My New Year’s Resolution

My mom asked me what my New Year’s Resolution was when it came to my cooking.  Well first she had to explain to me what a resolution was.  Then I really had to think about it.  First I thought about if there was anything new I wanted to learn how to cook… well I don’t know exactly but it will be fun trying to figure it out.  That doesn’t help for my resolution. 

Then I thought.. what do I want to learn about food this year.  Well I think I would like to learn  more about the foods in the different cultures are part of me.  Italian and Korean…  Learn why they make foods the way they do and more dishes and flavors from these places. 

 I would also like to cook more strange, different weird exotic (my mom helped with that word) food.  I would like to cook with wild bore and sea urchin.  I tried both when I was younger and in Italy.  I know I liked them but I don’t remember them since I was only 5 but I would like to try them again.  I want to cook with them and see how it is.

 My mom says I also need to say something about eating more fruits and vegetables.  I already eat a lot, but I will eat more.  I just want to make sure that I eat healthy too.  That is important.

Happy New Year!!!

Christmas Day

On Christmas day, I learned how to make Bechamel sauce: Basic white sauce

Bechamel Sauce

5 tablespoons butter

4 tablespoons flour

 4 cups milk

5 pinches of salt

A couple grates of nutmeg

You have to melt the butter in a sauce pan.Once it is melted, add the flour and mix until all is blended. Add milk and stir until smooth.

Add 5 pinches of salt and nutmeg and you are done.

My Nonna and I made white lasagna out of the Bechamel sauce. It is call white lasagna because it doesn’t have any tomato sauce on it.

My mom and I made lasagna with red sauce. We made fresh ricotta cheese. The word ricotta in Italian means cooked again. For those people who don’t know what ricotta cheese is… it is that crumbly white cheese you find in lasagna.. Sort of like cottage cheese but a little drier.

For Christmas I got lots of presents. The two foodie presents I got were my own set of pots and pans and a FOODIEJR sweat shirt.

I love being Asian-European American.

I get to eat the best food.  Pasta, Rice, …  Pizza.. Seaweed.. just tons of stuff..

I say that sitting here eating chick peas with chopsticks.  Life is good.

I’m on vacation from school for three weeks and I’ve been cooking. Today I made Pasta Alfredo for lunch for everyone.  This week I made.. shark..  spaghetti squash with my fresh tomato sauce… zucchini balls with blue cheese…  steamed rice.. then the leftovers I made into fried rice for lunch the next day..  salads..  cole slaw.. pot roast.. tortellini in white sauce… scallop potatoes oh just tons and tons of yummy food.  

I still haven’t found an exciting recipe for all the citrus in my house..  My Dad bought boxes of mandarin oranges and my mom bought more grapefruits.  If anyone has a good recipe I should try let me know.

Citrus

I love citrus fruit!!  Right now my mom is buying those 5 lb boxes of cuties mandarin oranges.  They are sooooooo good.  Oh and she bought me one of my favorites…  Grapefruits..  yummmm    I like to peel them and eat them as a snack after school.  I think I’m going to look for some recipes that I can whip up using these fantastic fruits.

 I’ll let you know if I find anything interesting!

My Chili

Once a week my mom let’s me plan a dinner for the family.  I can make anything I want. I have to write out the grocery list and check what we already have and what we need to buy.  Then we go to the grocery store and I have to find all the ingredients.  I have to check all the labels to make sure that there isn’t anything with nuts in it because of my brother’s allergies.

 This week I decided to make my chili.  My brother and sister love it!

 Here’s my recipe:

1 15 ounce can of kidney beans

1 14.5 ounce can of stewed tomatoes

1 15 ounce can of white navy beans

1 cup Morning Star crumblers (optional)

1 medium green pepper

1 medium onion

1 cup spicy V-8 juice

3 teaspoons chili powder

1/2 teaspoon hot pepper flakes

1/4 cup cheddar cheese (optional)

plain yogurt (optional)

First I drained both cans of beans. I put them in a strainer and rinsed them with cold water and then let them sit.  I cut eht bell peppers in half, removed the stems and then the seeds.  Then I chopped up the onion and green pepper into really thin small pieces.  I put about 3 tablespoons of the vegetable juice in the bottom of a large saucepan and put in the onions and green peppers over a medium flame.  I opened the can of stewed tomatoes and cut up any of the tomatoes that were still in really big pieces.   I added all the tomatoes, onions, green peppers, vegetable juice, chili powder and hot pepper flakes.  Then I let it all start to boil.  I turned down the heat and put a lid on the pan and let it simmer for around 10 minutes.   Then I added the both types of beans and the Morning star crumblers (you can add browned ground beef or ground turkey if you like instead) and let them simmer for another 10 minutes.

 Then I dished it out for everyone and then adde a bit of cheddar cheese on top.  My mom and I like it pretty cream so we both added a teaspoon of plain lowfat yogurt.

It was so delicious!!!!

I hope you guys like it as much as we did!!

Kimbap and Spam

This weekend we (i bambini Johnson) went with our Dad to Phoenix for the Arizona v Arizona State football game.  It was tons of fun.  We met up with my Grandma and Taba (Grandpa).  They are my Dad’s mom and dad.  My Grandma is Korean and she brought the stuff to make one of my favorite foods.  Kimbap..  I usually eat it really plain.. Just steamed medium rice wrapped in Korean seaweed wrappers..  YUM!!

