Usually sometime during the holiday, we’ll bake an entire bone-in ham.

Split pea and ham soup is so surprisingly easy, especially in a pressure cooker. It takes about 3 minutes of chopping, 4 minutes of pressure cooking time and then 20 minutes to just let it sit. My friend, Wendy taught me her version, which actually comes from the back of the package of split peas!

No soaking necessary (which makes the recipe even simpler!)

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A couple of weeks ago, we had a massive Temaki sushi party with friends. If you’ve never been to one, I highly suggest making friends with the fine folks at I Love Blue Sea  or head over to Casson Trenor’s site, Sustainable Sushi and host a sushi party of your own.

Since I’m a type of person who always over-cooks for dinner parties (oh, not overcook as in sawdust meat, but over-cooks as in I prepare enough food to feed triple the amount of guests I’m expecting), there was plenty of seafood leftover for the weekend to make Seafood Miso Noodle Soup.

Like nearly all of my recipes, this meal is fast ‘n flexible, especially when you use rice noodles, which take a quick soak and 30 second boil. Dried rice noodles are soaked in cool or warm water for a few minutes to soften and rehydrate a bit. Then a swirl in your boiling broth and it’s done.

Japanese miso flavors the broth – you can use regular miso paste (any kind, though I recommend Shiro Miso, which is white miso, the most mild of all) or check out my client, Miso & Easy, which is prepared miso paste already mixed with dashi and conveniently packaged in a squeeze bottle. Just add water.

The rest of the ingredients are really up to you – assorted seafood, any vegetable and any fresh mushrooms that you like. I’ve used Japanese mushrooms (Brown Beech Mushroom), but regular sliced white mushrooms will work just as well.

Ingredients for Seafood Miso Noodle Soup

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As my many house guests can attest to, I am not a breakfast eater (unless I’m hung over, then a 1/2 pound of bacon will be devoured quickly). When Diane and Todd were over, the first thing my boys did right after waking up in the morning was run over to the cottage to wake them up and drag them to the house to make their famous breakfast.

They made homemade pancakes, waffles, french toast and cinnamon sugar knots. Oh, and we went through 10 pounds of bacon too (I’m not joking). You should see my boys’ faces when they woke up on Sunday and realized Uncle Todd and Auntie Diane were gone….(sigh) back to cold cereal and boring eggs.

But the ONE thing I will eat in the morning is 10-minute miso soup. Okay, sometimes I like Ochazuke for breakfast too (but that’s for another post). My body craves savory Japanese flavors in the morning and miso soup, fortified with egg, mushrooms, tofu and whatever leafy greens I have will hit the spot.

I’m developing recipes for Miso & Easy, which is a prepared miso paste that’s all ready to go – add hot water and you’ve got instant miso soup. It’s a brand new product.

If you’re using regular miso paste, same recipe, just use vegetable broth or dashi broth in place of water.

What is dashi?

Dashi is Japanese soup base that’s made from bonito fish. Instead of using chicken, vegetable or beef broth (in soups and in cooking dishes), Japanese recipes will call for dashi broth instead. You can make it from scratch, with a piece of kombu (dried seaweed) and dried bonito flakes; or use instant dashi powder (which is what I use)

But if you don’t have dashi, just use vegetable broth instead.

As for the other ingredients, it’s simple. And flexible. Whatever fresh mushrooms you have (below I have Japanese mushrooms), whatever leafy greens you want (spinach, bok choy, napa cabbage) and whatever firmness of tofu you want.

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I know it’s a little early to think about Thanksgiving leftovers, but believe me, time goes by so crazy fast! Once the big meal is over, even after the late-night refrigerator raid (you sneak in and pick at the turkey in the refrigerator too, right?!), we’ll always have more than enough leftover turkey for Turkey Gumbo.

Since Thanksgiving is such a big, heavy dinner, I created this recipe with restraint in mind.  It’s a lighter, milder version of gumbo than what you may be used to, a little more broth-y and no mouth-burning cayenne pepper or hot sauce, since the little kids will be enjoying this too (but feel free to douse your version with as much hot chili pepper as you like!)

While the ingredient list may look long, it is ingredients that you’ll probably have on hand anyways from cooking Thanksgiving meal. Leftover turkey meat is stirred into the gumbo at the end, just to heat through. The slow-simmered, richly flavored Turkey Gumbo served over steaming hot rice may just break the monotony of leftover turkey sandwiches this year for you too.
Continue reading Leftover Turkey Recipe: Turkey Gumbo...

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My husband, Scott, has quite an extensive single-malt scotch collection, which normally is off-limits to me and my kitchen.

