Happy Mother's Day Brunch - Kale Bud Salad with Smoked Salmon and Poached Egg

I made this salad last week after staring at my over-grown red Russian kale looking more like trees in my garden box for a while, wondering "Can I eat them?"  I planted them last spring and over the past few weeks they've grown taller and taller due to the warm weather. 

I looked at the buds and yellow flowers. I've never grown kale before, so I wasn't sure what to do with them.  I didn't even know Russian kale grows so tall and has buds and flowers. They reminded me of nanohana in Japan or so-called baby broccoli in the States.  I found out after a quick look online that they are all in the same Brassica family.  I immediately thought about boiling them to make salad.  Since they are from my garden, I wanted to make something simple to preserve the taste and texture of the buds.  So I cooked them only for a minute or two and blanched them.

I have a feeling that some people wouldn't think to eat kale stems and buds, especially

 once they flower.  But they are really tasty and my kids have been snacking on them every day - happily. 

My husband was smoking some salmon with the new smoker he got for his birthday.  Since then, he's been smoking fish and meat every weekend.  Smoking fish or meat at home is relatively easy and fun.  

We have three chickens at home now and they've been laying eggs for the past couple of months. Yay, finally!  It feels very satisfying being able to eat my own eggs.  Cleaning their coop is a little less traumatizing now that they give us eggs.  I poached one of the eggs to top the kale bud salad with smoked salmon. 

I think this is a fabulous brunch dish to treat moms on Mother's Day : ) This one is for you, fellow moms~! Wishing you a great Mother's Day! 

Mussel Miso Soup

This is another dish I made with mussels the other day.  My mom made this all the time growing up.  As you can imagine, mussels or clams are great for miso soup. It gives that nice extra flavor for dashi.   

Miso soup is something I eat daily bases since I was born.  I was born in a fishing town known for producing quality Katsuobushi ,which is an fermented and smoked filet of bonito tuna.  Yes, the whole town actually smells like it - if you can imagine the scent - when the factories are doing their smoking thing.  Finely shredded Katsuobushi is the key to the flavor aka umami in dashi (soup broth).  Katsuobushi is available at any Japanese or Korean grocery stores here in the States, but you can substitute dashi to vegetable or chicken broth if it's too find the dried ingredient for dashi.

You can make dashi with other ingredients like dried kelps, dried sardines or dried shiitake mushrooms, but I almost always use katsuobushi and kelp in my dashi unless I'm on cleanse. 

I haven't made my own miso, but I would love to try it one of these days.  That'd be a great one to post : )

Treat of the Day - Simple Linguini with Mussels

I love pasta with seafood.  If I see linguine ai frutti di mare on the menu at an Italian restaurant, I order it almost every time.  I don't often buy mussels even though I love them.  They are one of those things that I love but don't crave for on a day to day basis.  Today, though, I saw them at the neighborhood market and they looked so fresh and tasty that I felt I could hear them screaming at me to take them home.  So I did!

This dish is fairly simple and quick to make.  The most important thing is good fresh mussels; if you have them, you are good to go.  If you want to treat someone to something special but don't have a ton of time to cook, I recommend this!

  I also made another dish with mussels that my mom makes all the time, which will be posted next!

Enjoy your weekend  :))

Power Granola - Saturday Cooking with My Baby Girl

 Cooking with my 3 1/2 year old daughter can be very frustrating and dramatic.  Lately she has to do EVERYTHING herself.  Cooking is no exception.  My little angel assistant is turning into my little unreasonable dictator.  I used to love to have her with me in the kitchen and let her cook with me, but I hesitate more now for the sake of my sanity and her safety. 

But I gave her a chance with this granola. It's mostly combining all the ingredients and mixing them up before putting them into the oven.  It turned out to be the funnest cooking for her and me to do together and easiest! We just thew a bunch of goodies hiding in my little pantry on a pizza cooking sheet, then I told CK that she can just mix, crumble, and do whatever she wants with them. 

