If you like green tea, have you ever tried cooking with it? An easy way to start is with this Green Tea Rice recipe from Bee Yinn Low of Rasa Malaysia, a website that features easy Asian recipes.

The recipe illustrates how green tea is not just for drinking but for adding flavor and nutritional benefits (antioxidants!) to everyday dishes.

Bee Yinn Low uses Oi Ocha brand’s shincha tea in her cookng. Shincha is the year’s first harvest of green tea, which begins in early April. The young leaves used to brew shincha tea has even more benefits than other green teas, the result of wintertime dormancy. They deliver smooth umami flavor plus four times the amount of the amino acid L-theanine, higher concentrations of catechin antioxidants and vitamin C. It’s also lower in caffeine than regular green tea, with a subtle sweetness attributed to the higher content of L-theanine and the lower content of caffeine.

In Japanese, “shin” means new and “cha” means tea. The tea is available for only a few months a year, but is still available on Amazon.com and from the manufacturer, Itoen.com. Think it as the summer ale or Beaujolais Nouveau of green tea.

Green tea rice. Photo courtesy Rasa Malaysia.

Shincha green tea. Photo courtesy Oi-Ocha |
Itoen.

Prep time is 5 Minutes, cook time is 10 minutes.

Ingredients For 2 Servings

Preparation

1. BRING the green tea to simmer in a small sauce pan. Add the salt and turn off the heat.

2. PLACE the steamed rice in a large shallow bowl. Top with the scallions and sesame seeds. Pour the green tea over the rice and serve immediately.

But it’s a new year, so how about a new approach? How about a chicken katsu sandwich served with pickled daikon, arugula and tonkatsu aïoli (garlic mayo mixed with tonkatsu sauce, also delicious with fries). It was on the menu at Sushi Samba’s Coral Gables, Florida location.

Or, make a ham or chicken sandwich with spicy Asian peanut sauce, satay-style. Or a turkey sandwich with hoisin sauce and green onions, Peking Duck-style.

Curried tuna and egg salads seem like something from your grandmother’s generation, and they were early fusion. Punch it up by adding chutney, as well.

Today’s tip: Look at the ingredients you have in your fridge and pantry for:

 
Mix them into conventional spreads—mayonnaise, mustard, sour cream, Greek yogurt—or directly spread them onto sandwiches with conventional fillings.

Don’t forget the kimchi or pickled jalapeños!

Get inspiration from the many types of sandwiches in our delicious Sandwich Glossary. And tell us what your favorite new combination is.

It looks like a regular chicken sandwich and fries. Look more closely! Photo courtesy SushiSamba | Coral Gables.

WHAT IS FUSION CUISINE?

According to an article in Nation’s Restaurant News, Florida chef Norman Van Aken claims to have coined the term in the late 1980s, writing a treatise on the subject in late 1988 or early 1989. In it, he described how he incorporated the flavors and dishes of the Caribbean with European cooking techniques and traditions.

He wanted to salvage the vibrant Caribbean flavors of old Key West by fusing them—his words—with contemporary American cuisine. The idea was a cornerstone of the “Floribbean” cuisine that emerged in South Florida, developed by Van Aken, Allen Susser, Mark Militello and Douglas Rodriguez, among others. Even before then, we remember a French restaurant that used Japanese ingredients in New York City (alas, long closed).

Fine dining pioneers like these began to evolve American cuisine 1990s, crossing their French culinary training with global ingredients. It led to fusion dishes like wasabi mashed potatoes, served at top restaurants, down to the barbecue chicken pizza, Thai pizza and numerous other fusions at California Pizza Kitchen.

Fusion is alive and well in more recent creations like cronuts, Korean tacos, ramen burgers and Thanksgiving tortillas (turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce rolled in a tortilla). The younger generations may thing of fusion as culinary mash-ups.

Remember the half grapefruit, a first course at breakfast, lunch or dinner? Rich in vitamin C, it became a staple at breakfast, lunch and dinner tables when train transport began to bring the fruits up from Florida in the the early 1900s.

Today, the half grapefruit and grapefruit salad have largely fallen out of fashion. Yet grapefruits are winter sunshine, and the tradition should be revived posthaste. This recipe is from Bee Raw Honey, which used its maple honey. The fruity flavors of the honey balance the sweet acidity of the grapefruit.

Our favorite grapefruits are in the pink and red families, but taste a variety to find what appeals to you.

RECIPE: GRAPEFRUIT SALAD WITH HONEY

Ingredients For 4 Servings

 
Preparation

1. ARRANGE grapefruit slices on four salad plates.

2. DRIZZLE each plate one teaspoon of maple honey.
 

The best fruit in winter: citrus! Photo courtesy BeeRaw.com.

3. SPRINKLE each plate with hazelnuts, micro greens and a touch of salt. Serve immediately.

WHAT ARE MICROGREENS

What are microgreens? They are tiny, tiny vegetables, no more than 8 to 14 days old, that have just developed their cotyledon (first) leaves. They are far tinier than “baby greens.”

Think of the first, threadlike shoot that rises when you plant a seed, and the first tiny leaves, barely a quarter-inch in diameter. You may have seen a few scattered on your plate or garnishing your food at fine restaurants.

Microgreens are very tender and oh, what flavor! Both intense and delicate, visually captivating and sublime to eat, they are a gourmet experience. Yet, they are highly nutritious with scarcely a calorie.

For people who already like greens, microgreens are the zenith. For people who do not care for salad or raw vegetables: If you don’t like these precious greens, we’ll rest our case. Use them in salads, main dishes, soups and as general garnishes.

Here’s more about microgreens.