Shoyu Chicken

Shoyu chicken is another family favorite. We were introduced to it in the late 1970’s/early1980’s. Where I my mom found it I do not know. It is a dish found in both Hawaiian and Japanese cuisines. The funniest thing is for the longest time my mom called it Shoe chicken. The spelling varied from Shoe to Shue to Shu. While I was going to Pacific University in Forest Grove Oregon, I had friends from Hawaiian and other Pacific islands. They informed me that it was shoyu chicken. Shoyu is Japanese for soy sauce.

This is a simple dish and I have made it in every variation possible. I have made it baked, slow cooked, grilled, and braised. Just before I started cooking from scratch I made it for my brother’s family in the slow cooker method. This was in April 2015. We always serve it over rice. For my brother’s family it was made with skinless boneless chicken breasts.

If you go to various Hawaiian plate lunch restaurants you will most assuredly find this on the menu. Part of the reason I was able to befriend many of my Hawaiian and Pacific Islander friends was due to my familiarity with dishes they grew up on too. The other dishes I knew that my Islander friends were surprised that I knew about were Filipino adobo, Filipino pancit, Filipino lumpia, and various Japanese foods including sushi.

Shoyu Chicken              

October 28, 2015, I made shoyu chicken in my personal style. I cut the meat into chunks, braised it for 30 minutes to an hour, and then thickened the sauce. This is similar to what I do with Filipino adobo. It makes it easier to serve over rice. It was everything I remember gingery, salty and rich.

Shoyu Chicken

1 whole chicken cut up into parts

¾ cup of soy sauce

1 quarter sized piece of ginger crushed

3 cloves of garlic minced

½ cup of honey

1 cup of water

Bring to a boil in a sauce pan the soy sauce, ginger, cloves, garlic, honey, and water. Simmer sauce for 10 minutes.  In a baking pan place the chicken, pour sauce over. Preheat oven to 350. Bake for 35 to 45 minutes turning halfway through cooking time.

Thai Chicken and Lemongrass Soup

This was another recipe from the Frugal Gourmet on Our Immigrant Ancestors. My sister-in-law and I had gone through my cookbooks years ago when I first moved back to the family farm. This was a recipe she was very interested in. Certain dynamics made me hesitant to start cooking from scratch, but my health issues made it imperative. I added this on my June 2015 menu.

My experience with Thai cuisine has been limited to a few local restaurants, some pre-packaged foods by Thai Kitchen and A Taste of Thai. There also were a few places offering Thai peanut chicken burritos or wraps. This would be my first attempt into cooking something from this culture from scratch. There were a number of ingredients I had not worked with before in this dish: galangal root, red curry paste, coconut milk, and Kaffir lime leaves. I went to H-Mart, my closest Asian market, and was able to find everything I needed.

October 22, 2015 Batch 

On June 5, 2015 I made this dish. I was hoping to leave most of the aromatics in, but they were not edible. What I mean is they were too hard or tough to chew. I strained them out of the broth. I was amazed on how good this was the richness from the coconut milk with the flavors from the ginger and galangal root were divine. My sister-in-law loved this dish too.

I made this again in October 22, 2015. This time I left the lemongrass, Kaffir Lime leaves, ginger, and galangal root in larger pieces making them easier to remove. I served it this time over jasmine rice. It lasted a little longer this way. Overall it was a success again.

Pasta in Tonnato Sauce

The fist time I learned of tonnato sauce was during the fourth season of The Mind of a Chef on PBS. Chef Gabrielle Hamilton talked about the sauce. It consists of canned tuna, anchovies, lemon, olive oil and capers. Traditionally it is served over sliced cold veal. In July 2015, I was told by my doctor to increase my consumption of seafood. I was looking for interesting ways to do that.

The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian cookbook includes a recipe for Spaghettini Tonnato, Spaghettini in Tonnato sauce. I wanted to use wheat free pasta and I found quinoa spaghetti. On October 16, 2015, I made quinoa spaghetti in tonnato sauce. I garnished with Parmesan cheese, parsley and black pepper. I loved the flavor, but the quinoa pasta broke apart too easily for my taste.

