Alt Feast

Offering alternative recipes without gluten, dairy, corn, or coconut

Author: TC

  • An Experiment with Fried Rice

    An Experiment with Fried Rice

    Seems every region that has rice as a primary food staple also has a version of fried rice as part of their cuisine. It’s not commonly seen in restaurants around here, but the Japanese also have their own version of fried rice. While I can’t seem to find any key flavors that make a Japanese fried rice “Japanese”, it seems the core ingredient that differentiates it is the short grain Japanese rice… which makes sense. Fried rice is made with leftover rice from past meals, so naturally for Japan, that would be Japanese short grain.

    While restaurant menus and certain Youtube reaction-ers would have you believe there are ONLY specific ways to put together a fried rice, for the home cook, fried rice is a dish meant to use up leftovers by combining them together (with new ingredients like eggs) into a new dish. So I thought, why not try to make a fried rice dish using Japanese-inspired ingredients?

    This experiment, perhaps, is an example where too much substitution changes the dish so much that you can no longer taste the original inspiration.

    I started with salt-brined fish, a technique I’ve used in the past to make salted salmon (shiozake) or salted sea bass, except I used rock cod instead (it was what was available to me at the time). This part wasn’t too bad, but it was very salty and I perhaps added too much to the fried rice, wanting to use up the fish in my fridge before it went bad.

    My downhill spiral was probably when I started adding ingredients like red sweet peppers and zucchini. Again, my goal was to try to use up what was in my fridge, but the flavors didn’t work together well into anything “Japanese” tasting by this point.

    So for fun, I added bacon.

    And finally, if you haven’t noticed from the photo… the rice I had leftover was basmati, not Japanese short grain. Personally…. I like making fried rice with basmati. It naturally is not sticky and stir fries easily as a result. Stickier rice requires some manual labor to break it apart before adding it to a pan or wok.

    My end result? Salty. Edible, but not that great. Oh well. Haha.

  • Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl)

    Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl)

    This is a dish I always seem to find myself returning to time and time again. There’s something about that soy-ginger sauce that goes so perfectly well with beef that makes this dish an incredibly comforting and satisfying meal.

    Thinly sliced beef is ALMOST mandatory for this dish. I found Trader Joe’s regularly has “shaved beef” in their shelves so you don’t need to go to an Asian grocer or specialty butcher to this this cut of meet. But if you’re having trouble finding one, you can also shave the meat yourself using a sharp knife and semi-freezing the beef so that you can get a clean cut without damage. But… if you’re finding that to be too difficult or too much effort, just cut the meet as thin as you can into bite-size strips. The texture might end up tougher but hte flavors will still be accurate.

    My favorite way to cook this is to include shimeji mushrooms (also known as white beech mushrooms) into the stir fry so that the texture and juiciness of the mushrooms pairs well with the onions and sliced beef in each bite.

    beef, onions, and mushrooms cooking in a pan
    After sauteéing, beef, onion, and mushrooms are simmered in a soy ginger sauce to absorb its flavor.
    beef with onions and mushrooms

    Gyudon (Japanese Beef Bowl)

    A savory and umami beef dish. Best served on a fresh bowl of rice
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 10 minutes
    Cook Time 15 minutes
    Course Main Course
    Cuisine Japanese
    Servings 4

    Equipment

    • 1 large cooking pan

    Ingredients
      

    • 1 lb shaved beef
    • 1/2 medium onion
    • 1 packet shimeji mushrooms white or brown is fine

    Simmering Sauce

    • 2 tbsp soy sauce
    • 2 tsp ground ginger if using fresh, reduce to 1 tsp
    • 1 tbsp sugar
    • 2 tbsp sake

    Instructions
     

    • Mix the ingredients for the simmering sauce and set aside
      2 tbsp soy sauce, 2 tsp ground ginger, 1 tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp sake
    • Slice the onion thinly (I prefer french cut, but you can cut however you like).
      1/2 medium onion
    • On medium heat, add oil to a pan. Add in the onion and sauté until translucent.
    • Add in beef. Continue to sauté until about half the pink is gone.
      1 lb shaved beef
    • Add in mushrooms. Sauté some more.
      1 packet shimeji mushrooms
    • Add simmering sauce. Stir and keep an eye on the pan, moving the ingredients around so it evenly cooks. Keep waiting and stirring occassionally until most of the liquid evaporates.
    • Remove from heat. Serve over a bowl of freshly cooked rice.

