Creamless Creamy Tomato Soup and macaroni salad from America's test kitchen and Onigirazu

This tomato soup is from a special edition of America's Test Kitchen Magazine called "All time favorite recipes". I love this tomato soup and I made it a few times already. One time, I made it for a friend who just had a baby and she and her family loved it.

This tomato soup use canned tomato and does not have any cream but it is creamy and great.

In America, I think it is common to have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich, however my son doesn't like cheese so we didn't make grilled cheese with it. But I am sure the grilled cheese will taste great with this tomato soup.

It is great with crouton and the recipe called for homemade crouton but I was too lazy to make it homemade so I just used store bought crouton.

My son love it. I am sure we are making this soup again and again especially during the winter season.

I love America's test kitchen or Cook's illustrated magazined because they try lots of different methods and come up with the ultimate one. They explain all the details and troubles they went through in the process and it is very interesting and educational, I think.

This book is a collection of their favorite recipes and it is a great one to own. I love it. I haven't made all of them yet but I sure would love to try all the recipes in there.



Well, another thing I made is "Onigirazu". This is a new version of rice ball and it seems like it is very popular in Japan at the moment. Regular rice ball is triangle or round but this one is square and you just place seaweed, then add some rice, then add some ingredients you like and add more rice on top and then wrap them with seaweed like a present. Here is how it looks.

I think the reason why it got popular is  because you can add more stuff in it and it is easier to eat than regular rice ball.

This was had Spam and lettuce in it. Spam Onigiri is very popular in Hawaii. Hawaii's spam onigiri looked like nigiri sushi. They put Spam on top and wrapped it with thin slice of seaweed.

Well, the spam was too salty but I like this shape of onigiri. I think you can come up with many different like of stuffing inside.

I also made some sushi roll since we had avocado and imitation crab. I don't know why but it was so difficult to roll these sushi. I guess I am out of practice. I got so frustrated rolling those sushi. I almost gave up but my husband calmed me down and I finished about 6 rolls. 3 of them came out OK but the other 3 were disaster. Oh well.

I also made macaroni salad from the same book which I introduced earlier.
This came out great. I Actually added more vegetables than the recipe called for.

I think this is great for potluck party or BBQ or something like that. It was really good but the portion I made was huge. We had to eat macaroni salad everyday.... Well, I am glad my husband loved it so he didn't mind eating them everyday :-)

Aidells Chicken and Apple Sausage with Apple and Onion

In many of the supermarket I go to here in the U.S., I see this sausage from a company called Aidells. I tried this sausage for the first time when I was still living in California. I loved their Chicken and Apple sausage so I buy this sausage sometimes and chop it and add to Pasta for an easy quick meal.

Well, the other day I was buying this sausage again. As I was paying at the check out, the lady at the cashier told me that she loves this sausage and tried a recipe from their website which was awesome. She told me the recipe and insist that I should try it.

So, I went home and check their website and found the recipe she was talking about. It was easy recipe and had all the ingredients so I decided to give it a try. Here is the recipe from Aidells website if you are interested in. 

Saute sausage and take it out.

Also, saute onion and apple.

Add wine

Add sausage back and also cream

Done!

My husband and kid loved it. (Even though, my son was only eating pasta...)

It was super easy and tasty. I would use less apple next time but this is a great quick meal!

Schinken Noodle Mausi Style (Egg and Bacon Pasta)

 Schinken Noodle is a german dish and one of the dishes which my husband taught me how to make. It is egg and bacon with rotini noodle. It is not like Carbonara. It is more like scramble egg and bacon pasta. My husband and I love this pasta because it is super easy and we always have egg and bacon and pasta at home. And of course, it is delicious!

I added two additional ingredients to make it little bit a little bit my own. Nothing fancy. I just added some onion and cilantro because I had these at home and I thought these will enhance the flavor of this pasta.

Here is how I made it.

