January’s Washoku Warriors challenge was Comfort Food. We were given the option of two recipes: Miso Ramen (味噌ラーメン) or Soy-Glazed Burger (てり焼きバーガー). I initially wanted to make the ramen because I have some miso sitting in my refrigerator, but upon further inspection the recipe seemed a little more intensive and had some ingredients that I didn’t happen to have on hand. Unfortunately, for the past week I’ve been buried under feet of snow so I’ve been limited to what my local organic supermarket has in stock. Plus, burgers are an easy sell to my boyfriend!

I halved the recipe and though the burgers were a little on the large side, there was some left over for bento! I did add a little bit too much onion and didn’t mince it finely enough. Other than that, I would have mixed the miso a little bit more into the meat before making patties.

• drizzles of vegetable oil
• 1/2 of a small yellow onion, finely minced
• 1 tbsp sake
• 3/4 lb ground beef
• 1/4 cup panko
• 2 tbsp beaten egg (about 1 large egg)
• 1 tsp miso
• 1 tbps sugar
• 1/2 tbsp hot water
• 1.5 tbsp soy sauce

Heat a drizzle of oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the onion and sauté until wilted and slightly aromatic but not browned. Add 1 /2 tbsp of sake and deglaze the pan, scraping up any browned bits. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the onion to cool to room temperature.

As the onions cool, combine the beef, panko, egg, and miso into a separate bowl. Add the cooled onion and knead until evenly distributed. Divide into equal portions and form patty shape.

Drizzle some more oil into the previously used skillet and place over medium heat. When hot, add the patties and sear on the first side until browned (about 1 minute). Flip and sear the second side, pressing to flatten. Lower the heat, add 1/2 tablespoon of sake, cover, and cook for 8-10 minutes (medium to medium well).

While the burgers are cooking, mix sugar and hot water until combined. Then add soy sauce. Return skillet to high heat, add sauce and move pan around until burgers are evenly covered. Flip the burgers once after a minute to make sure they are evenly glazed.

Plate when still hot, as you like. I chose to eat it open face on half of a bagel with some lettuce. Traditionally, it’s served more similar to loco moco style, with rice and the extra sauce served over it.

I really liked the miso in the recipe, but the large amount of onion in the burger made it taste more like meatloaf. I also chose not to put the extra sauce on the patty since I could see all the fat and grease from the meat in it. Not sure if I’ll ever make this recipe again, but it’s an interesting take on the standard hamburger. Since it’s cooked in a covered skillet, it keeps all of it’s juices.

My sister and I are huge fans of a local Korean bakery, Shilla Patisserie. There are many locations around where we live, so we often either meet their or stop by whenever we’re in the neighborhood. My family often purchases one of Shilla’s delicious and beautiful cakes for family get-togethers. One of these type of cakes is called “Roll Cake”. I recently purchased a book called くるくるロールケーキ Kuru Kuru Roll Cake from Kinokuniya in New York City. Kuru kuru means to spin or wind up, which is appropriate because the cross-section of a roll cake looks similar to a lollipop or pinwheel.

Even though my sister’s birthday is in December, she often celebrates her birthday later so that family and friends are back from vacation.I wanted to try to make a Shilla-style cake using the book I recently purchased. If I messed up, I could always just stop by the bakery on the way and pick up a real cake, right?

Unfortunately, I totally forgot that I didn’t have the special 30cmx30cm pan, Japanese super-fine sugar, a kitchen scale, and the types of eggs I had would probably be too big. These are some of the many problems that arise when cooking recipes from other countries. I also had to translate this recipe. Let’s be honest–I’m not familiar with Japanese kitchen vocabulary at all!

Here is my version of the simple Strawberry Roll Cake with substitutions/conversions below.

Sponge

• 5 egg yolks
• 4 egg whites
• 40g butter
  • 2 2/3 tbsp. unsalted butter
• 40g Low Viscosity Wheat Flour (薄力粉)
  • 8 1/2 tsp all-purpose flour
• 90g white superior soft sugar (上白糖)
  • processed 19 teaspoons granulated sugar in food processor

Cream

• 200ml fresh cream
  • 200 ml heavy whipping cream
• 20g icing sugar
  • 4 1/4 teaspoon powdered sugar

Combine egg yolks and 20g(4 1/4 teaspoon) of granulated sugar. In a separate bowl, whip egg whites and remaining granulated sugar until it forms stiff peaks like a meringue. Add the yolk mixture to the whites, combining gently. Sift the flour in, mixing from the bottom to the top to make sure everything is incorporated. Add the melted butter and mix thoroughly using a rubber spatula. Make sure there are no bubbles in the batter. Add batter to a pan lined with two layers of parchment paper with slits cut in the corners so it lays flat. Smooth out the batter with a card, bake @ 200 degrees Celsius (392 f) for 12 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.