    Notes

    Use gluten free tamari to make this dish gluten free. 
    Keyword beef, meat, protein
  • Simmered Kabocha Nimono

    Simmered Kabocha Nimono

    An easy side dish, the sweet flavor of the kabocha is highlighted through the salty umami of the simmering sauce. 

    “Nimono” is a class of Japanese dishes known as “simmering dishes”. In nimono, ingredients are simmered in a mix of broth and flavorings until the liquid is absorbed and the flavors are embedded into the ingredients.

    The most common flavoring combination used in nimono is a mix of soy, sugar, sake and/or mirin. A seafood-based dashi stock is also central to cooking nimono. I also like adding ginger to give it that extra little depth.

    Nimono that is made of a singular vegetable like this Simmered Kabocha recipe are often served as side dishes to compliment the full meal setting. This particular recipe is especially easy to prepare in bulk ahead of time and serve it throughout the week in various meals.

    simmmered kabocha squash

    Simmered Kabocha Nimono

    A sweet and savory side dish perfect for a Japanese-style meal
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 10 minutes
    Cook Time 20 minutes
    Course Side Dish
    Cuisine Japanese

    Equipment

    • 1 large pot or frying skillet
    • 1 drop lid use aluminum foil if you don't own this

    Ingredients
      

    • 1/2 kabocha squash
    • 2 cups dashi stock see notes on how to make dashi

    Simmering Sauce

    • 1 tbsp soy sauce
    • 1 tbsp sugar
    • 1 tbsp minced ginger
    • 2 tbsp sake

    Instructions
     

    • If you don't own a drop lid, create one using aluminum foil! Take a piece of foil larger that you pot and fold in the edges until it just fits within the pot. Punch holes through the center of the foil with a chopstick so that you have a large steam vent. This will be your drop lid.
      homemade drop lid made of shaped foil with venting holes cut in the middle
    • Cut the kabocha squash into ~1" cubes. If the kabocha squash is too hard, pop it in the microwave for 2 min to soften and try cutting again.
      1/2 kabocha squash
    • Line the bottom of a pot with the kabocha squash in a single layer.
      1/2 kabocha squash
      cubed kabocha squash lining a cooking pot in a single layer
    • Mix the simmering sauce ingredients together with the dashi stock. Pour into the pot.
      1 tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp sugar, 1 tbsp minced ginger, 2 tbsp sake, 2 cups dashi stock
    • Bring pot to boil on high.
    • Once boiling, turn down to medium low heat to simmer. Cover ingredients with the drop lid and cook for 20-30 min, or until liquid has mostly evaporated and the kabocha squash is tender.
    • Turn off heat and let kabocha sit in the pot with the pot lid covering to cool, about 30 minutes.
    • Serve at room temp or chilled.

    Notes

    It’s best to make dashi ahead of time and have some on hand in the fridge (see recipe for overnight dashi stock). 
    If you don’t have this, then take 4 cups water, 1 4″x4″ piece of konbu, and ~2 TBSP of katsuoboshi* and heat in a pot. Reduce heat to simmer BEFORE it gets to boiling (you want to avoid boiling konbu to prevent a slight bitter taste. It’s not the end of the world if you do though, but some people find it better to not let it reach boiling). Simmer for 10 minutes, then remove the konbu and katsuoboshi from the stock. 
    If you lack ingredients to make dashi stock, then plain water will do for this recipe.  
    Keyword nutritious, pumpkin
  • Chicken Soboro Don (Ground Chicken Rice Bowl)

    Chicken Soboro Don (Ground Chicken Rice Bowl)

    Starting Japanese cuisine cooking from the beginning can take a lot of initial work, but what I am quickly learning is that a lot of Japanese recipes and home-cooking staples are dishes that can easily be meal prepped. That is to say… you can cook a lot at once, store the leftovers, then serve the leftovers alongside another prepared dish (usually fresh rice) to make a new home-cooked meal.

