Big in flavor and renal friendly cooking adventure

My beloved yoga teacher has not been well. She is on a strict renal diet. For all the she has done for me and be there for me through the years, the least that I can do is to do some cooking for her. I know she loves to eat, I have been experimenting and creating different dishes that are low in potassium and phosphorus. I am very surprised how limited the diet can be and how fun it is to come up with ideal to replace one for another. I didn't post any recipe, however if you are interested in any of these dishes , please let me know and I will sent you the recipe.

Korean inspiration dinner to go

Momi like Korean food. I made a simple stir fried mix vegetable and a mock-beef strips cooked in shoyu and mirin sauce. I separated the 2 elements to make reheating simpler. The small green container is not spinach. It is a renal friendly version of the classic Korean spinach or watercress side dish. I lightly sautéed some arugula, toss with the classic Korea seasoning of shoyu, pepper and a splash of sesame oil.

India Kheer inspired frozen dessert with rose petals

Momi loves Kheer, India rice pudding, dairy is off her current diet list. I used rice milk and the spices, rose petal to create a frozen dessert that has the taste of Kheer. The trick here is to thicken the rice milk with cornstarch to give it that creamy "ice cream" like texture

Orzo salad with cucumber and red pepper with a basil dressing 

Summer is finally here, I noticed that Momi pinned a quinoa salad recipe on her Pinterest. I wanted to create something similar by using orzo as the "grain", replace the tomatoes with red pepper and elevate the taste by combining basil and Italian parsley in a light vinaigrette.

Lilikoi (passion fruit) tapioca pudding with a burnt sugar crust 

Another version of pudding. This time with rice milk and tapioca. The rice milk lack texture and the tapioca does not bring much richness, so I added eggs to give the pudding the richness.

 Very simple Asian noodle salad

Momi is vegetarian, this is a very simple noodle salad with julienned carrot, celery, green onion and Asian 5-spice tofu for protein. The dressing is a simple vinaigrette with a splash of sesame oil. I usually would make this dish with a peanut dressing, but nuts is off limit for her.

 Soy crumble and vegetable topping over garlic fried rice

You will actually find this recipe here, it is just my fried rice with vegetable topping. I added an extra egg in the rice to make sure she had enough protein in her diet. The vegetable topping here is a mixture of chopped asparagus, cabbage and soy crumble. (Rinvented Old Fashion Chinese "Vegetable Rice"

Renal friendly Classic India rice pudding

This is the 1st recipe I experimented with. I replaced the milk with rice milk. It is a much lighter version. but still have all the flavor and bold taste of a classic kheer.

Aloha!

German meets Hawaiian style Portuguese sausage and Kale Soup

Mr Wonderful loves "boiled dinner". It is basically boiling vegetable (potatoes, cabbage and carrot) will smoked sausage today. It is actually quite foreign to me. In the last year, he upgraded his recipe with Mrs Dash and onion!! That's a big step

At times I do feel bad that I made him eat all these vegetarian food. I do make meat for him and he appreciates that. One great thing about him is that he would try anything, however when it really boils down to it, he is a meat and potato guy with a strong Germany root.

Mr Wonderful has been fishing up North, I hope he will be coming back with some fish this afternoon. I woke up to a cold rainy day. It's perfect for some soup. It would be great to have something hearty to get the chill off, especially being out in the elements. I brought back a couple Hawaiian Portuguese sausage and I  still have 1 last sausage in the freezer. I decide to make some soup. My version of Portuguese Kale soup. It's boiled, it's potato, he should like this. You will notice I am keeping the pieces of vegetable and sausage pretty big. He like soup hearty. The sausage, potato and kale will "shrink" during cooking.

Hawaiian Portuguese sausage, kale and potato soup
1 large(12 oz) Hawaiian  Portuguese sausage, cut into 1/2" quarter pieces, or any smoked sausage with spice will make a great substitute.

1 large onion, skinned, cleaned and cubed
4 red skin potatoes, cleaned and cubed, I am leaving the skin on, if prefer, you can use peeled potatoes instead

3 gloves garlic, cleaned and chopped
1 bunch of kale, washed, stem removed and tear into small pieces
4 cup low sodium chicken stock
Pepper to taste
Directions
In a large dutch oven of pot, brown the sausage piece for 5-8 mins over med heat.

The sausage is quite oily, I didn't have to add anything at all. Remove some of the oil if you like. Leave about 2 tbsp in the pot.

Add garlic and onion, sauté with the sausage till caramelize and translucent

Add potato and cook for 4-5 min and lightly browned

Add kale in by the handful and fold into the meat mixture.

The kale will soften with heat. 

