Easy and Delicious Japanese Beef Bowl

This dish is something I make when I don't have much in my fridge or when I don't have desire to cook something complicated. This is super easy yet very delicious dish which my husband and my son love.

When I go to Japanese grocery store, I usually buy one or two package of very thinly sliced beef and freeze them for later use. I find it difficult to get this kind of thin sliced beef in the U.S. sometimes. But, I have seen them in Trader Joe's and some other place. I think if you go to Korean grocery store, they have these also. It is like beef for Philly Cheese Stake. The one I normally buy has some fat on them and I think this is the key for great beef bowl.

Anyways, it is super easy and I just make this without measuring anything but I thought maybe someone will be interested for this recipe so here I go.

Japanese Beef Bowl (For 3~4 people)
Thinly Sliced Beef   about 0.8 pound
Onions                      2
Ginger                      about 1~2 table spoons (Chopped or julienned)
Vegetable Oil          1 Table Spoon
Soy Sauce               2 Table Spoons
Sake                        2 Table Spoons
Mirin                       2 Table Spoons
Sugar                      1~2 tea spoons
Cooked Rice          about 3 cups (before cooking)
Picked red ginger   (optional)

1, First of all, slice onions and chopp or julienne ginger)

2, Add oil into the pan and fry onion. When it is softened, add ginger and fry little more.

3. Then, add meat and Sake.

4. When the meat is cooked through, add soy sauce, mirin and sugar. Bring to a boil and turn the heat off.

5. Add rice into a bowl and transfer some of the meat and sauce.

6, Add picked red ginger on top and serve.

My husband and I love ginger so I normally add lots of them in and also add picked ginger on top but if you don't like ginger, you can just add a little bit.

This is a super easy dish which taste really good. This is kind of a Japanese fast food. You will find some beef bowl fast food chains in Japan. They are cheap and good!

If you can find thinly sliced fatty beef, you should try this dish!

Ricotta Cheesecake

It has been quite hot these last few days in NY but how is everybody doing? Mausi family is doing great. Enjoying summer!!

Anyway, the other day we went to this Italian deli/pizzeria close to our place. This place has really good pizza and they also make fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheese.

We had small pizza (which is big) with mushroom and onion. What I love about this pizza is the crust is thin. I like thin crust pizza!

At deli section, they have different kind of fresh meat and cheese. One of my neighbor told me that their Mozzarella cheese and Ricotta cheese are really good so I bought those cheese.

I didn't take pictures of these cheese but we had Mozzarella for salad. Ricotta cheese was creamy and sweet and I could just eat it as is but since we had lots of them, I decided to make ricotta cheesecake.

This cake is not too sweet and have lots of ricotta and egg with little bit of flour.

The recipe I used was the one I found in All Recipes. Click here if you would like to jump to the recipe. 

It said Sicilian ricotta cheesecake so the recipe muse be from Sicily. This is very different from American cheesecake. It was light and bit dry. My husband loved it. I liked it but I think I prefer something little bit sweeter and creamer.

It was very easy to make and tasted great. Maybe I will add little bit more sugar next time ;-)

It was really hot when I baked this cake so we couldn't stay in the house. My son and I played in front of the house while the cake is baked.

I think cheesecake is great for summer because you can eat it cool!

Well, if you like light cheesecake, try this one!

Tyler Florence's Chicken Francese

It had been really hot here in NY for the past few days and it had been quite difficult to motivate myself to cook in this heat. It is nice and cool today so I think my motivation for cooking is back.

Anyway, so I had been trying to cook something which require less cooking time on stove or oven. I made this chicken francese which doesn't require standing in front of the stove for a long time.

This is quite an easy yet delicious dish using chicken breast. You just dredge chicken in flour and egg and fry them. Then, cook lemon with wine and put the chicken back to the lemon sauce. I added mushroom since I had mushroom at home but the recipe did not require mushroom.

Lately, I get lots of cooking ideas from Pinterest. I love looking at food pictures on pinterest. Pinterest is something like a online scrapbook which you can pin your favorite pics and organize them by categories. If you haven't try it and are interested in, click here to go to pinterest site.

Anyways, this is one of the dish I found in pinterest. I went to the original site of the pic and found out that the recipe was originally from Tyler Florence who is my favorite! So here, I link to Food Network site for his Chicken Fracese recipe. Click here for the recipe. 

I also found out that there are some people out there who pinned some pictures from my site to their pinterest board because they liked it! I was so happy to find out that there are some people who like it enough to pin my photos to their board. So, if any of you who like any of my picture on my site, you are more than welcomed to pin it to the pinterest board!!! Thank you for those who did already :-)

Well, back to Chicken Francese. The recipe asks you to pound the chicken to make it thinner. This resulted in the huge Chicken Francese as you can see in my pic.

I think you can easily feed three people with two chicken breast. Anyway, my husband loved this dish since he loves anything lemon. This is a great summer dish because of the fresh lemon sauce!

If you like lemon, it is worth trying this dish! Enjoy :-)

Tostones with chicken & Tres Leche Cake

About a month ago, we had another cooking playdate. This time, I asked one of the moms who is from Columbia to make this tostones with chicken which she made once and brought them to us last Thanksgiving. I loved it and I always wanted to learn how she made it :-)

As you might remember from the post in 2009, I took a Cuban cooking class once with my husband and learned how to make Tostones. (Click here for that post of Cuban cooking class)

Tostones is double fried plantain. My husband and I love them so after we took the class, we invited our landlord and made those things we learned in the class for them. (Click here for that post)

So we know how to make Tostones. But last Thanksgiving, my friend brought this Tostones with chicken on it and it was amazing. This is the Tostones with chicken.

First, we peeled Plantain and cut them into pieces.

Then we fry plantains.

Once they are cooked, take them out and let it cool a little bit then smash them to make them flat. My friend had a special tool for this so it was easy to do this job. Last time when my husband and I made this at home, we used meat pounder...

Then, we soak plantain in garlic salt water for a second. Then fry them again.

Meanwhile, cut onions and cook them.

Toss tomato sauce in.

Then add shredded cooked chicken. My friend told me she normally cook the chicken herself but I was too lazy so I bought a whole roasted chicken and shredded. Of corse I used skin and bones to make homemade chicken broth. (Click here for how to make homemade chicken stock)

On fried Tostones, place some chicken mixture and cover with cheese. We used parmesan cheese and Mozzarella cheese. Then throw them in the oven for about 10mins until the cheese melt. (Well, the below picture doesn't have cheese because I forgot to take pic with the cheese before I put in the oven. )

This is how it came out. Yummy!!!!

All the moms loved it including me. This is great dish to bring for potluck or as an appetizer when you have a party. It is quite a work but it definitely worth the effort.

For dessert, one of the moms brought Tres Leche Cake. This was also so good! She learned how to make this from her relatives in Venezuela. I have never had this before but it was so good!

It is especially good when you drizzle lots of these milky syrup on the cake. It is moist and Yummy!!!

I need this make this myself also! There are so many thing I would love to try making!

Once again, our cooking playdate was a great success!!! I love having these Yummy Playdates!!!