    Little pieces of several different dishes together create an aesthetically pleasing and balanced meal setting. Cook 1 dish today, another tomorrow, and bits here and there throughout the day, and you can keep that menu’s variety up over time.

    Since we’re at the beginning of our Japanese cuisine month, we are also starting from scratch with our homemade dishes. On today’s menu, we made 3 plates: chicken soboro, simmered kabocha, and seasoned eggplant. The intention was to create a balance of protein and healthy vegetables that was easy to make and also have leftovers for another day, but as you’ll see… that didn’t exactly go to plan.

    Chicken soboro and simmered kabocha squash were straightforward enough, though cutting the kabocha squash was very difficult (pro tip from Just One Cookbook: microwave the kabocha squash for 2 minutes to soften it up first before cutting (make sure to cut a slit first so steam can escape if you’re starting from a whole pumpkin though!)). Just make sure things don’t burn! I also tried my hands at poaching 2 eggs using these poaching devices we’ve had sitting in our utensils cupboards for awhile now. Those did not turn out well in my opinion and I think I need to just poach eggs without added tools.

    soy glazed sliced eggplant
    Deliciously decadent, this recipe ended up not being as healthy of a vegetable side dish as I had hoped. I recommend this as a main dish to go on top of rice.

    My partner took on the more difficult task of cooking the eggplant. He followed a recipe from Just One Cookbook for Soy-Glazed Eggplant Donburi to create this incredibly savory and surprisingly decadent (we found out that eggplant soaks up oil like a sponge) dish. We used the leftovers the following day as a main for a rice bowl, following the intended serving option from Just One Cookbook’s recipe. It’s like a vegetarian unagi! Would make again, but maybe with my own recipe variation to match my personal tastes more (and make it lighter).

    Today though, I’m going to focus on the chicken soboro part of the meal.

    And by “chicken” I mean turkey. I had a lot of leftover turkey meat from that one time a month ago where I decided to buy a discount turkey and debone it like a chicken (and the result of that experiment was… turkey is not built like chicken. It has the same bone structure, but the skin is too tough and there’s a whole lot more tough tendon in the legs that make it impossible to fully remove the meat without hours of effort). A simple pass through my food processor of the deboned meat and I had ~2 lbs of ground dark turkey meat to work with.

    Cooking this is a straightforward process and you end up with a sweet and savory rice topper that stores well.

    ground turkey in a cooking pan
    A straight-forward recipe, cook the meat, add the sauce, then simmer down until the liquids have evaporated and imparted their flavor to the meat.

    I’ve seen several styles of Chicken Soboro Don (“don” = rice bowl), but the one I remembered eating (and what I was hoping to replicate) was from a small Japanese cafe in Seattle where they put a raw egg on top of a bowl of chicken soboro and rice. I’m too chicken (ha!) to serve eggs from my Costco pack raw, so I did a poached one. I… clearly need to work on my poaching skills.

    turkey soboro rice bowl with egg

    Chicken (or Turkey) Soboro

    An easy meal-prep protein that looks simple but packs a deliciously sweet and savory taste.
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 10 minutes
    Cook Time 30 minutes
    Course Main Course
    Cuisine Japanese
    Servings 8

    Equipment

    • 1 large pot or pan

    Ingredients
      

    • 1 TBSP olive oil sub avocado oil or other neutral flavor oil
    • 2 tsp minced ginger
    • 2 lbs ground chicken or turkey
    • 1/4 cup diced mushrooms (optional) I like adding vegetables where I can… in this case I added some leftover enoki mushrooms I had for a nutritional boost)

    For the simmering sauce

    • 2 TBSP sake
    • 1 TBSP sugar
    • 2 TBSP mirin
    • 4 TBSP soy sauce

    Optional toppers

    • beni shoga (red pickled ginger strips)
    • diced scallions
    • poached egg

    Instructions
     

    • Add oil to a pan on medium heat, and then add ginger. Sauté until fragrant.
      1 TBSP olive oil, 2 tsp minced ginger
    • Add ground meat and sauce until most of the pink is gone. Use the spatula to periodically break the large chunks of ground meat down so that you have a relatively uniform consistency at the end. Add the mushrooms if using and continue to sauté
      2 lbs ground chicken or turkey, 1/4 cup diced mushrooms (optional)
    • Add the simmering sauce. Sauté. Keep using the spatula to break down the large chunks of ground meat as you continue to cook. Stir occasionally.
      2 TBSP sake, 1 TBSP sugar, 4 TBSP soy sauce, 2 TBSP mirin
    • Continue to cook until most of the liquid has evaporated.
    • Serve on top of rice and topped with red pickled ginger strips, diced scallion, and a poached egg (or as desired).
      beni shoga (red pickled ginger strips), diced scallions, poached egg

