Green Tea Ice Cream

English: green tea ice cream (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I use ceremonial quality matcha for this, and anything else, actually.  I made this today after church to satisfy a serious craving.  I’m about ready to dive in. Dinner is going to be Okonomiyaki. My husband’s will have chicken and shrimp, mine will be all veggie. I’ll do a post at some point about this wonderful Japanese dish. Tonight though, it’s all about the Green Tea Ice cream. Lovely to look at, incredible to eat.

Ingredients
•3/4 cup milk
•2 egg yolks
•5 Tbsp sugar
•3/4 cup heavy cream, whipped
•1 Tbsp matcha green tea powder
•3 Tbsp hot water

Preparation:
Mix hot water and green tea powder together in a bowl and set aside. Lightly whisk egg yolks in a pan. Add sugar in the pan and mix well. Gradually add milk in the pan and mix well. Put the pan on low heat and heat the mixture, stirring constantly. When the mixture is thickened, remove the pan from the heat. Soak the bottom of the pan in ice water and cool the mixture. Add green tea in the egg mixture and mix well, cooling in ice water. Add whipped heavy cream in the mixture and stir gently. Pour the mixture in an ice cream maker and freeze, following instructions of the ice cream maker. Or, pour the mixture in a container and freeze, stirring the ice cream a few times. Makes 4-6 servings

Simple Saturday – Sunomono and Miso Baked Chicken

I buy white miso paste in a tube so I can always have it on hand and keep in the fridge after opening.  This is a yummy dish and tasty any time of year.  In the summer, to avoid oven heat, I will prepare in a well seasoned, oiled cast iron skillet.  I start on medium heat and after about 3 minutes, turn heat to low.  Because of the mirin and sugar content, be aware of food burning easily.  You know your stove so cook accordingly and keep an eye out.  This is also good room temperature.  I slice the chicken and add over mixed greens, julienned carrots and celery, green onion,with a zipper ginger vinaigrette.  This Japanese home cooking at its best.  Something you may not find in a restaurant, but certainly in someone’s home.  You can grill of course, but again, beware of the burn factor.

Sunomono is kept in my fridge all summer for a cool snack or quick cool addition to a meal of anything!  The little Persian cukes, Japanese cukes, or the English cukes work well. If not available, use regular pickling cukes or use standard ones, as thin as possible, with the seeds taken out.  You can also use celery, snow peas, edamame, spinach, or mix a couple of veggies together.  I like with cucumbers best!  Photo courtesy of Wiki Images.

douzo meshiagare, y’all

Sunomono – Cucumber Salad
4 Japanese cucumbers or 1 English cucumber
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsp rice vinegar
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4  – 1/2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp sesame seeds
small sprinkle of chopped cilantro and green onion

Slice cucumbers as thin as you can or use a mandolin or similar slicer. Put in large non-reactive bowl and sprinkle with salt, mixing with your hands. Let sit for about 5 minutes then, using your hands again, squeeze water out of cucumbers (I use my handy dandy Japanese pickle maker for this – you can also view my post on Quickles). Rinse well and squeeze out water.  Discard water. To the rice vinegar,  add soy sauce and  sugar, mixing well. Pour over cucumbers and mix. Let sit in fridge to blend flavors about 30 minutes. Add sesame seeds, cilantro, and green onion. Great small side dish any time of the year.

Miso Baked Chicken/Fish

1/4 cup white Miso paste
3 Tbsp Mirin
2 Tbsp Sake
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
4 chicken thighs (or nice chunk of salmon or other firm fish)

Mix Miso, Mirin, Sake, and sugar (almost kind of sounds like a recipe rap, hey?) in a non-reactive bowl. Marinade chicken thighs (or fish) in marinade for 30 minutes to one hour. You can put the marinade and meat in a plastic bag to marinate as well.
Preheat oven to 425F. take chicken/fish from bag and place on a plate and use a paper towel to wipe excess marinade liquid well from chicken/fish. Place chicken/fish on oiled aluminum foil spread over a sheet pan. Bake for 15 (8 minutes or so for fish). Turn chicken over and bake 10-15 minutes until cooked through.  I like to use chicken wings or chicken breast fillet and garnish with sliced scallion and sesame seeds.  Serve with steamed sticky rice and sunomono.

照り焼き Teriyaki

Teriyaki is a way of Japanese cooking. Teriyaki is a combination of two Japanese words: “teri” and “yaki”; teri means luster, and yaki means grill or broil. This recipe is for oven baked teriyaki wings. You can of course use chicken thighs, legs, chunks, pork, beef, tofu…..cook on an inside grill or yakitori grill, or outside on a gas or charcoal grill. That is up to you. Be careful as the sugar and mirin content can easily cause food to burn.

