As you’ve probably figured out, I’m the roasting queen. I’ll roast any vegetable I can find with a bit of salt, pepper, and olive oil; cauliflower is no exception. It’s easy, quick, and minimizes dishes; what is there not to love?
Here is a quick green bean recipe that is positively delicious. Sweet, spicy, and a little bit tangy make these Chinese-style beans go perfectly as a side dish for almost any Asian meal. I recommend pairing them with rice and tonkatsu, yummm.
As promised, here is my Pasta Alfredo recipe. I love this dish because I can actually eat it, despite my weird dairy “allergies”. I make the sauce with 4 tbsp butter per 1 lb of pasta and fat free milk. It’s still just as creamy as Alfredo with real cream in it, but a little bit less fatty and 100% cheese-less. I hope you enjoy eating it as much as I do!
Butternut Squash just happens to be one of my favorite vegetables. It’s hearty enough to be left in the pantry for 2+ weeks, it goes well in many different dishes, and it’s an excellent substitute for sweet potatoes or kabocha. It also just so happens to be an excellent vegetable to roast! Here’s a quick recipe to roast this beautiful veggie into sweet, caramelized goodness.
Nabe is not so much one specific recipe as it is a style of eating. The entire family sits around a table laden with cut veggies and meats, a burner, and a very large pot of boiling broth. Each person has rice and their own dipping sauces, and everyone selects what they would like, adds it to the pot, and starts eating. It’s a very interactive meal; great for cold winter nights or dinner parties.
Snow Peas have been in season and what better way to celebrate this delicious vegetable than with a new recipe. I concocted this side dish with only one thing in mind: showcase the natural, delicate sweetness of the peas in the simplest manner possible. Thus, Mai’s Garlic Snow Peas was born! Excuse my dramatics, I simply love eating snow peas. On to the recipe…
This is going to be the first post in a segment I’m dubbing, “The Secrets of Cabbage.” Ignore the cheesy name, the point is there will be more posts about cabbage in the future. Also, I apologize for how short this post is going to be. I will write about an entree in the next post.
In my kitchen, quick vegetable dishes are key because most asian cooking is designed to have a main dish (meat) and several vegetable side dishes. I don’t have time on the weekends to make enough sides for the week, so I stick to two dishes per meal, the main meat and some quick, often roasted, vegetable. The thing I love most about roasted asparagus is it’s versatility; it goes with everything and can be prepped with any mix of spices you desire. I’m going to go with the basic, salt, pepper, and lemon today; but just know you can experiment with this.
Age Dashi Tofu is a classic Japanese side dish that is positively heavenly. When I was living in Japan, I used to eat this weekly at the Waseda Dining Hall, where they have perfected the art of this subtle dish.
I recently started cooking Korean food. To be honest, this is a whole new world for me in the realm of cooking, just like Hawaiian food is. Japanese food I learned from my host mothers, Chinese food I learned working in a Chinese restaurant, Filipino food I learned from my best friend, but Korean food I’ve only seen made in dramas. As a result, cooking it on my own is 100% an experiment. Luckily, I have the trusty internet.
MY UMAI 