    Notes

    To make this 100% gluten free, use gluten free tamari instead of soy sauce.
    You can “hide” other diced vegetables in this dish, like eggplant or mushrooms. Enoki mushrooms are very mild in flavor. Diced shiitake mushrooms would be a delicious alternative, but would change the flavor a bit. 
    Keyword ground turkey, protein
  • Pork & Cabbage Stir Fry

    Pork & Cabbage Stir Fry

    Starting Japanese Cuisine month off is a VERY simple dish of stir fried pork and cabbage. Truthfully, this is a dish that exists across many ethnic cuisines (Chinese, Korean, to name a few) and fits well in to my “cooking basics” list as a variation of the default stir fry option. 

    Stir fries like this don’t often get their own cuisine-identifying recipe because families often cook it without instruction. It’s more of a “what’s in my fridge that works together?” kind of dish. However it’s fast, easy, delicious, versatile, and very healthy. Those qualities warrant an entry by me.

    What makes this particular recipe “Japanese” (as opposed to Chinese or Korean) is the flavor profile. We use common Japanese ingredients to create a ginger-y and slightly sweet umami sauce that pairs well with the savory pork and crisp cabbage of this dish.

    A few key details:

    thinly sliced raw pork on a cooking pan

    Try to get thinly sliced or shaved pork for this dish. Thin cuts of meat are very common in Japanese cuisine. They cook quickly and stay tender through the cooking process better than thicker chunks.

    This dish is best served as a meal set, complete with rice as the base and a vegetable-filled miso soup to enhance the nutritional value.

    The recipe:

    Pork and cabbage stir fried

    Japanese Pork and Cabbage Stir Fry

    A Japanese-style stir fry dish that versatile and easy to make on a weeknight
    Print Recipe Pin Recipe
    Prep Time 15 minutes
    Cook Time 10 minutes
    Course Main Course
    Cuisine Japanese
    Servings 2

    Equipment

    • 1 large cooking pan preferably nonstick but not required

    Ingredients
      

    • 1 tbsp olive oil or other preferred cooking oil
    • 1 tsp freshly minced ginger ginger powder can work if fresh not available. See notes
    • 1/2 lb shaved pork any cut will do, but ideally you want thinly sliced small pieces of pork that has fat attached to the pieces. Pork butt or shoulder would be ideal. Pork belly works, but is too fatty in my opinion. Pork loin and chops are leaner options (see notes on how to tenderize for better taste).
    • 1/4 head cabbage chopped in to ~1" squares
    • 1-2 stalks green onion chopped in to 1-2" length pieces

    For the sauce:

    • 1 TBSP soy sauce
    • 2 TBSP mirin sub 2 TBSP sake + 1 tsp brown sugar if mirin not available
    • Salt & Pepper to taste

    Instructions
     

    • On medium heat, add oil and ginger to the pan. Saute until fragrant. ~2 min
      1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp freshly minced ginger
    • Once ginger is fragrant, add in pork and saute.
      1/2 lb shaved pork
    • Pour in the sauce and saute the pork and sauce on its own until most of the liquid is cooked out. ~5 min
      1 TBSP soy sauce, 2 TBSP mirin
    • Once most of the liquid is evaporated, add vegetables and saute, stirring frequently to prevent burning.
      1/4 head cabbage, 1-2 stalks green onion
    • Add salt & pepper to taste
      Salt & Pepper

    Notes

    1. If using ginger powder, add 2 tsp ginger powder to the sauce. Omit the ginger and oil sauté step and skip to sauté-ing the pork.
    2. To tenderize leaner cuts of meat, marinate in the soy sauce/mirin/sake sauce for at least 1 hour. The meat will become darker the longer it marinates, but the soy sauce and the alcohol will do its work to make the meat more tender. 
    Keyword stir fry

  • January 2022 – Japanese Cuisine Month

    I’m starting off this 12 months of cuisines with one of our favorites: Japanese food! 