Schinken Noodle Mausi Style
Serves 4

Ingredients
Rotini Pasta   1lb
Onion            1
Bacon            5 slices
Cilantro          1/2 cups (chopped)
Egg                 3
Olive Oil         1 table spoons
Salt and Pepper    For taste

1. First, chop onion and cilantro. And also Bacons.

2. Start boiling water and cook Pasta.

3. Add olive oil into frying pan and saute onion until soft. Then add bacon.

4. When bacon is cooked, add cilantro.

5. When pasta is cooked, add them to onion and bacon mixture in the frying pan. Then add eggs and mix then well in the pan.

6. Serve with some fresh chopped cilantro for garnish.

Easy and simple delicious Schinken Noodle. It tasted even better when I add some onion and cilantro!

By the way, I added Pin it hover button so if you hover over images on this site, you see pin it button. Feel free to pin any of these images to your pinterest board!

Cherry Tomato and Mini Zucchini Pasta

This is a super easy and yummy pasta which my mother-in-law makes for us. Since we love it so much, I started to make this one quite often also.

This is quick and easy and vegetarian. Perfect summer pasta when tomato and zucchini are at its peak!!

Normally, I use red cherry tomato and regular zucchini but this time I had yellow cherry tomato and mini zucchini so I used those.

Here is how I made it.

Cherry Tomato and Zucchini Pasta

Ingredients:
Spaghetti     about 1lb
Cherry Tomato  about 20
Mini Zucchini   about 6
Garlic                 3 cloves
salt and pepper   for taste
red chili pepper    (optional)
Freshly Grated Parmesan cheese  for taste
Olive Oil      about 3 table spoons

1. First cut the tomatoes into hald and zucchini into a bite size pieces. Chop garlic.

2. Start boiling pasta in salt water.

3. In frying pan, add olive oil and heat up. Add zucchini and saute.

4. When zucchini start to get some color, add tomatoes.

5. When tomatoes started to get soft, add some salt and pepper.

6. Then add garlic. (Don't let the garlic burn)

7. At this point, your pasta should be ready to drain. Drain and add pasta to the pan and mix well. If needed, add some pasta water or olive oil.

8. plate pasta and sprinkle with freshly grated parmesan cheese.

I love this pasta. Hope you like it too!!

Head on Shrimp Pasta and Special Pasta Fork

There is a Korean Supermarket about 15mins away from our new place by driving. I was checking their weekly circular the other day and saw head on shrimps are on sale.

A few days before this weekly circular, I saw a TV show on Cooking Channel called "Extra Virgin" and they were making a tomato sauce pasta with head-on prawns. It looked so good and as soon as I saw the sale on head-on shrimp, I knew that I was going to try this recipe. Click here to go to Cooking Channel website for the recipe I used.

The recipe called for Santa Barbara Spot Prawns but I think any kind of head on Shrimp or Prawn will do.

This was really good! Cooking shrimp with the shell and head makes the dish a lot more tasty. The only problem is that it is so messy to eat the shrimp when it has shells and head. So we ate the pasta first (well, the pasta had some shrimp meat with it) and ate those shrimps at the end.

On the day I made this pasta, a gift from my mother in law has arrived by postal mail. One of the gift was special pasta fork which she found in Germany. This is how it looks. See the picture below.

Isn't it look funny? When I saw this fork for the first time, I was like "This is a funny looking fork!"
Then, I talked to my mother in-law and she told me that this is a special fork for eating pasta. Then, I was like "Oh! now that make sense!"

And I really liked it when I used it. You know how sometimes it is difficult to get perfect portion of pasta on your fork? It is easier with this fork to portion the amount of pasta you take.

We also think this is perfect for our two year old son since he tend to take too much pasta on his fork and only 1/3 of it end up in his mouth.

I don't know if you can find these fork and spoon in the U.S. but it is great utensils to have if you love pasta and would like to look elegant when you eat :-)

Tyler Florence's Pasta Carbonara

One of my favorite past is pasta carbonara. I think this dish is very difficult to master and even at restaurant, it is difficult to find one which is completely satisfactory.

