Saturday Treats
Posted: December 4, 2010 Filed under: Treats | Tags: ethnic comfort food, Japanese food, Mamasan's recipes 55 Comments
You may know that I got married pretty young and that my mother-in-law was born in Kyoto. I was married for like 20 years and during that time my mother-in-law lived with us for quite some time. I was a teenager when I first tasted her sushi and other Japanese recipes. Both of my kids usually consider ‘home cooking’ to be some weird combination of southern food and Japanese food. They are used to both mac and cheese and yaki soba.
So, when I left my husband and settled into New Orleans, one of the first things I had to find was a grocery store with authentic Japanese ingredients. I finally found one out by the airport run by a nice Japanese woman. My first check out still gives my family a good giggle. I started placing all my fresh and packaged food for check out and the astonished owner blinked at me and said “You shop like Japanese housewife” with her very Japanese accent. Well, that’s a part of who I was for some time so I suppose that’s as good a compliment to how well Mama San taught me to cook as any.
So, this in thread I’m sharing some of Mama-san’s recipes that I learned from her when I was a mere 19 year old. I’m hoping that some of you will share your ethnic comfort food too!!!
First up, are chicken wings that are so delightful that I guaranteed a young analyst at the FED she would win the 
chicken wing cook off contest at a local bar here in New Orleans. Winning any cooking contest takes a lot here because this is Food City Central. Kai took the recipe and won the contest. You’ll be surprised by the surprise ingredient too!!! (Apricot baby food)
Barbecued Chicken Wings
For four people use 1 pkg of 12 pieces chicken wings cut up
1/2 small jar apricot baby food
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
1-2 tsp. garlic salt
Soak overnight in the refrigerator. Either cook on the grill over low heat or cook in 325 oven on foil-lined cookie sheet for 1/2 hour. You’ll need to turn them at least once. I’ve doubled, tripled, quadrupled, etc. this recipe and it works well for a huge party. People will eat these things up like candy.
Teriyaki Beef
1/2 lb/per person Rump Roast sliced like thick bacon
1 small bermuda onion-grated
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice wine (mirin or sake)
1-2 tablespoons water
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 finger grated ginger juice only
Soak three hours. Do not refrigerate and then Grill!!! You may want to grill some of the red Bermuda onions along with the beef. Serve this with Japanese Rice like Botan. Japanese rice is essential for good Japanese food and new crop is best.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
I’ve had those chicken wings… and they are fabulous! (hubby works for a japanese company) Thanks for the recipe… looking forward to trying it on my own.
I can never get enough of them!!!
My comfort food is casseroles. As a kid, Tuna Noodle Casserole was my favorite; and I still like it. I generally make it with pasta instead of noodles.
As far as ethnic food goes, my ethnicity is French Canadian and Scots-Irish. Not a lot of fancy cooking there. My grandmother was Frend Canadian, and she used to make baked beans a lot. I included a recipe for those in my treats post on traditional Boston cooking.
Another really good French Canadian comfort food is pea soup made with yellow split peas. Here is a recipe:
1 lb whole dried yellow peas
8 cups water
1/2 lb salt pork (or a ham bone)
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped finely
1/4 cup carrot, grated or chopped finely
1 teaspoon dried savory
Wash and sort peas; place in a large pot, bring to a boil. 2 Remove from heat and let sit for 1 hour. 3 Add salt pork, onion, celery, carrots, savory and 1 tsp salt. 4 Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer until peas are very tender, about 2 hours, adding more water if needed. 5 Remove salt pork; chop and return to soup. 6 Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Gee – I went to the store today to get dried pea’s and plan to cook them tomorrow, half of the fun is stiring the pot and smelling the aroma. We freeze a lot of it in small portions. The soup retains flaver very well. Same recipie, except the savory which I will try tomorrow
We make a similar recipe from my Dad’s side but we use white beans. They are variations of cassoulets.
