This eggplant in oyster sauce recipe is one of JDP’s most popular posts! It’s quick, easy, and packed with umami flavor. This dish one of my go-to dinners during the week.
Eggplant in Oyster Sauce
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Dessert First: Green Tea Layer Cake and Ginger Brownies
When it comes to dinner parties, I like to make dessert first. In general, baking takes more time and careful precision than cooking. So, before the kitchen becomes loud with banging pots and chopping knives, I like to have dessert completed. The great thing about cakes is that it can be started a day in advance. Usually, cake layers taste better the next day because the flavors are given time to rest and settle. While baking is done the day before, I always frost and assemble my cakes in the morning of the day of the party. I think frosting always tastes best the day it’s made.
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Mom’s Hamburger Patties
My brother is a picky eater. He knows what he likes and everything else he dislikes. When he and my mom visited me while I was studying abroad in Spain, we spent a lot of time looking for restaurants with dishes we thought he would like. In the end, he ended up eating a lot of hot dogs while we enjoyed amazing tapas with Spanish beer and wine. One of the most hilarious moments during the trip happened when the señora I was living with cooked an elaborate meal for us. He couldn’t get himself to eat all the Spanish dishes she had made, but he couldn’t bear hurting her feelings by not touching any of the food. So he secretly passed morsels of food under the table to my mom, who in turn had to eat two portions of everything. Even thinking about it now makes me laugh out loud. My poor mom left a fabulous meal with indigestion.
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Soy Braised Burdock Root
Yesterday, I shared with you a great way to use leftover, stale rice. Today, I will tell you about the side dish I ate it with: soy braised burdock! Burdock is a root most commonly used in Japan where it’s called gobo. In Korea it’s called woo-ung, 우엉, and it’s mainly used in kimbap, 김밥, a dish similar to the Japanese sushi roll. Burdock has a sort of sweet, earthy taste that disappears when cooked. After it’s cooked, the texture is similar to the potatoes in this dish.
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Baked Soy Drumsticks
September is such a fresh and exciting month. It’s the start of fall, a new school year, and the beginning of a marathon of holidays. I find this month to be very festive in a non-holiday related sort of way, if that makes any sense. There’s a very pleasant golden glow to everything, which makes me feel very hopeful.
In preparation for the future parties/get togethers you may hold for Halloween, Monday night football, cold weather birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and even New Year’s, I thought I’d share with you a great party food. Drumsticks! Not fried, but baked!
My mom makes really tasty soy glazed drumsticks but I didn’t have time to call her so I tried to come up with a marinade from memory. It didn’t turn out exactly the same, but it was good in its own way. The drumsticks were very tender and juicy, with a nice salty touch from the soy sauce. A lot of people don’t like to cook or eat chicken because it gets really tough and dry, but there’s a secret method to keeping it nice and moist: soaking in milk! It sounds odd, possibly even icky, but trust me it works. There is absolutely no dairy aftertaste, if that was what you were worrying about. My roommate let me in on the secret and I have never skipped this step since.
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