Migas Tacos

I made these migas tacos for the June 12 farmers market. I wanted to find a way to use the bell peppers, hot peppers, onions and tomatoes from my garden and this worked perfectly (and tasted soooo good) Try it for breakfast or dinner. If you want to skip frying the tortillas you can substitute baked tortilla chips.

4 corn tortillas

1 Jalapeno

2 bell peppers, green, red, yellow or any combination

1 small onion, diced

12 eggs

4 oz Cotija or Monterey Jack cheese (any cheese is OK)

1/4 cup milk or half and half

1 T vegetable oil

1 T butter

1/2 tsp New Mexico red chile powder or Chipotle seasoning blend

Cilantro, fined minced

Salt and pepper

Sour cream or creme fraiche

Finely sliced Jalapeno peppers

10 flour or other grain tortillas

Optional: 8 oz chorizo, turkey, soyrizo, cooked and crumbled can be added prior to the eggs, if desired.

Fry corn tortillas in vegetable oil until crisp. Drain on paper towels, sprinkle with Kosher salt. After cool, tear into strips or cut into strips or squares. Set aside. Whisk together egg and milk in bowl, add salt and pepper, set aside. Melt butter (or vegetable oil) in large skillet over medium heat. Cook onions and peppers for 3-4 minutes, add tomatoes and tortillas, reduce heat to low. Add egg mixture and cook with other ingredients on low heat. Add cheese and cilantro.

Place migas inside flour tortillas and top with cilantro, creme fraiche, and more peppers, as desired. Migas are also fine all by themselves!

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Oven Dried Tomatoes or "tomato candy"

I posted this photo on Facebook and got some requests for the instructions. I have lots of cherry and other small tomatoes ripening in my garden right now so I wanted to roast them and use them in sauces, frittatas and on salads. (But you can use any size tomato in this recipe)Here's how I did it:

Halve the tomatoes lengthwise and place them cut side up on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper or lightly oiled. Season with sea salt and spray lightly with olive oil. Let stand for 20 minutes, then roast in 250 degree oven until slightly dry but still juicy, about 4 hours. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with thyme or other herbs. Keep in refrigerator or they also freeze well. Enjoy! I liked eating them straight--just like "tomato candy" to me.

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Azle Farmers Market Food Demos

There is now a small farmers market in Azle, Texas where I live. It was started by the Rasmussen family, Lisa and Kristoffer and their children, to bring locally grown produce to the community. There are many backyard gardeners in this area who have much more than their family can consume and the farmers market is a practical way to both meet others with a common interest and share great produce. Last year my own small garden produced an abundunce of squash, cucumbers and tomatoes so this year I'll be bringing them to the farmers market instead of trying to find people at work who even eat vegetables. You'd be surprised to know there are many people who live on meat, bread, and sugar and only eat deep fried vegetables.

When I first read about the market I asked the Rasmussens if they would like to have me come and do cooking demonstrations using the local produce. They were happy to include me so June 12 was week 2 and the first time I joined them. I've been there twice now and plan to come every Saturday when I'm available.

The farmers market is being held at 1425 Florence Dr. in Azle. It starts at 8:00 AM.

So far I've prepared Migas Tacos, Japanese Grilled Beef, Brown Rice with vegetable saute,

and Asian Slaw with ginger sesame dressing.

Here are some of the recipes:

Japanese Grilled Beef

2 lbs beef sirloin for fajitas

4 green onions, thinly sliced

2/3 cup light soy sauce

4 T lemon juice

4 T sugar

2 T vegetable oil

2 cloves garlic

1 tsp fresh ginger, grated

Mix together and marinate meat 3-4 hours or overnight. Grill over medium hot coals or on gas grill until desired doneness. Rest for 5 minutes, then slice thinly. Serve with rice and salad.

Asian Slaw

Red leaf lettuce, cabbage, or any lettuce you prefer, shredded with knife

2 scallions, thinly sliced

1 carrot, shredded

1 small cucumber, shredded

also add any garden vegetables such as bell peppers, hot peppers, zuchinni, squash, etc.

