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Chocolate Cake, 1933 style
“All About Baking”, published in 1933, is an excellent primer on baking with lots of lost wisdom about how to prepare pans, to set baking times, and to perfect mixing techniques in the days before electric mixers. Doing this with a hand mixer makes it so very easy. Creaming butter by hand is a good…
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Jaljeera, Cumin Lemonade
While teaching a school program on a hot day in India, the kids and I were served a drink I’d never tasted before. It’s a sweet, salty, and spicy lemonade called jaljeera. I’m in love; this is the best thing for a hot day, whether it’s a Tokyo heatwave or a dusty playground. There are…
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Curried Mushroom Toast
Back from India, Tod is perfecting his fusion Indian recipes. Here is this morning’s brunch – a creamy curried mushroom sauce over toast. We’ve made this before, but this time Tod’s included some of the more esoteric Indian spices. The result is a rich, full-bodied flavour. If you don’t have these spices and seasonings at…
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Back in the Kitchen
Ah, what a relief. We have arrived in Bangalore and are staying with Shreyas and Arun. We can cook again! After five weeks on the road without kitchen access or grocery explorations, this is such a treat. Food is a big part of our lives and we love to both cook and eat. Shreyas is…
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Scorching Orange and Mint Salad
We had a strange assortment of leftovers from a party, including a bag of oranges, a bunch of mint and and a whole jar of black olives. A friend recently returned from a trip to South America gifted us some unidentified dried chiles. This must be a salad! The addition of cilantro and salt rounded…
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Waffle Experiments
Tod’s been cooking up a storm over his long two-week winter holiday. Over the last couple of months, we kept seeing interesting waffle recipes, so this break has been taken us from “we should try that” to “that was delicious.” This is my report on Tod’s tasty experiments. Waffle #1: Cornbread with Chili The waffles…
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Gyoza Variations
I don’t know why this didn’t occur to us sooner, but gyoza wrappers work well with non-traditional fillings. We’ve been experimenting and two of our favorites are spinach and feta (gyozakopita), and potato with sauerkraut (pieroza). You can use your favorite spanikopita or pierogie recipe, or try ours. Gyozakopita Filling 1 onion 1 clove garlic…
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Sardine & Tomato Risotto
This is one of Tod’s inspired creations the fuses Japanese stock with a classically Italian dish. It fits into the veg-aquarian mode of eating and is so full of umami that all you will need to accompany it is a salad. Sardine & Tomato Risotto serves 2 20 g dried konbu 1 cup katsuobushi flakes…
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Strawberry Fields Forever
Ichigo-gari with Heather and Zio yesterday in Tochigi yielded 1.6 kg of berries. The berries are grown in long hothouses through the winter. Another month or so and strawberries will be off the local produce menu until autumn, so I am glad to have picked some this season. We’ll have frozen strawberries for summer smoothies. Tod was…
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Honey Gingerbread Cookies
When we were travelling in Prague and Poland at Christmas a few years back, we fell in love with lebkuchen and pirniki, German and Polish gingerbreads. They are hard to find in Tokyo, so this year I decided to try making some myself. There is a bewildering variety of European gingerbread so settling on a…
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