    Why Japanese food?

    Outside of the “because it’s tasty” reason, I already have some familiarity with Japanese cooking, so it makes Japanese cuisine a good starter-month for this 12-month challenge. Japanese food is also often considered healthy, with its focus on vegetables and lean meats (mostly fish) over fatty and processed options (let’s not lie though. Japanese food has plenty of processed and fatty options too). Japanese home cooking also tends to feature a lot of soups, stews, and a balance of nutrients coming from fermented and fresh foods alike. This all sounds great for a healthier winter menu.

    Also, after a month of indulgent holiday eating, a month of lighter, Japanese fare seems like a great choice. 

    The challenges:

    1. While Japanese food does highlight leaner meats and vegetables, it is also is very high carb. The biggest culprit being their dietary staple: rice.

    There are plenty of resources that contest whether carbs are good or bad for you. Based on personal blood tests and past experiences, I know my body does not process sugars well and that any diet that is high in carbohydrates will not help with my gut health or related weight loss. That’s not to say I’ll cut rice from this month entirely, but that I’ll need to find ways to lower the quantity eaten (in a way that is not difficult to do).

    Cauliflower rice is a default swap, but we all know the taste is not the same (especially when compared to the sweet and sticky freshly-cooked Japanese short grain varietal). 

    2. Some Japanese ingredients are difficult to source

    Things like soy sauce and tofu can be found in most grocery stores across the US now, but ingredients like Umeboshi, Shiokoji, and others may be more difficult. A combination of COVID and busy life makes it difficult to go to those specialty stores and lately some of the items have risen in price or become unavailable on shelves, even in a state like California where there are a lot of Asian stores to choose from. 

    In areas where I use a special ingredient, I’ll try to provide a link to where to buy it or offer options for how to make it without. 

    3. Fish is expensive and difficult to find variety

    At least it is here in the US. When comparing meat options, poultry is the cheapest whereas fish can be some of the most expensive meat you can get, especially when you try to purchase healthier wild-caught options and adhere to the sustainable Monterey seafood watch list. Japanese common fish options (like large mackerels) are not as common here. There may be some work-arounds, like canned sardines. 

    Starter Ingredients:

    There are certain ingredients used in Japanese cooking that are quintessential to the cuisine and can be considered must-haves.I have a lot of these in my pantry and fridge already, b most of these ingredients can be found in a standard grocery superstore (the “international” section or your nearby asian grocer. Many of these are used in multiple cuisine types so will be useful to have if you try to cook other Asian styles of food. This isn’t a list of all the ingredients I’ll be using for these recipes but they’re a good starter set to build off of:

    • Soy sauce – a black/brown liquid full of salty umami. It’s the heart of many asian cuisines, including Chinese and Korean. There are many variations of this (dark, light, soup version, etc), but I’ve found I’ve been find with just the default regular soy sauce (sometimes I get low sodium as a personal preference though). For gluten intolerance, look for gluten free “tamari” (verify it’s gluten free by looking at the ingredients list. “Tamari”, while identified in western culture as the gluten free version of soy sauce, is actually a different item in Japanese cuisine and depending on the brand can still have some wheat in it). Tamari tastes different, but it works “well enough” for most recipes.
      • If you are not sensitive to coconut, I hear coconut aminos is also a good alternative
    • Sake – it’s a great mild-tasting alcohol for cooking and marinating meats. I use this a lot outside of Asian cooking too in place of other alcohols. Depending where you live, you can get giant 750ml or 1.5L bottles for under $10. I personally prefer the Ozeki Sake brand (smoother in my opinion and “good enough” to drink too).
    • Sesame oil – toasty and nutty tasting, a little goes a long way. 
    • Ginger – yum.
    • Garlic – yum.
    • Scallions – always keep a fresh batch either in the garden or in your fridge. Japanese actually have this much longer varietal that they use. The white parts are sharper like a raw onion but sweeter when cooked. The green parts are just like your every day green onions. Easily adaptable to more common ingredients. 
    • Miso – a brown/tan paste that is full of salty umami and probiotics. It’s primarily used as a soup flavoring ingredient. There are many varieties and shades of brown that have to do with how the miso paste is aged and can really change the flavor. For a starter miso paste, pick shiro miso (white miso). The flavor is mildest and is most commonly used and sold. 
    • Rice vinegar – milder than white vinegar, you’ll use it in sauces, seasoning for sushi rice, and for quick-pickling side dishes. 
    • Short grain rice – The core staple of Asian cuisines. You can sub for medium grain rice which is more commonly found, but really, if you can find the higher-priced short grain like Kohishikari or Temaki Gold, go for it. You won’t regret it. 
    • Seaweed – nori is what we use in sushi. Wakame is used in miso. Both are fairly common to find.

