Recipe: Kabocha Squash Soup

Yesterday I was watching repeat of TV show “Seinfeld” with my husband. And they are showing the episode of “Soup Nazi”. One of the best episode of Seinfeld!(You can see the short clip of it here)

Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” Clip

That was so funny and made me wanna eat a bowl of nice soup
And I found a Squash in our fridge.
The squash I used for this recipe is called “Kabocha”.
You can see the image of Kabocha squash here.
(http://www.recipetips.com/glossary-term/t--35847/kabocha-squash.asp)
In Japan, we eat this Kabocha squash for fall/winter season. It's sweet kind of squash.
Here’s how I made the Kabocha squash soup. You can make this soup in 20-30min.

Ingredients:
-kabocha squash 1/4
-milk 1 cup
-onion 1/4
-celery 1 stick
-butter 1 table spoon
-chicken flavor bouillon 1/2 teaspoon
-salt, pepper, sugar a little
-bay leaf 1

1.Cut the squash and scoop seeds out by spoon.

2.Wrap the 1/4 of squash by plastic food wrap and microwave it between 5-8 min. Duration will be depends on your microwave and how thick the squash is.
Poke a tooth pick to check how soft it gets.
If the tooth pick goes through the squash easily, it’s cooked perfectly!

3.While you are microwaving the squash, start to chop 1/4 of onion and 1 stick of celery.

4. Put 1 table spoon of butter in the pod and start the heat.

Once butter starts to be melt, you can put chopped onion & celery.

5.When the squash is cooked, scoop the orange part from it’s skin.
You can put it’s skin into the soup if you like, but the color of the soup would be yellowish green. Probably it’s healthier to put the skin into the soup nutrition wise…but soup looks better without the skin to my eyes...

6.Put the squash into the pod, then add 1 cup of milk.

7.Add 1/2 of chicken flavor bouillon, bay leaf, and a little bit of salt, pepper, and sugar.
Check the taste and if you need more spice, add some more.

8. Pick the bay leaf out from the pod and put whole soup into the food processor, or juicer to puree. You can eat without pureeing it. I just prefer to have a smoother texture soup. 

THAT’S IT!!!!!

Now ready to eat it!

Today I also made some dinner rolls.

BON APPETIT!!!!

(As the garnish, I add some cream and parsley on top of the soup)

Even though I didn’t buy a soup from the Soup Nazi, my tongue and stomach was so satisfied with this soup

Introducing new items for Fund Raising 2 & about anniversary

Today was a great day to me.
First of all, today is our 4th wedding anniversary!!!! Wow, I can’t believe 4 years have passed since the wedding… Time flies so fast!
I wanted to make something special for today and I made cream puffs for dessert


It was my first attempt to make cream puffs but I think I made them right. I used 2 different kinds of cream: custard cream and whipped cream. They were so good (The hand holding a cream puff is My husband’s. Thanks for helping me to take a photo!)

Second good thing was I had sales from my Etsy shop!!!! I didn’t expect somebody would buy something before the yard sale because my Etsy shop doesn’t have so much traffic, I was really really surprised and couldn’t believe it!
These are the sales I made.

Flower and Humming Bird necklace / Apple Green Fuzz Ball hair pins

A Teardrop in Rain necklace / Blue Flowers necklace

Flower Bouquet brooch

I really honestly couldn’t believe one person bought that much!!! As I announced before, I will donate all profits to Japan. I am going to post how much I earn and donate to Japan in the future on this Blog after I figure out how much percentage Etsy took as transaction fee.

Other than that, I was busy making more handmade Jewelry/Accessories for the Fund Raising Yard Sale/Flea Market held this coming Sunday March 27th.
Here are some new items.

Teardrop Earring 

Bird Brooches

Closer Look at them

Mmm… These photos are not good at all because I took them in the night.
I hope you can get a grasp of what they look like.

