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.

From McCormick, here’s a lighter version of the classic combination of tomato soup with grilled cheese. Instead of a sandwich, the grilled cheese is miniaturized into a crisp crouton. A bowlful of the soup will warm you up on a chilly day, and the croutons will make you smile with delight.

We had fresh basil on hand, so used it instead of dried. We loved the extra punch of basil flavor. To convert dried to fresh herbs, or vice versa, use this ratio: One tablespoon of fresh herb equals one teaspoon of dried herbs.
 
 
RECIPE: HOMEMADE TOMATO SOUP WITH GRILLED CHEESE CROUTONS

Ingredients For 8 One-Cup Servings

For The Tomato Soup

 
For The Grilled Cheese Croutons

[1] The croutons are miniature grilled cheese sandwiches (photo © McCormick).

[2] Roasted red peppers (pimento or pimiento) join the tomatoes in the soup (photo © Goya).

1. MAKE the tomato soup: Place the crushed tomatoes, stock, roasted red peppers, sugar, basil, garlic powder and onion powder in a blender. Cover and blend on high speed until smooth.

2. POUR into a large saucepan. Add the bay leaf. Bring to boil and reduce heat to low; simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Add the half-and-half and Parmesan cheese; simmer until heated through. Season with pepper. Remove the bay leaf before serving. Meanwhile…

3. MAKE the Grilled Cheese Croutons. Mix the mayonnaise and thyme in a small bowl until well blended. Spread 1 side of each bread slice with the mayonnaise mixture. Prepare 3 cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise side out on the bread.

4. SPRAY a large skillet with no stick cooking spray. Heat over medium heat. Place the sandwiches in the skillet and cook for 3 minutes per side, or until lightly browned. Cool slightly, then cut each sandwich into 9 croutons. Top each bowl of soup with 3 croutons.

In France, the holiday season continues into January with the feast of the Epiphany on January 6th, the 12th day after Christmas.

For the occasion, pastry shops are filled with galettes des rois, Epiphany cakes. (The name actually translates to kings’ cake; a galette is a flat pastry cake.)

The cake is traditionally—more of an almond puff pastry tart—is filled with frangipane (almond cream). Other fillings can be substituted, from almond paste (marzipan) to chocolate ganache to sliced apples. In the south of France, brioche is often substituted for the puff pastry.

You can buy puff pastry (pâte à choux) or make your own with this recipe.

The cake is often garnished with a metallic gold paper crown, and a charm is baked into the filling. Originally a baby, representing baby Jesus, today any trinket can be substituted. The person who finds the trinket in his or her slice becomes “king” for the day.

A couple of years ago we published an Epiphany Cake recipe from Héléne Darroze, proprietor of a two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris.

This year, we present François Payard’s slightly different recipe, with a bit of rum and almond extract (Darroze prefers a citrus zest flavor accent).

It was a staple for French-born Payard, who grew up in Nice, where his grandfather owned a pastry shop (his father also was a pastry chef).

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. MAKE the cream filling: Mix together the almonds and sugar. Add the creamed butter, the two whole eggs and rum; mix well together.

2. DIVIDE the puff pastry dough in half; roll out each half into a 12-inch (about) circle. Lay one pastry round sheet on a very slightly greased baking pan. Pour the filling in the middle and spread without reaching the edge. Drop the toy into the filling.

3. TOP carefully with the second circle of dough. With moist fingers, press firmly all around to seal the “cake.” Glaze the surface with the remaining beaten egg yolk. (For a little more control over the color, brush the yolk on roughly halfway through the baking)

4. DRAW some light, curved lines for decoration using a knife or fork. Make a few tiny cuts on the top to let out steam during cooking.

5. BAKE for about 35 to 40 minutes in preheated 400°F oven. Check with an oven thermometer, as oven temperatures can vary. Remove when the pastry is golden. Cool and serve while still warm, if possible.

We like ours with a dab of barely- (or non-) sweetened whipped cream or crème fraîche.