Haagendazs Cafe

http://www.haagen-dazs.co.jp/maison/

I was on Saturday shift for the first time. I knew I had to do something cool after work to make up for not being able to do anything exciting at work. So I asked my colleague what we could do around there. I had fancy chocolate opera cake. It was very rich in chocolate. It would have been the perfect photography subject but the dessert looked too delicious... There was a nice surprise when we finished with the payment. I got a free Haagendazs pen cuz today was the cafe's first anniversary! Since it was so expensive, I am not sure if I would go back there again but it was definitely a great experience.

Miso Tonkatsu

Yesterday I went to Nagoya and had the best tonkatsu I've ever eaten. Apparently Nagoya is famous for using a miso sauce instead of the standard tonkatsu sauce. I have to say, the miso sauce was AMAZING. I think I want to learn to make it the same way at home.

I'm not dead yet.

So it has been quite a while since I posted here... I'm actually now living in Japan and have a lot of food stories to come!! For now to make up for my silence, here's a bunch of food that I've been cooking.

Grilled salmon with veggies (it's natural to be jealous)

Rice + Stew

Udon and veggies, with oyster sauce

Basil Soup

Steak and Eggs

Spinach and udon soup

Christmas Cookies

What I like about holidays in Japan is that it normally involves food!

My mom has been baking cookies for her friend's kindergarten's Christmas party for about three years. The event gets bigger and bigger. This year they ordered over 300 cookies. Kids take three cookies off of the cookies piled up on a table at the party.

To make the cookies interesting, we add new types of cookie cutters or come up with new decorations. This year's newbie is the red & green sprinkles. I bought them when I went to Boston last month. Those colorful decorations are common in the U.S. but still special in Japan.

We have tons of left-over cookies so I'll keep giving some to whomever I meet in the next couple of weeks! Well, I mean to do it but I tend to forget to take them when I leave home...

Recent Experimentation

I recently tried out three recipes I found online. The first was a recipe for from-scratch english muffins which I found here. I have never made any sort of bread from scratch so it was a new experience for me, and actually a lot easier than I thought. I think kneading the bread is very fun, and the recipe was so simple I could make modifications very easily. In fact, the muffins shown in the picture are actually onion english muffins. I added the onions very late in the process and they created a bit of extra moisture, which is why the muffins puffed up instead of being flat like they normally would.

The second recipe was for a mushroom veggie burger. This recipe can be watched here. This recipe also was very simple, and I learned a new trick! To add salt when you cook mushrooms will drain them of moisture making them much easier to use in other dishes such as this. The picture here does these burgers no justice. They were quite amazing. I made four of them and ate one just before work, and I couldn't help it... I came home on my lunch break and ate the remaining three!!

I had a surplus of almonds that weren't getting eaten very fast, so I decided to try my hand at making almond mlik (recipe). I didn't do a very good job at this one, since I don't actually have a blender. I tried mixing the almonds and water in a food processor but because I had no good way to measure, I used way too much water, and not enough almonds. So while this mixture does look very similar to almond milk, the taste is unfortunately closer to water. I will try again soon though, maybe with a borrowed blender!

I ate Mt. Fuji!

My parents, Ian and I went to see Mt. Fuji during his trip to Japan. We were gonna look at the mountain by the lake near by but the thick fog was covering the mountain. We decided to drive up til the 5th step (go goume) and see it up close. We bought some souveniors and were about to head back and I found this bakery in the food court. They are selling Mt. Fuji melon pan or pinapple bun! As a big melon pan fan, I could not miss it. The bread is freshly baked in front of us and they sprinkled some cocoa powder on top, which made a good sweet-bitter contrast. Although the cashier chose crappy shaped ones, they were pretty tasty! When I get a chance to climb up Mt. Fuji, I will definitely try Mt. Fuji melon pan again:).

My melon pan journey continues...

Peanuts Party!

We had a Peanuts party to celebrate my Dad's birthday and my brother's new job. My dad likes Peanuts from when he was little so we decided to make Snoopy and his red dog house. To be more unique, since my dad wouldn't eat cake that much, my mom and I decided to make a dish that look like a desert. With all the preparation, my mom didn't have time to decorate the Snoopy sushi. I thought I could handle it but all the rice fell apart after a min or so, lol. Woodstock made of mashed potato was very realistic tho. My mom is good at making characters out of edible stuff. The "chocolate cake" on the right is Japanese style meatloaf. She made the letters by squeezing mashed potato out of a tube. Chocolate flakes sitting around the base is fried gobo. The brown stuff in the back is fake jelly made of soy sause based jelly with chopped raddish and squid in it. The cold jelly part was best in the hot humid weather (we had the AC on so it wasn't hot in the room tho:P). To conclude the party, we had three kinds of cake: plum wine cake, peach yogurt cake, and orange tart. Everything was yummy and fun.

If we are having a birthday party together, we will do something creative like this, Kris! lol...