    Special Ingredients

    These are ingredients that may be more difficult to find but are common or healthy in Japanese cuisine. If you can find them, get them, but if you are finding this list overwhelming, feel free to skip this part. 

    • Umeboshi – a salty pickled plum. There’s also a candied dried version that can be found in many asian snack aisles. The kind we’re looking for is usually found in the refrigerated section and is not sweetened. This is a very strong sour and salty flavor that on its own, in my opinion is too overpowering to eat. But it makes for a great condiment in other dishes. I don’t know if there’s a good replacement for this….
      • Make sure to read the ingredients labels. Many packaged umeboshi brands use high fructose corn syrup to sweeten or preserve their product. Look for ones that contain minimal ingredients and dye their plums from red shiso (aka beefsteak leaves) and not artificial coloring (or alternatively, find plums that aren’t dyed at all).
    • Shiokoji – fermented malted rice. It’s a salty (and umami) alternative to plain salt when seasoning dishes and is a good probiotic as long as you don’t overheat it (I usually add it to dishes at the end of cooking, just before serving). 
    • Mirin – a sweeter-tasting aged form of sake.  It is still has a bit of alcohol in it, so it’s not alcohol free. If you can’t find this, just use sake + sugar to get a similar affect in cooking. 
    • Red pickled ginger – if you can’t find this, just get normal pickled sushi ginger. It won’t have that bright color, but it will still taste the same. 
    • Natto – a type of fermented bean that is a sticky and slimy side dish. It’s an acquired taste (but once you do it’s very addictive), but natto is probably one of the best probiotic foods since it’s not sweet like our store-bought yogurt, kefir, and kombuchas in the US and not overly salty like miso and shiokoji. If you can get your hands on it, please do and keep it in the freezer. There’s an easy way to replicate it from a single pack as well (as long as you have the right equipment, like an instant pot with yogurt settings)!

  • 12 Months of Cuisines – Starting 2022 with a healthy and creative challenge

    The mission

    1. Cook dishes from 12 different cuisines over 12 months. 1 cuisine per month.
    2. Learn how to make dishes that taste great, omit my dietary intolerances, and are easy to make on a weeknight.
    3. Gain a repertoire of go-to dishes that span a variety of cuisine types and are easy to make with little thought required. 

    WHY am I taking on this mission?

    As much as I hear about all the rules to a healthy life, in reality, it’s difficult to put it into practice. Eat more plants. Cook more. Eat less carbs. Eat less processed. Choose fresh and local for optimum nutrition.

    When you’re stressed and tired at the end of the day, you get faced with a choice: delay hunger by cooking a healthy meal or satisfy hunter by eating something right now (which is likely takeout or pre-made. Something tasty and soul-satisfying).

    Hunger is a powerful influencer. Logic sucks when under pressure. When you’re hungry, all you want is the happy-brain-drugs that come from satisfying it with something tasty and enjoyable. 

    A little backstory

    It’s no secret I struggle with diet health. 3 years ago, I was under a very strict nutritional program (for gut healing, not weight loss, though weight loss was a great side effect) and lost 25 lbs. My body looked great, but internally, I was absolutely miserable with the restrictions on my lifestyle. 

