Tuna Mayo Spaghetti

This is a recipe my dad makes and it's soooo. guuuuud. As usual, it's a very easy recipe and I made it myself (Of course, it will never be as good as my dad's T.T.). There aren't many steps and the ingredients are pretty easy to find even in Europe!
It's a wafu recipe, meaning it's a fusion between Europe and Japan (more specifically Italy and Japan here)! I love these kind of wafu recipes, especially when it involves spaghetti :P Oh and wafu pasta is always made with spaghetti... Don't ask me why :P I'm sure it's still delicious with other types of pasta but for me it has to be with spaghetti...

Anyways, hope you try making it!

Ingredients (3-4 nomsters):

• 400-450g of spaghetti
• 1 can of Tuna (no oil no nothing)
• Couple of spring onions 
• 1 onion
• 4 table spoons of Japanese mayonnaise
• Somen/Soba tsuyu
• Wasabi (Optional)
• Sea weed (Optional)
• butter
• salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Boil the water for the pasta
2. In the meantime, cut the spring onion as thin as possible, you can use the photos as guide line :P Place them in a bowl in the meantime as you will only need them at the end.
3. Cut the onion into large stripes. In any case, you don't have to be super thorough with the cutting ;) Yey!
4. Before cooking the onion, open the can of tuna, and place it into a bowl. Add the Japanese mayonnaise (you can use normal mayonnaise of course, but the Japanese Kewpie Mayo has more flavour I think.) and mix well. I put 4 table spoons but you can also put more or less. It's up to you :). Add some pepper and a little bit of salt. Make sure not to add too much salt as the tsuyu is already quite salty. Set aside. 
5. In a large pot, add a little bit of butter and cook the onion. 
6. When the water is boiling cook your spaghetti. When they are cooked, drain them well and throw them (not literally... water might splash everywhere and you might burn yourself/make a mess) into the large pot that contains your onions. At this point, add somen/soba tsuyu. Just add enough so that it coats your spaghetti and mix well. 
7. Place on to a plate with some onion. Add a spoon or two of the tuna mayo sauce, add the spring onion. Rip some sea weed into small pieces and wasabi! On the picture, the wasabi is in the middle but usually I just put some on the side of my plate and add some to every bite I take ;)
8. You mix a little yourself and ready to nom nom nom....

I recommend using Japanese sea weed for this recipe (Korean/Chinese sea weed is also nice but they have a stronger smell/taste). 

Enjoy! :D

Hiyashi Carbonara

First time I made it! :)

You love carbonara? You love asian food? This may be the perfect recipe for you! I saw this recipe, hiyashi carbonara (冷やしカルボナーラ which means cold carbonara) in a Japanese magazine in a clinic for Japanese people in London. When I first read it I thought it was so clever! I adapted it a bit (combined it with how my mum makes her carbonara, my own carbonara recipe and the one in the magazine). If you love carbonara but have issues with the high calories of the original recipe, try making this one! Instead of using spaghetti, you use somen which are very thin Japanese noodles made of wheat flour that are usually served cold. For the sauce, use milk instead of cream! This dish is the perfect way to eat carbonara without feeling guilty or like a fat shit! Yey! AND if it's summer and it's too hot to eat carbonara (said no one ever?) this cold version will be perfect for you! Double YEY!

Second time I made this dish :3

Changed the presentation a bit :P

Ingredients (for 2-3 munchers):

• 400g Somen
• 1 Onion
• 100g Bacon/pancetta
• 2-3 spoons of mashed garlic
• 2 cups of Milk (you can also use liquid cream but makes the dish pretty heavy ><)
• Wasabi (optional)
• 3 Egg yolks
• Sake
• Cheese (emmental/gouda or any other cheese)
• Spring onion
• Salt and Pepper

Preparation:

1. Boil water for the somen while you prepare the sauce
2. Cut the onion into strips and cook them with a little bit of oil. When they start to soften, add the sake. Cover with a lid for 8min. Keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn. Lift the lid and let the liquid evaporate. When they are cooked, set aside and let them cool a bit. 
3. In another pan, fry the bacon (I don't put any oil in it since bacon already has PUULENTY) until crispy. Set aside so it cools down.   
4. In a bowl, add 3 egg yolks, wasabi and mashed garlic. Mix well with a fork until combined. 
5. Add the milk and cheese and mix some more. Add salt and pepper to taste. 
6. Cut the spring onion as small as possible and put into a bowl. 
7. When the somen are done, rinse them with cold water. Drain them well, place them on a plate, put the onion on top, the bacon and add the sauce. Sprinkle the spring onion as decoration! 