I love tuna noodle casserole, I swear it is a gift from heaven. I lived off it when I was in college. I called it tuna surprise because whatever was in my fridge went in it and it always turned out great. My boyfriend who is off the boat from Denmark had never had it. I was embarrassed to make such an out of the can dish at first (Europeans really only like fresh food, tells you something), but he loved it and is always begging me to make it.
My partner makes chicken with a recipe similar to the chicken wings. He uses my homemade apricot ginger preserves though. YUM!
ooooh, that sounds good … you should sell that on line!!!
Just posted an Indian dish on my blog. My husband and I honeymooned in New Orleans and went back a couple of years ago. We’re vegetarian. Can you recommend any places for vegetarian or even vegan food in New Orleans?
Yes, I can. Nirvana is a great place for Indian food and has lots of vegetarian food. It’s uptown. I also like Sukho Thai. It’s right out side the quarter in the Marigny. The best one in the Quarter is the Green Goddess. Also in the Marigny is, Schiro’s which also has some vegetarian food.
Another Thursday’s child! I have far to go too and was born on Thanksgiving!
Speaking of Thursday and Thanksgiving, I met and had Thanksgiving dinner with someone who lives in New Orleans for part of the year. She says she lives in a “very small house” in the 9th ward.
And here’s a Greek recipe: Yogurt.
To get the thick greek yogurt you can take the easy way out and drain regular yogurt. Just put it into cotton muslin, not super loose weave (like cheese cloth) but more like a dish towel. But not terry cloth! Anyway, hang it to drain. It’ll drip whey. When it’s the consistency you want, eat it.
If you want to make yogurt, that too is fairly simple. Yogurt needs a starter culture. This can be either a freeze-dried powder like yogourmet, or another starter obtained from a cheese supply company, local brewing business, health food store, etc) or a healthy dollop of your favorite yogurt (about 1/2- 1 c), assuming that yogurt has live cultures in it (check the label to be sure).
So you’ll need:
milk: the fresher the better. Raw milk is the best if you can get it. The recipe below is for 1/2 gal. I prefer goat milk, which makes a very tangy, lemony yogurt. If you can’t get it, cows’ milk’ll do.
starter culture: One packet of the yogourmet or equivalent freeze dried, or 1/2 – 1 c. yogurt
a mason jar and lid, whatever size you prefer
a place to keep the yogurt warm, at about 90-100F
stainless steel or enamel pot and a spoon.
Thermometer
Heat the milk to about 160-180 in the stainless steel or enamel pot. Stir constantly as it gets past 140 to prevent scorching. This effectively pasteurizes the milk. You don’t have to do this if you don’t care about the pasteurization (i.e. with raw milk), but I’ve noticed the yogurt tastes better after this step if using commercial milk.
Cool the milk to around 120F. If you didn’t heat it to 160-180 F to begin, then just warm the milk to 120F. The culture wants 120F to start.
Add the culture. If using freeze dried, add it to about 1/2 c of the milk and mix well before adding it to the rest of the milk. If using yogurt, just add the 1/2 to 1 c yogurt to the warmed milk. Stir in gently, but thoroughly.
Pour the milk from the pot into the mason jars. I use quart or pint mason jars. Do not cap them yet. TO keep the milk between 90-100 I use a small igloo cooler. I carefully add the mason jars to the cooler, then add one or two caped mason jars full of hot water. Close the cooler and it should keep the right temperature (I check from time to time).
The yogurt should set up in between 12-24 hours, sometimes quicker. After it’s set up, cap it and refrigerate. It’ll get better and better in the fridge for at least a couple months. Then it turns into cheese!
If it’s too runny for your tastes, and oftentimes yogurt made from commercial milk is runny, then you can try several things. You can drain it. You can add a drop of rennet (check cheese supply places, brewing stores, etc). Or you can be really sinful and added some powdered milk and cream to the milk at the beginning of the recipe.
definately gonna try this yogurt recipe!
Dak, those wings look good, I think I am going to have to make those tomorrow. I got a real good frittata recipe, it is made with cauliflower.
