Maki! Onigiri! Temaki!

So....I have told you in my very first post that my parents owned a Japanese restaurant! Well, here are just a few things I made just to show off  ^_^  ...these were made in the kitchen of my appartment...I didn't have the super awesome equipment you usually find in a restuarant....but they still turned out alright more or less...

California roll and handroll

 This has kani (imitation crab meat), cucumbers, oshinko (pickled radish) and masago (caviar) and japanese mayonaise in it. But normally oshinko is not found in a California roll in the restaurants here....oh, and you can't find a California roll in Japan, it was created by someone and then it became popular with everyone in North America....

California roll with and without masago and kappa maki

 There are many different versions of the california roll. I've made 3 of the versions I've seen so far: one without caviar, one with caviar sitting on the top of the roll and one with caviar that surrounds the roll (see above). The roll with the seaweed on the outside is a kappa maki (cucumber roll). To be honest, there really isn't much of a difference with seaweed on the outside or on the inside. It's just that if you wrap a maki with seaweed on the inside, you hold more food content versus a roll with seaweed on the outside. As you can see, the rice takes up the majority of the volume within the roll and only leaves a little bit of space for the cucumbers when the seaweed is wrapped on the outside. BUT the rolls with seaweed on the outside are much harder to roll since they have a tendency to "explode" if you put too much rice/food in it!  

assorted onigiri

 Onigiri is usually rolled in the shape of a rounded triangle with the palm of your hands.

onigiri, tuna handroll, and assorted maki

  One thing I noticed a lot when we still had our restaurant was the customer's confusion over the names. Sushi is the fish on rice ball, maki is a roll (usually gets cut into 6 pieces) and temaki is a handroll (the cone shaped one) and sashimi is just the fish slices (without the rice). Onigiri is a ball of rice and you can basically put anything you want in it or sprinkled on it. Oh and that green blob is wasabi (horseradish), I didn't have pickled ginger (gari) but it's usually the flaked pink pieces you get along with the wasabi *sigh* if only I had a deep fryer, I would make shrimp tempura =w= and then with the shrimp tempura I would make a dragon roll with it....

PASTA!

One of my favourite dishes that I order when I eat out is pasta. Then one day I thought...."Hey...why don't I try making it instead? I think I can handle it!" and so....

Creamy Alfredo Sauce

Final result: creamy pasta!

and here is the recipe:

1 whole chicken breast cubed
1/2 C chopped carrots, peas, chopped potato
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp pepper, garlic salt, chicken broth mix
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp butter
~3/4 to 1 C milk
1 C pasta (I love rotini pasta ♥)

first boil water to cook pasta, once the water boils place the pasta in and make sure you stir for 1-2 min before turning it down to medium heat so that the pasta doesnt stick to the bottom and burn!
in a non stick pan on medium heat, melt the butter in the pan and place the chicken, garlic, onions, potato and carrots in
once the chicken, potato and carrot is almost cooked, add in the milk and stir, bringing it up to high heat
add the oregano, pepper, garlic salt, chicken broth mix and stir evenly
add the flour a bit at a time to thicken the sauce (if you find it too thick, add more milk, if too thin, add more flour) make sure you stir between adding!!

*notes*: ok so if you find that this recipe isn't creamy enough you can add in parmesian cheese before adding the flour. In the picture, I had no carrots and potatoes (it's still good but having potatoes in this sauce is better)



Here is another pasta experiment:

Cream of brocoli and spam pasta

The sauce is similar to the one above but I used brocoli and spam instead of chicken, peas and carrots. This one has potatoes in it! 

My first food blog!!

Hey everyone!

I initially posted pictures and recipes of food that I made on facebook but a friend of mine suggested that I should start a food blog. So I'm trying it out. I guess I'll start off with a bit about my history and how I came to love cooking and baking. My parents are both chefs and when I was 12, they opened up a restaurant that served Japanese cuisine. After a few years they sold that restaurant and later opened a store that sold Chinese food. When I was 10, my mother had taken baking classes and I tagged along, watching the pastry chef teach my mom various baking secrets and techniques. I guess that was when I started having an interest in baking. My father is a great cook and he did most of the cooking at home. He would ask everyone in the family if there were any particular requests for dinner and he would take everyone's likes and dislikes into consideration....well, most of the time anyway! *cough* I hate mushrooms with a burning passion *cough* He still tries to get me into eating mushrooms even now haha. Anyways, whenever my father goes to the grocery store to buy ingredients, I would always tag along, learning all the secrets in how to choose the freshest fruits and vegetables and how to pick the best fish/meat. Oh, and my family LOVES seafood. Whenever there is a holiday, my parents go all out and plan and prepare food for the whole day and they always include seafood for dinner. I guess with my dad's love of cooking and my mom's love of baking, they both influenced me greatly. I started off by helping my dad around in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables and stocking ingredients to prepare for the dinner rush (when we had our restuarant). I helped out at home too, but what really got me to actually start cooking on my own was when I took a food and nutrition class in high school. After that, I started collecting recipes and creating dishes of my own that I modify from experimenting. Now that I'm in university and live away from my parents, I've been making things more frequently than before. The things that I cook and bake right now are just some fun experiments, I'm not a professional and I'm still learning, but I wish to share some of my experiments and fun stories with you guys. I hope that I can get you guys to love cooking and baking too after reading my blog!