sweet potato okonomiyaki with sesame peanut noodles
As a follow up to my last chicken post, I thought I'd share one of the photos of what became of our roasted bird. The top photo, of Sweet Potato Okonomiyaki with Sesame Peanut Noodles was part happy kitchen experiment, part tried and true recipe.
Okonomiyaki is described by some as a sort of Japanese Pizza, though it's closer to a pancake than a pizza in my opinion. I first had it when friends of mine came home from teaching English in Japan, and since then it's become one of my favorites, though making it at home requires some special ingredients that I don't often have on hand, so okonomiyaki only graces our dinner table maybe once a year. The beauty of okonomiyaki, though, is that once you have the batter (flour, potato, water, salt or dashi, shredded cabbage and egg), whatever else goes in/on it is up to you. Onion, ginger, shrimp, pork, chicken, kimchi, mochi, cheese, Sea Monkeys, stale marshmallow Peeps (OK, not really those last two), you name it. When Jo and I were in Hiroshima, we ate at a place that served theirs with soba noodles fried right in, a regional thing, apparently, called "Hiroshimayaki". So whatever you're hankering for, toss it on. Fry it up, squirt it all over with some thick, tangy okonomi sauce, some Kewpie mayo (or Kraft, if you, like I am, are always out), a few bonito flakes that will do a jiggly-wiggly-I-dare-you-to-eat-me dance for you and you're all set.
The 'official' version of okonomiyaki calls for grated "mountain potato" or yama-imo, which looks like mush, but provides a glutinous component to the batter that okonomiyaki purists (can they exist for a dish like this?) would argue is essential. I had none in my kitchen, but I did have a bunch of mashed up sweet potatoes that I'd used for another recipe, and the idea of sweet-potato-flavored okonomiyaki sounded plausible (and tasty, really) to me. I also had no okonomi sauce, and didn't feel like making a special trip to our Asian market, but I found this recipe for both the pancake and a homemade approximation of the sauce. Dinner was cooking.
While frying up our okonomiyaki, I tossed together a really simple "salad" of soba noodles, peanut sauce, some shredded chicken and veggies (cucumber, red pepper and green onion) (recipe, more or less, here). Jules picked and poked and prodded at it for the most part, asking for yoghurt about 20 minutes in, but Kasper, Kasper was amazing. He slurped and sucked up his noodles like the best of them, and even poked a finger in his pancake a few times before taking a few bites. I'd call dinner an overall success, especially because it's spurred me on to put (this, admittedly highly bastardized version of) okonomiyaki on my table more often.
I'm not going to share my own personal recipe with you for this, mostly because I wasn't paying attention myself when I tossed it together. But I do encourage you to try okonomiyaki for yourself. Let the improv begin!
I don't know about you, but four days after Easter, we're still hunting for eggs at our house. Jules got so into Easter this year, he hasn't been able to let go. He started a few weeks before the big day drawing pictures of the Easter Bunny carrying baskets of eggs around, spent hours cutting out and decorating eggs we drew together on construction paper. As Easter drew nearer, I'd run out of craft ideas to feed his Easter urge. I am not a crafty person. I am jealous beyond belief at all of you crafty people out there. But I try. I really do.
Maybe it's the emotional scarring from my 7th grade art class that I've never completely recovered from. I remember Mrs. Zimmerman like it was yesterday, sucking all the fun and creativity out of every project she assigned, belittling the meek, sculpee-challenged among us. I think I cried making my color wheel. Needless to say, I was delighted when some not-yet-but-soon-to-become stoner kid nailed Mrs. Zimmerman in the nose with an eraser one day. Sweet, sweet justice, really.
With kids of my own, I'm now reliving some of my childhood anxieties around art, and hopefully working through them at the same time. Some of my little experiments have turned out great. Others, not so much. But I push on, mostly because I have amazing friends whose own projects I can't resist drooling over, coveting, and so then ultimately, I attempt them myself.
So in honor of Jules's bizarre fascination with Easter, I give you these (mangled) baskets and (sadly, hideous) fuzzy chicks.