Get a good cauliflower and quarter it up, boil in a big pot but do not cook completely…
Then get a good and heavy cast iron skillet. Fry up some onion, garlic, salt, pepper and parsley in olive oil over low heat, so that the onions and garlic begin to brown slowly…then add the cauliflower. Fry this mixture breaking up the cauliflower as you do. While this is cooking, get some good Parmesan cheese (a lot of it) and grate it up. Beat 6 eggs real well, and put the cheese in the eggs. Set aside. When the cauliflower is fried up, add a spoon at a time to temper the egg/cheese mixture. Then put more olive oil in the pan and return the egg cheese cauliflower mixture to the pan. Let this cook until it sets up, then put in the oven on broil to finish the top.
Oh, that sounds really good. I usually make my fritatas with zucchinis and red peppers, I’m going to have to try that.
I love these recipe post, cause I really think they are full of dishes that look so dang good.
Dak, I have my post up and scheduled, if you can take a look and make sure I did it right…I think I am getting the same thing like Wonk has. Yuk, my throat is crying out for some hot tea and honey…night all, catch you on the morrow…
sleep well! I’ll look at it but I’m sure you did fine!!
My taste buds/appetite are out of order, but those wings sound good!
A really easy family recipe for kulfi, from when I was between blogs–
http://letthemlisten.wordpress.com/2010/11/05/diwali-and-a-recipe/
I love kulfi–my dad is from India but I only know how to make a few dishes really well. I didn’t know it was so simple! Anything with sweetened condensed milk is gorgeous. I’m going to have to try that soon too. Cardamom pistachio sounds good.
Mmmm! I’m going to try that. Thanks.
I’ll have to try those wings dak. It’s up my alley, not too difficult or too many odd hard to find ingradients (I still haven’t found bitters. 😦 ) I’m a novice when it comes to cooking. My household growing up was too dysfunctional to have recipes passed down I guess(my dad wanted dinner on the table promptly). I did live with my paternal grandmother who immigrated from Poland. Had she lived longer I might have been able to share her recipes for pierogi and krieshke. She used to spend all day making them from scratch(even the pasta portion) and it was super labor intensive but I loooved the days she cooked. My mom was an okay cook but she cooked pretty plain and she used boxed mixes for stuff like cakes. I do have lots of sites I visit that have recipes of varying levels of difficulty (Annie of Annie’s Eats leaves me feeling quite inadequate sometimes. She makes her bagels from freakin scratch and was always making cupcakes in between covering her intern time as a medical degree. Sigh.) Pioneer Woman makes good food of varying degrees of difficulty. I’ve even tweaked some of her stuff to make it more of my own. (She really seems to like cream cheese in her appetizers.) Joy the Baker is a riot. Our Best Bites probably has the recipes that are for someone of my skill level and my families tastes. I’ve been visiting Heavenly Homemakers though trying to learn more cooking from scratch stuff. It’s trial and error though and my family is still getting used to recipes with less sodium.
Anyway, I will definitely add that to my to try list.
I was hopeless at cooking when I was in my first apartment. Betty Crocker taught me how to cook! Finally, I got my Dad and my mother in law to help me out!!! After a few years, I turned out okay!!!
Talkin about food and I come running. The Japanese connection makes me laugh as Japanese food is my all-time favorite. I could eat it every meal, every day of the week. Sushi was my favorite food as a kid and is still my favorite. Since Japanese restaurants are so plentiful in my neck of the woods, I never learned how to cook many recipes though I make a mean tempura and miso soup.
But I was just on my way to the store when I read your recipe for the chicken wings and bought all the stuff to try it. I’m going to put it up to marinate right now. Thanks for sharing!
I’m well known at the closest sushi bars around here. The one I used to frequent in the quarter would deliver to me door. All I would have to say was Kat or Kat plus the Girls and they’d know exactly what to send.
I’d put some more up here but technique is hard to discuss. I have some great gyoza recipes and sushi but I’d have to show you how to fold the dumpling and make the egg omlette so I had to hold back on some of them.