    After the program ended, I slowly expand my food options, and was able to enjoy more pleasures in life (going out to eat, eating snacks, being in unknown locations without packing cut cucumbers and boiled eggs in a separate cooler box….). I felt like I had my life back, but over that time… I steadily gained a good portion of the weight back. 

    I don’t want to go back on that program again. It was admittedly effective, but I did not enjoy life, so it wasn’t sustainable for the long run.

    I like food. Who doesn’t? 

    The goals to lose weight, get healthy, do more art/creative projects, go indie, buy a house/car/camper van/PS5…. They exist every year. We start off on the right foot but end off losing steam by the end of January. 

    I don’t feel any guilt for that. It’s hard to stick to something when the routine is being “forced” by willpower alone and you aren’t enjoying it (like that strict nutritional program….). 

    This year, I want to try something new

    This plan takes in to account things I know about myself and my life experiences:

    1. I like to cook, but only when I’m not stressed or tired – I don’t like cooking out of expectation, but prefer cooking out of experimentation. It’s fun to cook when cooking is a challenge or a game. It’s uninspiring when it’s a chore or routine.
    2. I love to eat – there’s great joy in taste. A lot of tastes I had to sacrifice due to food intolerances. Surprisingly, in regards to taste, it hasn’t been an issue. Just bad in terms of convenience. Eating pleasurably tasting foods is something I enjoy in my daily life.
    3. I get tired and stressed a lot – my health hasn’t been great this last year, so fatigue has shown its face a lot. And when I’m tired or stressed, I don’t have energy or desire to even think about what to cook, let alone do the actual cooking.
    4. When I’m tired, stressed, AND hungry, I want easy and tasty food – this usually results in take-out or stress snacking. 
    5. When both my partner and I are tired, stressed, and hungry, all hope of making smart healthy choices are gone – don’t get me wrong, my partner is very supportive (he’s adapted all my dietary restrictions to his own diet voluntarily and tries to cook healthy when its his turn), but we’re like 2 monkeys making choices when we’re hungry. “You want tacos? I can go get tacos.” 

    Why I think this will work

    This 12-month plan gives me a creative mission to keep my mind engaged in the challenge. It will let me expand my cooking repertoire and also experience new tastes and dishes I’ve always seen but never tried. It will also force me to exercise my creativity in providing gluten-free, dairy-free, corn-free, and coconut-free options. Ultimately, by doing this I will be able to create alternate recipes that will allow me to enjoy foods in healthier ways.

    The rules

    1. I will focus on learning 1 cuisine per month and how to convert its ingredients to my diet as needed
    2. Recipes should focus on “home cooking”, meals that are easy to make on a weeknight and don’t require heavy process. If they do require a long process, find ways to make it easy to prep parts (or all) ahead
    3. Prioritize vegetables. I will always try to incorporate more vegetables into any cuisine’s dish that I make. If the dish obviously cannot or should not have vegetables, serve it so that we’re still eating a healthy portion of vegetables in the meal. 
    4. Restrict eating out only when necessary. 1-2 times per weekend. And during the week ONLY if necessary.

    These rules are subject to change

    Let’s face it. Life changes. Unexpected things happen. New factors arise. I’ll do my best to adhere to this but I’m not going to stress too much if we spend a week here or there completely ignoring these rules. As long as the mission remains intact, we’re good.

  • Healthy Pumpkin & Banana Waffles

    Healthy Pumpkin & Banana Waffles

    Waffles are so tasty but they really can pack a calorie punch with very little nutritional value. This recipe uses a blend of whole natural ingredients to make deliciously nutritious and low calorie waffles.

    (more…)
  • Food Explorer: Craftsman & Wolves

    Food Explorer: Craftsman & Wolves

    Craftsman & Wolves is a nationally famous bakery in San Francisco, known for their French-inspired patisseries and flavor explorations. In other words… rows of mouth-watering but untouchable treats!

    It’s rare to find a bakery that bothers to cater to a dietary-restricted audience (I mean to be fair… if you are going to a bakery then you should know what you’re going in to). Craftsman & Wolves is one of those places that goes out of their way to cater to our specialty audience with a gluten free and vegan option: the “chai mochi travel cake”.