We made them out of egg carton cups and tissue paper (the baskets) and cotton balls, yellow and black markers and construction paper (the chicks from Hades). If you'd like to see the gorgeous renditions of these (chick-less) baskets that inspired our little project, do not delay, and instead go visit my friend Sarah here. (And I won't tell you that Sarah's five year old did most of the work on these, while I was mostly responsible for mangling ours because the tissue paper kept getting stuck on my glue-y fingers). While you're at it, check out some of her other projects. You'll be just as jealous inspired as me soon.
If, for some reason you are still reading and have not fled over to Sarah's (like you should have), well then I have one more thing to share with you.
This would be the "home" Jules designed for his our new baby chicks after we'd hatched them. He dictated the signage, which reads, "FEED the tropical chickens that have really sharp beaks, as sharp as a blade. Do NOT give them water," followed by another sign that warns "Don't Put Fingers in Cage."
I guess creativity runs in a different direction in our family.
So I realized after uploading this photo to my computer just how obscene it looks. I'm sure there is some tutorial on food photography that bars photos of stuffed birds from this angle, but hey I didn't know. And it seemed like a good idea at the time. All fowl lewdness aside, this was one of the most properly tasteful specimens ever to spring forth from my oven. So the picture stays.
I'll come clean, though, and tell you that I have only ever attempted to roast a bird a handful of times, mostly on Thanksgiving. I've always been too intimidated by it. The washing and patting dry, the fishing out of the giblets, the sickening paranoia of cross-contamination I always get when handling a whole animal in my sink.
And had a friend of mine not sent me the link to this set of recipes by Kristen over at Cheap, Healthy, Good, I probably would have been content to buy my chicken in pieces shorn neatly by someone other than me. But this little cooking challenge I could not resist.
It starts out with roasting a 7 (or so) pound chicken and ends with using the meat to create five different dinners, most with at least one meals' worth of leftovers. Kristen claims to have made 17 meals (well, 17 servings, 5 separate meals) for $26, total. Sure, it seemed a little gimmicky. But the recipes looked GOOD. These were no chicken noodle casserole with a can of cream of mushroom soup and some frozen broccoli thrown in kind of meals. They were varied in flavor, a little Italian, a little Southwestern, a little Asian, and a whole lot of good.
So I roasted a bird. Stuffed it with a lemon which made for an oozy juicy sauce-y meal with roasted purple potatoes and carrots that had to get used up in my fridge. Day two we made White Chicken Chili and Trader Joe's Corn Muffins. Day three it was Sesame Soba Noodles with chicken and a load of crunchy veggies. Day four had us eating Cook's Illustrated Chicken Curry in a hurry with an added bunch of spinach, served with curried potatoes and homemade Puri (my Dad's favorite Indian fried bread, recipe courtesy of Manjula's Kitchen).
I have no idea how much I spent. But I'd guess less than $50, which is not bad considering all the extras. And most of the meals were even a hit with the kids.
So I will leave you with no recipes, but there are enough links above to get you started. Go check out Cheap Healthy Good for yourself!
Last month, Jules's preschool teacher had to put her 14 year old dog "Hamlet" to sleep. He's been a fixture of the school that Jules's teacher runs out of her home since Jules has been going there. He was the school doorbell, greeting our footsteps on the path up to the house with a one-dog chorus of barks, and its a mascot, a gentle creature who put up with small children tromping all over his house and never really seemed to mind. And now I sound like I'm eulogizing for a dog I barely knew, but that's where I head, I guess, when something like this happens.
Jules is not really a dog person. In fact, for whatever reason, he's actually mildly terrified of them. But he tolerated Hamlet like Hamlet tolerated him. They coexisted, peacefully. Hamlet's death prompted a slew of new conversations around death and dying, most of which I was not prepared for, mostly because I'm not myself prepared for losing anyone I care about. It's brought me to a place where I can no longer be the all-knowing parent, just a good story or a Google search away from the answer my kid seeks. Explaining death to a four year old has made me confront my own uneasiness around it, and ask myself some really hard questions. Am I really OK with not knowing for certain what happens after we die? I'm not, if only for the reason that I want to provide comfort and certainty to Jules (and later, to Kasper) when they want to know.
