Pasta/Noodle/Rice

When I saw a picture of “coconut risotto” posted by one of the popular local food Instagramers, Kat, I told myself that I should make something like this.

The coconut risotto she posted was that she had at a restaurant, Hasty Tasty and when I commented to express my interest in the dish, she replied and said the charred broccoli really made it.

She also said the dish was accompanied by peanuts, lime, and fried garlic.

My husband was under the weather last week, and when I asked him what he wanted for dinner, he said, “soup… with rice in it… with a lot of veggies… and a lot of garlic… maybe with curry”.

Me: Can I put coconut milk in it?

Hubby: Yes.

So I thought this was the perfect time to make coconut risotto!

I can’t believe sometimes how much my husband and I think alike (especially when it comes to food).

And if you know me, you probably already know.

I don’t like to follow recipes and I don’t like to re-create the exact same thing.

So my version is of course a quite modified one.

This is one of the things I decided to use to garnish my risotto: crispy onions.

I keep store-bought ones in my pantry, but I decided to make my own for this dish, because I wanted the visual.

And the star of the plate is this charred tomato.

I decided to go with tomato instead of broccoli because I thought tomato would go better with curry.

Voila!

Here is my Curried Coconut Risotto with Charred Tomato, Roasted Veggies, and Crispy Onions.

The risotto was creamy and flavorful.

Have each bite with a little bit of charred tomato.

The tomato really brightens the flavors!

Thank you for the inspiration, Kat.

Here is another dish I made using the Kuruma-Bu Katsu.

This is called Katsu-Don, which means Katsu (something breaded and deep-fried) on rice served in a bowl.

The Katsu is usually paired with onions and softly cooked eggs in soy sauce-based sweet broth.

In my version, the eggs were substituted with silken tofu and soy milk.

I haven’t had Katsu-Don for a long time but this was absolutely delicious!!

Just how I remembered.

Since the Kuruma-Bu Katsu was such a great hit that I decided to use it for a few more dishes.

Katsu Curry is a popular dish in Japan.

It is basically a bowl of rice, Japanese style curry (it’s a bit thicker and has the stew-like texture) and Katsu.

The crunchy Kuruma-Bu Katsu goes well with the curry.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Omelette Rice or “Omurice” is a popular Japanese dish.

As the name suggests, it is fried rice covered with omelette.

When I visited Japan in May, I came back with many vegan cookbooks, and I got an idea from the recipe in this book (Japanese) for the omelette part of my omelette rice.

(My hair is getting long!)

This is a soft scrambled “egg” version, and I really liked it.

(A note for myself: the yellow color from turmeric becomes brighter when cooked.)

The fried rice of the traditional omelette rice is flavored with ketchup.

I happened to be out of ketchup today, and I decided to use store-bought red pasta sauce as a flavor base instead.

The omelette rice is then typically served with a few spoonfuls of ketchup on top, and again, mine was served with red sauce based sauce (I added a few things to the store-bought red sauce like sugar and Japanese worcestershire sauce).

Love my IKEA utensils.

I bought them several years ago, but the more I use, the better they look.

This was SO TASTY!!

I definitely did NOT miss eggs.

And my non-ketchup version took the omelette rice to the next level!

There are so many fun ideas in this book.

I can’t wait to try others!