She is naturally a healthy eater, except her addiction for candies. She prefers salad to pizza, fruits to cookies, frozen yogurt and sorbet to ice cream.  Yogurt granola is her very favorite food, but she didn't realize what she was making that until we had a little bowl for her papa to try it out.  He gave her an A+ for making such a yummy granola and I gave her A++++++++++ for helping me without any drama...!

Welcoming "Almost" Spring with Simple Avocado Beet Mandarine Salad with Goat Cheese

I can feel and smell fresh earthy spring air the past few days.  Everyone in the house managed to catch cold from one to another at the end of the cold season.  We've been horribly sick and feeling helpless. I hadn't had any appetite in a few days.  Not in a mood to cook or eat.

This fresh scent of spring cheered me up though, and even inspired me to whip up this little salad - not chicken noodle soup, which I've already made a batch when we first got sick weeks ago. Mind is a strange thing. Once I'm inspired, nothing else matters. I was still feeling pretty sick and not hungry at all.  I didn't know I had all these ingredients in my refrigerator, but luckily I did. I even found the last jar of pickled beets I made from last year, hiding in the back of he fridge.

I assembled all the wonderful ingredients like avocado, pickled beets, arugula, mandarin orange, radish and goat cheese.  Then drizzled with simple vinaigrette loaded with full of vitamins.

The salad helped me forget about this horrible cold and took me to the land fresh earthiness : )

Cozy Quick Lunch: Baby Shrimp Open Face Sandwich

I've been doing pretty well cooking joyfully at home lately and it feels great! But I can't say that I cook joyfully all the time. Don't get me wrong, I love and enjoy cooking, but to cook for a family of four with different dietary needs at least twice a day every day IS also challenging and it is challenging since I care that they eat what I make.

But I've been blessed with a great spirit and inspiration for cooking the past couple of weeks, not really sure why, but I think sometimes something like sunshine is the reason especially living in the Seattle area, or a few good finds at the flea market for the kitchen. 

This doesn't mean that I make fancy amazing dishes all the time, but it means that I'm trying new recipes with what we usually have in the fridge at home or spicing things a bit with the dishes I usually make. So here's one of the dishes I made for the family last week and it was a big hit. My husband loves baby shrimp or any kind of shrimp. My kids don't. But they do love mayonnaise and it worked. It really does make me feel good inside when the kids eat something new and like it. The key was the basil aioli I made. 

The sandwich for my husband is open-faced because of his Norwegian heritage. When we went to Norway, I had the most delicious and fun open-face sandwiches EVER. There were several types that they always served, and baby shrimp was one of my favorites. I don't have any recipe passed on from them, so here is my version of a baby shrimp sandwich. 

Basil aioli works great on the sandwich or with pasta salad. Just add basil leaves, garlic cloves, egg yolk, dijon mustard, lemon juice and olive oil in a food processor or blender. A magic spread, indeed.

Happy Valentine's Day! Red Cheesecake and Champaign

The star of this post is not the cheesecake.  It's the velvet fruit sauce dedicated to Valentine's Day tomorrow. I made the sauce with frozen fruit that I usually use for making smoothies and jams for the kids.

Cheesecake was always my childhood treat.  My dad would bring back a dozen lovely European style cake slices and my first choice was almost always cheesecake.  I'm one of those people who can't let go and be brave enough to try different things when it comes to my absolute favorites.

The cheesecake I grew up eating is the fluffy kind - similar to soufflé - light and yet very creamy. It's so simple and very delicate. 

The sauce has strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, pomegranate, black currants and black cherries.  It's a simple sauce made by taking the frozen berries and adding some sugar, lemon juice and a little starch to thicken it. But the key to making it more interesting is to keep the shape of the fruit instead of mushing or pureeing them. Don't you agree? It gives more character to the dessert. 

For a Valentine treat, you can add a tea spoon full of the berry sauce to a glass of champaign and voila! a perfect lovely cocktail for the celebration of love.

Tomorrow, we'll be staying in at home with the kids and have a special dinner prepared by ME : ) Whatever your special plans are, wishing you all a lovely and loving Valentine's Day!