Author Archives: Moto Yamamoto


March 17, 2009

Wedding Cake Perfection – Final Trial

by Moto Yamamoto

Preface: Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 1 Wedding Cake Perfection – Trials 2 & 3 Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 4 I was going to practice piping last weekend, but it’s kind of useless doing it on a flat surface. The difficulty of piping lies in the fact that you mostly pipe on sides. As […]

March 9, 2009

Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 4

by Moto Yamamoto

Preface: Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 1 Wedding Cake Perfection – Trials 2 & 3 Seriously I am getting sick of this. I am usually a perfectionist when it comes to cooking/baking, but the smell of whipped cream is bothering me and worrying about overmixing the batter is giving me nightmares. Why? What was I […]

March 2, 2009

Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 2 & 3

by Moto Yamamoto

After the initial trial, I learned a lot from all the comments (big thanks to Chef the City!) and decided to try different options. Instead of trying everything, I focused primarily on icing this weekend. As you saw from the last post, the cake didn’t rise well, so I made one following the recipe precisely. […]

February 26, 2009

Wedding Cake Perfection – Trial 1

by Moto Yamamoto

Tmonkey and Ayagwa are getting hitched in March!!! But listening to them talk about their big day and planning was way too painful for me. “I will wear jeans, and Tmonkey will wear a Star Trek costume,” or “We don’t need any proceedings, we can just go with the flow and maybe it will become […]

February 17, 2009

UM Recession: Chinatown Heaven

by Moto Yamamoto

Chinatown is awesome. If you can deal with the smell of dead animals and fish, the occasional dead pig or cow sitting on the sidewalk, millions of people walking toward you, a live eel escaping from a bucket onto the street, and guys spitting everywhere as if it’s mainland China, you are good to go. […]

February 12, 2009

Truffles Not Turds

by Moto Yamamoto

Preface: Kitchen Follies: Chocolate Turd As you know, I have a tendency to fight till I get it right. This only happens when I am cooking. I usually don’t have strong will power, as I’ve already given up all the good things I tried to start in the new year. Smoke less, drink less, bitch […]

February 9, 2009

Kitchen Follies: Chocolate Turd

by Moto Yamamoto

I failed. Utterly and completely. I’ve had some failures in the past but usually saved them from total disaster, but this time, there was nothing I could do… Last week, Kayoko asked me to write about a Valentine’s Day appropriate post, and I decided to make chocolate truffles. It’s one of the simplest recipes you […]

January 22, 2009

Food Network: Too Extreme

by Moto Yamamoto

Have you seen Food Network programs recently? It’s getting to be a bit too much. Even if I am not watching, I have the channel on, and here and there I see a good recipe or two that I recreate. Also I watched Chefography the other day about the history the channel itself, and it […]

January 20, 2009

OBAMA Mochi Celebration

by Moto Yamamoto

In Japan, to celebrate New Year, we make mochi (rice cake). I have no idea historical or traditional meaning of eating and making mochi over New Year, but I believe there’s some kind of celebratory meaning to it. Today, January 20th, 2009 is the new era for not only this country, but the entire world, […]

January 12, 2009

Food Network Magazine – Great Recipes

by Moto Yamamoto

I started subscribing to Food Network Magazine. I like this one. Unlike other fancy picture perfect magazines (Saveur specifically), this is more like a ‘to the point’ recipe magazine. Yes it does contain certain bullshit such as, “Let’s look at Tyler Florence’s kitchen,” and putting black tile in the kitchen is a, “refreshing” idea, blah […]