I might mentioned this before but my favorite carbonara is from this restaurant in Palo Alto CA called "Osteria". The carbonara I had from this restaurant is by far the best carbonara I had in my life.

Palo Alto is famous for Stanford University and it is very expensive but nice area. I used to live in a surrounding city so I used to go out to downtown Palo Alto all the time.

This restaurant "Osteria" was introduced to my by an Indian lady whom I used to live with. She is a great cook and she has very good taste.

Every time I go back to Bay Area, I visit this restaurant and have Carbonara. I don't know what about this carbonara but I love it and I don't think I can ever make this on my own. So I have to go to California to eat this dish.

Anyway, even though I can not make "Osteria"'s carbonara, I wanted to make Carbonara at home. This time, I used Tyler Florence's recipe. I like many of his recipes.

If you are intersted in making Tyler Florence's Pasta Carbonara, click here for his recipe.

This time, it came out pretty good. Sometimes, I mess up when I add eggs and it becomes scramble eggs but it worked this time and it was very creamy carbonara as it should be.

It is very creamy but there is no cream in it. It has some Panchetta pieces. I love it!!!

This is a pasta dish which I will keep making and someday would like to perfect it!

Things I recently made and cook books I recently borrowed

Summer is finally here and I am enjoying my first summer with a baby. Sometimes, it is too hot but I put him in a water bath outside my house and he loves it. We take him to the beach sometimes also. He doesn't really like the ocean water. I think it is too cold. Anyhow, my life is perfect with him!
He is already 5months and we just started to give him solid food. we started with rice porridge. (He is a half Japanese :-) It is interesting to see how he develop. He is growing up too fast!

Well, I have been cooking more lately but just didn't have time to update my blog. So I would like to upload some of the things I made recently.

First of all, I made biscuit. I had homemade biscuit the other day at a restaurant in Brooklyn and I wanted to try making it myself ever since. Here is how it came out.

Not bad, right? It tasted good also! I didn't know how easy to make biscuit at home. I love having it with butter and strawberry jam when it came right out from the oven. Yum!

I used the recipe in this book which I had for this biscuit.















Also, I made an indian dish. This is chicken with some indian spices with lots of cilantro and tomato. My husband and I love this dish. I didn't make it super spicy this time so we didn't need to be crying while we ate. For some reason, I love eating spicy food when it is hot.

Next, I made salmon and napa cabbage. Salmon is just with salt and pepper and sautéed in a pan. Napa cabbage is cooked with bacon and some vinegar. I love this cabbage dish. I can eat a bowl full of this cabbage.

And, this is a edamame salad. We love edamame and we eat them quite often but I never had it in this form. This is a warm salad with mushroom, roasted bell pepper, snap peas and so on. I found this recipe on Martha Stewart magazine. I bought frozen shelled edamame. For flavor, I used vinegar and chili paste and stuff so it is a bit spicy but very good. To my surprise, my husband liked this dish. It is very healthy but tasty dish.

Speaking of edamame, I bought edamame plant this year for my container garden. It is growing some edamae but it is just like 5 of them so I don't really know what to do with them.

I also got basil for my garden as I always do every year. This year, basil has been growing really well so I have already harvested them twice and made pesto pasta. This pesto was really good. I wrote it down the recipe so I would like to upload it some other time.

I went to the library the other day and borrowed some books again. One of the book I borrowed was for my husband. This is from my favorite Japanese author named "Kotaro Isaka". He is very popular in Japan and I found that one of his books is finally translated into English. I always wanted my husband read one of his book so I borrowed it for him.

This is the book.

I read many of his book but I actually haven't read this one yet. I thought about reading it in English but I decided to get it in Japanese and read it in Japanese.

My husband finished reading it and he liked it.

He said he didn't like the first half of it but then he got into it and really liked it when he finished reading.

