use real butter

When Kell asked me what I would want for a last meal, sushi was my immediate answer. I love sushi – California style. That is, not in the traditional Japanese sense only because I haven’t been exposed to the traditional except in New Zealand (go figure). The Chinese are notorious for bastardizing sushi by dousing it with Sriracha and then dunking it in wasabi with a dash of soy sauce. *raises hand – guilty*

Jeremy and I had it good for almost a decade. We had a favorite sushi bar Ai, in South Pasadena. Fumito is the head chef there and he not only treated us to the best sushi, but he became our friend – teaching us to distinguish Good from Bad, sushi. When we moved to Colorado we discovered a handful of decent sushi joints in Boulder, but… price and quality just couldn’t compare to So Cal. They just can’t. We’ll dine out for sushi on occasion in town, but we will more likely make our own at home.

I have a favorite roll from Ai, the Not-So-Special Roll. Fumito has a Special Roll on the menu which is spicy tuna and spicy scallop with avocado, masago, and sometimes cucumber or daikon sprouts all crammed into a cut roll wrapped in halibut… or maybe snapper? I can’t recall because the Not-So-Special Roll omitted the outside fish (just because it got to be incredibly filling). That was my brain child and Fumito was happy to oblige. And that is what we create at home when we start to miss Fumito and all of the regulars at the sushi bar – except Hector and Eddie, those two made me laugh so hard I almost snorted my drink out my nose.

After spending the morning prepping our doors for the winter onslaught and then noodling around the hardware store for Things That Don’t Exist, we swung by Whole Foods to pick up some sea critters. We started with scallop carpaccio, something akin to a small plate I enjoyed with Kell and Jerad at Fish Face in Sydney (awesome place to eat if you’re ever there). I am a sucker for ponzu.

scallop carpaccio with ponzu

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Oh boy, I found the right butcher at Safeway to score me some beef short ribs cut flanken style. There is a big difference between the back ribs from last time and the wonderful ribs I got this time. I hurried and marinated korean bbq short ribs (galbi) so that we could grill them up before a cold spell blasts through. Even tastier than the first try, although I will omit the water next time and see if the flavor intensifies. I think I am addicted to these ribs!

where have you been all my life?

Recipe: chinese dumplings and potstickers

[warning: a long post]

Do you know what that one recipe was that started you on your cooking passion? I have cooked since I was a kid, but I didn’t get serious until I was a sophomore in college and I felt this cultural obligation to make dumplings from scratch to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Dumplings have lodged themselves in my head as my link to Chinese cooking and culture, but even better than that – mastering dumplings gave me the confidence to go forward and try other recipes and techniques.

for the pork filling

I posted Making Chinese Dumplings with Jen on my website several years ago (it now lives here). People have written asking about fillings, thanking me for my recipe, asking me to post more versions… The endeavor to make Chinese dumplings isn’t like pouring a can of soda – it’s quite involved and taking the photos adds considerably more time. Seeing as my days of free time may be near an end, I decided Making Chinese Dumplings with Jen could use an upgrade and an added variation. Besides, that old version was created in graduate school, a time of simultaneously happy and extremely bad, miserable, loathsome, angry, depressing, unhappy associations for me.

there is an ungodly amount of chopping involved

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