To make a teriyaki dish, ingredients are broiled, roasted, or grilled after being marinated in or basted by teriyaki sauce. It’s sauce that brings the shiny look (teri) to the ingredients. You can buy teriyaki sauce in a bottle at the grocery store, but authentic teriyaki sauce is very easy to make. To make teriyaki sauce, basically soy sauce, mirin, and sugar are used. Other ingredients can be added. It is possible to substitute mirin with sake and sugar BUT the key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients. Teriyaki sauce can be used for glazing and marinating meats and vegetables.

The recipes for the wings and the sauce were given to me by my “authentic Japanese” partner of years back. We enjoyed entertaining and feeding our friends. These wings, chunks of nice fatty beef, deep fried tofu (see post), umeboshi and other quick pickles along with some of my Southern American specialties made us extremely popular. This is good party appetizer/sports watching/entrée food.

Between good food, good conversation and good music, it truly was the best of South meets East!!! どうぞめしあがれ (douzo meshiagare – eat well) or, as my granddaddy used to say, Eat ‘til your little belly drags, Y’all!

desired amount of wings (I usually allow 6 full wings per person)
teriyaki sauce
sesame seeds
scallion, thinly sliced

Wash the chicken and cut at joints into two pieces. Frugal Hint: I save the tips in the freezer to make broth. Wash again and pat dry with a paper towel. Put into a non-reactive bowl and marinate the wings in the refrigerator with a generous amount of the teriyaki sauce for at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours. Mix well making sure wings are covered. Cover with plastic wrap.

This is oven method: Preheat oven to 375. Either use a broiling pan with racks or, lay cooling racks over baking pan. Spread the wings in a single layer and evenly spoon sauce over the wings. Cover with aluminum foil and bake about 30 minutes.

Take the pan out of the oven, remove the foil and place back into oven for about 10 – 20 minutes until skin becomes crispy. Move the wings to a serving dish and sprinkle with sesame seeds and very thinly sliced scallion.

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

2/3 c. mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
1 c. good soy sauce (I use low sodium soy sauce)
4 ½ tsp. rice vinegar
1 tsp. sesame oil
1/3 c. white granulated sugar
4 – 7 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tbs. grated fresh ginger
Dash of black pepper

Mix ingredients well and slowly heat until bubbly, stirring. Allow to cook for a couple of minutes until thickened and flavors are blended. This will keep in covered container in refrigerator for several weeks. Makes about 1 1/2 c. sauce.

Purin – Japanese Dessert Custard

 

All around the world, there are variants of this recipe – flan, crème brulee’, leche flan, caramel crème…The Japanese version is softer ,  more delicate, less sweet.  It is a delicious end to a heavy meal or an excellent light dessert to serve with a cold plate, salady luncheon.  I like to chill and then unmold on a plate and serve with some fresh cut fruit to garnish – strawberries, blueberries, aspic cutter flowers of thin sliced melons, thin slices or half moons of kiwi….. 

If The Kentucky Bourbon Cake (see recipe under a previous post) is a luxurious and expensive call girl of a dessert, this dessert is a fairy princess.

 Ingredients and Instructions

CUSTARD

2 cups whole milk

2/3 c. sugar

4 eggs

1 tsp. good vanilla extract

Butter (for greasing custard cups/molds) 

SAUCE

6 tbs sugar

2 tbs water + 1 tbs warm water 

Butter six custard cups/molds.  Heat 2 tbs. water in a sauce pan.  Add 6 tbs. of sugar and simmer until the sauce is browned (be careful not to let it burn!)  Carefully add 1 tbs. warm water to thin the sauce.  Pour sauce equally into the molds and carefully swirl around the bottom.  Put milk into a medium saucepan and heat to about 140 F.  Dissolve 2/3 cup sugar in the milk and add vanilla extract. Cut off the heat.  Lightly beat eggs in a bowl.  Gradually add warm milk to egg mixture, stirring so you don’t get sweet scrambled eggs.  Run the mixture through a strainer and scoop out some bubbles from the surface of the egg mixture.   Pour mixture over the sauce in the molds.  Please the pudding in a steamer and steam for about 15 – 20 minutes on low heat. Cut off the heat and let them cool.  Remove pudding from the molds and serve on plates.  If you don’t have a steamer, use bain marie method, covering the whole with foil.  ***Be careful lifting the foil or opening the steamer.