The Fund Raising Yard Sale/Flea Market will be held as follows:
Date : Sunday MAR. 27th.
Time: 10:00~4:00
Place : 3333 Helms Ave. Culver City, 90232
Right now we seem to have 16 different vendors so far. It would be fun! Please come and join us!

Memory of HAWAII: Garlic Shrimp

When we traveled to HAWAII last December, we ate many many wonderful food over there.
The lucky thing was one of my husband friend lives in there and he recommended us great local restaurants.
He especially recommended Shrimp Wagon in KAHUKU.


According to him, this Shrimp wagon is LOCO’s (Loco = local people in Hawaiian) favorite food truck. Sometimes he drrives to KAFUKU just because only for Garlic Shrimp dish.

Rice and macaroni salad (up left), and garlic shrimps on the cabbage salad (up right).

And it was AWESOME!!!!!!! It was so good that I can eat it everyday!!!!! It was really worth to drive far from WAIKIKI beach just for this dish!!!!

Two months has passed since we came back from the trip, suddenly we missed HAWAII and the taste of garlic shrimp!!!!

Sometimes I like to challenge myself to cook what I ate in the restaurant. I try my best to recall the taste of the dish and figure out its ingredients and seasoning to cook it in my kitchen.
And this is my version of Garlic Shrimp dish.

Rice is same as original. Instead of macaroni salad, I made potato salad. And garlic shrimp on the cabbage salad like original.

Here is what I did.
I prepared shrimp with garlic, salt and white pepper with some potato starch. Potato starch helps to keep shrimps tender even after its cooked.
And I sauteed them with butter. Also I added some garlic powder in the end.




The result was really good! I could put some more garlic and butter… But hey, it was a first attempt, so I am happy with the result. It was really close enough what we had in HAWAII.
And less butter is less fat and a little healthier anyways.

Recipe: Banana Roll Cake

Sometimes I want to eat cake very bad.
And if I have some bananas in our house, this is my favorite cake to make and eat.

“Banana Roll cake”

And good thing is this cake is not hard to make.

All you need to have is

-Egg: 4

-Sugar: 6 table spoon

-All purpose flour: 4 table spoon

-Salt: a pinch

-Vanilla extract: a little

-Banana: 2

-Whipping cream: 7oz

-Sugar for whipping cream: 2 table spoon

1. Separate yolk and egg white. Put a pinch of salt and sugar (6 table spoon) into the egg white and whip it until they form stiff peaks.

2. Put yolk into the egg white and mix them together.

3. Put flour through sifter into the mixed egg and mix them with a spatula nice and easy. And add vanilla extract.

4. Spread them onto the prepared baking sheet (I use the size of 13x18 to bake it thin and flat) and bake it 9-10min. in the oven which is heated up around 360F.

5. Meanwhile, prepare the whipped cream.

6. When the sponge cake gets cold, it is time to spread the whipped cream on top of it and put bananas.Roll it!!!

Instead of banana, you can put the other kind of fruits like pears, peaches or strawberries.

Even you can add cocoa powder into the sponge cake to have some chocolate flavor.

Please enjoy to make it and eat it

My Favorite Cooking Tool 2

Can you guess what this is?

You may easily see that it's a rabbit in the hat.
But what is this for?


The answer is…

It is a toothpick holder!!!!

This produced is produced by Italian design company called “Alessi”. They design very modern/stylish ,yet funny and cute stuff.

The name of this particular item is "Magic Bunny Toothpick Holder" and they have different choice of colors.

I wanted to have a black hat and a white bunny version to be honest, but I found mine from the garage sale and it was $1!!!

And if you buy it from the shop, normally it costs me $30!

I decided to compromise about the color to save $29. Don’t you think that it was the wise choice?

I love this product. It’s very cute but also very functional like “Matryoshka measuring cup”. Very easy to pick the toothpicks.

The one small complaint is the company describes this bunny’s color as “pink”

But to me, it looks an orange bunny with the pink-purple magic hat ‘cause first photo is exactly how it looks like in person.

