Try Okonomiyaki, a Savory Japanese Pancake

By Sandy Hu

I’m still reliving my trip to Japan and the wonderful meals we had. Whether an o-bento from the fabulous Japanese department stores that devote their basements to prepared foods and food gifts, to portable eki-ben meals from the train station, to ramen shops and izakaya, to more formal restaurants, our meals in Tokyo and Kyoto were uniformly artfully presented and well-prepared.

In Tokyo’s Asakusa district, after a temple festival, we wandered into an okonomiyaki restaurant. Often called Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza, okonomiyaki more accurately describes a savory, dense pancake filled with such ingredients as chopped cabbage and sliced pork, beef or seafood, then topped with okonomiyaki sauce, mayonnaise and a generous sprinkling of katsuobushi, shaved bonito flakes. The bonito (skipjack mackerel) fillets are steamed, aged, dried and shaved so thinly they look like wood shavings.

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Mom’s Super-Easy Avocado Sherbet

By Sandy Hu

When we were growing up in Hawaii, avocados were virtually free. If you didn’t grow them, a neighbor did.

To “put up” extras when we had more than we could eat, my mom created this simple, refreshing avocado sherbet. It takes just four ingredients and a few minutes, and it’s really quite wonderful.

Avocados are high in fat, making sherbet of a creamy-rich consistency. The fat is primarily the “good” fats: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. And you can feel virtuous about eating avocados; they are a nutritional powerhouse.

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Turn Veggies into “Cream” Soups

By Sandy Hu

With the bounty of fresh vegetables now coming to market, it’s easy to overbuy. When I find my enthusiasm has overtaken my cooking capacity, I turn the extra vegetables into “cream” soups. There’s no actual cream in these soups but the soup turns wonderfully thick and satiny when the veggies and potato are pureed.

This recipe is a formula: You can use 3 cups of any vegetable you’d normally cook, such as broccoli, carrots, asparagus or cauliflower. Just don’t combine vegetables in one soup because you could end up with an unattractive, muddy-looking broth. And don’t skip the potato. It provides the body and creamy quality to the soup.

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Asparagus, when Company’s Coming

By Sandy Hu

I love vegetables but I’m not big on preparing them. Usually I steam them and dress with good-quality butter, salt and pepper, and I’m done. Or I blanch them, then sauté quickly. Or I toss them in olive oil and roast. I’m happy with such simple treatments because the natural vegetable flavors shine through and besides, it’s almost no work.

But when company is coming, I feel the need to do a little more. Not much, but a little something extra to make the vegetables seem company-worthy. In the spring, when asparagus is in season, I turn to Baked Asparagus with Goat Cheese and Breadcrumbs. It’s hardly more effort than simple roasting, but the topping looks just a bit fancier. Also, I happen to have a colorful, rectangular asparagus-patterned platter that’s the perfect size and shape for this recipe.

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Pancakes – Because Breakfast Should be more than Eggs

By Sandy Hu

Okay, I confess. Steve started making breakfast for the kids when they were growing up because he thought they should have more than eggs.

I love eggs and they’re my idea of breakfast –scrambled, sunny-side up, boiled, omelets or in the hole. Steve’s is pancakes, waffles, biscuits, popovers and muffins. Who do you think won out? The kids and I chose his, of course. And I blissfully relinquished breakfast-making duties to him.

Never one to let a recipe alone, Steve would improvise, experiment, research, try other versions of the recipe, until he created one to his satisfaction. And on weekday and weekend mornings, we would wake up to delicious smells from the kitchen of something freshly prepared, waiting for us at the breakfast table.

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