I went to this Jpaaneses used book store called "Book Off" in Manhattan the other day and purchased the original version of it. I am excited to read it. My husband ask me every day if I read it already or not. But I still have other books to finish so I haven't really started yet. (Plus, with a baby, my reading time is quite limited right now)

Other than the above book, I borrowed lots of cook book again. I realized that there are many celebrates publishing cook book lately.





This is a cook book from an actress "Eva Longoria". Since her parents are Mexican, I thought I can get some good Mexican recipes from this book. I liked many of the stuff I saw. I am excited about trying it.










This is my favorite celebrity chef Jaime Oliver's cook book about food from American continent. There are many dished which looks really good from all different regions. Very interesting book.











This is a book from iron chef Cat Cora. I actually have never tried her recipe so I would like to try something from this.













This is a cook book from Trisha Yearwood. I think she is an country singer (I am sorry but I am not sure about who she is)

In this book, there are lots of American classic recipes and some of them looks really good. I would definitely try her chicken salad and chicken casserole.







When I borrow or buy cookbook, the most important feature is pictures of the dishes. I don't like cookbooks without any pictures of the dishes. All of these cookbook above had many pictures of the dishes. However I wish they have pictures for each and every one of the recipe they have in the book.

Anyway, I am excited about trying some of the dished from these book. The only problem is that it is too hot to cook lately!

Rigatoni alla Vodka

I started to have little more time and feel less overwhelmed these days and started to cook again. It is still difficult to update blogs because of the time (my baby does not take long naps) but I would like to continue this blog as much as I can.

Anyhow, I made this pasta with vodka sauce the other day and it came out pretty good so I wanted to post.

Vodka sauce is quite popular here in the U.S. I never had it in Japan but when I first tried it here, I was pleasantly surprised. I have ordered this dish at some restaurants and also I bought a jar of Vodka sauce but I had never made it at home. I saw someone making vodka sauce on TV and it seemed quite simple and easy so I decided to give it a try.

I wanted to make this with Penne but I didn't have Penne at home so I used Mini Rigatoni which I had at home. Here is how I made.

Rigatoni alla Vodka
Rigatoni  Pasta   1lb
Canned Tomato (chopped) 1lb
Yellow Onion       1
Vodka    50ml
Heavy Cream   1/2 Cup
Garlic    2 cloves
Parsley    for garnish
salt and pepper for taste
Olive oil    2 table spoons

1. Chop onion, garlic and parsley.

2. In a frying pan, add olive oil, onion and garlic. Saute until tender.

3. Add Vodka in a pan and continue cooking.

4. Boil pasta following the direction on package.

5. Add tomato in a frying pan.

6. Add heavy cream to the pan. Bring to boil.

7. When pasta is done, add pasta to the sauce and mix till the sauce coat the pasta.

8. Serve with chopped parsley on top.

Its easy, isn't it? I really liked it and surprised how easy it was. You don't taste the alcohol so kids can eat it also.

By the way, our son is already 4months old. Time flies! He can hold his neck on his own and he start to really laugh. His voice is getting bigger and when he cries hard, it is quite loud :-) It is great to see him grow everyday. He is such a wonderful boy. I am really thankful to have him. He is my treasure.

I was watching his photo and videos with my husband the other day from 4 months ago and was surprised how tiny he was. It made me feel very sentimental because my baby is growing up so fast. I really need to enjoy every moment of his baby stage because it goes by so fast. Soon, he is off to college, leaving home :-(  It is great that he is growing up but at the same time, I want him to stay as baby... I know it is selfish of me to think this way but that is how I feel. I think the baby stage is too short. At one year old, he will not be a baby anymore. I think baby stage should be at least for 2 years or so.

Anyhow, I am very happy that he came into our life. I love him more and more every day.

Salmon & Spinach Cream Pasta

My husband and I love pasta. I had this nice looking salmon which we bought from Costco so I decided to make salmon cream pasta with it. It is just salmon, spinach and cream. So simple but rich and tasty.

