Pear tomatoes from my mom's backyard and a handful of Thai-flavored cashews...

Chop up the cashews, toss with halved tomatoes, and let them rest for fifteen minutes in the fridge, and you have Thai cashew tomato salad. Work time? Two minutes. Juice from the tomatoes work as the liquid base for the dressing, for which the seasoning comes from the lime- and chili-flavored nuts. Brought to you by Trader Joe's spicy concoction, Thai Lime Chili Cashews. (Hey, I'm not getting commission from Joe or anything...)

Using a Japanese eggplant and a little bit of daikon radish that we picked up from the Green City Market on Saturday, I made "asazuke," Japanese-style light pickle. Though it's called a pickle, it's more like a salad than a pickle; it takes only 20 minutes or so in the fridge for the veggies to be ready for din-din. Well chilled and spiced, asazuke can be a refreshing side dish for any summer meal. The added salt dehydrate the veggies a little, making it easier to eat a lot of vegetables than in their bulky, raw state.

Daikon and Eggplant Asazuke (for two, and a bit of leftover for tomorrow)

• 6 inches daikon radish
• 1 medium Japanese eggplant
• 1/3 inch ginger, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon kobucha*
• dried and crushed hot chili pepper to taste

Slice the daikon and eggplant into 1/8 - 1/10 inch thickness. You can make them thicker or thinner, depending on how fast you want the pickle to be ready. In a hurry, make them thinner; I like to keep them crunchy, so I usually stick to this sickness. Place them in a small ziploc bag, sprinkle salt, kobucha, minced ginger and hot chili pepper over them. Shake the bag so that all the veggie slices are mixed with the condiments and spices, and "knead" the bag a little. Push the air out of the bag, seal it and place it in the fridge until dinner time. When dishing out, squeeze out the excess water by hand.

I added shredded shiso (perilla) leaves on top. Though it's not absolutely necessary, its sweet, faintly fennel-like aroma was quite wonderful on the pickle that combines the refreshing tang of the ginger and the heat of the red chili.

I've done this with normal radishes, and they work pretty well. Also good in this dish are cucumbers (ones with tender skins, like Japanese or Persian cucumbers are the best), carrots and even celeries. Just like cucumbers, you would want eggplants with their skins on the tender side. If the ones at hand seem to have tough skin, you can also peel them partially (so that the remaining skin looks like purple streaks on the white fresh), which is what Japanese professional chefs often do with their eggplants to make them look nicer.

* Kobucha--or kombucha--is a kind of instant drink made from powdered kelp (kobu, or kombu). Since kobu has a ton of natural umami compounds, kobucha is often used as a flavor enhancer in contemporary Japanese cooking. For example, I've used this in a simple mushroom spaghetti. Though you don't have to use kobucha for the pickle (traditional recipe doesn't call for one), with kobucha you can get additional depth of flavor that's unachievable with just veggies and salt.

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By the way, my post about the unassuming yet delicious Georgian bakery, Argo Bakery, is on Gapers Block Drive Thru today.

It's going to be HOT today--the highs predicted to be in the mid-90s. Argh. But then again, Chicago's hot day is nothing compared to hot days in Japan, thanks to the usually low humidity. It's hot, but not stifling. (I was brutally reminded of this difference when I went back to Japan for the first time in three years, on the first day of that year's real hot day. At 7 am, it was already steamy, and by the time we arrived at the Tsukiji fish market on foot around 7:30, my back was a cascade of sweat. Yuck.)

To survive the appetite-killing, hot and humid summer, which lasts from mid-July to late September, Japanese people heavily rely on a variety of chilled noodles. Some traditional ones include udon (thick, wheat-based noodles), soba (delicate, buckwheat-based ones), hiyamugi (spaghetti-thin noodles made of wheat) and somen (even thinner, wheat-based noodles). All of these could be served hot or chilled, but in summer, we eat them overwhelmingly chilled. There's been some foreign influences as well, mainly from neighboring China and Korea. Hiyashi Chuka (chilled Chinese noodles) uses ramen-like noodles and features refreshingly sour, vinegar-based sauce, while spicy, chewy Kankoku Reimen (Korean chilled noodles; naengmyon) has recently achieved a prominent position in the summer chilled noodle war.