For the cream, put the beater and bowl in the refrigerator until cold. Add the cream and sugar, beat for 6-8 minutes until thick. If you beat too long, it’ll turn into butter, so be careful!

Flip the cake over and remove the parchment paper carefully. Spread cream on with knife and fill with desired fruit slices. Roll 90 degrees (I rolled mine tighter, so it was really skinny!) using parchment paper on the outside. Once it’s rolled, keep rolled in the parchment paper for at least 30 minutes before cutting into slices.

I topped the cake with homemade dulce de leche and some toasted coconut. Toasted coconut marshmallows lined the side with milk tea pocky, some panda picks, and a bear-shaped marshmallow! (My sister’s nickname is “Bear” and one of her favorite animals are pandas) It tasted very good, but I don’t know yet if it was quite worth the effort. Granted, most of the effort went into translating and converting measurements. Now that I have a kitchen scale, it should much easier, right?

Unfortunately, due to the snow, her party was canceled! This cake won’t keep for long because of the cream in it, so I drove it out to her the night of her would-be-party so my family could enjoy it. I took a slice for myself and placed it in my French Postcard bento–that’s two slices I got to take because I had to make sure it tasted good before decorating it ^_^

I was snowed in this weekend (still snowed in actually!), and didn’t have a chance to eat the bananas I had picked up for on-the-go breakfasts. They were looking awfully brown, so I decided to make banana muffins! This was a great recipe because it used up the last of my cream cheese, butter, and of course, bananas.

A quick search through my Google Reader yielded many results, but I don’t have a loaf pan and I didn’t have any whole or buttermilk on hand. I also didn’t have any nuts, so I subbed the cup of nuts in the recipe below with an extra banana.

Adapted from The Sweetest Kitchen
Makes 12-15 muffins

• 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• ~1 cup mashed ripe bananas (2 or 3 bananas)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, cream cheese and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add egg, beating well.  Beat in bananas and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; add to creamed mixture.

Transfer to a muffin tin with liners. Bake at 350F for 22 minutes for regular muffins, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

December’s Washoku Warriors challenge was New Years (O-Shougatsu). We were given the option of three recipes: New Year’s Salad (紅白なます), Fiery Parsnips (きんぴら), and “Smashed” Burdock (たたき牛蒡). I chose to do the first two because the process for the gobou seemed a bit time consuming in comparison to the others.

I made the kinpira for my family’s New Year celebration on January 1 (more on this later). Everything seemed to be going really well and looked like it might even taste good, until I added in the soy sauce. Right when the soy sauce hit the pan, it caramelized and made the whole pan give off a burnt smell. The parnips tasted fine themselves, with a nice root-y flavor, but I couldn’t get over that burnt smell.

I just made the namasu and I love it! The recipe is very easy and it’s a dish that most everyone will like. The fruit in this salad mixes with the “dressing” (or pickling sauce) and gives it a nice pleasant sweetness that reminds me more of dessert than an appetizer salad. I will definitely make this again because it doesn’t have many ingredients and it only takes a few minutes to make. This makes a great accompaniment to a meal or a nice, healthy bento-filler.

I’m glad that I finally found a recipe from Washoku that I absolutely love and it has common ingredients and is very easy to make!

Kohaku Namasu (New Year’s Salad)

• ~3.5 inches of daikon, shredded (yield ~7oz)
• ~1 inch of carrot, shredded (yield ~2oz)
• two measurements of 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 c. Sweet and Sour mixture
  • 1/4 c. plum vinegar, 2 tbsp each of sugar, dashi, and water
• 1 small dried apricot (or fruit of choice), shredded
• 1/2 tsp. yuzu peel or lemon zest

Peel and slice the vegetables. Put the carrot and daikon in separate bowls, sprinkle with 1/4 tsp. of salt each. Allow to sweat for 2-3 minutes and then press between fingers, gradually increasing pressure. Rinse briefly with cold water and drain all liquid. Combine vegetables and fruit and toss to combine. Drizzle the sweet and sour mixture over top, gently toss, and let sit at room temperature for at least an hour.

