Taco Santana

A new favorite Mexican joint in W'burg, Taco Santana. It's a very small, family-owned place with only 3 tables. My fav is tacos. Their carne enchilada is quite spicy, in a good way. While you wait for the food (they could be a bit slow as only 2 people in the tiny kitchen), you can go ahead and open up some drinks, like Jarritos or Coke made with real cane sugar.

I also like Tostada, crispy tortilla with fried black beens and lots of lettuce with meat.

You get incredibly full for such reasonable price. If you are in the hood, check out this joint on Keap by Marcy St.

Not from the Can

I impulsively bought a fresh bamboo shoot at a Chinese super market. I remember bamboo shoots soaked with skins on in water at my home in Japan. But I never learned how to cook them. With Internet, you can find not only new recipes but also mom and grandma's wisdom.

Remove a few layers of skin, chop the head of it in angle, and parboil bamboo shoots with rice bran (or in water you rinse the rice with). Boil till a stick goes easily through the thick part of bamboo shoots. Leave them in the boiling water for over night. Next day, beautiful, smooth bamboo shoots come out of the skin.

I lightly boiled in seaweed broth with broccoli. Subtle - bland for some people - flavor of Japanese spring.

Shrimpy Pasta

Mr. M got lots of jumbo shrimp. I voted for stir fry or shrimp in chili sauce. But he might have tired of relentless Asian dinners and we decided on pasta, his specialite.

Little cream, saffron, a little chili worked really nicely with linguini. My suggestion was crispy asparagus. Visually looking good. It tasted very very good. I love pasta with quick-to-prep, which serves hungry Miko before she gets angry...

Go Green

Soup. I decided on soup. What soup? Something easy and something economical. Fresh mushrooms could end up pricey. Tomato soup sounded too boring. I wanted something hearty and filling. With my shallow repertoire, all I found as a potential was broccoli. I also wanted some vegetable. Broccoli would melt down and loose texture. I wanted a side dish. Salad sounds good. I remembered we had some blue cheese, which went well with endive. Picking up endive, frisse and green pear, I realized my shopping basket is in green pallet.

Quickly boil sauteed onion and broccoli in chicken broth, puree and finish with some cream. Toss frisse, endive and pear in balsamic vinegar blue cheese dressing. Voila. Refreshing yet comforting dinner for a healthy evening.

Pork Belly Noodle Soup

With chunks of pork belly and fresh chinese noodles, I cooked Chinese style pork belly noodle soup. Stew the pork belly in rich, soy sauce with a hint of clove and star anise. It's time consuming but you can serve the leftover and have it later too. Once you have some rich meat stew, all you do is make broth with the sauce from pork stew and add egg noodle. Fresh egg noodles are easy to find at Chinese grocery stores and cooks in a few minutes. Yum yum.

Taste of Japan

Stewed fish is one of the authentic Japanese dishes. You can use flounder, fluke, snapper, and pretty much any white fish would work. I was craving for such simple Japanese comfort food.

Boil a piece dried konbu (seaweed) water, soy sauce, sake, mirin and sugar (for sweeter taste) with some water. Add the fish and fresh ginger slices. Put a lit and simer for 10 min or so until the fish is cooked. The fish absorb the soup and tastes better next day. It's not easy to eat this dish with fork and does require some skill to eat with chopsticks since the fish is really soft and has bones. So happy to be Japanese!!

What Chili Paste Can Do

Recently I get groceries from a Korean super market near my office. I always wanted to cook Korean dishes at home but didn't know what makes them so flavorful.

I found the chili paste on sale. The paste seems to have some seasoning, maybe some bean paste too. It's spicy but very delicious in and out of itself. I made stew with daikon radish, scallions, and tofu from the refrigerator.

As the stew boiled up, I added two big spoonful of the chili paste, and it did look like a Korean soup. This paste will help our cooking for sure!!

Udon with Love

This V-Day, I shared my love with some friends, mostly singles. My friends and I made udon noodle (Japanese white wheat noodle) from scratch. First you mix flour, water and sault.


Mix them well until it all comes together into a ball.

Now the fun part. Put the dough in a plastic bag and step with foot for 5 - 8 minutes.

After the dough rest for a few hours at the room temp, spread it into a quarter-inch thickness, spreading starch as necessary.

Fold it in and cut the noodle.

It turned out ok, but didn't meet my expectation. It should have rest little longer and maybe more steps. I guess the guests liked the flavor of our LOVE :)

Malaysia in Queens

One of our new year's resolutions is to explore ethnic foods in Queens. Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Indian, Middle Eastern, Greek... True food lovers pay little attention to NY dining scene and reach out to Queens. Today's lunch was at Taste Good, a Malaysian restaurant right off the Elmhurst station on R train. It's a very small restaurant next to huge Chinese supermarkets. All the surrounding tables were having Hainanese Chicken, so we tried 1/4, which is big enough for two. Although some may not like the skin and fat, it's fairly easy to remove, which I did. We took the left over for next day.

Malaysian classic Roti Canai. We almost always order this appetizer at Malaysian restaurants. Well, it wasn't the best Roti I had, but it wasn't a disappointment at all.

MCH tried the curry noodle. Lots of fish cakes that he dislikes and super rich, sweet curry soup. It has a very unique flavor and the noodle is clear, slimy one instead of typical wheat noodle. I wasn't too crazy about this type of noodle.

My pick was a dish plate with coconut rice, curried chicken (very good), fish chili. It was okay but not amazing. I might try something else next time.

