First course: Soupe à L’Oignon (French Onion Soup)
Caramelized onions swim in a twist on the traditional poule-au-pot soup, with swiss cheese on the bottom, and parmesan cheese and soaked bread on top.

Second course: Salade de Trinité (Trinity Salad)
Good things come in threes, and everything about this salad is good. Smoked salmon sits atop a bed of zucchini, corn, and onions, that can be enjoyed with three different yet harmonious sauces: teriyaki, garlic and mayo, and pineapple sauce with a kick.

Third course: Magret de Canard aux Pommes Rissolées (Duck Breast with Golden Potatoes)
Orange-infused duck breast with a sizzling crisp skin is bathed in a Bordeaux wine reduction with raisins and caramelized onions. On the side, golden potatoes in herbes de Provence.

Fourth course: Fraises au Chocolat et Truffes (Chocolate-covered strawberries and Truffles)
Orange-dark chocolate covered strawberries alongside raspberry-mint truffles dusted in cocoa.

The starters were enjoyed with a Gewurtzraminer from Isreal, while the main was accompanied by a rich red from Catalan, and dessert was served with a young Riesling. The entire meal was enjoyed with rays from the setting sun streaming in the large open windows of the salon of our Paris apartment with views of the Eiffel Tower.

The recipe I used for the duck breast was adapted from this one: French Countryside Duck Breast.
The modifications I made were to add the OJ directly to the duck breast. I changed the sauce quite a bit because the vinegar made it too sour, so I poured in more poule-au-pot stock and added onions and raisins.

The recipe I used for the potatoes was similar to this this one: Pommes Rissolées (French Browned Potatoes).
The only difference is that instead of using all those spices, I just used herbes de Provence, which is still very traditional.

Dumplings (jiao zi) originate from the northern regions of China where rice is less common. Although they are considered an appetizer or “dim sum” in North America, they are actually a lone entree in China, especially during family gatherings, where everyone can help make the jiao zi before they are steamed. Savoury fillings usually consist of ground pork with some sort of vegetable, such as Chinese cabbage and chives. Mushrooms and other fungi family ingredients are sometimes included to enhance the savoury flavour. Dumplings are typically steamed, but a pot sticker is fried “on the bottom” and steamed “on top.”

Pot stickers

Ingredients:
Dumpling Dough:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup boiling water
Filling:
8 ounces Chinese cabbage (Napa cabbage)
3 tsp salt, divided
1 pound ground pork
1/4 cup finely chopped green onions
1 tbsp cooking wine
1 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp sesame oil
Other:
2 – 4 tablespoons vegetable oil

Instructions:

1. Cut the cabbage across into thin strips (or use a food processor). Mix with 2 teaspoons salt and set aside for 5 minutes. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible.
2. In a large bowl, mix the celery cabbage, pork, green onions, wine, cornstarch, the remaining 1 teaaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon sesame oil, and the white pepper.
3. In a bowl, mix the flour and 1 cup boiling water until a soft dough forms. Knead the dough on a lightly flour surface until smooth.
4. Divide the dough in half. Shape each half into a roll 12 inches long and cut each roll into 1/2-inch slices.
5. Roll 1 slice of dough into a 3-inch circle and place 1 tablespoon pork mixture in the center of the circle. Lift up the edges of the circle and pinch 5 pleats up to create a pouch to encase the mixture. Pinch the top together. Repeat with the remaining slices of dough and filling.
6. Heat a wok or nonstick skillet until very hot. Add 1 tablespoon vegetable oil, tilting the wok to coat the sides. If using a nonstick skillet, add 1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil. Place dumplings in a single layer in the wok and fry 2 minutes, or until the bottoms are golden brown.
7. Add 1/2 cup water. Cover and cook 6 to 7 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. Repeat with the remaining dumplings.
8. Serve hot with vinegar on the side.