    The chai mochi travel cake is pretty visually unassuming compared to their other options. It’s a bar with a tab of dairy-free chocolate ganache that you can pick up with your hands and eat on the go (hence the “travel cake” name). But when you’re stuck living a gluten and dairy free lifestyle, it’s nice enough that they at least provide an option. Taste-wise, it is a dense bar with crunchy elements from the buckwheat kernels baked within. Not my favorite, but nice to be able select a treat from the display case alongside my non-dietary-restricted partner.

    Sweet and hot drinks on a street bench
    It was a gloomy day but we still enjoyed our hot drinks and sweets from the neighboring shops in the Mission District of San Francisco.

    In the same street is a chocolate shop: Dandelion Chocolate. Expensive, but one of my favorites from San Francisco. The chocolates really showcase the flavor variety from the cocoa bean origins. If you get a chance and are in the Mission District, stop by this little corner to check out both shops.

    drinks and sweets
    Craftsman & Wolves and Dandelion Chocolates: Two great shops within close proximity from each other in the Mission District of San Francisco
  • Experiment: Guava Cheese Tart

    Experiment: Guava Cheese Tart

    I bought guava, from Walmart of all places. It came in a small box of 8 and was very inexpensive. This was a surprising find, especially in the Bay Area where fresh guava is not common at all (at least not in stores like “Whole Foods” and “99 Ranch.” But I think it might be more possible to find in the small Latino grocers).

    The guava itself was very tart. Strong with flavor, but too tart for casual eating so I decided… let’s try to turn this into something else!

    I found a recipe for Guava Cream Cheese Tart by Food52 and got to work modifying it for a gluten free and dairy free diet.

    I also took this opportunity to experiment with a pie crust theory I had using rice flour. Using the same technique of making rice flour dough for ‘pupusa de arroz‘, I combined 1 cup of rice flour with 1/2 cup of hot boiling water. I also added 1/4 cup of oil, more oil than the pupusa recipe requested, with the intent of making a more oily dough that would hopefully crisp and flake in the oven.

    This… didn’t work. What I learned from the experiment though, is when rice is mixed with oil alone, it incorporates it into a ‘wet sand’-like dough that comes together, but feels gritty. But when I add hot water to the mix, the rice flour absorbs that and as a result, repels the oil. I thought this would be ok and that having pockets of repelled oil would make the dough become more brittle and crumbly. But in the end, none of that happened. The dough that was exposed to the oven heat just became a hard crisp. The dough hidden below the tart filling was chewy and wouldn’t break apart. It made cutting the tart cleanly pretty much impossible.

    In hindsight, this recipe would work REALLY well with a crumbly almond-flour based crust instead of trying to roll out a rice-flour based one. Maybe I should get a tart pan too. One with a removable bottom.

    The filling itself was a success. I used Kite Hill plain cream cheese, something I’ve done in the past for my pumpkin cream cheese cake ring, to make it dairy free. And I made a few other modifications to the recipe as well. Not related to making the tart diet-friendly but more about me wanting to experiment more:

    • I was bothered that the recipe asked you to dispose of the seed section of the guava because that’s where the strongest flavor and sweetness is, IMO. So I mashed it and pushed the pulp through a sieve (diluted slightly with maple syrup… water might have been ok?) and mixed it in with the dairy free cream cheese filling. This came out amazing. It wasn’t as noticeable until baked and just gives that cream cheese filling a little more kick to tie it together.
    • I added a whole egg instead of just the egg yolk to the filling as well. I get why they want just an egg yolk, but I hate having leftover parts of egg and I saw no consequence to including the egg white, so I used the whole thing.
    • I added almond extract to the cream cheese instead of the crust. This was just because I screwed up with following instructions. Tasted great though. Almond extract + tart guava is an amazing combination.
    • I didn’t do the crumble top. It sounded too sweet to me and I was concerned it would drown out the guava flavor. Instead I took leftover rice flour dough and made some decorative cuts. Which I won’t be able to do if I switch to almond flour crust so maybe back to that crumble next time?

    Once I’ve successfully made a cut-able tart with guava cream cheese, I will share that recipe here.

    In the mean time, Link to original recipe: Guava Cream Cheese Tart by Food52.