Jules has a peculiar (to me), but totally appropriate to his age, understanding of death. He seems to get that plants, animals, and people die, and is hugely fascinated with fighting, killing, and dying, but he doesn't see death as a permanent state. He wants to know what happens to his body, does it stop moving when he dies? When does it move again? What about his head? He's made up imaginary friends who he's said have died, but then later they did something special to make themselves alive again. For days we played "Hamlet in Heaven," a game where Jules took a little plush Texas Longhorn I brought back from a recent Dallas trip and named him "Hamlet" and used him as a sort of emmisary from heaven, taking his friends (us) from the land of the living on a tour of his new celestial digs. At the end of the day, when Hamlet has to send us home, he just waves goodbye nonchalantly. We'll be seeing him tomorrow, I'm sure.
So we've talked about (and role-played) heaven and reincarnation, and about what other people believe happens when you die, because I want him to be exposed to different ways of thinking about this (and about a host of other things) so he can make up his mind about what he does and doesn't believe, but I've yet to give him my position in a way that satisfies me. Though he seems satisfied, for now.
But until that time comes when I'm forced to confront this again, I'll leave you with my very escapist (perhaps) way of dealing with death: trying to prolong, or at least enhance this one life that I know we do have with a good, healthful, tasty recipe for soup. It's also a nice warming, earthy meal on a cold, sloppy day like the one I find myself writing in today. Serve it with buttered (yes, REAL butter, just don't go overboard) bread.
Spinach and Leek Soup with White Beans and Fresh Tomatoes 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon butter 1 large or 2 small leeks, white and light green parts only, sliced thin and rinsed well 2 cloves garlic, minced 6 ounces baby spinach 4 cups vegetable (or chicken) broth 1 (15 oz) can white beans, drained and rinsed a handful of fresh (I prefer cherry or grape this time of year) tomatoes, chopped plain yogurt or grated parmesan salt and pepper to taste
Heat oil and butter over medium heat in a large soup pot until butter begins to foam. Add leeks and a little salt and saute until soft and translucent, about five minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add chicken broth and bring to a simmer, then add spinach and continue cooking, stirring, until spinach is wilted. Puree the soup with a handblender and then add the beans, cooking just until the beans are warmed through. Ladle into bowls and garnish with chopped tomatoes and a dollop of yogurt or grated parmesan, salt and pepper to taste.
Over dinner the other night with friends, someone brought up this handy catch-phrase from Michael Pollan's book Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. I'm thinking about making it my new mantra. Or one of my new mantras. One thing at a time, I say.
Lucky for me, I now live in a world where "apple" means more than the bag of mushy Red Delicious apples we had rotting in the fridge when I was growing up. Those were anything but delicious. I still can't eat the things. But bring on the Fuji, Honeycrisp, Pink Lady. I can even enjoy a Granny Smith from time to time.
Some of my other favorites from Pollan's book:
"Don't ingest foods made in places where everyone is required to wear a surgical cap."
"The whiter your bread, the sooner you'll be dead." -- catchy, no? Eeeeesh.
"Eat all the junk food you want, as long as you cook it yourself."
"Spend as much time enjoying the meal as it took to prepare it."
Jo asked for a Black Forest Cake, "just like the one they made in Switzerland" when he used to go there on ski vacations, when he used to be European, for his birthday this year. Well, I'm ashamed to admit I've never been to Switzerland, but that did not stop me from, well, improvising, as I am wont to do with birthday cakes.
So I give you the Macrina-recipe chocolate bundt cake that's not a bundt, with chocolate cream glaze, (Italian) Mascarpone cream and (German) Marello cherries. A little Italian, a little German, and a lot of decadent chocolate, just like the Swiss. We served this warm because the thing had to bake for close to two hours and we could not wait for it to cool down if we were going to have it before dinner, which was imperative. It was delicious, though next time I think we'll need to invite at least 20 of our closest friends to help us polish it off in one go since it's best when fresh.
sweet potato okonomiyaki with sesame peanut noodles