Dressing

1/2 tsp grated ginger

2 T rice wine vinegar

few drops sesame oil

few drops soy sauce

1 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp Sambal Oleek

4 T vegetable oil

Mix together ginger, vinegar and all ingredients except oil, add oil a few drops at a time until thickened, then add rest of oil. Adjust taste by adding more vinegar or oil as desired.

Add dressing to slaw but only use enough to coat the salad, do not overdress it.

Brown Rice with Vegetable Saute

1 T olive oil or vegetable oil

1 small onion or 3 scallions, chopped

1 clove garlic, minced

1 T fresh ginger, grated

1/2 cup chopped zuchinni, squash, eggplant, or other fresh vegetable in season

2 cups cooked brown rice

3 T light soy sauce

few drops sesame oil

2 T chopped cilantro or parsley

Heat oil, quickly saute the onion, garlic, and ginger, stirring constantly. Add vegetables and cook until tender but still a little firm. Add brown rice, soy sauce and sesame oil. Sprinkly with cilantro or parsley and mix well.

Perfect Brown Rice

I read these instructions in Saveur Magazine a couple years ago and have made all brown rice this way since then and it's so much better than the usual method. Try it and decide for yourself!

1-2 cups brown rice

12 cups water

Kosher salt, to taste

Rinse rice in a strainer under cold water for 30 seconds. Bring 12 cups of salted water to boil in a large pot over high heat. Add rice, stir once and boil uncovered for 30 minutes. Pour the rice into a strainer over the sink.

Let rice drain for 10 seconds, then return to pot, off the heat. Cover the pot and set it aside to allow the rice to steam for 10 minutes. Uncover, fluff with fork.

This rice is great for using in fried rice.

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Food Adventures in San Diego

I've been in San Diego for several days for business but did my best to make the rounds of recommended eating places. My hotel is on Harbor Island, a not so convenient spot, so until my husband joined me 2 days ago I was stuck at the hotel, attended required functions with awful food. Why is hotel food so bad?? We had a big, fancy dinner Monday night but the salmon was so-so and this was the dinner for the Surgeon General of the United States! The worst was a lunch meeting where we were served ice cold pork tenderloin with ice cold noodles and lettuce on an ice cold plate. No flavor at that temperature. Dessert was watery creme brulee covered with chunks of pink grapefruit. Not a good combination at all. Breakfast at the hotel was fine for me since it was mostly provided at the conference, however I checked on breakfast for my husband for Thursday morning, knowing I would be busy at the conference. The only breakfast choice besides Starbucks was the buffet, $25.00 per person. Yikes! I figured he would drive around until he found a McDonald's, which is exactly what he did.
Tuesday night the Social Work group went out to The Boathouse and I was warned the food was no good. The waiter told us the flash-blackened ahi tuna was the best thing on the menu so I ordered that and it really was pretty tasty, had a nice wasabi-soy drizzle and some steamed vegetables and rice.
Things got better when Steve arrived with the rental car. Lunch at Cafe Coyote in Old Town was our first stop. Patio dining is the popular thing in sunny San Diego. We sat outside and enjoyed carnitas and pibil in banana leaves, but the best thing was their fresh tortillas. Women are making the dough, hand rolling the tortillas and grilling them right before they're brought to the table. For some reason these tortillas are chewy and flavorful, more so that the typical flour tortillas. Walking around Old Town was quite enjoyable.

Later in the evening we ventured out to the Blue Water Seafood, a restaurant featured on the Food Network, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives show. BW is known for having very fresh seafood, caught locally and delivered daily. I had the ceviche, perfect shrimp, crab, onions, cilantro, lime and lemon juice served with crunchy homemade tortilla chips from the El Indio restaurant next door. My fish tacos, one grilled ahi and the other grilled white sea bass were good, but not fantastic. Seems like they put so much cabbage and sauce the fish was hidden under it all. My husband's blackened white sea bass (local) was wonderful. We decided to come back the next night when my brother and his wife arrived and bring them. The next night we had ceviche again--so good-- and I tried the blackened white sea bass with salad and rice. Very fresh fish, succulent and well seasoned. My brother enjoyed his clam chowder and halibut dinner. Steve had a blackened sea bass sandwich which he devoured. I'm a BW fan now! I also plan to make ceviche as soon as I get back to Ft. Worth as well as my own version of fish tacos with the freshest fish I can get.

