 Faiai Eleni is a savory coconut fish stew that we first enjoyed when we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii, at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie. We participated in an AirBnB experience called "Prepare Polynesian food in a Fire Pit" and although sadly I don't see it offered on AirBnB any more, I'm sure there are other ways to participate in it on the island or as part of the Cultural Center's offerings! It was a very special experience and I am glad we were able to try authentic Polynesian cuisine. We learned all about how the Samoans would cook using the different parts of the coconut tree, how to weave a basket, how to prepare chicken for the fire pit, making taro leaves with coconut cream (palusami), preparing breadfruit, and more! We then enjoyed a meal together afterwards with what we made. This dish was an immediate favorite of ours and I immediately asked our host how to make it since it wasn't one of the dishes we made together as a group (it was prepared already and appeared alongside the rest of the food we made). Faiai Eleni is a coconut cream fish stew that is baked and typically uses mackerel, onion, taro leaves or spinach, and cooked in coconut cream and some mayo. It is so creamy and delicious and goes so well with rice!
This dish is great for a quick weekday meal or when you're looking for a comforting dish to eat with rice. It comes together relatively quickly, and for the most part you are throwing everything together into one pot. Once all the ingredients are cooked and well incorporated in your pan, you can either serve as is, or you can place into an oven safe casserole dish and bake for about 25 minutes. This allows the flavors to truly marry in the oven! The process of baking is similar to how the dish would normally be cooked in an earth oven under hot volcanic stones called an umu. It's not a "pretty" dish per se, but it is certainly delicious! Plus, it includes plenty of veggies with the onion and spinach, and healthy fats from the coconut milk base. I always make enough so that my hubby can take it to lunch the next day, and he's always excited for it! You can either do plain white rice or you can flavor your rice with garlic, ginger and coconut oil to make it even more fragrant.  Coconut Tuna & Spinach Faiai Eleni
Servings: 2-4 INGREDIENTS:
DIRECTIONS:
Until next time, Jenny
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 This is a "laterpost" (haha, instead of latergram 🤣) that I had started writing last year when the hubby and I went clamming for the first time and got a little over 2 dozen clams! Life got in the way and I completely forgot to publish it, but now that I am living in Illinois and it's hard to find "fresh" seafood, I find myself really missing the days we went crabbing and clamming in New Jersey. It was such a fun time and also a bit of a workout--who knew raking for clams would be so tiring! My muscles were so sore the next day, but I didn't feel tired at all while digging! (Maybe that's the best kind of workout? Hahaha) We dug for clams in the shallows of New Jersey's Barnegat Bay. The water is relatively clear in the shallows and we used little gardening rakes from Home Depot. You basically rake through the sand and if you hit something, you dig it out with your hands! Sometimes it might be a rock, but if you're lucky, you get a clam! It's really a hit and miss but it's so exciting to find them, especially if you find a huge one! After the first time we went, we fell in love with clamming and went back a couple more times--and would come back with upwards of 60+ clams! They were always so sweet and fresh, and I would make dishes like stuffed clams, pasta with clams, steamed clams in wine sauce, or clam chowder with the big clams. 💗💗💗  Clamming was also a great to be away from our phones for a few hours and spend some quality time together. My family never understood why we liked to go catch our own crabs and I'm sure it's the same when it comes to clamming—they always say, "Why don't you just go buy them from the market? Less work!" But there's something that is just so satisfying and fun to be able to cook the food that you hunt for yourself. (For me, only seafood though, I could never hunt mammals in the wild like deer. To each their own I guess!) 😁   Once we started eating, we removed the shells and mixed the pasta with the clam meat ? We purged the clams overnight to get rid of the sand and then enjoyed them as linguine with white wine clam sauce! Nothing like cooking your own catch! This recipe is a Japanese style recipe based on the Italian clams with white wine sauce over linguine. Of course you can always do the original Italian version, but in our house, I always like to put a little Asian spin on things 😎 Instead of white wine, I use Japanese sake and topped it with nori furikake (seaweed seasoning typically used for white rice). I found the Japanese sake to add an inherent sweetness to the dish that regular white wine doesn't provide, which also enhanced the sweet, fresh clam flavor. I also found that the clams had plenty of their own natural salty flavor (as did the bacon) and that I didn't need to add much salt if at all to the dish when cooking! I hope that one day we can go back and go clamming and crabbing again 💗 I hope you get a chance to as well, and if not, at least enjoy this yummy clams and linguine dish 😊  JAPANESE STYLE LINGUINE WITH CLAMS Makes 2 servings INGREDIENTS