Duck stewed in Beer

Ingredients:
1 whole duck/chicken
1 bottle of beer (12oz)
1 head of garlic
2 tbsp ginger
2 star anises, broken up
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup of soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 stalk green onion
1/2 cooking onion, chopped
8 baby carrots

Instructions:

1. Chop the duck into big pieces with a cleaver. Slice the garlic and ginger.
2. Heat up the iron casserole pot and add some oil (1 tbsp). Put duck pieces in the pot, and stir-fry for 5 minutes till they become golden.
3. Add the garlic, ginger and anises, and then stir-fry for 5 minutes more.
4. Pour the beer in and boil for 5 minutes. Add soy sauce, salt, sugar, onions, and carrots, and cook for another 5 minutes. If you are using chicken, you can stop at this point as the chicken will be fully done (the meat should be half-hanging to the bones). If you are using duck, continue to the next step.
5. Preheat the oven into 250F and put the iron casserole pot with the dish together in the oven to roast it for 1 hour. Then open the cover and add onions in it. It will be cooked after being roasted for another 15 minutes.

Kung Pao Chicken with Ssamjang

Ingredients:
2 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, 5 to 6 ounces each
Marinade:
2 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
1 tbsp ssamjang
Sauce:
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or dry sherry
1 teaspoon sugar or brown sugar
1/2 tbsp gochujang
1/2 tsp Lao Gan Ma
Other:
small dried red chili peppers
2 cloves garlic
2 green onions (spring onions, scallions)
4 stalks of celery, chopped
1/2 cooking onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
4 tablespoons oil for stir-frying, or as needed
1 teaspoon Szechuan peppercorn, optional
1/2 cup peanuts or cashews

Instructions:

1. Cut the chicken into 1-inch cubes. Combine with the marinade ingredients. Marinate the chicken for 15 minutes.
2. While the chicken is marinating, prepare the vegetables. Cut the chilies in half so that they are approximately the same size as the chicken cubes. Remove the seeds. Peel and finely chop the garlic. Cut the green onion on the diagonal into thirds.
3. Heat the wok over high heat. Add 2 tablespoons oil. When the oil is hot, add the chicken. Stir-fry until it is 50 percent cooked.
4. Add the garlic and stir-fry until aromatic (about 30 seconds). Add vegetables, the chili peppers and the Szechuan peppercorn if using. Stir-fry until vegetables are soft (add water if needed).
5. Add the sauce to the wok. Bring to a boil. Stir in the peanuts and the green onion. Remove from the heat. Serve hot.

Fried Eggs and Tomato
Ingredients:
3 tomatoes
3 eggs
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1/2 cup water
Oil

Instructions

1. Beat eggs and add in salt.
2. Slice tomatoes into sixths.
3. Heat up wok. Add oil to coat bottom. Fry egg (like scrambled eggs).
4. Add tomatoes when eggs are done. Add 1/2 cup water and sugar.

Other dishes: corn and cream of mushroom soup, beef and broccoli, stir fried Chinese greens.

• Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, based on her mother’s coworker’s friend’s secret recipe
• Caramel custard with whipped cream, based on the recipe from Classic Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti
• Banana napoleons with warm caramel walnut sauce, based on the recipe from Classic Stars Desserts by Emily Luchetti

The banana napoleons were the most successful and the most delicious, but also by far the most time-consuming. We made everything from scratch, without realizing how tediously long it takes to turn a ball of butter, flour, and salt into a light, airy puff pastry. Luckily, we started working on the puff pastry first, so by the time we were finished preparing the cookies and custard, the puff pastries were almost ready¹.

Unfortunately, I cannot find the caramel custard recipe online, nor am I allowed to share the chocolate chip oatmeal cookie recipe on pain of death, so I will walk through the process of the napoleon recipe, and you can see the full recipe here. My version is basically written in layman’s terms (or how I would describe the process) because the steps written in the book are slightly confusing.