Pasta in Tonnato Sauce

My mom bought me a Veggetti device. It turns vegetables into two sizes of flat noodle/pasta shapes. In December 2015, I had the harebrained idea to use zucchini or cucumber noodles instead of any form of grain-based pasta. I finally decided on cucumber. Why? In a traditional American tuna salad, you have tuna, mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, pickle relish, and sometimes capers. Pickles and pickle relish are made from cucumbers, so I thought that would make them perfect with tonnato sauce. This was the best version of the dish so far. The raw cucumber noodles did not break apart easily at all.

The tonnato sauce has a fishy flavor from the tuna and anchovies. The lemon gives it a bite that cuts some of the fattiness of the tuna. The capers bring brininess to the sauce. The olive oil has its own flavor although most used in this as a emulsifier. The version with the cucumber noodles will positively be used again in my menus. 

Tangy Cold Avocado Soup

In the beginning of September I bought two cookbooks on Mexican cuisine. One of the books was Mexican Cooking for Dummies by Susan Feniger and Mary Sue Milliken. I wanted to cook Mexican from scratch, no more pre-packaged sauces. The cookbook is great and it gave me so many ideas and has recipes for things I have never made myself, various sauces and salsas.

I love avocados. That is not an exaggeration. My childhood home in Oxnard, California had an avocado tree in the backyard that yielded fruit 3 to 4 times a year. It sat above the septic tank, so it was huge. It also produced softball sized fruit, or at lease larger than any you can find in the Pacific Northwest. I grew up eating them plain, plain with salt, plain with mayonnaise or Miracle Whip, in guacamole, and as a garnish on various dishes. I ate tons of guacamole, to this day it is my favorite condiment.

Tangy Cold Avocado Soup

One time my mother was sick when I was 15 in the early 1980’s and my Grandma Mac came to help. At the time we had two American Cocker Spaniels. They loved the avocados. They were also very smart and they would pick the low lying fruit by jumping. They then would cover the fruit with leaves in a small area between the backyard cinder block wall and tool shed. My Grandma Mac saw avocados going to dogs as a waste. She lived in Oregon her whole life. Avocados were not that common there for the longest time. When they did get them in Oregon they were not as good as the ones from the family tree. She began a war against the poor dogs. She would raid all the hidey holes for avocados. They were not happy with her one bit.

I found this wonderful recipe in the Mexican Cooking for Dummies cookbook called Tangy Cold Avocado Soup. It is a simple easy recipe. The ingredients are tomatillos, jalapeños, lime juice, orange juice, salt, black pepper, avocados, and cold water with scallions or cilantro as a garnish. On October 8, 2015, I made this. It was like guacamole soup. The tanginess from the tomatillos and the sourness from the citrus cut the fattiness of the avocados. I could see garnishing this with crema Mexicana, and tortilla chips as well. If you use Mexican crema do not use the sour variety. I made this again in December 2105. This is definitely in my repertoire.

Pepperoni Pizza

By the beginning of October, I was craving pizza. Not just any pizza, but an ooey gooey double pepperoni with extra cheese. I still was trying to eat healthier. First thing, I did not want a repeat of the vegetable lasagna experiment, so I used a marinara recipe from The Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian cookbook. Days before I made the pizza, I made the marinara. I froze what I did not use. That marinara lasted till January.

Everybody in the U.S. has had pizza; my experience is a little different. When I was 19, I came home to Dundee, Oregon for the summer and started working at Ats A Pizza in

Newberg, Oregon. I was a pizza cook and delivery driver. I learned how to hand toss dough and make pizzas. I worked in the Pizza Industry for 4 years, two with Ats A Pizza and two years with an Italian restaurant in Newberg. For the longest time I could not stomach pizza with marinara sauce. I got free pizzas at both jobs. Being broke, I ate a lot of it.

Pepperoni Pizza

Due to logistics of my living situation making my own dough was out of the question. I bought Mama Mary’s Thin Crust pizza crusts. There are two per package. I was working to eat healthier, so I went with turkey pepperoni and skim milk mozzarella. On October 3, 2015, I made my first pie. It was everything I wanted in a double pepperoni and extra cheese pizza.

Making it was simple. The ingredients were the crust, olive oil, marinara sauce, turkey pepperoni, skim milk mozzarella, and shaved Parmesan. The first pie was a little over cooked on the edges of the crust. Still it gave me the salty melty goodness I so wanted. The second pie was perfect.