It’s been an thrilling 24 hours, starting with a book signing at Barnes & Noble at 68th and Lexington in NYC – and seeing for the very very very first time, my cookbook in a bookstore.
A real book, done by me. In a real bookstore.
I saw. I cried. I took a photo.
Of course, I’ve seen the book up on Amazon.com and friends from around the world have sent me photos of my book in their bookstores, but since the book has been out, this was my very first time ever seeing it in person with my own two eyes.
Damn. I did good, real good. People around me at the store noticed the similarity between me and the gal on the jacket cover (except the gal on the jacket cover is 10 pounds lighter. That’s what writing a cookbook does to you.) and started congratulating me.
“Oh yes, that IS me!”
“Thank you, thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the book!”
I gushed with joy.
I still had a couple of hours til the event started, so I hopped into a cab to grab some lunch with my publicist and her friend, Maria.
Into the cab I go, still smiling from ear to ear, barely able to keep my happy feet from doing a jig.
And then I looked at the back of my leg. [click to continue…]
view at 6:30am, 35th floor at Westin Times Square
Well, yesterday officially started Day 1 of the Steamy Kitchen Cookbook book tour with a 5-day stop in NYC! I’ve been to the city 5 times this year already, and I’m hoping that next time I’ll get some kind of frequent visitor perk, like maybe a personal navigator, as the public transportation system is confusing and a bit scary for someone who gets lost even going to the grocery store.
Yesterday, I was the M.C. for the Dumpling Festival (more on that later…lots of pics…) [click to continue…]
Hello friends! Please say hi to Rachael, who’ve I’ve been mentoring in the blog-world as a Steamy Kitchen intern.
She’s a kick-ass gyoza ninja and I’ve asked her to write up her super-secret recipe for these savory pan-fried Japanese style dumplings.
Rachael lived in Japan for a number of years and here’s her story and a step by step photo tutorial on how to make Gyoza.
xoxo Jaden
How did a girl who was born in the Rocky Mountains and raised in California and who graduated with French and Law degrees end up writing a food blog called La Fuji Mama and striving to perfect her gyoza recipe? The story starts seven and a half years ago when I married a man who had lived and studied in Japan. Six months into our marriage, we moved to Japan, a place completely foreign to me. Before my marriage, I had traveled all over Europe and lived in Paris, but I had never imagined that I would ever live in Asia. But there I was, living on the outskirts of Yokohama in a tiny little 400-square-foot, two-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood devoid of any other foreigners.
My kitchen consisted of a large sink, a gas range with two burners and a “fish fryer” beneath the burners (like a little mini broiler), a refrigerator that was considerably shorter than I was, a toaster oven, and two cupboards. I spent my free time exploring, eating, watching and listening, and loving each moment more than the last. After almost a year, we returned to the States. Three years later, my husband’s company asked him to transfer to Tokyo, which he happily agreed to. I soon found myself living in Japan for the second time, this time in downtown Tokyo, in a slightly larger 950-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment, with a slightly larger kitchen, and a spectacular view of Mt. Fuji.
I quickly settled into life, feeling much more comfortable the second time around, and trying to embrace the experience. Our ties to Japan were further strengthened by the birth of our first child in a Japanese hospital. A piece of my heart will always be in Tokyo because of that experience.
Our move back to the US a year ago was a difficult one, but we try to keep the “homesickness” for Japan at bay with trips to Mitsuwa (our nearest Japanese grocery store) and lots of home cooked Japanese meals.
My first foray into Japanese home cooking started a few weeks after we moved to Japan the first time. One of my neighbors, a woman named Miki, periodically knocked on my door to ask if I wanted to “cook and talk.” I looked forward to those knocks – they meant that I got to accompany her to her apartment and spend an hour with her, helping her to both cook a meal and practice her English. It was in her kitchen that I stuffed and pleated my first gyoza.
Miki made it look easy–her hands rhythmically pleating the top layer of the gyoza wrapper and simultaneously pinching it against the smooth bottom layer as she went–finishing each gyoza within moments of having started it. My first gyoza took me forever to complete, looked sloppy, and didn’t hold together well when cooked. But with a few pointers from Miki, my gyoza quickly started to look more as they should (although I still can’t stuff and pleat a gyoza as fast as she could).
Over the last seven years I’ve tweaked the gyoza recipe I learned from Miki, adjusting the amounts of ingredients here and there to suit our palates, and adding a couple of ingredients used by other wonderful Japanese cooks I’ve met along the way. The recipe I’m going to share with you today is that recipe in its latest form (though ask me again in a few months and it will probably already be slightly different).
My most recent adjustment to the gyoza recipe is in the technique I use when mixing the filling. In Elizabeth Andoh’s cookbook, Washoku, she describes a method that helps tenderize the meat and helps hold the filling together. She explains that it’s “a bit like baseball practice” because you are gathering the filling into a ball and throwing it back into the bowl repeatedly. The bonus to the technique is that you get to play with your food.
How to make Gyoza
Gyoza are really easy to make. Just mince, grate, and measure out your ingredients as called for,
and then mix the gyoza ingredients together in a bowl using your hands. 
[click to continue…]
My husband, Scott, is a big French onion soup fan, ordering it whenever possible when we’re eating out. For me, though, the traditional French version is just a little too rich, too heavy for my tastes. All this time, I thought what Scott liked about the soup was its full-bodied, sweet beefy stock and the heady cognac. Because, that’s a foodie or a chef would say.
But, nope. I should have known better. “It’s all about the cheese, baby,” he revealed. That’s exactly why I love him. Scott’s a simple guy with simple tastes (man eat meat. grunt.) and always brings me back down from gourmet la-la land.
Read the rest + step-by-step recipe at Steamy Kitchen on TLC (it’s a ridiculously simple soup!)
Yesterday, we brought the kids to my friend Julie’s kids’ birthday party.
Did ya get that? Too many apostrophes and plurals in that sentence. Anyways, the birthday party was held at Mixon Fruit Farms & Wildlife Refuge.
The kids got to ride on the back of this big tortoise, who didn’t seem to mind at all. He just kept doin’ his thing.
This is Mr. Matthews, the keeper of the animals and tour guide. And here is his pet opossum.
These critters normally freak me out – but I gotta say, this guy is pretty darn cute. Except for those freaky-sharp nails. Oh and the teeth. Or the rodent-nose. Or the cross-eyedness (which, I just learned from Matthews, is why they end up as roadkill so often)
Okay, never mind. the really aren’t cute at all.
Only in Florida would you ever have a beautiful fruit orchard destination that includes a tram tour of their roadkill refuge. [click to continue…]