Salmon & Spinach Cream Pasta (for about 2 people)

Ingredients
Spaghetti  (about 1/2 pound)
Salmon (about 0.3 pound)
Baby Spinach 1 package (170g, 6OZ)
Heavy Cream  1 small package
Nutmeg   about 1 tea spoon
Salt and Pepper for taste
Olive Oil  1 tea spoon
Butter       1 tea spoon

1, First, cut salmon into small bite size pieces. If you are using regular spinach, also cut spinach into small pieces.

2, Bring water to boil and cook spaghetti.

3, In a frying pan, add butter and olive oil and saute salmon.

4, Add spinach and saute.

5, Add nutmeg, salt and pepper. Then add heavy cream. Bring to boil.

6, When spaghetti is cooked, drain and add to the frying pan and mix.

7, Serve.

This is such a simple and quick pasta dish but it is so yummy. You can eat lots of spinach this way also. Though it might be quite high in calorie, it is quite rich so I don't think you eat lot of them so it is OK. Everything in moderation.

This salmon we got from Costo was really good quality. We also broiled and ate them with soy sauce and sesame oil with scallion and it was really good. Salmon is very convenient ingredients. I can find them in any supermarket and it is not too expensive and there are so many different ways to eat. Though we normally eat in a very very simple way.

Maybe I should learn more salmon dish recipes but when fishes are really fresh, I like eating them in a very simple way such as just with say sauce and white rice :-)

Christmas Dinner (Shrimp Pasta with Garlic Sauce) and Blizzard in NY

This year's Christmas was very quiet and  relaxed Christmas with just my husband.

On Christmas Eve, we Skyped with my husband's parents and we opened the presents together. It was really nice and fun! On a day after Christmas, we Skyped with my parents and also had a nice time. It is great to have this kind of technology for the people like us who live away from family. They are away but it feels like they are just there right in front of you.

Anyway, for Christmas Eve dinner, we made shrimp pasta with garlic sauce. This is something my husband's family eats on Christmas Eve every year so we decided to follow the tradition and eat this dish on this day.

This is a super easy dish. Garlic sauce is something my husband make quite often. You just mix sour cream and crushed garlic with chopped chives and salt and pepper. (We didn't have chives so we omit chives this time)

I just sauteed some shrimp in butter with salt and pepper.

Then, add a dollop of garlic sauce on top of cooked pasta, then add sauteed shrimp. We sprinkled with some chopped parsley for color.

For dessert, I just heated up Apple Blossom which I bought from Trader Joe's in the oven and add some ice cream and sliced apple. This is really good also. If you have Trader Joe's near you, I would recommend this product. It is in the freezer section.

This year's Christmas was very very relaxed and I felt very peace. We played Christmas music all day and enjoyed each other's company. Well, we have been playing Christmas music this year since Thanksgiving so I feel like I had long Christmas this year. I really appreciate that we were able to spend great happy Christmas this year again!

However, we had a big blizzard on a day after Christmas. We had lots of snow in just one day. On Monday morning when we try to open the front door, this was what we found.

Since we didn't have the outside door right now, we were able to open our door without much problem but our neighbor told us that they couldn't open the outside door which opens towards outside so they had to call their son who live near by to come over and shovel the snow from outside to open the door.

We had so much snow everywhere in NY and NJ area. It seems like plow couldn't catch up with this amount of snow plus it was very windy so I think that made it difficult to plow and clean the street and stuff. Luckily, our street was plowed on Tuesday morning. (Well, since we park our car on the street, we first had to shove our car out of the snow. This was lots of work. Thanks to my husband for the hard work!)

Lots of people couldn't get to work on Monday or even Tuesday. We didn't have to go anywhere on Monday or Tuesday so we were lucky to be able to stay home on these crazy mess. I have to think about nature's power again. It is amazing what nature can do in one day.

