Holiday Ham Korroke

I love korroke, but they can be pretty time consuming to make. So I find that the best time to make korokke is when you already have potatoes boiled, especially easy with leftover mashed potatoes. After all, the most time consuming and tedious part of the whole process is peeling and boiling the potatoes, mashing them, and letting them cool. Now leftover mashed potatoes often have butter or cream in them, but I found that just adds an extra creaminess to these quick croquettes.

Since some of you will be soon making a holiday dinner for Easter that often includes ham, I want you to consider setting some leftover ham aside to make these!

This recipe is adapted from Julia's Korroke, with her secret ingredient of Lipton's onion soup mix!

So Cal-Style Taco Rice

Taco rice, also know as takoraisu (タコライス), is a bit of a strange dish. You can trace it back to the 1980s, where outside the American military base in Okinawa, restaurants created their own twist on Tex-Mex. Rather than using a tortilla, rice forms the base of this dish. The easiest way for me to describe it: taco rice is like a taco salad without the giant tortilla bowl. I can imagine cutting out the tortillas made it easier and cheap for the restaurants to make something filling for servicemen.

This dish is so popular in Okinawa, you can even find it at chains like KFC and Yoshinoya periodically as a special item! This is probably the most famous Okinawan food outside of Japan.

I love it because it makes a great dish for bentos and one-dish donburi. It also tickles me how many cultures this food passed through on its journey to invention. Tacos predate the Spanish, a truly indigenous dish of Mexico. The delicious and humble taco then jumped the border to America, who adapted it to the American palate and mass produced it with a hard shell, ground meat, and iceberg lettuce. Then it was brought to Okinawa, where the hard shell was discarded in favor of short grained rice. Mexican-American-Okinawan fusion? Nah, it's just good food, no labels needed.

How do I put my spin on it? By introducing some Southern California style! I couldn't resist adding some fresh guacamole, something you wouldn't see in an Okinawan diner due to the cost of avocados, but here in Orange County, avocados are practically on every dish.

Next, some heat! Taco rice typically is very mild, with no hot sauce at all. I couldn't help tweaking it to fit my palate, and I wanted something that made this dish quintessentially Orange County besides avocados. I grabbed a bottle of Gringo Bandito original hot sauce for the honor. It's made here in Orange County, and was created by the lead singer of the Offspring, Dexter Holland, an Orange County native.

It doesn't get more So Cal-stylish than that! But more than hailing from my home stomping grounds, the Gringo Bandito also brought the dish a nice heat and flavor I needed, without being too salty or vinegary. It's quickly become my go-to sauce for taco night!

My challenge to you: how will you make this dish your own?

Nakau (なか卯)

I'm definitely not fluent in Japanese, especially when it comes to the written word. Therefore I amused my relatives by exclaiming excitedly when I actually could read a sign on my trip to Japan. To put this in perspective: imagine if your crazy cousin from another country came to visit you, and every single time you drove past a Little Cesar's, they joyfully bellowed "Pizza!" like they discovered the promised land.

I'm brilliant if I do say so myself.

It doesn't help that my Japanese reading comprehension is all limited to food. I can instantly recognize the characters for donburi (丼), ramen (ラーメン), udon (うどん), curry (カレー)... and not much else without some careful thought.

So I was especially excited to try Nakau (なか卯) as their sign boasted not one, but two words I knew by heart: gyudon and udon. Nakau is a fast food restaurant in Japan famous for their cheap eats with over 400 location. Or perhaps fast casual, not fast food? It's hard to tell in Japan. Anyways, it's very popular with Japanese looking to get a cheap fast meal and I wanted to experience what the quality and price of such a typical chain was.

Hiroshima-Style Okonomiyaki (広島風お好み焼き)

If you walk into an okonomiyaki joint in Hiroshima and ask for Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, you might get a funny look. To them, this is simply okonomiyaki and others just have it all wrong.

Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki starts with wheat flour and water, mixed to a thin batter that is cooked over a grill. Shredded cabbage is piled on top as it is halfway through cooking, along with whatever toppings you would like. Yakisoba noodles are put on top, followed by a fried egg.


This entire tower of savory goodness is topped with sauces and served piping hot.

Check out the layers!

What the difference between Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki and the rest of Japan? The more popular style of okonomiyaki mixes the cabbage and eggs directly into the batter rather than stacking them for a thicker okonomiyaki with almost a custardy inside, and most importantly it lacks the noodles.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese dish that lots of people have tried describing it by attempting to liken it to pizza, but it's nothing like pizza! I liken it more to a Japanese savory cabbage pancake, but it's a little hard to describe even in these respects.

Okonomiyaki, in my opinion, is one of the most accessible foods to those who might be picky or apprehensive about Japanese cuisine. It's a shame that there's a huge lack of okonomiyaki shops in America because everyone who try it seems to love okonomiyaki. I myself actually dislike cabbage, but love this dish. Also in its favor is its nature of customization: okonomiyaki's name itself means "grilled as you like it," and you can add whatever you like to it: squid, seafood, bean sprouts, or anything else that strikes your fancy. For instance, Mr. Mochi loves pork belly and only wants a hint of mayo. No problem! Customization is key.