I love all kinds of chilled noodles, but here's a basic one: Hiyashi Udon (chilled udon). Since this is my food blog, the recipe is going to be slightly cheat-esque, as usual. You need udon noodles, and pre-made all-purpose sauce mix.

First, boil a large pot of water. Just like you would do when boiling pasta, you should use a lot of water to boil udon. This prevents the noodles from rubbing against each other excessively, which can create slimy coating around them. Follow the instruction on the udon package as to how long it needs to be boiled.

Meanwhile, make the sauce. Traditionally, the sauce comes on the side, and the noodles are dipped in the sauce as you eat them. But this method leads to a lot of leftover sauce, so I usually make a more concentrated version of the dipping sauce and pour it over the noodles. The instruction on the sauce mix bottle usually assumes that you're using it as a dipping sauce, so you can just increase the proportion of the sauce mix to the water, in order to make the pourable sauce. Some aromatic ingredients I mix in this basic sauce are pickled plums (chopped and made into a smooth paste), wasabi, green onions, ginger, sesame paste (tahini sauce could be used), etc. (but not everything at once!). Pickled plum sauce is especially nice in hot summer months, because it adds just enough sourness to the dish to make it refreshing when your body's too hot and exhausted to feel hungry.

Now, when the noodles are done, strain and wash them under cold, running water. This process eliminates the slimy stuff on the surface, while instantly firming up the noodles, giving them a nice, resilient texture. Shake the water off the noodles and place them on plates, then pour the sauce over it. I used some chopped scallions and ground sesame seeds this time, and added flavored boiled eggs (a leftover from this meal. (The two dishes in the background are simmered ferns and spicy stir-fried baby bok choy.)

As I'm sure I'll be cooking many more of the chilled noodle dishes, there'll be a few other recipes showing up here. Stay tuned...

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Some places to get udon noodles and noodle soup mix are as follows:
Mitsuwa Marketplace
100 E. Algonquin Rd., Arlington Hts., IL
(847)956-6699
H Mart
801 Civic Center Dr., Niles, IL
847-581-1212
Sea Ranch 518 Dempster St., Evanston, IL
847-492-8340
Cost Plus World Market
Various locations
Mitsuwa is probably the best place for variety, since it's a large Japanese supermarket. H Mart, a humongous, mainly Korean supermarket, has a decent selection of Japanese noodles and sauce mixes, although it could be difficult to find them in the maze-like clutter of the store. Sea Ranch is a small chain of Japanese grocery stores, and while they can't have everything in their tiny stores, they usually have a few Japanese noodles and sauce mixes to choose from. I've seen at least one kind, each, of soba and udon in Cost Plus World Market, but I'm not sure if they stock Japanese sauce mixes. Some normal supermarkets and higher-end ones like Whole Foods might have a few varieties, too.

Saturday night, after a Chinese feast for lunch, we knew we shouldn't be hungry. But being gluttonous foodies, we found ourselves slightly snacky around 7:30. I didn't want anything too heavy, but I didn't want to snack on things like chips or cookies (both of which we have plenty at hand, despite our rational side telling us not to). And we had an open bottle of white wine in the fridge. That needed to be consumed before it turns sour. So I quickly made a few veggie-based munchies to go with the Chardonnay.

Curried Tomato and Egg Salad
I used six of the mini Roma tomatoes from Whole Foods for this, but any one large tomato of preferably a sweeter kind should work just fine. Boil two eggs and let them cool. Meanwhile, cut the tomatoes into bite-sized chunks. Dressing is a mixture of mayonnaise, lemon juice, salt, pepper and Ras El Hanout that I used for this fish dish. When the eggs are not too hot, peel the shell and cut them into wedges. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl, chill and serve.

I also added some Caribbean Calypso spice mix from the Spice House, but it had lost most of its orangy zestiness (been sitting in the cupboard for too long). I still think that the orange flavor might be good with the Arabic curry, so the next time I make this, I'll add some flesh orange zest (or get fresh Calypso mix).