 This weekend she added a new twist… SPAM!  I’ve never had it before..  It was interesting… kinda salty..  and not too bad in my Kimbap.. My favorite will still be plain but I can handle the Spam every once in a while.

Here’s someone else’s picture of Kimbap just in case you’ve never seen it before. 

Korean seaweed wrappers are a bit different than Japanese wrappers.  The Korean one’s are crunchier and are slightly seasoned.  My mom cuts these into smaller squares and my brother, sister and I (I bambini Johnson) eat them like potato chips…  Now I’m hungry again!!

Basic Pesto

Basic Pesto Recipe

Here is the Pesto recipe that my mom and her family use in so many of their recipes.

About 2 cups of fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup of extra virgin olive oil
3 medium size cloves of garlic

first the leaves are chopped up in the food processor.. then we add the garlic and last we add the olive oil. We store it in the fridge in a glass jar.

If you are going to use it by itself you can add pine nuts or walnuts but if you are going to use it in other recipes you should probably leave the nuts out. I should add that my little brother has a really severe allergy to nuts. The kind you die from so we are pretty careful that we don’t ever store anything with nuts in it.. just in case.. so their won’t be any mistakes.

This is the pesto recipe I mentioned in the Fish Soup recipe.

Its pretty easy.

FoodieJr.

La Cassòla (Sardo)

La Cassòla (Sardo)
Zuppa di Pesce alla Sarda (Italian)
SARDINIAN FISH SOUP (English) 

5 – 6 pounds assorted fish – we had scorpion fish, white fish, and a mackrel
2/3 cup olive oil
1 large onion quartered
1 tablespoon of homemade pesto (recipe coming)
2 – 3 sprigs parsley, finely chopped
1 pound canned whole peeled tomatoes
pinch of dried hot chill pepper (peperoncino)
slices of day old or dried bread
salt and freshly ground black pepper
Large pan, stew pot.

We cleaned the fish. My uncle cut off their heads.

My aunt had me put the fish heads in a pan. Then we covered them with water and added salt, the onions, and pesto; we let it come to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. I used a wooden spoon to break up the fish heads and according to my aunt get the best flavor out. Then I added some hot peppers and the tomatoes.

In another large pan we heated about 2 tablespoons of olive oil. We put the bodies of the fish in the pan in order of cooking time. For us it was first the scorpion fish. After a few minutes we added the white fish and lastly the mackerel.

We strained the Fish stock and added it slowly to the pan with the fish in it until the fish was covered and added the sprigs of parsley. We let simmer until the fish was cooked.

My uncle said that if we would have had some we could have added some cuttlefish at this point or even some octopus.. but we didn’t have any. We added some salt and a bit more chili pepper.

Then we took the fish out.

We put a slice of dry or day old bread in the bottom of each of our soup bowls and then poured the fish soup over it.

The dried bread soaked up half the broth and it was fabulous.

Then we ate the fish! Wow it was fantastic!!!

I’ll post the pictures soon!

Deep Sea Fishing with my Dad and Great Uncle

My Great Uncle (Zio Gianni) and Great Aunt (Zia Vanna) are here visiting us from Sardegna.  They are really a lot of fun and I get to speak Italian with them because they don’t speak any English.  They are teaching me about different types of foods and I’m loving every minute of it.

I’ve been to Italy a few times and the first time I ever went fishing it was with Zio Gianni.  I caught a fish right away and they said I was a natural born fisherman.  I was so proud.

Yesterday I went deep sea fishing off of Dana Point with my Dad and Zio Gianni.  It was so much fun!   I caught a mackerel right away.  Then we caught scorpion fish and my Dad even caught a white fish.  The sea lions kept stealing our fish as we were reeling them up.  A few times I ended up with just the head on the hook but we did get to keep a few. They didn’t like the scorpion fish because of their spines.

We took our fish home and my Great Uncle taught me and my brother and sister how to clean them.  It was a little gross but still definitely cool.  My little sister wants to be a doctor when she grows up and kept asking my Great Uncle what each part of the guts were.. 

In Italy my Great Uncle has a big sail boat so he goes fishing there all the time.  As soon as we brought the fish home Zia Vanna decided we were going to make La Cassola, a Sardinian Fish Soup (Zuppa di Pesce alla Sarda).  She stayed with me in the kitchen and taught me how to make it.  It was delicious.  I added the recipe to the Recipe Log.

It was pretty amazing that I was eating the fish I just caught in the ocean.  I learned so many things.. Wow this isn’t a day I will ever forget!

 My mom is getting the pictures together and will help me post them soon.

 FoodieJr.

Casadonte’s Kitchen

Hi everyone,

I just added my very first food video.  My mom’s friend Michael (yes another Michael) has a podcast on Youtube, Casadonte’s Kitchen, where he teaches different people how to make a variety of dishes.  When he found out that I loved to cook he asked me to be his assistant for a taping of his show.  I was so excited.  I got to make Saltimbocca, an Italian dish, with him. 

I hope you like it.

 Michael – AKA FoodieJr.