easy recipes — Journal – Recipes, Rituals, Travel and Design

Kokoro Care Packages with Products by Japanese Food Artisans

High quality Japanese food products that are not laden with chemicals and coloring are surprisingly hard to find here in the US. Recently, Marc Matsumoto from No Recipes (!) reached out and told me about Kokoro Care Packages. They offer monthly and seasonal care packages, filled with Japanese food products that are produced by small artisan producers all over Japan. So when they offered to send me a box to try, I was so excited!

Tahini Butter Mochi

Butter mochi, a staple at Japanese-Hawaiian potlucks, is said to be a combination of Japanese mochi and Filipino bibingka, a sweet coconut rice flour cake. This butter mochi has another layer of complexity- the addition of tahini, one of my favorite Middle-Eastern ingredients.

Potluck Cabbage Salad

Looking back on my childhood in Southern California, it seems like my family went to potlucks almost every weekend with our Japanese-American family and friends from Hawaii. As much as I loved seeing my aunties and uncles (some biological, most not), the little foodie in me loved the food most. And there was always ramen cabbage salad.