Making the Puff Pastry
If you’re planning on making your puff pastry, make sure you have plenty of time and plenty of patience. It takes up to four hours to make, because every time it is folded, it has to be refrigerated for an hour. To make it worth your while, I suggest making a large batch and freezing what you don’t use. Or, just buy frozen puff pastry from your local supermarket.

1. Cut up the butter into small pieces. The book says to cut them into 1/4 in cubes, but it doesn’t have to be that precise. The point is to break up the block of butter without melting it.
2. Work the butter into the flour. It’ll be clumpy and messy, but don’t worry. That’s how it’s supposed to be.
3. Make the dough into a mound and form a well in the centre. Pour the water into the centre, then work it into the dough.
4. Pat the dough down to about 1 1/4 in thick (6 x 8 in rectangle). Wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
5. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the dough into a 7-by-16-inch rectangle about 1/2 inch thick. You may have to flour the surface of the dough so the rolling pin doesn’t stick.
6. With a short side of the rectangle facing you, fold the dough as you would a business letter: Fold down the top two-thirds toward you and then fold the bottom third over the top.
7. Give the dough a quarter turn so that the open seam is on your right and the closed seam is on your left. Repeat the rolling and folding process. Wrap and refrigerate the dough for 1 hour.
8. Repeat steps 5-7 two times, refrigerating for 1 hour after each time.
9. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the puff pastry into a 16-by- 9-inch rectangle about 1/16 inch thick (basically, as thin as you can).
10. With the tines of a fork, make holes (about 1/8 inch apart) all over the puff pastry.
11. Using a sharp knife, cut the puff pastry into twelve 4-by-3-inch rectangles. Place the pastry rectangles on the prepared baking sheets, spacing them 1 inch apart. Place the baking sheets in the freezer for at least 30 minutes.
12. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Bake the puff pastry rectangles until golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets to room temperature.

Making the Caramel Walnut Sauce

1. In a heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium-low heat. Stir in the brown and granulated sugars and cook, stirring frequently, until the sugars are melted, about 5 minutes.
2. Stir in the cream and vanilla and continue to cook until the sauce has thickened slightly, about 5 minutes. If the sauce doesn’t thicken, it may just because the heat is too high. After taking it off the heat, it’ll thicken as it cools, so don’t worry.
3. Remove from the heat and let cool. Stir in the walnuts. If you don’t want the walnuts to soften, you can wait to stir in the walnuts right before serving, or sprinkle the walnuts over the napoleon separately and add the caramel sauce on top.

Making the Chantilly Cream
Chantilly cream is just fancy whipped cream basically. Being the lazy chef that I am, I really don’t see the need to make your own whipped cream for this recipe, because it is only a topping. Just get some store-bought whipped cream, mix it with the amount of vanilla extract and sugar called for in the recipe, and you’re done!

The rest of the recipe is simply to combine the elements. Our puff pastries were too thick, so we just topped one with the other elements, instead of making it into a sandwich. Either way, it tastes amazing!

Other notes: This would also go really well with vanilla ice cream, and feel free to add some berries to give it some colour. You can also substitute caramel sauce with chocolate fudge sauce, especially if you’re using ice cream.

svgallery=bakingparty

1. Actually, I lied. They weren’t ready at all, not according to Ms. Luchetti’s recipe. But we decided to skip one, or two, hours of waiting.

Whenever I stay with my parents, I become the head chef. For the most part, I make all the meals, and even though my dad still sometimes helps, he’s more of a sous chef. My dad, by the way, is an awesome cook. He’s never had any training, he’s never read any recipe books, he just has a knack for it. Maybe that’s why cooking comes naturally to me, too. But the weird thing is, he has yet to impart any of his cooking knowledge to me. I developed my cooking skills almost entirely independent of him, and it’s only when I occasionally come back and cook that he can comment on certain aspects, like how hot the pot is or how I should slice the veggies. To the extent that we use the same ingredients (since I am working from his pantry¹), the flavour of our dishes are similar. But “my taste” is still rather distinctive from his. I don’t like using salt, I never use MSG or any artificial substitute if I can help it (i.e. onion powder, garlic powder, stocks), I try to use a minimal amount of soy sauce, and I usually add sugar in a lot of my soy sauce dishes. I like using fish and oyster sauce, and I’m impartial to ginger (which he almost always adds). Of course, ginger is an important ingredient, especially in meat dishes, but I only use it when I have to, and in trace amounts.

