if you like it a little milder, add water. if you like it more sour, add lime juice.
2. Toast rice in a small skillet until golden. Make sure to shake it consistently for even toasting. Grind it in spice mill until coarsely grinded. (I make extra and save in a small jar for the next time)
3. Heat 1TBS vegetable oil in skillet on medium heat. Cook chili until fragrant for a few seconds. Add chicken and a little fish sauce and cook, while breaking up the chicken lumps.
4. Turn heat off, mix in onion, lime zest, lemon grass, 1 and 2, and herbs.  Let it sit for about 15-20 min to allow flavor to blend. Serve on the bed of julienned cabbage.

Just like the Thai eggplant salad, I LOVE the flavor fireworks in my mouth — balance of sweet, sour and spicy.

As in my past post (click here if you missed it), fish sauce adds depth and flavor to many dishes, both Asian and non-Asian.  Be sure to click the link at the bottom of the post for San Francisco Chronicle article how celebrity chefs are using fish sauce to add umami to their dishes, and recipes. So, if you don’t have one, get a bottle, and use it often as your favorite flavor booster.  They are available at Asian market (best selection and price) or large supermarket’s international section.

Thai eggplant salad

The last of the Easy Exciting Grilled Eggplant Extravaganza series is Thai dish.  I can go on and on with this, to share the versatility of grilled eggplants, yet just like me in Turkey (if you missed my Turkey eggplant story last week, click here), some of you may be wondering “would Mari turn this into an ‘eggplant blog’?”

No… As I said many times, I thrive on VARIETY. Even for writing.  Don’t forget, I cook things I write about and EAT them for dinner.  I’ll save other eggplants recipes for later (nice fall/winter dishes….).

In Thai restaurants, this dish is often made with dried shrimp.  But that’s not the easiest to come by for most of us, or even if you find it, could take years to finish unless you cook South-East Asian dishes all the time.  Therefore, my version is simplified with something you can use more often, and every grocery store should have, and some people like me always keep some in the freezer…  regular shrimp.

What’s exciting about this is that you can double the amount of the sauce and onions, to make Thai Chicken Salad (Laab Gai) as well.  It’s a bit like that Indian spread, you can have two Thai salads really quickly. (or one today, another next day.) Or make a large batch, keep a jar in the fridge, and use them for other Thai as well as Vietnamese dishes such as fresh spring rolls and Bun, cold Vietnamese vermicelli noodles salad.

I’ll share the Laab recipe on my next post.  Again, make sure to subscribe from the top right, so that you won’t miss it.  You have 3 options: email, RSS or Networkedblogs Facebook application.

Thai Eggplant Salad (Yaam Makhuea Yow)

Ingredients – serves 2-3:

• Eggplants (Japanese, Chinese or Italian)  4 small to medium, grilled, and cut in bite size pieces (click here for how to make grilled eggplants)
• Cooked shrimp  2 large (cut in 1/2” pieces) or 3-5 medium (if frozen, thawed)
• Red onion  1/2 C, thinly sliced
• Green or red chili  1-2, seed removed, and thinly sliced, or red pepper flakes
• Sugar 1 -2 ts
• Fish Sauce 1 1/2 TBS
• Lime juice 2 TBS
• Water or lime juice 1 TBS
• Mint leaves or julienned ao-shiso as garnish

Directions:

1. Dissolve the sugar, fish sauce, lime juice.  Taste and if you like it a little milder, add water. if you like it more sour, add lime juice.
2. Mix shrimp, eggplant, onion and the sauce.  Let it sit for about 15-20 min to allow flavor to blend. Garnish with mint leaves (or my favorite, julienned ao-shiso leaves).

Note: You can also omit shrimp and serve with hard-boiled egg wedges. Or to make it more substantial, cook 1/4 lbs ground meat (chicken, turkey or pork works best) in oil, and proceed to 2.

If you are vegetarian or vegan and cannot use fish sauce, here’s the resource for the alternative. http://www.thaigrocer.com/VegAdapt.html

I LOVE the balance of sweet, sour and spicy burst in my mouth, along with cold slippery texture of eggplants and shrimp in summer. (It’s great in any season.) As you can see, you can make this with everything you have at home (or easily accessible.)

As in my past post (click here if you missed it), fish sauce adds depth and flavor to many dishes, both Asian and non-Asian.  Be sure to click the link at the bottom of the post for San Francisco Chronicle article how celebrity chefs are using fish sauce to add umami to their dishes, and recipes. So, if you don’t have one, get a bottle, and use it often as your favorite flavor booster.  They are available at Asian market (best selection and price) or large supermarket’s international section.

Sneak Preview of the next post…  mmm….