According to him, scotch is to be slowly sipped and savored, not poured or glugged into a sizzling pan as a base for a sauce. Our rum stash, on the other hand, is fine for me to experiment with. Scott likes fine rum but not quite at the same intensity as the scotch.

We experimented with creating boozy salad dressings for adults a couple of weeks ago. We thought, why not make salad a little more fun for us? It turns out that aged rum, which is made from sugarcane, has the perfect caramel sweetness for a vinaigrette. Whisk a shot with a bit of apple-cider vinegar, mustard and olive oil for a salad dressing that’s sweet, tangy and has a touch of heat from the rum.

We used Flor de Cana rum from Nicaragua, aged 18 years. Of course, the better the rum, the better the results: You’re only using a shot-glass full. Aged rum or dark rum is better than the gut-twisting cheap stuff.

Rum Vinaigrette

Here’s whatcha need:

Simple, right?! Basically, you whisk everything together. Feel free to add more rum than stated in the recipe (hiccup!)

Continue reading Grilled Steak and Tomato Salad with Rum Vinaigrette...

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A couple of years ago, my husband, Scott, asked me to make a potato salad. He’s not a man who asks very often for something so specific, 95% of his requests center around the one-syllable, “meat” so I took his request pretty seriously.

I’ve always considered potato salad one of those “filler sides” that come with your lunch order at a deli – it’s cheap, easy to make and generally all taste the same. The gloppy, mayo-heavy version that comes in a plastic tub is nothing to brag about, nothing to complain about, it’s just there next to your sandwich.

So I set out to make a version of potato salad that would be show-stopping memorable and that I actually could brag about. The first step was to do away with boiled potatoes, which have very little taste (except when mashed with loads of butter and drenched in gravy — but that’s an entirely different recipe), and instead roast them, which gave them a deeper, nuttier taste and a crisp-brown crust on the sides.

I definitely wanted to pair them with loads of warm chopped bacon, this was going to be a potato salad served warm with salty bacon that had just come from the skillet.

Instead of mayonnaise, I went lighter and made a tangy vinaigrette out of red wine vinegar, mustard and the bacon drippings. Toss it all together at the last minute, right before serving.

Bingo! It was all sorts of perfect, my husband had thirds of the warm potato salad and nearly forgot about the “meat” on his plate. So much for the salad being merely a side, it’s been one of my most requested dishes by my family and friends. You know you’ve got a winner when people rotate their dinner plates so that the warm potato salad stands closest, right in front.

Warm Bacon Potato Salad Ingredients

Here’s what you will need for the salad:

Continue reading Warm Bacon Potato Salad...

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A wonderful friend has just come out with her second book and I’m thrilled to be able to share one of the recipes with you. I first met Deb Samuels via email as we shared the same publisher, Tuttle Publishing. We finally got a chance to meet in person and shared a lobster dinner in Boston, which quite frankly, has to be the *best* way to meet new friends. Deb spent more than a decade in Japan, studying, eating, cooking Japanese cuisine. Now, she teaches Japanese cooking classes, writes for the Boston Globe and is the proud author of My Japanese Table book. 

I’ve asked Deb to introduce the recipe, Shoko’s Sesame Chicken Salad, I thought you’d enjoy this recipe, as it’s quite different than any other chicken salad that you’ve experienced, especially with the drizzle of sizzling hot oil on cold chicken. ~Jaden

***

One summer day in Tokyo, deep in August, we were invited to the home of our Japanese “brother,” Shingo Oishi, his wife, Shoko, and their sons, Banri and Moro. It was only a ten-minute walk from the train station, but by the time we had arrived we had wilted from the heat. We greedily drank down ice-cold glasses of roasted barley tea, and Shoko had almost completed making a gorgeous cold chicken dish. The sliced, ginger-scented chicken lay on 
a bed of lightly crushed chunks of cucumbers, surrounded by skinned tomato wedges and topped with a heaping mound of chopped green onions (scallions). Shoko had saved the drama of dressing preparation for last. She filled a soup ladle with dark sesame oil and held it just above a low flame. When the oil began to bubble, she withdrew the ladle and poured it directly over the chicken. The crags in the smashed cukes held the dressing. Sizzling hot oil met cold chicken and green onions. Wow! What an appetite trigger! I like to shred the poached chicken breasts and serve the whole dish on top of a bed of shredded lettuce along with the tomatoes and cucumbers.

You can purchase Debra Samuel’s book, My Japanese Table on amazon.

You can also keep up to date with her on Twitter and Facebook!