Quick Japanese Cucumber Pickle
This is a quickie. All you need for this recipe is some sesame oil and what's called "ponzu." Ponzu is a traditional Japanese condiment that combines soy sauce, fish stock and citrus juice. It has a wonderfully refreshing flavor of a Japanese citrus called "yuzu" (although the ones available in the U.S. seem to substitute this distinctive citrus with lemon), and the fish stock adds nice depth to any dish. Bottled ponzu tends to be on the sharp side, but hey, I can't make it from scratch every day (that would involve finding the elusive yuzu, making stock from bonito flakes and konbu, and other time-consuming steps), so I rely on the less-than-perfect ready-made ones. Ponzu can be used as salad dressing or dipping sauce for broiled fish, but today, I used it for this quick pickle.

To make this light pickle ("asa-zuke" in Japanese), cut the cucumbers into bite-sized bits and sprinkle some salt on them. After a few minutes, gently squeeze the excess water out of the cucumber, and pour some ponzu over them. Drizzle a touch of sesame oil, and let it sit in the fridge for ten to fifteen minutes. When the cucumber bits are slightly brown from ponzu, it's ready to serve. Today, I used some cilantro for garnish.

The ivory-colored dish in the front is the oven-roasted russet potatoes with garlic and rosemary, which came out wonderful. I should have made more of those, but then again, the idea was to eat light after an indulgent lunch, so a potato and a half for the two of us was just fine.

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A Seattle Times article describes a Seattle-based chef's experiment with ponzu, and is much better at explaining what the condiment tastes like than I am.

I've been locked up in the apartment, writing my last term papers for a few days now. Yesterday, I skipped lunch. I was completely papered out and didn't feel like cooking anything. That was a bad idea--by the time Patrick came home, I was pretty grumpy. Even worse, I forgot that it was Patrick's birthday. (Low blood sugar can do a multitude of harm to you...it's not that I stopped loving my lovely boyfriend...you're reading this, Patrick, right?) At any rate, no lunch is a bad idea particularly for me.

So, today, not to repeat the same mistake within 24 hours, I decided to make something quick for lunch. I remembered that we had a large bag of frozen Kimchi (or Kimchee--spicy Korean pickled cabbage) dumplings in the freezer. The dumplings came from our friend H Mart in Niles, a gigantic Korean supermarket with rows after rows of frozen Korean and Chinese dumplings we have yet to try. I also had half a daikon radish and a handful of wakame (Japanese seaweed you most likely find in your miso soup), so I went for a quick dumpling soup.

Because I'm a lazy chef (especially when I'm cooking for only myself), I didn't bother making my own broth. I simply boiled some water and threw in a teaspoon of Chinese chicken soup mix (the red can in the photo). This brand isn't my favorite--this soup has an unpleasant odor of (probably) chicken, and the artificial flavoring in it tastes like, well, artificial flavoring. So I added a bit of minced ginger to tame those unwelcome flavor elements.

Then I cut up the daikon into thin, fan-shaped bits, threw them in, and while they danced in the hot water, I chopped up some green onions. I also washed the preserving salt off the fresh wakame and cut them into small pieces. When the daikon bits were close to being done, I took out a few frozen dumplings and slid them into the boiling soup. (It takes about 6-7 minutes for the dumplings to cook from the frozen state.)

Toward the end, I added the green onions and wakame bits, ground some black pepper into the pot, and drizzled a bit of sesame oil (a must for any Korean dish!). All in all, it took me about twenty minutes from the start to the end, and that includes the time-consuming photographing part, so you can safely bet on cooking this delicious soup within fifteen minutes.

The dumplings could have been a bit spicier, but otherwise, it was a very satisfying meal. My brain is up and running again, and I won't forget Patrick's birthday--only that it'll be a year from today! I'll have to keep my brain well-fed for quite a long time now...

The salmon pink of the kimchi showed beautifully through the half-translucent skin of the dumplings. Yum!