Aloha, I'm Donna, known everywhere on the Internet as "Champuru." I'm a Christian, blissfully wedded to my perfect match (the yang to my yin) of 16 years and a stay-at-home mom to my miracle baby, born in October 2008. Living life in Hawaii, less than 5 miles from my hometown, seeking balance in my pursuit of family, faith, recreation, and rest. Read more on the About page.
Another reason I couldn’t be a chef, aside from the obvious which is I am not a great cook, is that the sight of uncooked meat and chicken makes me a little squeamish. Today, I nearly lost my lunch when I found what looked like the remnants of feathers (?) on the chicken quarters I was preparing for tonight’s dinner. Perhaps it brings me a little too close to the source of my food, which is that not too long ago, this drumstick was attached to a chicken. With feathers.
On the other hand, the BBQ chicken turned out tasty delicious. Sans the feathers, of course. Here’s a quick chicken recipe that my mother-in-law shared with me.
Ingredients:
Chicken quarters
1/4 c. sea salt
Water to cover chicken
Your favorite BBQ sauce (I used Bullseye Original BBQ sauce)
Directions:
Mix the salt and water until the crystals dissolve. Soak the chicken quarters in the salt water for at least an hour. Remove and place in a baking pan. Baste with BBQ sauce and bake for 400º for 1 hour. Baste a few times during the baking process, to your taste.
My friend Arnold shared this great side dish with me: Eggplant Miso Dengaku. The sauce is savory with a hint of sweetness. When baked, the sauce becomes almost caramelized — simply delicious. There’s a recipe for it but I made it with the prepared sauce purchased from Marukai. It’s a great lazy cook’s side dish that’s very easy and quick to prepare.
Eggplant - scored and sauteéd, awaiting sauce before baking
The cut eggplant in half and soak the eggplant (flesh down) in salted water to remove some of the bitterness. Score the eggplant with a knife, being careful not to piece the skin. Sauté it in the skillet on medium-low heat to soften the flesh, turning often during the cooking process. Apply the sauce on the top and bake it.
Miso Sauce purchased at Marukai
Bake the eggplant at 350º for about ten minutes — test with fork to check for desired doneness. Top with toasted sesame seeds. A quick and delicious side dish!
Miso Eggplant and toasted sesame seeds
If you’re interested in making your own sauce, here’s the recipe:
½ Cup red miso (white for milder taste)
1 Tbs sugar
½ Tbs mirin
½ Tbs sake
1 egg yolk only
1 tsp Yuzu juice (optional)
Heat the sauce on low heat to thicken. Add the yuzu juice last.
Ingredients: 2 T. butter or margarine (I use unsalted butter.)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb. ground turkey (or ground beef)
1-2 T chili powder (I use 1-1/2 T for moderate spiciness)
¼ t cayenne pepper
¼ t pepper
1 26 oz. can of tomato soup (I usually buy another small 10 oz. can of soup and add it if the consistency is too thick or “dry.”)
1 can kidney beans (Instead of kidney beans, I use frozen shelled soybeans. I use about ½ to ¾ of the package. Prepare according to the package instructions before adding to the chili.)
Melt butter, add onions, garlic and ground turkey; brown slightly. Add remaining ingredients. Cover, cook on low heat for 30 minutes. Stir occasionally.
OPTIONAL: I also add chopped sweet peppers or bell peppers.
Of course, the “twist” is the use of soybeans — an unconventional (weird, maybe?) substitution for the usual kidney beans. This is one of my old stand-by recipes that I can make in a jiffy and we all enjoy it — even Baby Champuru! I hope you will, too.
Recently, mom had a hankering for banana bread. She gave me her tried and tested recipe on an old discolored newspaper clipping that was probably as old as me. I tried it and it was much better than the modern, newfangled recipe that I had been using — and this one had less ingredients. It even worked well with apple bananas. Giving it away is the hardest part. (I just want to eat all myself!)
1 cup butter or margarine (2 sticks)
2 cups sugar
6 or 7 ripe bananas, mashed
4 eggs, well beaten
2-1/2 cups sifted flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking soda
Cream margarine and sugar thoroughly. Add bananas and eggs. Sift dry ingredients; blend into creamed mixture. Do not over mix. Pour into loaf pans. Bake at 350º F for 45-50 minutes. Do a toothpick test: it’s done when the toothpick comes out clean.
It’s the new year and I’m obsessed with mochi. We ran out of the fresh mochi that my mother-in-law makes with her mochi machine, so I went to Marukai in search of a suitable alternative to satisfy my craving for the Japanese rice cakes. There was fresh-frozen mochi in the freezer section, but the clerk suggested using the dried variety from Japan (Usagi Marukomochi). Although I’ve seen these packages of mochi in stores, I’ve never tried them. They’re a little pricey, in my opinion, at $8 for a fairly small bag (360g). I picked up two bags, figuring I would make another make another batch of ozoni (new year’s mochi soup) and enjoy some pan-fried mochi at the same time.
