What would you do with a 2.5lb slab of pork belly? I can always just do my usual “sake braised pork belly” or just plain roast the thing in the oven. Looking around the kitchen and in the fridge trying to see what I need to use up before they go bad. Also stashed in my to-do recipes book, I thought about doing a roasted pork belly with miso paste. Well as always I have miso paste in the fridge. Okay what else, mint from few weeks ago, rice wine?, yakitori salt that my friend got me in Japan, ginger and peppercorns. I thought about curing the belly with just the salt and peppercorn but there wasn’t enough salt to cure the whole slab. In my mind the ginger and mint should work good together right? A little spicy and a little refreshing.
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I came up with this idea when I wanted to use up my miso paste (it’s funny how you invent things because you wanted to use up something). Also I’m a fan of Curry House in SoCal and for their pasta dishes, they fuse Italian and Japanese together. Fish roe pasta anyone?

I usually buy the white low sodium miso but thats just me.
miso paste
pasta, any type
heavy cream
brown beech mushroom, any type is fine
red onion slices, or yellow
garlic
pepper, optional
shiso leaves, optional but preferred

Cook the pasta according to directions on the box. Hit up oil in a saute pan and fry the onions. Add the minced garlic to pan when onions are translucent. About 2 or 3 minutes later add the mushroom. You can season the mushroom now but beware since miso can get quite salty. I usually don’t season until afterwards. Cook the mushroom until almost done then add heavy cream. Add enough cream to the pan according to your taste. Then add a big scoop of miso, stir and let it melt into the cream. When all of the miso are incorporated into the cream, taste it! Add pepper or more miso or salt if you want. Check the pasta and add them to the sauce when it’s done. Stir and mix and turn the heat off. Slice or dice the shiso leaves or you can use parsley and incorporate that into the pasta.
Serve!

Howard and I thought it be nice to celebrate our blog’s first birthday. Both of us have always wanted to go to Perilla and so we decided to use the blog’s birthday as an excuse to eat there. Sadly no tables were available for Saturday. We then came up multiple Plan Bs but they just weren’t the same as Perilla. Then our friend Matt suggested that we host a party and cook food for the party/people. I think he was joking but we thought it was a great idea and that was what we did. It was basically an excuse to make something new and experiment. Also if we can write about food we should be able to cook food right?
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Went grocery shopping one Sunday in Chinatown. After a whole week of eating out my wallet and bank account were feeling the pain. I decided to make a giant pot of Japanese curry that will last for a whole week! My favorite chain Japanese curry restaurant, Curry House is own by House Foods America Corporation. Japanese style curry is really easy to make because it either comes as a ready-to-eat-just-heat-it-up-sauce mix or a block-shaped-roux-like mix. I got the latter at Jaz Mart few weeks before. Anyways, so at Chinatown I picked up a 2.5lb pack of pork spare ribs, 5 medium sized potatoes, 2 carrots and 1 big onion.
I need a knife handling lesson!! Took me so long to cut and dice the potatoes, carrots and onion. After slow cooking it for 2hours it was done! It came out so good, I’m a good cook.

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