Once everything is combined. Pour in 4 cups of chicken stock

Bring to a boil,  then lower heat to a simmer, cover and let the soup cook for about 35-40 mins till the kale and potatoes are soft and tender. 

Taste and season with pepper. The sausage is quite salty and highly spiced, I didn't have to add any salt at all. 

Ladle the soup in to a bowl, top with fried shallot and serve.

Enjoy
Aloha

Hawaiian style Mango bread

Everytime I make mango bread, it always brought back some fond memories of my college days at Chaminade  in Honolulu. I can still see that big mango tree behind the Chapel and how the "girls" would sneak mango off the trees and sweet smell of mango bread from our community kitchen... (Use your imagination what we did :P)

There were a big mango sales at Whole Foods. Good mango was hard to come by last year, I was excited to see something that resembled good produce. I bought a case. I picked one that was not quite ready since I was supposed to be cooking for a women retreat next week. 

Mango bar was one of the dessert I need to make the filling this week. I had more than enough mango since they all ripened at the same time. 

My hanai sister Kawailani was looking for my mango bread recipe. She thought it was posted here. Well, I forgot. With all these extra mangoes, making some bread would be a great idea. The only issue with my recipe it was very moist and the bread didn't freeze very well. I remember how mushy it got when we packed it for our cross country drive to CA. I did some research. I found a recipe by Sam Choy, my favorite local chef of all time. I did a little of modifying and here it is. It's still very moist. I finely chopped 1/2 the mango into small piece to make the bread more mangoie, while the other 1/2 were in big pieces to show off the fruit. I also changed the cake flour in the original recipe to regular flour, just to give the bread a firmer texture.

Hawaiian Mango Bread

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 salt

1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup melted butter

3 eggs

2 tsp vanilla

2 1/4 cups diced mango - 1 cup finely chopped, the rest in bigger chunks. 

Directions:

Heat oven to 350*F degrees. Grease or spray 2 9x5 loaf pans or 1 13X11 oblong pan with non stick baking spray or butter

In a small box, mix all the dry ingredients together: Flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and sugar

In a large box, whisk together vegetable oil and eggs.

Whisk in melted butter

Add vanilla

Fold in the dry mixture.

Fold in mango, mix well

Pour batter in the 2 prepared loaf pans or the oblong pan. Take it stand for about 10 mins.

Bake for 1 hour, ready when toothpick insert in the center comes out clean or when you pressed the center, the bread spring back 

Remove from oven and cool for about 10 min. Invert the pan and ready to enjoy.

You can wrap up the extra loaf and freeze it.

Serve with whipped butter. 

If you bake this for brunch in a oblong pan, sprinkle with powder sugar  before serving. 

2 loaves or 12 generous serving.

PS: How I cut mango... I gave Mr Wonderful 2 mangoes last week, he called to find out how he is supposed to cut it. Here is my quickie way of cutting mango:

Slice the mango along the seed into 3 pieces: you will have the 2 "cheeks" and the seed

Score the meat to the skin, but not cutting through

Use a spoon and remove the cubes

Peel the skin around the seed and shave the meat off. Scrap the seed with the knife to get the rest of the puree. 

Enjoy

Aloha

Secret of Haupia (Hawaiian coconut "stiff" pudding)

I have been MIA for a few weeks. I went back to the Island. I was not able to make a trip back last year. I missed my home state. I was glad I finally was able to return. Weather was not the best - rain, hail, water sprout, then tornado! It didn't really matter. I was back to my Island home.

While I was away, my sister asked me for my recipe to make haupia for a baby shower. Haupia is a traditional Hawaiian coconut dessert for special occasions. Haupia used to be make with arrowroot, today we use cornstarch as the thickener. Haupia can be very simple, just coconut milk, sugar and corn starch. However it can be tricky. The issue is something time the pudding will not set and you will ended up with "soup". I am going to share my secret with you.
1 - Don't overuse cornstarch. It will make it taste horrible
2 - The secret is: use frozen coconut milk. The canned coconut milk is too thin. It does not work.
Now, you have my secret
Frozen coconut milk is usually available in Asia grocery store. Please make sure you purchase the coconut milk and not the coconut gel.

So... here is the recipe, please note that I am making a double recipe here.

Hawaiian Haupia (coconut pudding)
1 1lb bag frozen coconut milk

1/2 cup sugar
5 tbsp corn starch
3/4 cup water
Directions:
In a small bowl, whisk corn starch with 3/4 cup water, set aside

In a medium pan, combine frozen coconut milk with sugar over med low heat till sugar completely dissolved. Slowly bring to a boil

Continuous to stir, add cornstarch mixture.

Bring to a full boil over med heat. Stir constantly till the pudding thickened and coat the back of the spoon.