Ceviche

Blackened white sea bass plate

Fish tacos

BW was also half the price of the fancy tourist seafood restaurants down by Seaport Village and the hotel. I paid as much for my own dinner at The Boathouse as it cost for both of us at BW.
This morning we set out to explore Mission Beach, a really popular beach a few miles from our isolated Harbor Island hotel. I googled "best San Diego breakfast spot" and kept getting the name, Mission Cafe, so off we went to try it. Not a big place, just a nondescript cafe on Mission Drive, a few people waiting outside on the sidewalk. While we were waiting I started reading the menu and was amused to see the words, Mission Cafe, Conscientious Cuisine. What the heck does that mean? Then I spotted wait staff wearing t-shirts announcing on the back, "urban assault food for a revolutionary people" I'm still not sure what they mean but we each bought a t-shirt. People in Texas will scratch their heads and wonder.

The menu was titled, "Chino Latino Food" That was another new one for me but the items were things like huevos with verde sauce, papas, chorizo, etc, however there were many dishes with soy chorizo and tofu as well. It all sounded interesting and healthy. Google Mission Cafe, San Diego and look at their menu for more details. I had the huevos with verde sauce and was not sorry. A fresh tortilla was topped with well-seasoned black beans, fried eggs, chopped tomatoes, cilantro, avocado, onions, and the green tomatillo sauce. It was spicy and delicious. I looked over and saw another diner having the "Zen breakfast" and wished I could come back again and try it. The Zen Breakfast is a dish of egg whites, brown rice, grilled vegetables and braised tofu. I know that sounds weird but I think I would like it.
Mission Beach was so beautiful. A wide sidewalk on the ocean stretched out for miles and we saw a surfing class, people of all ages rollerblading past us, runners, bikers, walkers, and rental houses all facing the ocean. I could picture myself staying there sometime in the future.
We drove on to Ocean Beach and walked around a while, but it was not so nice, kind of seedy.
We met up with my brother and his wife, Shannon at their huge (32 ft.) luxury RV to plan the rest of the day. That RV has everything in it, just like a house--even a big TV set. Pretty cool.
We wanted them to see La Jolla, a beautiful park, wildlife, cliffs, flowers. Reminds me a lot of Carmel by the sea and the Monterey Peninsula, the area I grew up in. They enjoyed the seals, pelicans, ocean and so did we. Dinner was at Tioli's Crazy Burger, another DDD spot recommended for the unusual burgers. I had a Francais Burger (with Brie cheese), Steve had the blackened Cajun burger, Charles a Swiss burger, and Shannon had a crab cake burger.
Very good overall but not nearly as good as Fred's Texas Cafe in good old Ft. Worth!
Some things are just better in Texas.
I mentioned my planned shopping trip to the Mitsuwa Marketplace tomorrow and Charles immediately agreed to go. After all, he is half Japanese too! He really misses most Japanese food now since he is on the renal diet due to kidney problems. He can't have soy sauce, soy products and phosphorus or potassium. I am going to try to use my culinary skills to come up with some recipes for him. We already figured out he can eat white rice, eggs (not too many yolks) and noodles. I suggested tamgo yaki, okonomiyaki, yakisoba, all modified to eliminate
the soy sauce. He wants me to create a renal friendly Japanese cookbook. Now that will be a challenge! If you know of any Japanese foods without too much sodium please let me know.
Back at the hotel my sweet husband suggested we have breakfast at another location of the Mission Cafe a couple miles from the hotel so I could try the Zen breakfast. Did I jump at the suggestion? Of course. Good thing we've walked miles and miles on this trip.....Zen Breakfast

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Japanese Festival Foods Presentation

I work at a federal prison for women when (when I'm not cooking!) and was asked to put on a cooking demonstration for the Asian Pacific Islander heritage month staff event. Since it took place in the prison I could not take photographs which is why I only have the cover sheet of the recipe handout to show you. Earlier in the week I went to the Grand Prairie personnel center and taught an origami class, so this has been a very hectic week.

