Kyuuei's Cook book!

[kyuuei]

Osuimono - Clear broth soup that's super cheap, easy, hydrating, and what I ate for dinner along with some zucchini meatballs and sauce.

4-6 cups of water
1 piece kombu (if you cannot find this, it's easily ordered online. Don't wash off that white stuff on it, that's part of the magic.)
A drizzling each of Mirin, Soy sauce, dashi, and sake if you have it.. I don't, so just a bit of salt and couple drops of lemon for me.
Decorate it how you like... dried shiitake mushrooms, or dried wakame seaweed, dried green onion, etc.

Basically let the kombu sit in the water for an hour or so, then bring it to a boil. Turn the heat off, and add the drizzles of things. Then add in the decor, and let it rehydrate. When ready to eat, turn the heat back up again, or eat it lukewarm after it's cooled if it's hot out.

 

[ceecee]

Even though they are a bit time consuming, agua frescas are so good, I keep looking for new ones to make with all the fruit in season.

Aguas Frescas

Pineapple Ginger is my favorite.

 

[kyuuei]

Chicken Katsu:

Very easy dish, made easier with the help of Hispanic grocery meat markets.

- 1 bottle of Katsu sauce because ain't nobody got time for that.
- 1/2 lb Pollo bistec (very flat cuts of chicken, even thin thickness... 1/2 lb gave me about two very large katsu pieces for 2 dinner plates.)
- Some shredded cabbage (thin strips of cut cabbage head, put through the food processor's slicer setting)
- 1 egg + 1 tbsp water, whisked together
- Some flour (I used a southern fry mix instead of regular flour to give it an extra bit of oomph)
- Panko + 1 tbsp olive oil.

Preheat the oven to 400F.
Drizzle olive oil on top of the panko and heat over medium until the panko is toasted. Put on a plate and let it cool.
Make three plates: one with flour on it, one with the egg mixture, one with the panko spread over it.
Take your bistec pieces and coat with the flour, knocking off any excess, you just want a light coating to make it nice and dry to the touch.
Dip in the egg mixture to make it nice and wet again, and then cover with the toasted panko ensuring as much of it as possible gets covered.
Place on a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet, ooorrr on a wire rack raised up from the cookie sheet, and place in the oven for 17-18 minutes.

Pull it out and let it rest for juuust one minute, then place on a plate and cut into bite sized pieces and drizzle katsu sauce on top. Serve with shredded cabbage, as taking a bite of the two together makes a perfect balance right in your mouth.


Seaweed Salad, Kyu style. Serves 2.

1 pickle cucumber or just 1/2 of an english cucumber.
3-4 tbsp dried wakame seaweed, placed in warm water to reconstitute. (The more time these have the better, at least 3 minutes but perferrably 5-6 minutes)
Lettuce leaves, about 2-3 of them
Cabbage leaves, about 1-2 of them
A little bit of julienned daikon

For the sauce:
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 tbsp neutral oil of any sort, like olive or canola or vegetable
1 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp sesame seeds

Mix the sauce together into a bowl. Add ingredients as you prep them into this bowl, stirring between ingredients to coat. Squeeze out the excess moisture from the seaweed, draining the dish it was in, and when still wet but not dripping wet toss into the bowl. Shred up by hand into small pieces the leaves of cabbage and lettuce into the bowl. Cut up the cucumber. Add the daikon. This makes a fairly small side dish, not a salad like you're used to seeing.. so if you want this recipe beefed up to be a proper american-style side, you'll need to add in more lettuce in bigger chunks and probably double the sauce recipe. Anyways, stir it all together, and let the flavors do their thing in the fridge for about 30 minutes before serving. It is fine right away but tastes much better with a small pause.

 

[kyuuei]

Potato Mushroom Soup over an open camp fire. Feel free to cook this at home though.

I thought this would feed around 8 - 10 people.. It fed about 2 less than that much but they were getting multiple bowls too, so I might have been on point.

- 5 lb bag of gold potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces and peeled.
- 1/2 of a large onion, or 1 small onion, diced.
- 1 package of sliced white mushrooms.
- 1 package of sliced shiitake mushrooms.
- Approx. 1/2 stick of butter. I scooped out a generous amount straight from a container.
- Salt (I only added a pinch because of the broths), pepper, and Togarashi chili pepper seasoning to taste.
- 1 box Low sodium chicken bone broth
- 1 box beef bone broth
- 1 box chives, chopped
- 3-4 pieces of cooked bacon chopped

I thought I'd use milk or cream of some sort in this, but it turned out to not need it at all. First, take the onions and the butter and saute them until softened. Add the potatoes and stir it around until the potatoes are heated through, then add in the mushrooms and let them heat up. By this time the butter might be wanting to burn, but since we don't want that, stick the bone broths in to cool it all off and get the soup going. Cook until boiling, and stirring occasionally, continue to boil until the potatoes are soft and mash easily in the mouth with the tongue and the mushrooms have a softened but still meaty texture. Sprinkle enough chili pepper to give it warmth but not heat, and add chives on top when finished. Serve with bread.

This was a huge hit (not shocking.. umami flavor, butter, and salt?) at my camping trip this weekend.

 

[kyuuei]

Matcha Yogurt Bark

1 single container of greek yogurt, any kind will do. I might try a chocolate mocha one next time, I just used vanilla as I had it already.
1/2 - 1 tsp matcha powder, depends on how strong you want it to be. I'd go with the half. If this isn't jiving with your taste, you could always replace it with a protein powder, splenda coffee flavor packets, or even just a bit of hot cocoa mix. I think it'd be cool next time to try strawberry yogurt with a chocolate protein powder.
1 tsp vanilla extract
Whatever you want to sprinkle on top. In this one, I used chopped almonds that were coconut flavored. Next time I think pistachios and cacao nibs.

Mix together in the container, then spread on parchment paper and freeze for 1-2 hours until solid. Use a knife to chop it into bark and consume immediately.

It's cold as hell outside and this was still really yummy, so I think this is going to be a summer go-to for initial eats, especially after working out. It was super cooling. Found on the 1200isplenty reddit.