Salty, sweet, with a little crunch – it makes a great party appetizer. Think of it as a Japanese take on fried chicken, the ultimate comfort food.

ingredients:
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken – cut up into small pieces
1/4 cup mochiko
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup sugar
5 Tablespoons soy sauce
2 eggs
1 teaspoon minced garlic
black pepper
1 Tablespoon Furikake

flour
oil for frying

Furikake is a Japanese rice seasoning. It comes in a variety of added flavors but regular old nori flavor is good for this recipe. Mochiko is a sweet rice flour which I like to use a lot in baking. You can find both of them in Japanese markets or online.

In a bowl combine the mochiko, cornstarch, sugar, soy sauce, eggs, garlic, pepper and furikake. Add the chicken pieces and stir to coat.

Cover and marinate in the fridge for 5 hours.

When you are ready to cook heat the oil in a deep skillet. Dredge the marinated chicken pieces in flour – shaking off the excess. Too much flour makes for a gummy mess, trust me. Drop in the chicken pieces one by one, leaving enough room to ‘breathe.’

Flip over and fry until golden brown and cooked through. Let drain on a wire rack.

Excellent with rice, and it even tastes good served cold from the fridge the next day!

Pokemon nori sheets! These are great because they add just a little bit of seaweed and the images come pre-cut so you just punch them out. Genius!

ingredients:
1 can Spam
soy sauce
sugar
3 cups cooked rice
Pokemon nori (seaweed)

Open a can of Spam. One can should be able to be cut into 9 slices, pretty evenly.

Place the cut slices in a pan – drizzle with soy sauce, and sprinkle liberally with sugar. Turn over and do the same to the other side. NOW turn the pan on to medium high heat. I like to cook it until the sugar gets good and caramelized and you get a nice sticky teriyaki color on the outside.

Turn them to make sure the other side cooks the same. Take them out of the pan to cool, then cut into small bite sized pieces.

I have an onigiri maker – IF you have one this is how you do it – place a small amount of rice in the bottom, a few cut pieces of spam in the middle, then top with more rice. Press down and the rice ball will pop right out!

If you DON’T have a maker, don’t worry! Here’s a quick and easy old skool way to do it: place a sheet of plastic wrap down. Pile a small amount of rice into the center, a little bit of cut spam into the center of the rice, then top with more rice.

Now – pull up the sides of the plastic wrap, twist and squeeze and form the ball with your hands and the plastic. Super simple!

Unmold the rice balls and place a punched out sheet of Pokemon nori in the middle for decoration. I re-wrap the rice balls with a new piece of plastic wrap just to keep them fresh and portable.

Who’s that Pokemon?!

I have to admit, I don’t celebrate this anymore – I’m sort of irate at the fact that they decided to get rid of Boy’s Day aka Tango no Sekku, on May 5. Instead they changed it to the all inclusive ‘Children’s Day.‘ If that’s the case, why not get rid of Girl’s Day too? I’m an equal opportunity non-celebrator. Still – come May 5 I always do something so *my* two boys aren’t forgotten.

Back to Girl’s Day – as always there are special foods and sweets to go along with the celebration. One is hishi mochi, a three color mochi in a rhombus shape that is pink on top, white, then green on the bottom. This is my homage to the hishi mochi, in cupcake form!

ingredients:
matcha mochi cupcakes (recipe here)
mascarpone frosting (recipe here)
chi chi dango mochi (recipe here)

Make the matcha mochi cupcakes – your ‘green’ layer.

Top with mascarpone frosting – the ‘white’ layer.

And finally add a small rhombus-y piece of chi chi dango mochi in pink, of course.

This is a lovely modern way to celebrate Girl’s Day!

Chi Chi Dango was what I always remember it being called in Hawaii – small squares of colorful mochi, sometimes plain sometimes with strong fruit flavors. But plain ol’ pink Chi Chi Dango has always been a favorite of mine.

ingredients:
1 box mochiko
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups water
1 (13.5 ounce) can coconut milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla
pink food coloring
Potato starch (katakuriko)

Mochiko is a sweet rice flour and katakuriko is a fine, flavorless potato starch – both are available in asian markets or can easily be found online.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, grease a 9×13 inch pyrex with butter.
In a large mixing bowl whisk together the mochiko, sugar and baking powder.

Add the water, coconut milk and vanilla to the dry ingredients, mixing together well.

Pour the mixture into the prepped pan. Cover tightly with foil and place the pan in the center of the oven and bake for 1 hour. Uncover and cool for completely.

When the mochi is cool, cut it into squares using a plastic knife. This can be sticky stuff.

Roll the pieces around in the potato starch (katakuriko), that will keep the mochi from sticking to each other when you serve it.

Mochi anything I’ll take it! And adding matcha to a mochi cake gives it extra color and flavor that is simple and delicious.

ingredients:
1 pound (1 box) mochiko
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons matcha powder
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, melted
2 cups sugar
1 (12 ounce) can evaporated milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prep cupcake pans with liners. (will make approx 24)

In a medium bowl whisk together the mochiko, baking powder, salt and matcha powder. Set aside.

In a separate bowl stir together the melted butter and sugar. Add the evaporated milk, vanilla and eggs.

Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and mix well.

