entrée,

{ Recipe } Sunomono 酢の物 (Japanese Cucumber and Seaweed Salad)

May 29, 2013 Unknown 0 Comments

Mr. Pear and I love cucumber very much. The freshness and juiciness feeling make the dish taste extra delicious. This is one of the reasons that we planted the cucumber in our garden. Since we planted the seeds in February till now, we have got more than 15 cucumbers and there are more coming soon.

Now we have supply of cucumbers in our garden, of course, we will make very good use of this fresh produce. While Mr. Pear's signature cucumber salad is my all time favourite, today I made this Japanese cucumber salad from Just One Cookbook and it tasted absolutely fantastic.

Just One Cookbook and Just Hungry are my Japanese cuisine rescuer. There got lots of Japanese cuisine recipes and they are easy to follow. Good for weeknight dinner if you are always busy!

finger food

{ Recipe } Spicy Kale Chips

May 27, 2013 Unknown 0 Comments

Some time ago I bought a voucher from Living Social for a fruit and veggie store which I can buy things up to A$40 for only A$20. Yesterday was the day I shopped for all the beautiful and fresh fruits and veggies :D

Then I came across a brunch of kale while I was walking down the aisle. I remembered I saw kale many places... Pinterest, blog and website... It is a super food and a hardy food for winter :) Since there are so many people talking about kale, I wanted to know more about this super food, so I took one in my grocery basket. And here we go to explore this special vegetable.

When I got home, I looked at it... I was like, ummm... How should I cook this? Stir fry? Cook in soup? Or what? Then, Lianne's blog came into my mind. I remembered I read about the kale chips post from her blog, so I quickly went there to see if I have the ingredients to make it.

Surprisingly, this kale chips was super easy to make. I did not have the exact ingredients that the recipe called for, but I followed most of the steps from the post :))) and it was a great success, it was crunchy and it was super additive as Lianne warns us in her blog!!! :D

biscuits n cookies,

{ Recipe } Green Tea Chess Cookies

May 17, 2013 Unknown 0 Comments

I want to make this little cookies for long. Just purely because they look really pretty. Read through the recipe, I was surprised that it is actually easy to make than I thought. It just need to take more steps to make the pattern.

There are quite a few thing I can definitely do better next time when I make it again. First, I should not do it in a rush. I remember on the day Mr. Pear and I had to go to his parents place. So I was like running around the kitchen and tried to make this happen. Second, all because of the first reason, I did not harden the dough enough which made it too soft to cut it straight and nice. Therefore, some of the cookies still had the gap in the middle.

Overall, despite the shape doesn't look what it supposed to look like and a little bit bitter, but it was close enough and the taste not too sweet too.

freezable,

{ Recipe } Pork and Vegetable Dumplings with Garlic Vinegar

May 02, 2013 Unknown 0 Comments

Dumplings, something like pizza. I know it is a bit weird to use pizza as an example, but seriously, you can have many different fillings, just like pizza has different toppings, right?

Another variation you can do with dumplings is how you cook them. You can pan fry, you can steam, you can deep fry or even boil them, depends on your personal preference. This time I chose to boil the dumpling and dipped with garlic vinegar.

This time I chose to use mince pork and Asian green (I used bok choy) as the main ingredients. I also put some dried shitake mushroom.

As for wrapping the dumpling, you can pick a method from my last post. The one I used is a bit complicated to explain but it is not too hard to make once you practise a few time. :D