Ekiben and Japanese Train Stations

Southern California does not have the best public transportation, especially where I live in the suburbs of Orange County. When I lived with my parents, we didn't even have street lights or sidewalks, let alone a train or subway system.

Japan, on the other hand, has amazing public transportation. I can see why so many Japanese don't have cars. It's like New York City, it's almost a bother to have a car. The shinkasen, or bullet train, was possibly the coolest form of transportation I've taken in quite a while. The only train that I had ever taken prior to this trip to Japan was the train at Disneyland (no, stop laughing, I'm not joking).

The shinkasen reached top speeds of 200mph but was so smooth and quiet I fell asleep on it quite a few times. I was worried about getting motion sickness as I'm prone to it in cars and I was still a bit jet-lagged when I stepped on my first shinkasen to head to Hiroshima, but it was so butter smooth I was able to read without any headache.

We were all very excited to try ekiben (駅弁) as well. We had heard of the delicious train bentos sold at the train stations that showcased local cuisine, and I made sure to take tons of pictures.

I apparently missed the golden age of ekiben, which occurred in the 1980s. Back then, the trains were slower and plane rides were so expensive, a lot of people traveled by train. And since the trains were slower, more people relied on ekiben as a meal while traveling. Now, with the shinkasen reaching top speeds of 150-200mph, you might not get to finish that meal! Despite this, ekiben are still a thriving aspect of most train stations in Japan and I made a point to snap some pictures to share with you.

Yawatahama Champon (八幡浜 ちゃんぽん)

It was really hard to decide what to make for Yawatahama. I wanted to bring you something not just uniquely from Shikoku in origin, but Yawatahama itself. However, I was a bit stumped. A lot of what makes Shikoku cuisine unique is the island itself. For instance, the most famous local food of Shikoku is sanuki udon because the island has the best wheat production in Japan. However, that dish hails from Kagawa prefecture, not Ehime prefecture where Yawatahama is located.

Citrus is a huge part of Ehime's agriculture, however I don't have access to the more unique citrus that Japan has. I could do a citrus recipe, even though it's summer and citrus is at its peak in winter, and call it good. But there's not a lot of recipes for citrus that are unique to Ehime because the citrus is normally just eaten simply and the fruit is savored in its original form, and I've already blogged about that. I'd basically be slapping together a marmalade and making a flimsy connection to Yawatahama, something I didn't want to do. I could do a recipe of a nearby city, like Imabari or Uwajima, instead of Yawatahama. I found some awesome regional foods when I researched, however they still weren't strictly from Yawatahama.

I guess I stressed over this so much because I felt so connected to Yawatahama when I visited. My family is buried there. My family lived and died, and continues to live, there. Our creaky old ancestral house stands firmly on its soil. A tiny portion of my soul, my very essence, I think was left on that hilltop surrounded by graves and citrus and the smell of the ocean. A bigger portion was left in that house where I shared tea and smiles with family. It's only natural I wanted to share some of Yawatahama's soul with you.

I'm not normally this cheesy, but truly it was a special experience.

So really, the choice was made for me. If I was going to share a bit of Yawatahama's soul, I was going to have to get serious about creating a dish I've never actually eaten: Yawatahama-style Champon.

Bratwurst and Mashed Potatoes

I draw a lot of influence from my mother's cooking, and I don't think anyone is surprised by that. Who doesn't, for better or worse, learn from their family? Sometimes that means never learning to cook at all, but in my family, it means inheriting a whole lot of crazy.

One night it's oden or our family's unique version of Japanese curry, another night it might be pickled beet eggs and braunschweiger sandwiches. Sometimes it's both German American and Japanese American in the same meal. My family really owns its mixed roots, no more so than in its cooking.

This one is decidedly from the German American roots, and also born from my mother's busy work life. This was always a quick meal she could make at home for a fast weekday meal. She would prepare this in a snap on the electric griddle, served with a mountain of sauerkraut and some other veggies.

I make this one even faster by relying on ready-made mashed potatoes from the refrigerated section of the grocery store, as well borrowing my mother's tradition of buying sauerkraut in giant bags or hulking jars.

Recently I secured a promotion at work, and I've been just totally stressed out now that I'm in a management position. Coupled with a commute, I've been turning to a lot of my mother's go-to quick dinner ideas that I had as a kid.

Bacon Corn Chowder

This recipe has no exotic Japanese American ingredients. It's all American. As I've said in my Southern biscuits and gravy post, I am heavily influenced by the way the women who raised me cooked, which was my Japanese American grandmother and mother. However, I do switch it up and cook Southern, New Mexican, and American Indian once in a while.

While traditional American Indian food is for another post, it is funny to think about the American Indian influences on modern cuisine today.  Already pish-poshing?  How you liking your popcorn at the movies?  Corn cultivation and domestication is all thanks to the indigenous people of the Americas. We tend to forget when we sit down to beans, sweet potatoes, cranberry, and turkey every year, but American Indian influences go beyond Thanksgiving.

And let's not forget the potato, which may seem like an old European staple, was brought back from the Americas by the Spanish.

In fact, according to What's Cooking America, the first chowders in America were eaten by American Indians. However, you cannot necessarily say that they introduced Europeans to chowder, because chowders are in every culture.

Bacon and pigs, however, was introduced to the Americas, and made it a better place. hehe!