Spoon the batter into the prepped baking cups. Bake for 15-17 minutes depending on your oven.

Let cool on a wire rack, frost and serve!

Is there a more beloved Japanese snack than Pocky? Thin, crispy biscuit pretz (check out Pretz, here) dipped in just the right amount of chocolate. You can find them in Japanese markets or online.

Somehow I decided they’d be a perfect fit for an ice cream flavor. (Especially since I always have so much in the pantry.) The best thing is, the pretzels stay crispy and the flavor is totally Pocky-like! Think of it as a Japanese version of chocolate chip…but better.

ingredients:
2 cups heavy whipping cream
2 cups whole milk
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 box (2.4 oz) Pocky

Chop the Pocky sticks into small pieces and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the heavy cream and the milk.

Whisk in the sugar until dissolved. Stir in the vanilla.

Cover and refrigerate for 15-20 minutes. Pour into your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s directions. In the last 5 minutes add in the chopped up Pocky.

Pour into a sealed container and freeze until solid. Scoop and eat!

One night I had no idea what to make for dinner, I threw this together quickly and now it’s become almost a weekly meal. The kids love it because it’s so full of comfort and flavor. I love it because it takes minutes to prepare!

ingredients:
1 lb thinly sliced beef (shabu shabu meat, sukiyaki meat…)
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup mirin
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon cornstarch
2 Tablespoons water

In a bowl combine the soy sauce, mirin and sugar. In a small bowl combine the cornstarch and water to make a runny paste. Add that cornstarch mixture to the soy sauce mixture and stir well.

In a pan over medium-high heat, saute the onions until soft. Add the thinly sliced beef until just cooked through. This will only take a few minutes since the beef is so thin.

Pour the soy sauce mixture over the meat in the pan. Cover and let simmer for 5 minutes until the sauce thickens.

Serve over hot rice. With lightsaber chopsticks.

She knows my love of Hello Kitty and desserts so I knew this had to be good…

Whohoo! Hello Kitty shaped daifuku! Little tender cakes filled with a sweet chestnut filling. Have you ever seen anything so adorable?! Why don’t we sell this on the regular here in the states? I’d buy them and eat them everyday. This was even cuter than the things I saw at the Sanrio dessert cafe in Hawaii!

Cutest food ever from halfway around the world and man, was it tasty!

It’s National Soup Month! Is it because it’s cold or something because it was hovering around 80 here in LA for most of January…Anyway, to celebrate I’m posting soup!

Green tea noodles make this soup special. Then again so do lightsaber chopsticks.

ingredients:
1-1/2 cups low sodium chicken broth
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
1 bundle green tea udon noodles
1/4 cup roasted chicken
2 Tablespoons edamame, shelled
2 Tablespoons sweet corn
3-4 slices kamaboko
fried nori chips

In a large pot of boiling water, cook the green tea noodles until soft, approx 6 mins. Drain (do not rinse) and set aside.

In a saucepan heat the chicken broth, soy sauce and mirin on medium high until hot.

Pour the soup into a bowl, add the noodles and top with the chicken, edamame, sweet corn, kamaboko and nori chips. The beauty of this is you can put in anything you have around. I even added two gyoza for the heck of it.

As many ingredients as this has, this is still a fairly light soup – perfect for a cold day or…an 80 degree winter day at the beach.

I stumbled across this giant sushi mold at Marukai (a local LA Japanese market) and immediately bought it. Nevermind that the instructions were in Japanese and I don’t speak/read Japanese – it was Hello Kitty and that’s all that matters. I knew it would be the perfect centerpiece for my Oshogatsu (Japanese New Year’s Day) celebration!

The basic parts speak for the themselves. The mold works like a musubi press or springform pan. You add sushi, press down layer upon layer and when you take the mold off, you have an adorable kitty head – tho not before you decorate her face with the liftable template!

It was all genius – and large, 8″ to be exact so it’s like making a traditional Hawaiian pan sushi. I took the liberty of making up my own fillings since I had no idea what the box said but this thing is pretty versatile.

sushi rice ingredients:
2 cups rice
3 Tablespoons rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 Tablespoons sugar

salmon filling ingredients:
1 (6 oz) can pink salmon
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar

face toppings:
1-2 pieces Spam, cooked
1 egg, scrambled
furikake

Cook the rice in a rice cooker. When it’s done and piping hot, scoop it out into a bowl and add the rice vinegar, salt and sugar. Stir together well to combine.

Scoop half the sushi rice into the press, layering it evenly, then push the press down to get the rice flat.

In a small bowl combine the salmon, soy sauce and sugar. Spoon that over the pressed sushi rice and press down again. Make sure you clean off the pressing plate after each press to make sure you have a clean surface.

Spoon the last of the sushi rice over the pressed salmon and one last time, press flat again.

For the bow I fried some Spam in a pan until cooked through, then used the template to cut out the bow.

I did the same for the nose by scrambling an egg and using the most yellow parts to cut out an oval nose shape.

I placed the template on top and sprinkled furikake for the eyes and whiskers then placed the egg nose and Spam bow into place.

There you have it, the most adorable giant sushi ever. It was so cute that when I made it for New Year’s Day no one wanted to cut into it – but one bite and they were hooked!