Anyway, I was born and grew up in Tokyo and after that lived in California for about 9 years so I am not used to having this much of snow. I heard that it will warm up now for New Year's eve and New Years day so hopefully all these snow will melt soon.

It realized that it is much more difficult to live in a area where it snows a lot. I appreciate all the people who worked really hard during this blizzard to make street and public transportation functional. I think I had enough snow for this season already.

Aglio Olio Peppronchino, Miso Eggplant, Miso Ramen & Kazuo Ishiguro

 I would like to post some of the things I had this past few days. They are all easy and am not sure if I can call them cooking but those are great when you are lazy or don't have time.

First, it is pasta. Pasta is always easy thing to make. I love creamy or tomato sauce pasta but sometimes I just want to eat simple pasta such as Aglio Olio Pepperonchino. It is just garlic, olive oil and chili flakes.
If you prefer, you can add some anchovy or sautéed shrimp but this time I made it simple. I love this pasta because it is easy but very tasty. I can really enjoy the taste of pasta itself. I added some parsley on top at the end for color.

Next one is "Miso flavored eggplant sautee". This is a dish my mom makes quite often. It is super easy and quick but you can eat lots of eggplant. I love eggplant so this is one of my favorite dish my mom makes. I can just have this and rice and be satisfied. It is easy and healthy. Mine tasted little bit different from my mom's. I should ask her how she make it next time when I talk to her.

Then, Miso Ramen. This is just a store bought fresh miso ramen. It comes with fresh ramen noodle and soup. I added lots of vegetables. These vegetables are frozen stir fry mix from trader joe's. I just take it out from the freezer and sauté them a little bit and add on top of ramen noodle. I also added some corn for color. Ramen noodles are super popular in Japan. This is a great dish for a cold winter day.
Also, I love this stir fry vegetable mix from trader joe's. I sometimes just add some meat for this mix and saute them together, flavor with salt, pepper, sesame oil and oyster sauce and you have a nice stir fry dish for dinner.

By the way, I borrowed another book from the library today.

I found out about this book from a Japanese magazine which I was reading a while ago. Since the name of the author was Japanese, I assumed that it is a Japanese book and I have to get it in Japan or Japanese book store. However, little bit later, I found out that he was born in Japan but moved to England when he was little and become a British Citizen. So I thought the original of this book must be written in English and I search for it and found it. I ordered it from the library. I think it is quite popular book since it took for a few weeks to arrive at my local library. I got the notice from them so I went to pick it up.
I really don't know much about the story but I am going to start reading it today. I am so excited!!

Beef Bowl & My Husband's Torterilli

I made beef bowl using thin sliced beef which I bought a few weeks ago from a Japanese supermarket and froze. This is very popular dish in Japan and super easy to make.

I boiled some water, add soy sauce, sugar, grated ginger and added sliced beef and onion then cooked for about 20 mins or so with the lids closed. Then, pour it over the rice and add pickled ginger on top at the end. That's it. It is very tasty and wonderful.

We have a beef bowl fast food chain in Japan called "Yoshino-ya". They serve this beef bowl in fast food style. Actually, there is one in Manhattan also.

Anyway, my husband loved it also. It makes me feel little bit guilty because it is so easy but I get so much compliment from my husband. Well, I guess it is great!

A few weeks ago, I got a cold and stayed in bed for a day. My husband took a great care of me and he made torterilli for us.

It is torterilli with tomato and basil in butter sauce.

This was also really good. I don't know how exactly he made this since I was in bed but he even took some pictures for my blog. What a wonderful husband I have :-)

Torterilli is store bought and had cheese and garlic inside. The sauce had tomato, basil and green onion. He said he add butter to it.

When someone makes food for you, I think it taste much better than you make it for yourself. I am very fortunate to have someone who cook for me with lots of love when I can not cook.

Since my husband took great care of me, my cold is gone and I feel great now. I was very careful not to get cold but it is getting cold here and I have to pay extra caution such as washing my hands when I come home and stuff like that. I hope you guys won't get cold this winter wherever you are!