Lower heat and continue to stir till you have a smooth texture and the pudding is shiny

Remove from heat and pour the mixture into a 8x8 pan (I use a 9x13 pan for a double recipe)
Even the top

Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding.

Refridguate till cold. The pudding will set
Cut into small squares and serve! To add a little tropical touch, try placing the pudding square on Ti leaves or banana leave!

Enjoy
Aloha

Middle Eastern Inspired Red Lentil soup

It has been a crazy couple of weeks. I had a busy travel schedule with my new position. On top of that, I fell from the stairs while I was taking my bag downstairs to get ready for the airport. Thank goodness I didn't break anything, but I had a bad sprain and I was in a brace since. Finally I felt good enough to go to Momi's yoga class. I was amazed with the range of motion that she was able to get me to do.

Since I felt better and can finally be on my own 2 feet, I need to do some cooking. It's a cold day here in Minneapolis, soup would just be perfect. When I was at Whole Foods, I saw a recipe of Red Lentil soup, I thought I would come up with my version. In this recipe, I added a Middle Eastern spice mix za'atar, it's a mixture of toasted sesame, sumac and thyme. You can make your own, here is a link: Za'atar recipe. It is also readily available in Middle Eastern or Greek grocery stores. There is so salt in there if you decide to buy a mix, please make sure your taste the soup before adding more salt. This is a nice quick soup, takes less than 1/2 hour!

Red Lentil soup with yogurt and mint
1 1/2 cup red lentil (Masoor dal), washed and remove any debris.

1 medium size onion, diced.
2 carrots. Cleaned, peeled and diced
1 full tbsp crushed garlic
1 full tbsp za'atar spice

11/2 tbsp tomato paste
6 cups vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil
1/4 cup think Greek yogurt
Chopped fresh mint to taste and garnish
Sprinkle of additional Za'atar spice
Direction:
In a small pot or dutch oven, heat a couple tbsp olive oil. Saute garlic and onion till translucent.

Add carrot, cooked for 3-4 mins.

Mix in lentil.

Add za'atar spice

and tomato paste, mix well.

Add stock. Bring to a boil, lower to simmer.

Cover and let the soup cook for about 20-25 mins till the lentil is soft and the soup thickened.

Taste and season with salt and pepper as needed.
To serve, ladle the soup in individual serving bowl. Add a dob of yogurt, sprinkle with chopped mint and a dash of za'atar spice.

If you like a little more spice, you can add crush pepper in the soup with the za'atar spice.

Enjoy
Aloha

Chin-Mex Braised beef with cilantro, kumquat and Chinese bean sauce

If you looking for a real Mexican guisada, I am sorry that I may disappoint you. This is my Asian version of braised beef served Mexican style on a tortilla. I was putting together a bento box dinner to bring to my father in the nursing home. He asked for something "beef" couple weeks ago. I wanted to make something that will go well with rice. I came up with a version of braised beef using kumquats and Chinese bean sauce. With the amount of cilantro that I was using, I was inspired to make it a Chin-Mex style stew. Dad enjoyed it with rice, while I had it with tortilla and salsa. A simple dinner 2 ways!

Chin-Mex Braised beef with cilantro, kumquat and Chinese bean sauce
1.25-1.5 lb beef stew meat.
5-6 kumquats. Cut in half across, squeeze out as much of the seeds as possible.

1 small bunch of Chinese celery or 3-4 stack of regular celery. Leave removed, trimmed and chopped

2 whole fresh garlic or 2-3 cloves, finally chopped

1 medium onion. Trimmed and chopped.
1 bunch of cilantro, trimmed and lightly chopped
1.5 tbsp Chinese bean paste
1 tbsp mirin
2 cups water
salt and pepper
Directions

In a small processor, add cilantro and process for 1-2 min till finally chopped. Since I am using a grinder, my process time is a little longer.

Add kumquats

Process till combined and paste like.

 Mix Chinese bean sauce and mirin. Add to 2 cups of water and set aside

 In a medium pot, heat a few tablespoon of olive oil till hot. Add garlic, celery and onion. Saute till caramelized.

 Add beef and let it brown.

 Add cilantro kumquat paste.

Add the bean paste liquid.

 Mix well, bring to a boil. Low heat to medium. Cover and let it cook for about an hour till the meat is tender.

The stew should be a bit on a "dry side" with a thick sauce. Taste and season with salt and pepper.

 Fold in chopped green onion.

To serve:
Asian Style : Serve over rice
Chin-Mex style: Warm a tortilla, top with some shredded lettuce. Spoon some stew on top.
Top with chopped tomatoes, cilantro and some salsa.

Serve 3-4.

Enjoy!
Aloha