DIRECTIONS
Until next time, Jenny If you love noodles and pasta as much as I do, be sure to check out some of my other favorite noodle recipes, like: Air Fryer Beef Chow Mein Dan Dan Noodles Lobster Garlic Noodles Braised Beef Noodle Soup Korean Jap Chae Noodles Handmade Noodles Shrimp Cheung Fun  So I haven't posted in foreverrrrrr to this blog because a LOT has happened in the past year, other than the COVID19 pandemic, of course. Earlier this year we moved to Illinois because my hubby got a new job and everything changed after that. We quit our jobs, he started his new job, we sold our house in New Jersey, bought a new house in Illinois and moved over here within the span of a couple months. Looking back on it now, I don't even know how we managed such a feat, but it certainly helped that his new company paid for all of the expenses and moving company. It's crazy how much stuff we'd accumulated over the short span of a few years, and so I got rid of a TON of stuff and still managed to move with a giant truckload! We've been living in Illinois since May now, and I have just started to get back into the groove of things, in terms of doing things that I wanted to do, for myself. Since moving out here, we realized our town does not have many good Asian food options, and we did try some of the offerings around, though none of it memorable. I craved all the things we usually had easy access to in NJ and NYC, and being out here all alone really made me miss real, authentic foods from my culture. If we wanted anything remotely good, we'd have to drive about 2 hours to Chicago to find something. There is a town about an hour from us with slightly more authentic Chinese food, but it's still just so-so. So now, I end up making a lot of the foods we crave. Within the first 2 months or so, I made hundreds and hundreds of assorted dumplings and wontons, one of our favorite foods, which brings me to today's recipe post! Wontons (雲吞) are a favorite in our family and a type of dumpling that I have fond memories of. These dumplings are a favorite of my father's and his favorite were from a very specific no frills restaurant that he would frequent in Hong Kong that served up "Ping Pong ball sized" wontons filled to the brim with fresh shrimp mixed with a touch of pork and served in a delicious clear broth. Cheap, fast, and delicious was the name of the game when it came to food in Hong Kong--especially street food or casual food. Nowadays, we always reminisce about how delicious the ping pong ball wontons were from Hong Kong whenever we have wontons or make them at home!  Traditional wontons are dumplings that are typically filled with pork, shrimp, or a combination of both. In Hong Kong and China, wonton soup often includes 大地鱼 or bian yu, also known as dried sole or flounder that adds a real hit of umami when the wontons are submerged in it. Some dried flounder powder is sometimes added to the wonton filling as well. It's been pretty hard to find this dried flounder powder in the USA, but with some online googling, I'm sure you can find it if you truly want an authentic wonton experience. For this recipe, we don't use dried flounder powder, but it still tastes great and goes wonderfully with noodle soup or on its own. In my recipe, we use shrimp and pork, some Chinese staple seasonings and sauces, and ginger. The trick to a shrimp-ilicious wonton is to mix a combination of chopped chunk shrimp and pounded shrimp paste with some ground pork.  With 2 pounds of shrimp, I clean and devein all of them, removing the shells, and then chop 1 pound into small chunks, and then with the remaining 1 pound of shrimp, I take the back of my knife and "pound" each individual shrimp into a paste. This results in a wonton with a "crunchy" and smooth mouthfeel from the 2 varying textured shrimp filling.  (You will see fibers pulling apart into strands). This process of mixing until the pork is "起膠" or "hei gao" in Cantonese, which means that it will have a good firm, and "bouncy" texture when cooked. When a dumpling filling does not "hei gao", it will have a loose texture that results in a bad mouth-feel when you eat it. Here's a photo of what "hei gao" looks like.  Once your filling is ready, you'll spoon some onto some thin wonton wrappers which you can find at most Asian markets, and now increasingly can be found in the refrigerated sections of non-Asian supermarkets. I usually find them where they keep their tofu selections, which is also where they keep egg roll wrappers if you need to find some! I like to fold my wontons in half, then bring the ends together to "hug" the wonton.  