Laab Gai, Thai Chicken Salad

Eggplant is THE national vegetable of Turkey, and they are everywhere.  Appetizers, salads, casseroles, fried, stuffed and pickled, even pureed eggplant, served with a nice lamb stew with a strange name…

When we  traveled around Turkey, I was fascinated with this fact, and wanted to try all possible preparations of eggplant.  Even though I start getting bored of it toward the end (remember? I love VARIETY, so too much of the same thing, even if it’s wonderful AND prepared differently it’s bad news for me), I faithfully ate all the eggplant that showed up in front of me, and some extra on my husband’s plate.

As you can imagine, when we came back, I had to go cold turkey with eggplant. I even avoided the eggplant section at Berkeley Bowl, my favorite gourmet grocery store in our neighborhood, especially because they have 10 different kinds of eggplant (and 20 differnt kind of radishes) and I did not see any.  At all!

But my effort was in vein.  It didn’t last that long.

It was such a great trip, my husband and I shared the stories and photos with many friends as well as among ourselves.  And you know what happens.  Maybe it’s only me, but the conversation always end up “Oh, and such and such at this place was so delicious!” and many of them were eggplant dishes.

So quite a few eggplant dishes started to end up on our dinner table, (almost) night after night.  We even visited our local Turkish restaurant with our friends within a month of our return (they didn’t know it wasn’t our first time to have Turkish dishes after we left). Finally my husband had to force me to stop the eggplant experimentation. Crazy me!

One of the dishes I make often since that trip is Patlican Salatasi, pureed eggplant salad, actually more like dip.

It’s super easy and refreshing, and in my humble opinion, better than bababanouj, because you don’t need any “exotic” ingredients like tahini (sesame paste).

The good news is there are two versions.  One is with yogurt, and another without.  The Kitchen Wizard kind of split recipe indeed. So either split the recipe in half and try both at the same time, or enjoy the no-yogurt version first, then add yogurt later.

If you are splitting the recipe, start with less lemon juice, since the one with yogurt will get more tang from whey in yogurt.

Serve them with toasted pita chips, crusty bread or crackers.

Turkish Eggplant Salad

Ingredients:

• Grilled eggplant (about 1 cup)
• 2 or more cloves, garlic, minced
• 2 TBS or more Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• lemon juice to taste
• lemon zest to taste
• salt

Directions:

1. Combine all the ingredients and puree in food processor or with a stick blender.
2. Adjust the seasoning (garlic, EVOO, lemon juice, salt) to taste.

Turkish Eggplant Salad with Yogurt

• Add 1/2 C yogurt to above recipe. Mix well.
• Optional: Top with chopped tomatoes and dill as garnish.

They are easy and the crowd pleaser.  My 2 year old nephew Hugo loves it too. He ate it with the dip all over his face! (I forgot to take a photo, so this is actually the ice cream photo just like the last one, but you get the idea.)

So make them for your next party or potluck, and remember to leave me a comment on how you liked it!

Hugo eats everything with 100% commitment.

There are so many dishes you can make with grilled eggplant.

Today’s recipe is Chinese Eggplant Salad with Chicken.

This is really easy to do especially when you have shredded chicken (click here for how to make it) on hand, and perfect for summer.

Chinese Eggplant Salad with Chicken

Ingredients:

• Cooked, shredded chicken – 1 c
• Grilled eggplant, cut in about 2” –1 c
• Cucumber – 1 small cucumber or about 2” English cucumber
• Napa cabbage or romaine lettuce – 2-3 c (preferably center part and/or top 1/3 of the bulb)
• Sliced tomatoes (Optional) – 1 or 2
• Chinese dressing (recipe follows)

Directions:

1. Roll up the napa cabbage leaves and slice thin. If using romaine lettuce, you can just chop them into bite size pieces. Cut cucumbers into thin sticks. (If using regular cucumbers, peel the skin, cut in half, remove seeds first.)
2. In a salad bowl, pile up napa cabbage/romaine lettuce at the bottom, and arrange shredded chicken, eggplant and cucumber (and tomato if using).
3. Serve with Chinese dressing. Optionally, top with cilantro, fried wonton skins etc.

Note: If you don’t have chicken, you can substitute with a can of tuna (in Olive Oil preferred.)

Chinese dressing:

• Mix equal parts sesame (or vegetable) oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and some sugar (adjust the amount based on your taste). Add either grated ginger, chopped green onion and/or ground sesame seeds. Add chili oil if you have any.
• You can use this dressing for Hiyashi Chuka (Cold Chinese Noodle Salad), or on any other salad, as well as dipping sauce for gyoza and marinade.  Especially tasty with vegetables with high water content, such as grilled eggplant, cucumber, tomatoes as well as wakame seaweed.

Since summer is almost over, here’s the bonus recipe of Hiyashi Chuka.