All this culminated in a week-long marathon of “healthy” dishes (by his standard, not mine), such as:

• Spicy eggplant
• String beans and garlic
• Pork loin, bell peppers, and onion
• Pork loin, celery, and onion with marinated firm tofu

I’m going to post the recipe for pork, bell peppers, and onion because it was my most creative one (you’ll know why once you see the recipe), but I have some hints and tips for the other dishes. Unfortunately, there are no pictures, so I’ll just be using the closest ones I can find on the Internet.

Pork and Veggies

Ingredients:
1lb pork loin
2 tsp cornstarch
1 tsp five spice powder
1 tsp cumin powder
1 tsp ground peppercorn
1-2 tbsp vegetable oil
2 small green peppers, or 1 big one, cut into chunks
1/2 small onion, cut into chunks
2 tsp cooking wine
2 tbsp soy sauce
3 slices of orange

Instructions:

1. Slice the pork loins thinly and mix with cornstarch, five spice powder, cumin powder, and ground peppercorn.
2. Heat up the wok with the oil until it’s nice and hot, then add the pork. Add the cooking wine and stir quickly, separating the pieces.
3. Add the green peppers, onion, and soy sauce. Continuing stir-frying. At this point, you may want to add a couple more pieces of peppercorn. You can also grind in some orange rind for a more tangy flavour.
4. Remove from heat and squeeze in two slices of orange juice. Serve hot.

See? Very easy and delicious. And the orange juice adds a subtle tang and also gives it a refreshing aroma. Really yummy!

Now for the other dishes…

Spicy Eggplant

I’ve made Szechuan eggplant in the past, but I don’t quite remember the recipe for it, so I made my own spicy eggplant dish off the top of my head with the ingredients at hand. Now you can probably find plenty of spicy eggplant recipes online, but here are some tips to keep in mind when you make this dish:

• Eggplant tends to get mushy quite easily if you’re not careful, and when you have a cubed eggplant dish, you do not want it to get mushy. The solution? Salt the cubes before you cook them, letting the water escape. Also, make sure the wok and the oil are extremely hot before you put the eggplant in. Once they’re in, try not to stir them too much, just shake the pan to toss.
• This dish will not come out well if you don’t use enough oil! You need hot oil and you need lots of it. I usually find I have to add oil part way through cooking. DO NOT ADD WATER. If you try to steam the eggplant, it will become mushy. If you don’t feel it’s cooked enough, just add more oil and keep tossing on high heat!
• Tastes great with lots of garlic, hot chillies, and hot chili oil. Garnish with scallions before serving.

String Beans

This advice is kind of generalized for many green veggie stir-fries.

• Start off with ample oil and wait for it to heat up before putting in the veggies.
• Add salt and garlic.
• If you want the veggies to be cooked longer (softer), add chicken/vegetable stock instead of water for great flavour (especially for veggies with skin, such as this)
• For bok choy or cabbage, instead of stock, use water and sugar to enhance the flavour

Remember, the effect of MSG can be easily mimicked with a combination of salt and sugar!

1. But then again, most ingredients are typical of Asian dishes anyway.

Now it must be noted that Ma Po tofu is not easy to make right. The tofu used in this dish is somewhat firm, but not extra firm (fried or marinated) tofu, so it can very easily lose its shape. For an amateur without a real wok, this was a challenge for me. But I think, judging by the picture, I succeeded.

