Panna Cotta with Apple and Pomegranite

Aibo-kun (my husband) brought back a nice colored pomegranite from work which one of his co-workers gave him.

I remember when I was a child back in Japan, our neighbor had a pomegranite tree and when fall arrived, they gave some to us. Even though it is not an easy fruit to eat, or really tasty one for a child, I was still excited with the bright red color they have, and the seeds looked like red jewerly to me in those days!

There are different ways to deseed pomegranite, but I think the cleanest way is to break or cut one in quarters, soak them in a bowl filled with water for a little while. Then get the seeds out, and they should come out easily.

You can juice them and make some syrup or jelly, but this time, since I only have one, decided to simply enjoy it as is. Fresh!

I loved the flavor, the aroma, the tartness, and the look.

The next day, I made some vanilla panna cotta topped with caramelized apple. Then I noticed the dessert was missing something... Color!

I opened my fridge, and there they are, the left over pomegranite seeds from the previous day. Perfect natural decorative color.

So, here it is, the vanilla panna cotta with caramelized apple topping with a finishing touch of pomegranite seeds. Yummmm♪

Shibukawa-ni ~ Cooked Chestnut Sweet ~

It's already November, but since the leaves are not colorful nor temperature is dropping enough to wear winter coats in LA, I don't feel like winter is coming up.

However, foodwise, the fruits and vegetables we see at the farmer's market are different from the kinds in summer, so I've decided to make something fallish today.

I bought large good quality chestnuts, peeled the hard shell, boiled them with baking soda for a couples of times, then boiled the batch the third time, and finally cooked them in a syrup made with two kinds of sugar, and rum to add extra flavor.

The most time consuming and difficult part of making this is cleaning the excess fiber and skin without breaking the inner skin of the chestnut. You need patience, but it does take your mind away from everything else, so it is like meditating in a way.

This chestnut sweet is called "Shibukawa-ni" in Japanese. You can eat it by itself, or make chestnut puree out of it, or bake different kinds of cakes using it.

Just thinking of different ways of using "Shibukawa-ni", I may run to the store tomorrow and buy some more chestnuts, so I can try out making different sweets and upload in this blog!

Starting a new blog in English

Keeping a blog for almost 3 years in Japanese, I have finally decided to start a new one in English, so I can share my life filled with yummy things with my non-Japanese friends as well. For ones who can read Japanese, or just want to check out the photos, here is the link to my Japanese blog.

For you who haven't read my Japanese blog or don't know me in person, I would like to write a little about myself.

My name is AKO. I moved from Japan to Michigan 6 years ago, and then married aibou-kun (this is a nick name I use to call my husband in my blog that means hubby-parter in Japanese). When I first moved to the US, I've decided to change my career path from business world to culinary world which was my long time dream since I was in high school.

Through attending culinary school, I realized that I have more talent in pastry field rather than hot food cooking, so addition to my culinary degree, I also received a pastry certificate and started my career in a pastry kitchen of a fine dining French Restaurant where I learned so much about plated dessert and delicate pastry production.

After a while, I moved on to work for a private golf country club. Here, I learned more about baking breads and volume pastry production for various banquets.

Even though I truely loved what I did at work, I had to admit that spending time with aibou-kun and do traveling which I love was not very easy because aibou-kun works during weekdays in office, and kitchen schedule usually works the opposite.

Therefore, after we moved to California 10 months ago, I have decided to find a way to keep doing what I like, but in a different style. Right now, I have just started a pastry class, offering to help people cook in their own kitchen, and also work as English-Japanese interpretor on the side.

I think this is long enough for today. Thank you very much for visiting my blog. I hope you got to know a little about me, and would love you to keep coming back to check out more about my life filled with yummy stuff!