If you make tempura, you should use sparkling water … it makes the tempura really lacy and crispy!
Ah, the sparkling water trick sounds great. My mother always stressed the water added to the batter must be ice cold and then keep the batter in an ice bucket as you cook. I also found that rice bran oil works very well.
I have had some success making gyoza but it was an all-day process. I loved eating it more.
We are lucky to have so many different ethnicities close by so I can get ingredients. I usually go buy a big old plate of pre-cut sashimi and then make a couple of different sauces, one with ponzu, ginger and chile and one with mayonnaise, rooster sauce, soy and tobiko and chow down.
I usually have to save up to go to the sushi bar as I can eat a LOT of sushi. I love your order system! They should make a dish named after you.
The girls and I usually spend several hours making lots of gyoza and freezing it between wax paper and then into storage bags. That way you have a bunch of it and a bunch of meals for all that work.
Wow Dak!! I’m jealous of you! What I would give to have a live in Japanese cooking teacher!! I’m curious as to how you fuse New Orleans cuisine with Japanese flavors. I bet some of your Japanese-inspired dipping sauces with New Orleans influenced meats and seafoods must be restaurant quality!!
I think I am going to prepare your Teriaki Beef as a old favorite that i can never get enough of when I go home – suya (Nigerian skewered beef).
Suya
Meat, cut into cubes.
Ground hot pepper.
Salt.
2 sliced tomatoes.
2 sliced onions.
Ground kulikuli (enough to cover the meat)*.
Mixed spices (optional).
Metal or wood skewers for roasting.
Mix the ground pepper, the salt, the kulikuli, and the spices together.
Put the meat inside the mixture and make sure it is coated well with the mixture.
Put the pieces of the sliced beef into a thin wooden or metal skewer. Add the sliced tomatoes and sliced onions inbetween the pieces of meat.
Roast on top of charcoal fire, barbecue maker, local firewood roaster or an oven.
Allow the heat to cook one side of the meat then turn to the other side.
Serve as a snack or as a side dish.
*Kulikuli is grounded up peanuts.
Take groundnut, after squeezing the oil, the paste is fried in the oil. The resultant product is kulikuli. You have to grind the groundnut so well that the oil oozes out of it.You need to extract as much as possible. You can put the groundnut in a clean fabric material and squeeze tightly. There are so many ways to do this. Mixing spices entails ensurring that the ingredients used cannot be easily seperated from one another.
Or, if you live in a big city near a large West African population, you can just buy it at a local African store…
Hillary 2012
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I’m going to convince my partner to try this. It looks really good.
I would get sick as a kid eating too much of this stuff. It’s easily as addicitive as crack…..
Dang that looks good! I’m going to have to hunt up a West African store.
TheRock, can you share some more recipes with us? I haven’t eaten much African food besides Ethiopian which I really love. I love the stews and the pancake. It would be so great to learn some more recipes like this one.
Absolutely!! The staple foods in Nigeria are rice, yam and casava. Most dishes are built around those three. I’ve already made some jollof rice with some of my leftover turkey meat, and I plan to make an okro soup with the neckbone tomorrow while watching football” 😀
I cook a lot of pinto beans, rice, onions, and yam things. My favorite these days uses a blend of spices from Yemen. I saute chicken,onion and garlic, chopped up yams in olive oil, also some chopped up celery. Then I add 1 tablespoon ground cumin, 2 teaspons cardamom seeds, fresh ground blackpepper, 1 tsp cloves, 1 tsp sea salt, and 1 tsp tumeric. Let it cook about 20 minutes with some chicken broth mixed in …you may have to add more chicken broth because it can thicken quite a bit. I throw in about 1 can of pinto beans at the end and serve it on rice. It smells like heaven.