The recipe is modified from the one at Shiok (theirs is vegetarian, mine isn’t).

Ingredients:
400g firm tofu
200g ground beef/chicken/pork
1.5 tbsp Chilli bean paste (I didn’t have this so I used a combination of Guilin chili sauce and Lao Gan Ma chili sauce – both of which were made from or contain beans)
4 tbsp peanut oil
2 tsp black bean sauce
6-8 whole Sichuan red chillies (or 4-5 dried Indian chillies)
1 red chili pepper – chopped
3/4 cup Chicken stock
1-2 tsp sugar (makes it less spicy, so if you like it really hot, add less sugar)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp cornflour mixed with 1.5 tbsp hot water
1/4 tsp Sichuan peppercorns (ground)
2 tbsp spring onions (scallions) – chopped

Instructions:

1. Cut the tofu into 1/2in cubes. Be careful not to break any of them.
2. Marinate them in 2tsbp soy sauce for 30min.
3. Heat a wok on high and add oil. When it’s hot, add ground meat. Stir-fry until the meat is brown on the outside (but there is still some cooking left to do).
4. Turn the heat down to medium. Add the chicken stock, chili sauce, bean paste, and chillies, and mix.
5. Gently add the cut tofu. Try not to stir-fry it too much, as the tofu will break. Push it around the pan or hold the pan by the handles and shake it.
6. Pour in about 2tsp of the soy sauce that you were using to marinate it. Add the sugar.
7. Turn the heat down to simmer for about 5 min.
8. Depending on how much liquid is left, add the cornstarch and water. This will thicken up the sauce.
9. Turn the heat back up to medium-high and cook until the sauce has thickened.
10. Turn off the heat and add the scallions.

Anyway, I bought some chicken giblets¹ the other day and I’ve been really looking forward to cooking them. If you’ve never had giblets and are a little grossed out by them – don’t worry! They don’t taste strange, they’re just extremely chewy. So if you like tendons, you’re sure to like giblets (gizzards are my favourite)!

Now this recipe is an original so don’t go thinking I’m just copying and pasting some disgusting chicken innards recipe on here. When I read up on gizzards, I realized that they have to be cooked for a long time. You know what else is simmered for a long time? Tea eggs! One of my favourite street-vendor-foods (and extremely easy to make), tea eggs are simmered in a pot with soy sauce, star anise (or five spice powder), and green tea. Hence, that is how I decided to infuse flavour into my gizzards! I call this dish “Dragon Gills” (because all Chinese dishes have crazy names).

Ingredients:
0.2kg giblets – separate hearts and livers from gizzards
1/2 an onion, sliced into squares
2 slices of fresh ginger
3 tsp salt
2 tsp ground pepper or 1 thsp peppercorns
1 tsp green tea leaves
3 bay leaves
2 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp dark soy sauce
0.5 tbsp Guilin chili sauce²
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp Chinese cooking wine or sherry (or Grand Marnier in my case, since I had neither)

Instructions:

1. Bring a pot of water to boil and add gizzards. DO NOT add hearts or livers. Scoop/rinse off the foam, refill pot with water, and bring to boil again.
2. Add ginger, salt, peppers/peppercorns, tea leaves and bay leaves. Turn heat down to medium and cook for 30min.
3. Add 2 tbsp soy sauce, turn heat down to medium, and cook for another 20-30min.
4. Heat a wok/pan and add olive oil.
5. Pour pot contents into wok. Remove bay leaves (and tea leaves if possible). Add 1 tsp salt and 2 tbsp soy sauce and cook for 2min.
6. Add chicken hearts and onions. Sautee for a while, and add Guilin chili sauce.
7. Finally, add chicken livers, dark soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, and sugar. Mix constantly.
8. Chicken liver does not need to be cooked long. Remove from heat and serve hot with white rice.