This salad is full of vitamins and is said to bring good luck because red and white are auspicious colors (red carrots grow in areas of Japan around the time this dish would be made). Kohaku Namasu actually means “red-white” and “(vegetables) pickled in vinegar”. The strands of vegetables also look like ribbons, which connote prosperity, but also longevity!

This year I decided to do a lot of baking for the holidays. Last year, I made Milk Chocolate Espresso Cookies and Lemon Rings. I chose to make EggNog Cupcakes, Snowball Cupcakes, Milk Chocolate Espresso Cookies and Linzer Cookies using four different kinds of filling.

Here are the recipes (to be followed by pictures):

EggNog Cupcakes with EggNog Pastry Cream Filling and Spiced Rum Caramel Cream Cheese Frosting

These were absolutely delicious, but they took a long time to make! I think I spent about two hours making all of the components of the filling and frosting, not to mention that hand-dyed and cut fondant. I was quite surprised at the strength of the egg nog flavor, but not sure that all the effort was worth the result. I’d buy these, but not make them again (unless requested).

Snowball Cupcakes (Failed)

The cupcakes themselves turned out alright. They tasted pretty dense, like brownies. Unfortunately, the frosting refused to come together. Even though I followed the directions, the egg whites refused to solidify. I tried making chocolate whipped cream frosting, but my beaters were too fast (and my whisking arm too slow). In the end, I just drizzled the failed whipped frosting on top and plopped some chocolate chips on top.

Linzer Cookies

I absolutely love the Linzer cookies from La Madeline. I tried to find an easy Linzer recipe that didn’t involve anything weird like nuts or specific extracts or flours. My friend, Stephanie, went to Catoctin Mountain Orchard during the fall and brought me back Peach Brandy Jam and Blackberry Preserves–I thought this was the perfect opportunity to put them to good use (besides me eating them of course)! I also used Strawberry Rhubarb preserves and Ginger preserves. Unfortunately, there was no more strawberry jam, or else these would have been 100% homemade.

Since the recipe made so much dough and I was the only one rolling, flouring, cutting, sugaring, baking, spreading, and stacking these, it took a long time. Probably about 3 hours, plus some recon work the next day to finish a few that cooled overnight when I was too tired to continue. Everyone seemed to like these more than the espresso cookies, which was fine because I love the espresso cookies! Then again, who could resist a cute heart, star, bunny, or bear cookie when faced with an alternative that looks like a lump of coal. The box below is what made it to my house for Christmas; the box I took to work was half espresso cookies and half linzer.

These cookie cutters are from Japan. I wouldn’t recommend getting them. Even though their use is for linzer cookies, the dough doesn’t pop out of the cutter that well and you have to tap on the side of the counter to get them out. Note to self: use open cookie cutters if I ever make these in the future.

That wraps up the baking for this year! I didn’t talk about the espresso cookies since I documented them last year.

I think I’ll be able to escape the rest of the year without baking anything else, but I have a feeling I’ll be baking on the 1st of the year for my family’s Chinese New Year feast. Wish me luck!

The first snow of the year! (Dec 5th)

I went to a Cupcake Exchange/Bake-Off as part of a Yelp event. I really like Chai, but I don’t like buttercream frosting, so I was interested as to how these would turn out. The recipe, from The Cupcake Blog, had a recipe to make your own chai spice, but I chose to buy Chai teabags and cut them open.

These cupcakes turned out surprisingly delicious! The chocolate wasn’t too deep and the cake was firm (with a crust on top) yet soft on the inside. I didn’t really get the chai flavor, but it might be because of the chai that I used and the fact that this was a chocolate cake.

This was also my first attempt at piping frosting (which I think turned out alright). I tried to make chocolate mint leaves, but I didn’t put enough chocolate on the leaves so when I peeled the chocolate off, the leaves broke. I was able to salvage about three leaves from the fifty I attempted to make and put silver dragees on the rest.

