No longer updating, but hope you enjoy the recipes!
Unfortunately, I got too busy to go back to blogging, after I was forced to take a break from it in 2015 because of tendonitis.
But you can still follow my cooking, eating, and travels on instagram: (@spontaneoustomato)
Travel Photos: Izakayas and Cafes in Japan
Installment Number 2 (of many) of the Japanese food photos. This time: two reasons (of many) why I love eating and drinking in Japan.
Japanese “rare cheese” on sweet potato chips with powdered sugar, at an izakaya.
An izakaya is a type of restaurant that is less like a restaurant and more like a bar, with food. Good food. The portions are usually small but shareable, like at a Spanish tapas restaurant, and the menus– at least at the large chain izakayas– are usually large, laminated, and covered in photos. Izakayas offer their fair share of deep-fried junk food, and often stay open late into the night, many until 4 or 5am. So in other words, an izakaya is kind of like a tapas bar, and kind of like a good old American diner, where you’re expected to drink.
I also wanted to take a moment to share my love of Japanese cafes. If you’ve never been to Japan, then you’ll perhaps be surprised to know that Japan is not so different from many other places in this regard. Cafes are everywhere, and– like in many other countries– some are more like coffee shops, some are more like restaurants, and some are more like bars. There is no such thing as a typical Japanese cafe (although as a side note I would like to make the observation that a VERY large percentage of them devote their stereo systems almost exclusively to Brazilian bossa nova). Some serve sandwiches and cappuccinos, some serve french pastries and fruit smoothies, and some serve hearty meals and gin & tonics…
Afternoon tea at Quarante-Quatre Cafe, Hiroshima.
Continue Reading: Travel Photos: Izakayas and Cafes in Japan…
Huevos Rancheros
Happy 2012! I’ve cooked so much in the past few weeks, I’ve barely had time to take food photos (or update this blog). So I’m typing up an old year-round favorite, instead of fancy holiday fare, just to get back into the swing of things.
Huevos Rancheros has long been one of my favorite brunch dishes. I think I can trace this back to brunches out at Rx Restaurant on 45th & Spruce St. in West Philly. Their huevos rancheros– at least when I was living there 5 years ago– were made with black beans and salsa verde, and never failed to make up for my wait for a table at the tiny but popular brunch spot.
Travel Photos: Seafood and Sushi in Japan
Thanks to being blessed slash cursed with a digital camera, I took something like 1600 photos in six weeks of hanging around Japan, and no small portion of those photos involved edibles.
Ikura (salmon roe).
So I am delighted (slash dismayed) to report that this marks the first of what will probably turn into many many small installments of my Japan food photos.
And I decided to start with perhaps the most expected of foods (sushi) with a little of the unexpected thrown in (like tsumire— a fish version of meatballs– and fugu— poisonous blowfish). Enjoy!
Pan-fried Kabocha (Japanese Pumpkin)
I only have one day left in Japan. So I thought it was about time I posted this little ode to the Japanese pumpkin.
Japanese kabocha squash is green on the outside, but orange through the center. Kabocha are rounder and squatter than their outsized orange jack-o-lantern counterparts, but these are no carving pumpkins. Nor are they pie pumpkins waiting to be blended into pulp and doused with sugar. They bear little resemblance to other kinds of stringy or chalky winter squash that either need to be slathered in butter and brown sugar, or cooked into some kind of rich coconut milk curry to be enjoyable.
Travel Photos: Bibimbap and Banchan in Korea
Ojing-eo Bokum (Spicy Squid Stir-fry) and side dishes, Seoul
I have a talent for getting preemptively nostalgic. This is my last week in Japan (collecting dissertation data) before I return to California, and I’ve already surrendered to sentimentality, partly because I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be able to come back here again. I always seem to start missing places even before I leave them. But I also miss California (and cooking! Haven’t done much of that here…) so it’ll be nice to get back home, too.
Dolsot Bibimbap (in a stone bowl that nicely browns the rice).
I’m getting ahead of myself, though… first, back to Korea. My last travel post was an attempt at explaining my love for the wonderful world of street food in Seoul. This time I wanted to step inside and share some photos of the kind of Korean food that can be sampled in homes and restaurants.
Continue Reading: Travel Photos: Bibimbap and Banchan in Korea…
Pear Brown Butter Buckle
In the midst of nectarine and peach season earlier this summer, I made Smitten Kitchen’s Nectarine Brown Butter Buckle, not once, but twice! Although I almost never follow recipes exactly, I happen to suffer from baking stage fright; this time I stuck pretty closely to the recipe, and it was delicious.
Then this fall, my roommate returned from a visit to the Bay Area with a small cardboard box bursting with at least 30 miniature and quickly-ripening pears. She generously asked me to help her eat them (and I generously told her I was up to the task). I love making salads topped with chopped pears, along with almonds or walnuts, instead of tomatoes, but at 1-2 pears per salad, and 0-1 salads a day, that clearly wasn’t going to cut it…
spontaneous tomato 