Hiyashi Chuka (Cold Chinese Noodle Salad)

It’s pretty much the same with the Chinese eggplant salad above, except, you’d want to use boiled and chilled fresh Chinese noodles instead of napa cabbage.

When it gets really hot, I lose my appetite (many of you who know me personally probably do not believe that’s possible).  I survived the muggy summer in Tokyo with this dish, and still make it when it’s hot in the Bay Area (even though the the humidity is a lot lower, we don’t have an air-conditioner, so all I want to eat is something cold when it gets beyond 85F!)

Traditionally we use shredded toppings of various colors and nutritional values – protein from egg and ham or chicken, and vitamins from vegetables. The most typical veggies we use for this dish are tomatoes and cucumbers. Yet you can use bean sprouts, boiled and julienned asparagus or green beans, as well as corn (my favorite!) or wakame seaweed.

Directions:

1. Boil fresh Chinese noodles (thin egg noodle or spinach noodle – I use 3 oz per person,  6 serving to one pound of noodles).  Should be done in 2-3 min. Drain and wash with cold water until noodle is cold.
2. If using egg (about 1/2 per serving), either boil eggs cut into thin wedges, or beat egg with a little bit of salt and sugar, make a very thin omelet (just like you would make a crepe). When the egg is set, let it cool, and julienne.
3. In a salad bowl, pile up cold noodles in the center, and arrange shredded chicken/ham, and julienned vegetables and egg attractively.
4. Pour generous amount of Chinese dressing. (Note: You’ll need enough amount of dressing to coat all the noodles, make a large batch and dilute the dressing with water or dashi broth a bit.)

Our 26 month old nephew Hugo loves Hiyashi Chuka (he’s 100% American, no Asian blood at all as you can tell from his size), and so are many of our friends and their kids.  (Sorry I forgot to take photo of him when he was eating it…  So instead, here’s the photo of him adult-size coffee ice cream – all by himself.  I’m so proud of him!)

Try it before the summer is over and please leave us a comment on how you liked it.

Do you like to grill?  Then next time, make sure to throw on several whole eggplants on while you are cooking your meat, veggies or seafood.

Why whole eggplants?

Because while you are grilling something else, they basically cook themselves and you can use them for hundreds of dishes, or eat as a side dish to eat with your BBQ.

Rather than huge globe eggplants, I prefer smaller and more slender Japanese, Italian or Chinese eggplants which cook much faster and are more versatile. As you see in the glimpse of what you could do with Eggplant curry recipe, there are so many dishes you can make with grilled eggplants; Japanese to Thai to Turkish and Italian.

How to make grilled eggplants:

1. Poke several places with a folk or knife on eggplant skin.
2. Grill at 400F or so until tender (Do not use oil). The skin should be charred. When cool enough to handle, remove the skin (and seeds if there’s a lot, especially in the globe eggplant). Or if hard to do so, use a spoon to scrape the flesh.  If preferred, cut into bite size pieces. Keep in a tight container in the fridge.

Note:

• Alternatively, before you start grilling, you can beat or roll the eggplants on the counter.  Create a shallow incision around the calyx, and around the long side of the eggplants. It’s a bit cumbersome, but helps you peel the skin very easily.
• In winter, you can do the same in the oven, toaster-oven or even right on gas stove.There’s a lot you can do with this.

Probably the easiest is to just eat it with your grilled food on the side. The smokiness of grilled eggplant is great even without any seasoning, yet when soaks up vinaigrette, it’s a wonderful summer treat.

Here’s the easiest and probably the most refreshing of all, a summer favorite of all Japanese households and restaurants around the world called Yaki-Nasu (simply meaning grilled eggplant.)  Every time I have some, it reminds me of how I survived the hot summer days in Tokyo with this (and cold somen noodles), and how I appreciate living in San Francisco Bay Area now, the place with year-round natural air-conditioning (even thought we don’t have one installed at home!)

Yaki-Nasu (Japanese Style Grilled Eggplant)

• It’s the best to use the chilled grilled eggplant.  If you only have eggplants that’s hot off the grill, you can put them in a small bowl (metal is best), cover with aluminum foil, and put it in the freezer until cold.
• Top with grated ginger and drizzle with soy based Japanese sauce, such as  soy sauce, thinned men-tsuyu (Japanese noodle soup base), ponzu, or just by itself.
• Alternative garnishes: beside grated ginger, try shredded ao-shiso (green perilla), bonito flakes or toasted sesame seeds.

Enjoy!

We’ll cover more international recipes using grilled eggplants later this week.  Be sure to subscribe to “Secrets of Kitchen Wizard” from the 3 options on the top left (E-mail, RSS or Facebook NetworkedBlogs application), so you won’t miss any.

Ao Shiso (Green Perilla) plant in our vegetable garden

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