1. Technically, giblets are gizzard, heart, and liver, but there was no liver in mine.
2. I recommend Lee Kum Kee’s Guilin chili sauce. This is a very versatile chili sauce that can be used with many Chinese dishes containing meats. It is not very spicy, does not overwhelm your taste buds, and enhances flavour without affecting other ingredients.

Until I started writing this recipe, I did not know what these were. I’ve used them before, oh, plenty of times. They’re great for stir-fries, easy to work with, and an easy, tasteless way to add some veggies to your dish.

Turns out, they’re not veggies. They’re fruits! Melons, in fact. I’d always had a sneaking suspicion they were related to melons (the green and the crisp and the seed gave it away), but I never really bothered to confirm it.

Chayote are apparently native to Costa Rica and a popular ingredient in Mexico, although I was introduced to them in a Chinese supermarket. Known as 佛手瓜 (Fu Shou Gua) to me, I’ve used them in stir-fries alongside the likes of chicken, soybeans, and firm marinated tofu. Since they’re related to cucumber, you can imagine that they soften easily, so you shouldn’t cook them too long if you want to retain their crisp character. They don’t have much flavour to them (less so than cucumber), and they’re fairly good at retaining water.

Anyway. Long story short. I’ve been meaning to make something with the rest of my beef chunks, which I had already slow-cooked with some salt, star anise, and dried chilli peppers. I also needed to make some “street food” for Blog Party #33, which I’ve been undecided about the entire week.
Suddenly, inspiration hit.
You know in some Chinese buns, they’ll have pulled pork or beef that’s heavily marinated? Well…

I decided to pull apart the beef chunks into “strings”, and stir-fry it with chayote and onion. The result was a great mish-mash of savoury pulled beef and soft chayote. The best part was that both components were moist (beef looses its moisture quite easily) and packed with flavour.
The street-food element is that it would be a great stuffing for a pita. In fact, it could easily be turned into a main with the addition of any number of carbs: steamed Chinese buns, white rice, or even something made from potato (polenta or mashed).
I’m trying to cut down my carb-intake though (I’ve grown up eating rice with every meal so believe me, this is a lot harder than it sounds), so I had to think of something else.
I also had to make this into an appetizer in order to qualify for the Blog Party. So…

Ta da!
I had been chewing on a stick of cucumber while I was debating (yes, I chew on sticks of cucumber), and realized that the cucumber tasted pretty good with the beef-chayote dish. So the end result was a cucumber-based appetizer with some beef, chayote, and onion. I topped it off with a small piece of red pepper to give it some colour.

The verdict: the makeover of the “street-food” beef and chayote stuffing into an elegant little appetizer is all sorts of genius. Cucumber and chayote naturally marry well since they’re members of the same family (which I did not know at the time! Hence, genius), but they also contrast each other since the chayote is soft and full of flavour, while the cucumber is on the outside, adding a fresh crisp to every bite. The beef is moist and well-marinated in typical Asian fashion, with an aroma of sesame decadence and a subtle spicy undertone. This is probably the healthiest street-food-turned-appetizer ever!

The name of this dish is another brand of genius in itself (thank you, thank you very much). Since cucumber and chayote are in the same family, they are “The Green Sisters.” The love feud is between them and the beef, whose passion is ignited by the spicy undertones and the red pepper topping, much like the tip of a flame.

We recommend that this appetizer be consumed with Amazake¹, a low-alcohol Japanese drink made from fermented rice.