I didn’t win first place, but I did win third (which I later learned was actually 4th place after some math was recalculated). The first place winner was a blow-torched graham cracker crust S’mores cupcake and second place was an Irish Car Bomb cupcake, which I couldn’t really compete with. If I had a molten lava center to this cake, I’m sure I would have won!

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I gave these out this year for Christmas presents. It was a great project because I was able to give something handmade and also use up some of the fabric that I bought in Japan two years ago.

• 5 tablespoons cups nonfat dry milk powder
• 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 4 tablespoons confectioners’ sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• dash salt
• mini marshmallows to fill (about 2 ounces or 2 small handfuls)
• 8 oz mason/canning jars, fabric, ribbon

Layer in ingredients in the order listed above, tapping the jar against counter in-between layers to settle ingredients. Since I wanted a uniform look for the top layer, I chose to mix together the sugar, cornstarch, pumpkin pie spice and salt before adding to the jar.

If making the cocoa, shake jar up so all ingredients are combined. Add 3 tablespoons of mix to a mug and fill with hot water or milk (whichever you prefer). Stir until combined.

This mixture keeps for up to six months. It is easily adaptable for 8 and 10 ounce sizes by changing all quarter measurements to thirds. Keep the marshmallows for the 10 ounce size or omit for 8 ounce jars.

Glass jars can be found in various sizes in the produce section of supermarkets during canning season. They’re pretty cheap when bought by case like this. If you have to buy individual jars, they’re usually expensive and the incorrect size, so try to stock up during the summer and fall!

I made two versions that had vegetarian marshmallows in them. I also ran out of jars, so I purchased some plastic hinge ones from the Container Store (expensive and they were a different size). Some were packaged in plastic bags, some weren’t. I also included recipe cards for some people.

I made these cupcakes November 23rd, the Monday before Thanksgiving. My office was having a Thanksgiving potluck and I did bring Brown Sugar Roasted Acorn Squash & Sweet Potatoes, but just in case that flopped, I brought these.

They may look entirely homemade, but they’re not! I used a Sprinkles Banana Cupcake mix that I found at the Williams Sonoma outlet and used canned cream cheese frosting. All of my effort went into making the decorations. I dyed half the frosting orange and paired those cupcakes up with lighter-dyed fondant flowers. The darker flowers were paired with the original frosting. I had leftover wax-lined (read: not safe for baking!) party cups, so I poked holes through them and tied them with orange curling ribbon.

I used the smallest biscuit cutter from this set to make the flower, and the diamond from this bento cutter set. The brown/yellow circles came with the Sprinkles set as decoration.

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For this month’s Washoku Warriors, our challenge was sushi. I’ve made sushi before, but it has been a long while since I was able to successfully execute a maki roll. One assignment was a maki roll containing unagi 鰻 (broiled eel), daikon radish sprouts, and cucumber. My cucumber went bad before I got to it so I substituted the crunch with red pepper. I added a mayo/sriracha sauce  inside. I really didn’t like this sushi, but it was mainly because the eel I used was from a can and disgusting looking.

Another challenge was inari いなり寿司 (fried tofu pocket sushi). I make inari all the time,  so it was quite easy. After making 3 inari and a maki roll, I still had leftover sushi rice so I made some onigiri mixed with furikake and bean sprouts. After making all of these, I found out the rice was too dry and had too much vinegar in it.

Inari – Nov 18th Bento; Onigiri – Nov 20th Bento

As part of the most recent Washoku Warrior post I did, I made enoki-hijiki relish. Here’s what I posted in the original entry about this relish:

I haven’t tried the Kelp-Mushroom Relish yet, but I did make it! I tried to make onigiri with it as a filling, but the relish was too wet. I made inari with the relish as a topping and will take a picture and my thoughts later. The relish is a good way to use up leftovers, but I did not like cutting the many squares of kombu. I chose to cut them into half-inch strips, which was tedious when cutting almost twenty squares of seaweed (I halved the recipe). My cutting board got a bit slimy after a while too.

This relish works great as a topping for inari, but I’m not sure I like the flavor of enoki mushrooms. I certainly didn’t like it enough to warrant the prep time it required. I won’t post the recipe here, but you can find it in Washoku, a book you should buy anyways!

Below are two salmon filled onigiri and a lone relish-topped inari.

I brought the last of the first batch of salted-plum dressing to eat with the salad (This was bento for October 16th).