Indulge in Scallop

My body was asking for scallop for some reason. Without any idea how much each piece of sea scallop would weigh, I asked for 6 medium pieces. The price label freaked me out... But the piece was so thick/big that I had to slice in to two: two pieces for each and I got extra 2 pieces for next day!

On the side is asparagus, endive and bacon roast, roasted potato. It's hard to saute scallop perfectly. All the side dishes were excellent compliment. Splurge worked!

Mushroom Risotto

Risotto Vol.2! The asparagus risotto I made last time got me into making risotto. This time, I use the mushroom ragu I've already cooked before and had it in the freezer. The same cooking method, but it was harder this time to cook with lots of chunky mushroom. The rice didn't cook perfectly. Asparagus worked better. Lots and lots of parmesan cheese made the risotto very nice. It became incredibly rich dish... I should try with fresh mushroom next time.

Easy Lentil Soup

I wanted to explore using dried beans and got a bag of lentil. Weeks went by without using it, and suddenly it came to me, "soup!" I already got chicken stock, celery, carrot, onion.

Saute vegetables and garlic in olive oil. Add coriander and fennel powder on a whim. Exotic aroma fills up the kitchen. When they are soften, pour the stock. I throw in prosciutto drying out in the refrigerator (ham and bacon must work very well). It is still a bit bland, so I add some dried tomato and tomato paste that are also sleeping in the freezer. Sprinkle herbs (dried is fine) like thyme, basil and bay leaf. Finally the dried lentil. My online research says it's unnecessary to soak lentils. So I just throw them into the pot and season with salt and pepper.

Kitchen Tip: Tomato Paste
I rarely use up all tomato paste, even the smallest can. It's nothing expensive but makes me feel bad to throw it away. My solution is to wrap the leftover paste in plastic wrap (make it half an inch flat piece) and freeze. It's so easy to cut frozen tomato paste. This way, you don't have to defrost every time and use as much as you need.

Raclette Party

I had cheese fondue only once in my life time, not alone Raclette. So when my Japanese friend who's grown up in Switzerland invited me to a Raclette dinner, I had a hard time picturing what I would be eating. Raclette is LIKE cheese fondue. Instead of melting all the cheese in a pot and dip bread and potatoes, Raclette melts a piece of cheese on a special Raclette pan and you put put the cheese on top of potatoes. Using the pan is common but certainly not traditional. They used to melt a huge piece of cheese on the surface and scrape the melting surface onto the veggies. That sounds very time consuming and probably not convenient for a group dinner. On the other hand, this Raclette pan kit is a great way to enjoy the Raclette with up to about 8 people. You can keep your own pace and eat what ever you like. Kind of similar to Shabu Shabu in that sense.


Traditionally, it's almost only with potatoes. But we had mushroom, asparagus, tomato. The lentil salad my friend made was a nice side dish to cleanse the palette from rich cheese. When we were getting groceries, we weren't sure if melting cheese with pieces of veggies would fill up our appetite. After 2 hours, we didn't event finish all the food on the table.

I LOVE this dish and Raclette cheese. And I vote for the tradition: Raclette over just-boiled potatoes is sublime.

Healthy, Meaty Dinner

I want to come up with healthy recipe for our late dinner. Very classic Japanese dishes don't seem to fill up big man's appetite, so I tried to incorporate some meat for him. I grilled chicken crispy with just salt and lots of pepper, topped with white part of scallion and Japanese chili flakes. For nutrition, I steamed buk choy and tofu, and served with thick sauce with Edamame, shrimp and egg white.

Terrarium Workshop at Wave Hill

Wave Hill in Bronx is one of my favorite spots in NY. They were having a terrarium workshop. About 20 people, including couples and single males, attended the workshop this day. Thanks to the publicity in DailyCandy, an online newsletter for urban young female, there was a group of youngish girls. They were using the materials supposed to be shared by all participants. Quite annoying. The lecture took most of the workshop time, and the actual exercise was less than 30 minutes. Next to other people who quickly finish their terrarium, my friend and I stayed till the end, feeling kind of rushed by the coordinators who started cleaning around. All you have to do is put soil and three kinds of plants and decorate with stones if you like. It somehow was very hard to visualize what I wanted. We carried a big glass jar with our baby plants back home.

Asparagus Risotto

Bunches of asparagus in the refrige. I wanted to try something new without getting other groceries. Bing! Asparagus risotto seems to be easy. I picked a recipe from online research and tried a very simple version.

Risotto is simple but takes lots of patience and dedication. For a short girl like me, Wester kitchen stove is a bit too high to work. You have to keep stirring the risotto constantly, adding stock little by little. But the result was amazing. I added some shrimp from freezer to add extra texture and flavor.

Oyako-don : Chicken egg rice bowl

Oyako (parent-kid) don (rice bowl) is arguably one of the most popular Japanese dishes. It's very easy to cook with few ingredients. My friend had lots of chicken left in her refrige, so we cooked Oyako-don together. She made the sauce from scratch, which made a very big difference to the taste. But you can use Men-tsuyu (soba dipping sauce) you can easily get from an Asian grocery store.

You cook slicked chicken (unboned thigh is the best) in the sauce (just about to cover the chicken pieces). When the meat is cooked, add onion and cook for another 3 minutes till it's tender. Bring the heat to high and add egg (2 eggs per person), cover with lit, and cook for 1 minute. I like fresh scallions on top to add some texture and sharp flavor. Serve over steamed rice.