Usagi Marukomochi Dried mochi in packages, not refrigerated
Showing the size of the mochi. These rice cakes are quite small compared to the ones that my mother-in-law makes.
In the frying pan with a small amount of oil to prevent sticking. This type of mochi seems to be less sticky than the fresh ones.
Perhaps if I had a non-stick frying pan, I could’ve attempted
frying without the oil.
Mochi in varying states of doneness. I cook them on medium-low heat, #4 or 5 on my stove
depending on how patient I am at the time.
These are just about done. The outside is golden brown and puffy — and the inside is soft and slightly chewy.
Kinako (ground roasted soybeans) At Marukai, there were a dozen different types of kinako from Japan.
I got confused, so I decided to stick with the known-good: Hula Brand.
Mix sugar and kinako to taste. This part is tricky. You’ll have to do some experimenting to determine the
right mix for you. We tend to like it on the sweet side,
so our sugar to kinako ratio is almost one-to-one.
Serve the hot mochi with kinako+sugar mixture and eat while hot. Don’t let your mochi get cold because it will get rubbery and unpleasant to eat,
like chomping on a kamaboko slipper.
I would definitely buy the dried mochi again for both the yaki mochi as well as the ozoni. I was impressed by how nicely they fried up as well as how soft they got in the soup — and convenient, too. Good stuff!
Traditions are so valuable, creating closeness and strengthening the connection between family members. My mother-in-law recognized the importance of family traditions early on. The traditions she established decades ago are still practiced today and it’s the glue that keeps their family tightly knit.
One of my favorite traditions is partaking in the new year’s ozoni. Every year on January 1st, all family members would assemble for their first meal of the year: a bowl of steaming hot ozoni. Mom-in-law says that drinking the soup ensures a good upcoming year for the partaker. Good luck or not, the soup is just plain delicious!
I posted the recipe for mom-in-law’s “easy ozoni”in 2008 and made a video in 2007 which I have embedded below. I must apologize for the shaky camera work (was trying to hold the camera in one hand and cook with the other).
This year, I didn’t get a chance to buy the very expensive (~$15/can) hokkigai clams, so I made it with chicken instead. It wasn’t as tasty, but still quite good. Ryan Ozawa mentioned using steamer clams from Costco. When I inquired about the clams, here’s what he said:
The steamer clams box, from the Costco freezer section, had three trays of about a 1/3 lb. for $14. The clams were fully cooked and still in shell. Jen just pulled the meat out of the clams and threw it in the ozoni, rather than nuking the clams in the tray with the butter as designed.
I am definitely going to try this. Unfortunately, venturing out to Costco on New Year’s Eve is probably a bad idea if I wish to keep my sanity — so I’ll make a run early next week.
What traditions have you established for your family? Do you have ozoni on new year’s day? Or perhaps another traditional/ethnic dish? Care to share your recipe?
Truth be told, I tweet about almost everything. And more often than not, I get some pretty helpful feedback from the Twitterverse. Today is a good example of that. In a tweet, I mused:
Wondering if I can cut the romaine lettuce or fry up the bacon bits today for tomorrow’s furikake chop salad? Or will it wilt/get soggy?
People offered their opinions and advice about prepping lettuce and bacon ahead of time, but a tweet by @kyubikitsy, creator and illustrator of the awesome webcomic, nemu*nemu caught my eye. Her reply:
@champuru I suggest frying up the bacon in the oven for even crisping and easy clean up
Frying bacon in the oven? Was that even possible? Why, yes, it is! Here’s how:
Get a pound of your favorite brand of bacon. Then:
1) Cover a cookie sheet with heavy-duty aluminum foil. You’ll want to use the type of cookie sheet that has a lip on all four sides or else you’ll have a mess of bacon grease to clean up. Lay the strips of bacon on the ungreased foil. (This method makes for easy clean-up, but your bacon will be sitting in bacon grease until you drain.)
OR
2) Use a broiler pan. (Using a broiler pan will drain the oil as it’s cooking. In either case, you can reserve the bacon drippings for use in other recipes.)
Preheat your oven to 400°. Place your sheets/pans in the middle rack of your oven and bake for 10-12 minutes. Be sure to keep an eye on the bacon in the last few of minutes of cooking time as it can easily overcook in under a minute.
Cook the bacon on the soft side of being fully cooked. Store cooled bacon in a freezer bag and throw in freezer for future meals. Reheat 2 slices of bacon in microwave on MED HIGH heat for 30 seconds or until warm. Cook longer when reheating more slices. You know how your microwave cooks, so adjust time as needed. Do not reheat with high power, it burns the bacon. Remember that the bacon is already fully cooked, you just want to warm it up, not cook it again.
This method of cooking bacon is great because clean-up is a cinch and you can prepare an entire pound (or more) of bacon and freeze it for later use. Mmmm… bacon!
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