Although I love carbonara, I do think it is pretty heavy. By changing some ingredients to somen and milk, it makes the dish a lot lighter and still very tasty! To reduce even more fat I used smoked ham (it has less fat than bacon). I do think bacon is good for this recipe (even though I'm not such a fan) as it gives extra flavour to the sauce. Make sure you add enough salt to the sauce (it's just milk so it doesn't have that much taste). I also used 2 different types of cheeses for the second time I made it (grated emmental and some powdered nameless hard cheese?) but parmesan would also definitely be yummy :D

If you are not a fan of wasabi you can skip that step but I personally love wasabi so I like to put enough so I am able to taste it hehe. You can also add the onion and bacon to the sauce but make sure they cooled down a bit because otherwise it will cook the egg yolk in the sauce and it will become clumpy.

Enjoy!

Cream Tarako Spaghetti

One of my favorite dish of all times is Tarako spaghetti (Spaghetti with spicy pollock roe sauce). I am a huge fan of this Japanese dish and it is definitely one of my comfort food.
Usually, this sauce comes in a little pack and you just need to season your pasta with butter, and the toppings which consist of nori (seaweed) and tarako (spicy cod roe).
Recently, in the Japanese food store in West London, I found a new kind of tarako sauce called cream tarako. 

Cream tarako from a pack!

As I have not been to Japan in 15 years, I don't know much about current trends there and all the new products that come out (except those that reach Europe i.e. barely any). Anyways, trying this new sauce was a total revelation to me. I never thought that fish eggs and cream could go so well. In order to understand what I mean you really need to try tarako first. Tarako is roe (fish eggs) of cod that have been salted; when I was small I always used to think it looked like a tongue (the fish eggs come in a little sack that resembled a tongue and it was red :P). It can also be spicy which is my favorite, called karashi mentaiko. I used to munch the spicy one with my parents back in Japan during their aperitif ;)

Mentaiko: top is already 'dissected' to be able to scoop the eggs and bottom is just normal :P 

As any of the already prepared sauces are very expensive in London (around 4£ for the cream tarako and normal tarako one) I decided to make it myself. Checked a few recipes online to get inspired and decided to make my own version of it. So here it is! :)

Cream Tarako Spaghetti recipe:

Ingredients for 3 people:

• 400-450 gram of spaghetti
• Butter 
• 2 teaspoon soya sauce
• 1 teaspoon lime/lemon juice 
• 3 Mentaiko (difficult ingredient to find, you have to go to a Japanese fishmonger if possible :()
• 300 ml liquid cream 
• 1 teaspoon of mayonnaise (Japanese Kyupi Mayonnaise is advised or you can skip this)
• Seaweed (seasonning)
• Wasabi (optional)

Preparation:

1. Fill in your pot with water for the pasta. 
2. While the water boils, cut the mentaiko in half and use a spoon to scoop out the eggs and place them in a little bowl. Make sure to scrape most of it! You will be left with a transparent skin like sack; throw it out, we wont need it anymore.
3. Add lime or lemon juice to the eggs in order to get the fishy smell off and mix. Do the same with soya sauce (this is to give it some extra flavour).
4. When you see the water for the pasta is boiling, throw the pasta in and time it until they are al dente. While they are cooking, prepare another large pot (big enough to contain the cooked pasta later on) and add the cream on low heat and wait until it's warm. 
5. Before the pasta is done, stir the mentaiko one last time and add it to the cream. Stir until there are no more big clumps of eggs (at this point your cream will turn pink-ish). Add a bit of Japanese mayo at this point if you want. 
6. When the pasta is drained, add in the large pot, add some butter and coat them evenly with the creamy sauce.
7. Serve on a plate and decorate it with some seaweed and wasabi (this step is optional. Personally I like the little kick it gives and cream and wasabi go great together). You can also keep some mentaiko as decoration like I did :) 

For this recipe, I decided not to cook the eggs directly in the pot because I feel like it makes them dry. In other recipes online, I saw some where the eggs are cooked in butter and then the cream is added. It is up to you but I personally like keeping the eggs a bit raw and juicy. I find it more appetizing ;) 

Overall, not a diet friendly recipe but still very delicious. Be careful not to add too much mayonnaise since it is already very creamy!

Enjoy!