I love to wrap a whole bunch of wontons and dumplings in one sitting so that I can store them in the freezer. After you are done wrapping them, place each finished dumplings onto a flat pan lined with parchment paper. After they are frozen, you can throw them into a freezer gallon bag to save space in the freezer.  It's so easy to use these for a quick meal or if we don't feel like really cooking--just pop them out of the freezer and throw them in some boiling water until they float! I've also discovered that wontons and dumplings get super crispy and delicious if you spray them with oil and put them in the air fryer at 380 degrees F for about 8 minutes, then flip and fry for 2-6 more minutes until they reach your preferred doneness. Healthy and yummy with no deep frying and making a mess in the house? Yes please! I definitely recommend eating this with the recommended spicy chili garlic dipping sauce and I hope you enjoy this wonton recipe!  SHRIMP & PORK WONTONS
INGREDIENTS Wonton filling:
Other: 1 package of wonton wrappers (50-60 wrappers) Spicy Chili Garlic Dipping Sauce:
DIRECTIONS:
I hope you enjoy this recipe, it's one of our favorites! Until next time, Jenny  So while being at home during this pandemic, we've been craving dim sum like crazy. Dim Sum is a Cantonese tradition of breakfast or brunch food, and might be compared to Spanish tapas where all the dishes are small dishes meant to be shared. "Dim Sum" literally translates to 'dim' - to touch, and 'sum' - heart" or "to touch the heart" or "order to your heart's content". Traditionally, dim sum places involve restaurant staff, usually elderly Chinese Aunties, pushing hot steaming carts with steamers piled high and calling out what they have in their carts. (various dumplings, bao buns, mini steamed dishes of cheung fun noodles, siu mai, pork ribs and more.) You'll often hear classics like, "Ha gow! (shrimp dumplings) Siu mai! (pork dumplings), Fung Zhao! (braised chicken feet)" Waiters will walk around with trays of freshly fried foods or fresh out of the kitchen dishes like salt and pepper shrimp, calamari, fried bacon wontons, fried taro nests, stir fried clams and dear lord my mouth is watering!! Going for dim sum is an experience--it's loud, crowded, full of families and kids running around, adults gossiping and chatting, plenty of laughter and mountains of good food to stuff your face with. One of my favorite dishes is the Cheung Fun (Steamed Rice Noodle) with Shrimp, also known as "Ha Cheung" in Cantonese. After some research and trying out quite a few recipes from different sources, I finally found a recipe for shrimp cheung fun that tastes like restaurant quality cheung fun!  This recipe is adapted from Shashira, owner of the My Lovely Recipes food blog. Her Instagram is @my.lovelyrecipes so definitely give her a follow! This is so good! 👌👌👌 My hubby and I will now be able to enjoy our beloved cheung fun at home whenever we want 😁 Here's the link to her blog recipe for chee cheong fun: https://www.mylovelyrecipes.com/recipes/chinese-cuisine/chee-cheong-fun/ For this recipe, I use a wok and a metal rack to hold up my 8x8 metal tray to make the cheung fun. You basically make a slurry, steam it, add your raw shrimp, steam again, then fold it up! Keep the cheung fun rolls warm in a separate steamer so it's all hot when you're ready to eat. (Or microwave them all at once for about 30 seconds before eating). Best enjoyed with sweet soy sauce and chili oil or sriracha! Now I just gotta learn the 383747483829 other dim sum recipes so we can have a real homemade dim sum brunch at home! Now, when we do dim sum at home, we steam up some ready made shrimp dumplings and siu mai, pan fry some pork & chive dumplings or make some crispy beef rolls with scallion pancakes...and of course, some tea! 😁  Silky Dim Sum Shrimp Cheung Fun
Servings: approx. 10 Cheung Fun Rolls I use an 8x8 square metal pan and steam in a wok Cheung fun mixture: 3 cups water 1 cup rice flour 1/2 cup tapioca starch 1/2 cup wheat starch 1/2 cup potato starch 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp sesame oil Shrimp: About 1/2 lb shrimp, deveined and shells removed (you can use small shrimp or you can use larger shrimp and cut them into bite sized pieces) 1/2 tsp salt 1 tsp cornstarch 1/2 tsp white pepper Equipment: 8x8 metal pan Small metal stand/rack to place pan on top in wok Wok Sauce: Sweet soy sauce (Can do regular soy sauce + sugar and water) Cilantro, Scallion (optional) DIRECTIONS:
Until next time, Jenny  Lately, I've noticed that being in quarantine seems to be making everyone a little bit more creative in the kitchen, which is great! Perhaps out of necessity because we only have certain ingredients at home, or maybe because we're tired of eating the same things over and over. Either way, I am amazed and inspired by so many people posting their creations online. Being in quarantine also means craving food that we don't regularly make at home, like fried chicken or like sushi and sashimi, which we normally eat out. But not having had sushi for a while and then going into quarantine, made us crave it big time. After all, we don't know when we will be able to go back to our favorite Japanese sushi restaurants! So while we were picking up groceries and essentials at Costco, we got a pack of farm raised Atlantic salmon for our poke bowl dinner. And this is what I came up with. Drool worthy goodness. A salmon party in your mouth!  Now why Costco, you might ask? Is it safe? Is it sushi grade? Well the answer is that there will always be risk when eating raw fish, no matter where you buy it from. But of course, if you have access to sushi grade salmon, then go for it! I and many other friends and family have regularly bought farm raised salmon from Costco for raw consumption and have never had any issues. We also eat it within the first two days of buying it, and any leftovers are cooked in other recipes or portioned out for the freezer to be cooked another time. If you are thinking of going to Costco for sushi night, I recommend this article from Sushi Modern as a guide for what to buy. So after buying some farm raised Atlantic salmon from Costco, I set to work creating a hybrid dish that combines our favorite flavors from Hawaii and Japan. When we were in Hawaii, we got poke almost every other day! At restaurants, from ABC stores (they're like the equivalent of 7 Elevens but better!), and food trucks, everywhere! The fish was always fresh and the different versions were fun to explore. Our favorites were the oyster sauce pokes and the spicy salmon pokes! Our version in this recipe is a mix of sweet from the honey, saltiness from the soy and oyster sauce, heat from the spicy mayo and tang from the fresh lime juice melding perfectly together, sitting on top of a bed of seasoned sushi rice.
On top of our poke bowl we included strips of salmon seared with a blow torch. This was something we were inspired from watching sushi chefs lightly sear salmon nigiri before serving. The first time I remembered having it served this way was Kura Revolving Sushi Bar, a conveyor belt sushi place in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo. While conveyor sushi places tend to have a rep for having low quality fish or questionable freshness, Kura blew us away with their surprisingly sophisticated, creative and fresh offerings, with a la carte options delivered to you directly on a "bullet train" belt. When we first tried the seared salmon with mayo nigiri, it immediately became a favorite and if we didn't see it going past us on the belt, we would get direct orders to come to our table via bullet train. Somehow, searing it just makes the salmon feel extra soft and buttery, especially if you have a nice fatty cut of salmon! Adding the mayo on top just made it that much more creamy. So, with this in mind, we decided to torch sear our poke bowl salmon slices as well. Plus, the hubby loves to use the blowtorch any chance he gets. (He has claimed the blow torch and the grill his domain, lol.) The sauce goes well with the rice and the salmon is just so, so good. Sprinkle some furikake and drizzle some Japanese kewpie mayo as a finishing touch and it is perfect! We hope you enjoy it!  INGREDIENTS: Rice: • 3 cups uncooked Japanese sushi rice • 1/2 cup Sushi rice vinegar • 2 tbsp sugar • 2 tsp salt Spicy Salmon Poke: • fresh sushi grade salmon (we usually use Costco farm raised salmon and have never had issues with it) cubed to bite sized pieces • 1 tbsp oyster sauce • 1 tbsp lite soy sauce • 1/2 juice squeezed from lime or lemon • 1 tbsp honey • 1.5 tbsp Japanese kewpie mayo • .5 tbsp Sriracha chili sauce (I usually add more to mine because I like spicy, but just gradually add to your preference) • 1 tsp sesame oil • 2 tbsp scallions • 1/4 chopped red onion • 1/2 avocado, cubed • Salt and pepper to taste Topping: • Seaweed furikake rice seasoning • Salmon strips thinly sliced to top the bowl • La-Yu chili oil to taste DIRECTIONS: 1. Cube avocado and chop red onion. Cube the salmon and reserve slices of salmon to use for searing later. Mix the cubed salmon, cubed avocado and chopped red onion with all the salmon poke sauce and seasonings and chill in the fridge until ready to use. 2. Cook your sushi rice according to manufacturer instructions. Usually about 40-45 min in the rice cooker, about 20 minute on stove top. 3. When rice is ready, take it out and add sushi vinegar, salt and sugar. Mix well and let cool to room temp. 3. Fill your bowl with rice, add your salmon poke and top with salmon strips. Use a blow torch to sear the top. Shake some furikake seasoning on top of the salmon strips, some La-Yu chili oil (optional), then add some kewpie mayo for extra creaminess. Enjoy!  |
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