I have been very busy testing various version of the Japanese festival foods I enjoyed during my trip to Japan. Of course I have made all these dishes many times during my life but I never wrote down the actual instructions and quantities and I wanted to make everything from scratch, not use bottled yakisoba or okonomiyaki sauce or the worst, bottle teriyaki sauce. So, my husband got a little tired of okonomiyaki and yakisoba dinners while I experimented, but we did enjoy our experiments on the patio with my new clay yakitori grill and the little charcoal grill I purchased to compare charcoal vs. gas grill flavor. Charcoal won, by the way. One day my son, John David, was the chef and had a blast making the yakitori on the little clay grill. Then recently, I was testing yakitori sauces on a weeknight. I was out on the back patio which is right outside my kitchen door, with a glass of wine, grilling the yakitori and enjoying the evening air when my husband wandered out. We sampled a bite of the chicken and I decided we'd just sit down, have our yakitori off the grill for dinner--hot and fresh. That was a great dinner!

The organizer told me there would up to 100 people coming to the event which was a "lunch and learn". The plan was to serve yakitori, rice, and salad as the main lunch and small samples of yakisoba and okinomiyaki after I demonstrated making them. I spent hours and hours the night before the event preparing all the ingredients, cutting chicken, making sauces, cutting up vegetables, and getting things organized. My plan was to have 3 stations set up with the main one for me to demonstrate the dishes during the presentation and then 2 other stations for volunteers to make both yakisoba and okonomiyaki while I was making it. This worked out very well. By the time I had finished speaking there were samples ready to serve all around the room.

During the presentation I spoke about my recent trip to Japan and the wonderful street foods.

The audience really seemed to enjoy hearing about the different foods served at Japanese festivals compared to the corn dogs and funnel cakes they are used to having at the State Fair of Texas. I was not expecting them to enjoy the okonomiyaki as much as they did, though.

I served it with cabbage, onions, pork, beef, chicken, bean sprouts and topped it with mayo, beni shoga, okonomiyaki sauce, and aonori. I forgot to put out the katsuobushi topping, but that may have been a little too strange for them anyway. So many people came back for more samples, asked questions about how to make the dishes, and simply thanked me for sharing these foods.
The yakisoba was also a big hit and they could see how easy it would be to make it at home.

My friends who attended want me to have a party at my house and re create the same dishes.

After this huge crowd, a dinner party for 20 seems pretty easy.

My next project is the cooking demonstration at the new Azle Farmer's Market, then the next day I'll be doing a cooking demonstration for the Fort Worth Japanese Society, making some takoyaki and other things.

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Food Adventures in Japan: Yakitori on the street

Yakitori Alley is what I called it. On the road under the raised railroad tracks was the alley full of little yakitori places. Businessmen in expensive suits sit around drinking beer and eating yakitori. At the little place we tried there was a man sitting on a table made from an old crate. We could not read a thing on the menu but managed to tell the woman cooking and waiting on tables that we wanted meat, not cartilage or gizzards. We got some really nice yakitori in the end and thoroughly enjoyed it in the open air alley.

Oh, I managed to talk Steve into going to the little Gindaco stand that Minako pointed out to me the last day. It was right by our hotel all along and I didn't even know it! Darn, I could have had takoyaki every day had I known. I order a few and enjoyed every bite.

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Food Adventures in Japan: Midori Sushi

Steve spotted Midori Sushi when he was out walking earlier in the week. He noticed it because there was a long line of people waiting to get in for lunch. Our concierge confirmed that it was a great place. On our last day we decided to have our final sushi meal. We got there early enough but when we left it was packed. I ordered an assortment and Steve ordered his favorites along with their "Californian Roll". This was the only time we saw sushi rolls like the ones in America at a Japanese sushi place. Usually the only rolls are thin rolls with a single ingredient, like tuna or cucumber.

The Californian Roll got a look from the woman sitting at the table next to us. She was an elderly woman, sitting alone, looking very intense and serious, keeping to herself, but when the roll was delivered she looked over and couldn't help but grin a little. We saw her look and tried to talk to her but she was shy. We had a good laugh watching her watch us eat the sushi.

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