That sounds GOOOOOOODDDDD………
I’ve cooked long enough now that I have certain spice groups that I can use and vary basic recipes to fit the spice mood. The biggest thing i’ve found is that you change your oils depending on what you cook. I use sesame oil for oriental food, olive oil for generally everything else. Then you choose a carb base like pasta, rice, barely and then a major vegetable, and meat. The cooking is very similar, what gives it the feel is the oil you use and the spice mix.
This is what I will be doing while I’m watching the 3pm game tomorrow. Substitute meat with turkey, and that is where the leftovers from turkey day will be in part going!! 😀
Jollof Rice
Makes enough for about 3-4 people.
2 cups white rice (parboiled)
1 tomatoes and 1 bell pepper (without seeds if you don’t like things too hot)
OR 8 ounces canned tomato sauce and 2 cans oftomato paste
Onion
Salt
Dry Red Pepper (like Cayenne pepper)
Meat broth (about 1 cup) or 2 Magi cubes (beef or vegatable buillion)
Water
Unless the rice is pretty clean, you will want to rinse it before cooking it.
Put the rice and about 3 cups of water into a pot and place on high heat. (Some people prefer to boil the water and add the rice to boiling water. This is fine too.)
If you are using fresh ingredients (the tomatoes and pepper) blend them until they are smooth in texture (you can also grind the onion with this mixture).
Let the rice cook 10-15 minutes.
Add either the tomato/pepper mixture or the tomato sauce and tomato paste.
If you have not added the onion, you can slice or dice it now and add to the pot, depending on how large you like your onions.
Add enough water to allow the rice to complete cooking (since you will not be draining the rice, it is better to add too little and check up on it often, than to add too much).
If you have any meat broth from boiling any meat, you can add it to this as well. Otherwise, unless you are a vegetarian, suggest adding about 4 magi cubes for taste.
Add about 2 teaspoons of salt, and about ½ a teaspoon of dry red pepper (as the rice is cooking, or as you are eating the finished product, you can add more of either one of these so I really suggest starting out small, also useful if different people who will be dining have different tastes).
Allow the rice to continue cooking until the rice is soft. If it is not dry at this point, then switch the heat to low to allow it to dry the excess water without making the rice much softer. (Also, some people prefer to bake it once they’ve added the ingredients…I suggest 350 degrees or so.)
Once cooked, add more salt or pepper to it if you wish.
That sounds wonderful … and I actually do fuse the two together oddly enough.
One of the things I do is a funky fried rice. I use smoked beef brisket from the barbecue on the corner. I chop that up. I fry up finally chopped sweet potatoes (in place of carrots), onions, garlic, green pepper in a little Tony Cachere’s. Then I add the brisket with a little parsley and lots of green onion. At that point, I squeeze in a little lemon juice. Then I add the rice and get that heating, Make the well in the middle to scramble the egg. Get it to scramble and then mix it through so you get chunks of scrambled eggs. Instead of soy sauce, I use a mixture of Louisiana Sauce with a but of Worcestershire. Try it. I guarantee no one else cooks it!!! You can use any kind of meat of course, Shrimp is good too because basically the lemon, hot sauce and Worcestershire are the basis of Louisiana style bbq shrimp.
I’ve got some Cajun stir fry I do like that too!
I figured you did, and I’d LOVE to taste some. Especially the spicy cajun seafood with the dipping sauces, kind of sweet with soy sauce providing a nice savory compliment, would go great as an appetizer at a holiday party or a great first course at a dinner party…..
yup, I use a lot of crawfish in things that call for shrimp and instead of soy sauce I use the Worcestershire. I always spice it up with the hot peppers too. I also substitute yams for carrots too.
mmm bbq shrimp…this dish sounds like a good use when I have leftovers from a roast or something. Will have to remember that. We order a half of beef from the farmer now so I’m cooking many more roasts than ever before. For two people, they’re usually too big to eat, so I’m having to become very creative with leftovers. I have to disguise them so the Dane will eat them.
There’s two Nigerian women that own a restaurant in the Quarter. I love the place!!! The food is hearty and the atmosphere is very family home like. There’s like round tables and comfortable low seating and the smell of these fabulous spices!