However I shouldn’t complain at all since I got it A DOLLAR!!!!

My favorite cooking tool 1

I love something cute yet practical.
If it's just cute and not practical, I normally don't purchase it.
Nor if it's just practical and not good design, I won' buy it either.
And this is what I fall in love with recently!

What a cutie!!!!

But this is not just cute. Also very practical tool actually.
They are measuring cup which are designed as Russian doll "Matryoshka"
You can check how it works from following link.

http://www.amazon.com/Fred-Cup-Measuring-Matroyshkas-Cups/dp/B002L162FS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1296193432&sr=8-1
You can see that they got quite good reviews, too!

I didn't buy measuring spoons yet.
Perhaps I should own that, too ;-)

Chicken Teriyaki Buns

Since I found that making buns are not difficult and not time consuming that much, I am trying different buns whenever I have a spare time.

And today’s bun is Chicken Teriyaki Buns.

On the top of bun, I put chiken Teriyaki and cheese.

Once I made bread dough with 300g of bread flour, I can make 12 buns of a pam size.
And Teriyaki sauce was pre-made. Not hand-made of mine. Well, I cheted…
If you are a costco member, There is good pre-made teriyaki sauce called “Yoshida Sauce”. As you can see by name, Mr. Yoshida who is originally from Japan made this sauce. So it’s taste is authentic Japanese sweet&salty teriyaki taste. My Japanese friend gave me two thumbs up for this receipe so I can highly recomend to you

3 different buns

I guss I am a little addicted to make buns.

'Cause it is not too much work, and tastes good!!!!

And gave me the feeling "I did great job!!!" lol

Here are three kinds I made the other day.

Mmm.... Discription I wrote on the photo is not easy to read...

I made following three kinds;

1. Sweet red bean inside

... It doesn't look good in this photo at all... But it was good! ;-P

  2. Corns&Onion dressed by Mayo on Top

 3. Chili con carne on top

I used left over chili for this bun.

It was the easiest and tastiest make-over ever :-)

My husband liked one with Chili con carne the best.

I thought he wouldn't eat sweet red bean kind because it tastes very traditional Japanese and totally different from American food. So I ate all four of them.

Then later he asked me, " where the sweet red bean kind go? I didn't try even one."

...Well, it was too late. All of them were in my stomach already...

Please wait until next time ;-)

Potato Stuffed Buns

Everytime when I go back to Japan, I always go crazy about food.
Sushi, ra-men noodle, and Japanese bakery's bread, buns&pastries.
Of course I can find good bakeries here in L.A, too... However if I really miss the taste of Japanese bakery, I need to recreate them by myself.
So here is what I made.

Potato Stuffed Buns

Bread part is similar to French bread.
Inside is potatoes and bacon dressed with mayo, salt & pepper.
Japanese style mayo is little sour than American mayo.
Adding a bit of rice vinegar to American mayo is the solution to have similar tastes.

Easiest way to prepare potatoes, cut them small pieces and microwave it 5~7 min.
Less dirty dishes, less effort, but taste good :-D
That's my favorite way to cook ;-)

Recipe: Honey bread

This is one of my favorite recipe.
You can have sweat and soft bread with this.

Honey Bread
-bread flour 7oz (200g)
-all purpose flour  1.7oz (50g)
-honey 1.4oz (40g)
-sugar 0.7oz (20g)
-salt 1teaspoon (2-3g)
-butter 0.7oz (20g)
-yeast 1teaspoon (5-6g)
-milk 6oz (170cc)

If you have a bread machine, set it "light" or "sweet bread". Other than that, it gets burned.
With my bread machine, it takes 2 hours and 40min to have a bread like this.

 It is really soft.

I had it for lunch today with some salad.

 The dressing for salad was mixture of mayo, soysauce, rice vinegar, and home grown parsley.

It was really good together!