明太子丼 = YUM!

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Today we made two excellent curries: Aloo Matar (potato and pea curry), and Sri Lankan chicken curry. We had planned the Sri Lankan curry before the awful bombings happened, so that gave me several moments of pause while we were preparing the meal. Very sad news…

Before making the curries, I cooked a huge batch of Indian onion masala in our Instant Pot, some of which was used in the potato and pea curry. We froze the rest of the onion masala which will be great for our future curries!

Most of the ingredients can be found in supermarkets or smaller Indian markets nearby so we had most of them in the house. The curry leaves were the hardest to find, Mariko said, and had to be ordered online. I had never seen them before, so those were interesting to use.

I love curry so much, and these two will only satisfy me for a short time. In fact, I’m already thinking about Thai curry!

Instant Pot Aloo Matar (Potato & Pea Curry)

The Best Sri Lankan Chicken Curry

Indian Onion Masala (Instant Pot)

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

I don’t know if it’s because he is going to college soon and wants to practice cooking, or if he’s just sick of my cooking, but Bay made dinner for us tonight. The chicken parmesan sandwiches were yummy! I approve! And because he did the cooking, I did the dishes, which he has pretty much taken over as one of his chores.

Here’s the video that he followed for the dinner:

I’m going to miss Bay when he leaves for college, so I’ll cherish these days when he’s still at home.

Enjoy the photos!

またね～

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I wanted to share a nice little recipe for Caesar Salad dressing. It’s easy and delicious, so you can make it right before dinner. Although the recipe calls for freshly grated Parmesan, I just used the cheap grated Parmesan cheese that comes in the cylindrical container, and it was pretty good.

This recipe makes a lot (two of the half-Mason jars), so I recommend cutting it in half if you don’t eat salads often. For the salad this evening, I chopped up one bunch of Romaine lettuce and mixed in a couple of spoons of the dressing. It was yummy.

Give it a try!

Homemade Caesar Salad Dressing from Once Upon a Chef

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こんばんは and happy Pi Day!

To celebrate the occasion, I made a couple of Costco thin-crust pizzas (the boxed ones in the freezer section of the stores). I like these pizzas but since I had some leftover carnitas and a couple of jalapeños, I decided to replace the pepperoni on one of them with these toppings. I wasn’t sure how the combination would taste, but I think it turned out pretty good! And then the other pizza had double-pepperoni.

Speaking of pizza, whenever I make a frozen pizza, I always feel the need to spice it up a bit by adding oregano, garlic powder, black pepper, and a few shakes of red pepper flakes on top before it goes into the oven. And sometimes if we have some shredded cheese handy in the fridge, I’ll add a little. It takes just a minute but I think it adds so much.

I hope you had a nice day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight I made a basic beef stew using our Instant Pot. It turned out pretty good! It doesn’t have a very complex flavor, but its simplicity is the key to its beauty. We had some homemade crusty French baguette for dipping in the rich broth, which was just perfect. (Thanks Mariko!)

I found the Instant Pot Beef Stew recipe at the Life Made Sweeter website, and made a couple small adjustments, by omitting the celery (yuck) and adding some canned peas right at the end. Prep was very easy, but I think it’s better to brown the meat using a pan on the stove since you can finish browning the meat in much less time than it takes using the Instant Pot’s sautee function. However, if you want to save yourself from washing another pan, then you can use the Instant Pot for all the cooking.

I think I’ll search for a stew recipe with more spices, but this one is good to keep in the recipe book(marks). Simple and satisfying.

I hope you had a great day!

またね～

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I love donburi, which is basically a Japanese rice bowl (food served on top of rice in a bowl), and one of my favorite takes on this is mapo tofu. I’m not sure if it’s a “real donburi”, since mapo tofu is Chinese, but I like to have mapo tofu donburi style. It’s great comfort food!

Besides the main ingredient of tofu, Mapo commonly includes ground pork or other ground meat in the spicy sauce. We like to top it with fresh green onion. And of course, I like it spicy so we add red pepper to the mix.

It’s delicious if you make it from a prepared packet of mapo tofu sauce, but Mariko makes it from scratch (no preservatives). Here’s the recipe (in Japanese) if you want to give it a try!

本格派★四川風麻婆豆腐 by popo

I hope you had a good day!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Tonight we had a wonderful fondue dinner at home. We have a family Valentine’s tradition to eat fondue, but because of Mariko’s schedule yesterday, we had to delay it for a night. But we definitely can’t miss our annual fondue dinner!

As always, we have two pots of cheese, one with wine for Mariko and I, and the other with no alcohol for the kiddos. Every year they try the “adult” fondue, and scrunch up their faces at the taste. “Horrible” was heard this time around. But eventually, I think they will prefer the wine and cheese fondue. Until that day, it’s all for Mariko and me!

The ingredients for dipping were simple this year, with a yummy chicken/spinach sausage, potato, broccoli, carrots, and homemade baguette cubes. It was a yummy dinner!

I hope you had a nice Friday!

またね～

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Just a photo tonight of our dinner: deep fried chicken in a sweet sauce, with homemade tartar sauce, shredded cabbage, and potato salad. As you can imagine, it was very, very good!

I hope you had a nice day!

またね〜

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こんばんは。How’s it going?

Today was a great day because I got to make a big batch of chili. We’ve tried a few chili recipes over the years, but the ones we like always have dried Guajillo peppers in it. These give the chili a deep red color and a wonderful flavor. Just be careful because the red color will easily stain clothes!

Anyways, I usually buy a dozen Guajillo peppers at our local market, then boil them for about 15 minutes to rehydrate them. Next, I put them in our Cuisinart food processor with maybe half a cup of the water, then process until almost smooth. Adding this chili paste to the pot makes it “real” to me. Chili just isn’t the same without it! And I love to make chili because it means I get to pull out our largest Le Creuset pot. Yay!

With each pot of chili I make, I will adjust with different ingredients, sometimes out of necessity. For instance, this time I didn’t have the can of tomato paste I normally add, so I used some pasta sauce we had in the fridge. And I didn’t have the usual dark beer that the recipe calls for, and I didn’t want to use the IPA we had), so I just used more of the water I boiled the chiles in. I also added a bit of white vinegar and shoyu (soy sauce) to the mix, which is new.

I have to say, it turned out really good! And we have enough to last us a few days.


Bay and I had the chili over steamed rice, with cheese, raw jalapeño, raw habañero (for me), sour cream, and a bit of hot sauce. And a runny egg, of course! Because we put it over rice, we call it “Chili-Gohan”, with the word Gohan being Japanese for rice or meal. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

I hope you had a delicious day!

またね～

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