For a place where the villages are so poor, I never saw people cooking for 2 or 4. Growing up, there was never only 4 people in the house eating. A cousin, a nephew, an uncle, a neighbor was always at the house, and I was always at a cousin’s an uncle’s or a neighbor’s house. And there was ALWAYS food and/or the smell of food cooking. That’s how I cook now…..
That sounds like such a wonderful family atmosphere. It’s something that’s hard to recreate in the big city. I’m going to try your rice dish, sounds very like Mexican rice that my mom used to make that I loved. I’m going to make it hot though as I love spicy food!
Mexican cuisine and Nigerian cuisine have a TON of similarities! I’m curious as to what you want to do to add more heat. Spicy is ALWAYS good and I can just imagine the fried version of this with your added heat would be real good!
That’s so interesting, I wonder if it was the Spanish and Portugese influences on both continents.
As for heat, I use what they call here African Bird Pepper instead of cayenne as it’s much hotter. Do they have that there or is it just something they made up? I also add a little habenero seed to something as it gives intense heat but doesn’t change the flavor of a dish like adding jalapeno or the like would because you only need a little. I’m going to order what they call Ghost Pepper sauce, supposed to be the hottest in the world, and you only need a drop. Sounds like my kinda sauce. In India, they eat a lot of chili with everything like in many tropical countries, it kills the bad bacteria and/or parasites. So whenever anyone asks me about traveling, I tell them to eat as hot a food as possible so they don’t get sick. Most tourists eat the tourist version of the food and because it’s not spicy, they miss the protection of the chilis. But I just like my food spicy as an acquired taste. I think that’s why I like Cajun food and other spicy cuisines.
Peppers originated in south America. They got to the rest of the world via the Europeans.
I’m going to look for that Bird Pepper when I wake up. It may be a brand name, but I think I know what it is. I saw that Ghost Pepper on Man vs. Food, and while I am no punk when it comes to spicy, that one might just be a bit much for me!! 😛
Oh and the similarities come from the environment. Alot of the same fruits and vegatables are indigenous to both countries as a result of the tropical environs. What is scary is that the cooking techniques are the same as well. Take for example roasted corn. Its the same in both countries all the way down to how its eaten (with the thumb kinda pushing each roasted kernal into the palm of the hand). Papaya (called paw-paw where I am from) is another one. Plantain is yet another. The meat filled empanadas are the same as our meat pies back home……
Here’s a link that talks more about it. Might help you find it if it’s not some marketing fiction.
http://www.silvercloudestates.com/viewproduct.aspx?id=135
That’s the stuff! Its goes GREAT on the suya with a fresh onion! My mouth is watering at work now, and I HAVE to make suya this week now!! 🙂
Also, just wanted to add I put my wings in the fridge to marinate until tomorrow and HO-LY, that marinade tastes delicious. I took Sima’s suggestion and added ginger as well as a little garlic and red pepper for kick. I normally don’t like sweetness in savory food but this is really good.
yeah, it’s like candy … folks just eat those things up and the brown sugar isn’t as sweet as the white and the apricot baby food tames it too.
The baby food threw me for a loop (I thought, eew, baby food) but I have read about it used in other recipes so I thought for the first try I would stick to the recipe. Glad I did. Didn’t have any yuckiness in the finished product. Can’t wait to eat em.
I tasted them before I found out about the baby food. I also have a great cookie recipe that uses carrot baby food. It’s delightful. It also has orange in it. It’s now my favorite cookie!!!
That’s where I must have heard about it, in a cake, most likely carrot cake. Sounds like that cookie recipe is coming next week.
I have to say I really love this recipe exchange, so many different cultures and sharing the love of good food is really wonderful. I look forward to it every week. I’m cleaning my house right now and cooking a little for the upcoming week as this is the only time I have to do it. Coming to check the blog every so often and hear from everyone has made it so much fun. Thanks to everyone.