Umami Days – Meaty with a dash of veggies

We all love miso soup here at home but I have to admit that my husband and daughters are not huge fans of tofu. Whenever there is an opportunity to use another ingredient, I do not hesitate to substitute. That’s the case in this mushroom miso soup.
This is an updated recipe. The first time I cooked mushroom miso soup, it was a hurried affair. It was Christmas Eve, and my husband and our older daughter were shocked that soup was not included in the menu. So I took what I could find in the fridge...

Tinolang tahong and sinabawang tahong are only two of the names by which this simple and rustic Filipino soup is called in some food blogs. We didn’t have a name for it when I was a child. But it was on our dining table often. I still cook it the way...

Yes, it’s fusion — a creation of my daughter, Alex. And it does look similar to cua pao, the Filipino adaptation of the Fujian gua bao. But since both gua bao and cua pao traditionally use lotus leaf bun — a folded bun that you unfold to insert the filling...

Che is a generic term for a wide array of Vietnamese sweets which can range from soupy to almost dry. Che can have beans, peas, fruits, jelly, root crops or glutinous rice. Che bap has corn and tapioca pearls or, occasionally, rice. Unlike Western pudding...