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Ingredients:
0.3 lb stewing beef
2 tsp salt
1 star anise
3 dried red chili peppers
1 chayote, cut into strands or thin slices
1/4 white or red onion, cut into strands or thin slices
1 cup beansprouts (optional)
0.5 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp sugar
2 thin slices of ginger
2 tsp sesame oil
1-2 tsp 老干妈 (Lao Gan Ma) chili sauce²

To make the beef:

1. Boil a pot of water. Add the beef stew cubes.
2. Wait until the water boils again, then dump the water out and rinse the beef. Add water until it is 1in above the beef and return to stove.
3. When the water is almost boiling again, add 2 tsp salt, star anise, and dried chili peppers. Wait for the water to boil, then turn the heat down to a medium-low setting.
4. Cook for at least 30min or until beef is no longer hard.
5. Remove from stove. Take out beef cubes and keep the liquid (will be used as stock later). Pull apart beef cubes with your hands. (If you’re good with a knife, you can also cut them, but make sure to cut them into tiny strands).

For the stir-fry:

1. Heat the wok. Skim some oil from the top of the beef stock and add to wok. Add 1 cup of beef stock.
2. Add beef, onions, ginger, half the soy sauce, and half the sugar.
3. After mixing, add the chayote, the rest of the soy sauce, and the rest of the sugar. (Optional: You can add another tsp of salt here if needed. For an appetizer, I wouldn’t add the salt, but if you’re eating this as a main with plain rice or steamed buns, go ahead and the salt.)
4. Lower the heat to medium and cook until chayote is soft. Make sure it doesn’t dry out when you’re cooking (add water or more beef stock if needed). The mixture should always be just immersed in liquid.
5. Just before you’re done, turn the heat back up to high, add the sesame oil, and stir frequently. This will make the water evaporated faster and thicken the liquid.

If you’re serving this as a main, serve hot on a bed of white rice or alongside some plain steamed buns. It can also be lunch tomorrow if you heat it up and stuff it into a pita. If you’re serving it as an appetizer, put some on top of slices of cucumber and garnish with a small slice of red pepper.

1. From Wikipedia: “Amazake can be used as a dessert, snack, natural sweetening agent, baby food, salad dressing or smoothie. The traditional drink (prepared by combining amazake and water, heated to a simmer, and often topped with a pinch of finely grated ginger) was popular with street vendors, and it is still served at inns and teahouses. Many Shinto shrines provide or sell this in the New Year. In the 20th century, an instant version became available.
   Amazake is believed to be very nutritious, with no additives, preservatives, added sugars or salts. Outside of Japan, it is often sold in health food shops.”
2. 

Ingredients:
1 pound of beef (chunks, like for a stew)
2 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of madras curry powder
4 mini-potatoes or 2 small potatoes cut into chunks
1/4 white onion, cut into chunks
1 tomato, cut into chunks
1 red bell pepper cut into chunks
4 tsp of sugar
3 bay leaves

Steps:

1. Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add the beef. Cover and let boil.
2. When the water boils again, dump the water out and rinse the beef (to get rid of the foamy stuff). Add water up to 1in above beef and let boil.
3. Add 1 tsp of salt, and cook on low for 30min.
4. Remove beef from pot and add to wok or pan (high power). Strain 3 cups of water from pot. Add 1 tsp of salt and all the curry powder, and mix well.
5. When the liquid in the pan starts bubbling, add onions, tomatoes, bay leaves, and sugar.
6. Wait 10min, then add the red bell peppers.
7. Cook on medium heat for 15min, or until tomatoes have basically melted.
8. Remove from wok and serve hot with rice.

Serves: 3

Alternatives:
This can be served with fragrant white rice or brown rice. I used the leftover “beef stew” liquid to cook brown rice, so the rice smelled and tasted amazing. If you have coconut milk, you can add half a can to the madras curry (in step 6), and half to white rice.

Notes:

• The tomatoes are meant to disappear, that’s why they are added early on. If you don’t like strains of tomato skin in your final product, you can use tomato sauce instead (1/2 cup should do it).
• Brown sugar is preferable to white granulated sugar, so you can substitute 3tsp of brown sugar if you have it.
• It’s important to cook the beef in the pot before cooking it in the wok. The cooking time in the wok is not long enough for stewing beef to become tender, and also you don’t want the foamy blood stuff to be cooked in.