Hiroyuki

Thanks for your suggestion, budrichard. I think I'll start with a deba in a price range of 2,000 to 3,000 yen and master how to fillet fish in a Japanese way.

My Global santoku arrived today. Well, not the greatest knife in the world, but I find it satisfactory for an amateur cook like me. I made squid sashimi with it for the very first time, which is something I couldn't do with my previous knife. Now, I'm thinking about getting a deba. I'd like to learn how to fillet fish.

lol ← Post pictures of your fish dishes in my Toaster Ovens thread!

Here is a nice thread started by melonpan, titled "sake kasu and kasuzuke, sake lees/dregs".

-maru is a suffix formerly used for a child. Thus, either Ushiwakamaru or Ushiwaka Maru (or Ushiwaka-maru) should be correct. Even today, many Japanese ship names end with -maru.

The Japanese government may be interested because it wants to set standards for Japanese restaurants overseas. For those of you interested in the government's intention, click here. And, here is a related thread in the Japan Forum.

Hi, komatsu, toaster oven to cook it? You are my buddy!

Last night, I finally made up my mind to buy a good knife. I searched and searched, and decided to buy a Global Santoku (7,000 yen excluding consumption tax), and ordered it. Can't wait to try it out!

After a few searches, I realized that arima pepper is arima zansho (= sansho), which is sansho seeds simmered with sake, sugar, and soy sauce. A photo can be found here. I didn't know anything about arima zansho. Here is some information I learned: Simmered dishes (nimono) made with arima zansho are called arima ni. Arima zansho is used as a condiment and can be eaten with hot rice, just like furikake. As for its availability in your country, I have no idea!

Talking of salmon, I'd like to mention sake fureku (salmon flakes), like this. My favorite style is add only sake (I mean rice wine) to the sake (salmon), and pour some soy sauce at the time I have it. Also, my saba furikake is more like flakes than furikake.

Yes. In Japan, ginger is usually added to what we call "ao zakana" (lit. blue fish) like aji (horse mackerel), iwashi (sardine), and saba (mackerel). But adding it won't solve your problem. One possible solution: Just say to him, "Love me, love my fish!"

According to this blog, per bag: 600 ml: Clear soup, chawanmushi, oden, nabe, etc. 400 ml: Udon, soba, nimono (simmered dish), etc. ?? ml: Somen, ohitashi (boiled vegetable), etc. 600?? ml: Miso soup I have a similar product at home, which also says 600 ml per bag.

Hiroyuki san, any of bonvivant or others magazine on Japanese cooking by Japanese available for subscription that you come across? ← Subscription? I don't know of any at the moment. I'll post a link if I find one. ← You can subscribe to bon vivant "meru maga" (email magazine) from here. Click おとなのたまり場 ボンビバン メルマガ申込み located near the upper right corner, and a subscription window will appear. The problem is that you will need a Japanese friend to guide you through the subscription process.

Saba no miso ni is very popular. http://japanesefood.about.com/od/seafoodfi...abanomisoni.htm

Hiroyuki san, any of bonvivant or others magazine on Japanese cooking by Japanese available for subscription that you come across? ← Subscription? I don't know of any at the moment. I'll post a link if I find one.

How about kenchin jiru, ton jiru, and chikuzen ni?

I finally tried the recipe for boiling edamame that I learned years ago. 1. Prepare a pot of water and salt the weight of which is 4% of the water. (I put 2 liters of water in a pot, thus I prepared 80 g of salt.) Bring the pot to a boil. 2. Put edamame in a bowl and add a small amount (not all) of the salt. Rub the edamame against one another with your hand. 3. Let the edamame stand for 1 hour to let the salt seep through the edamame. (The initial recipe calls for cutting both ends of each edamame to let the salt seep through. I thought this would be almost impractical (too time-consuming for many people). I googled and found that a similar recipe recommended letting them stand for 1 hour to have the same effect.) 4. Put the edamame in the pot (don't rinse them) and the remaining salt. Boil for 3 to 4 minutes. 5. Drain and put the edamame on a colander. Do not rinse. 6. Cool the edamame with a fan. The result is the most flavorful edamame I have ever had! Edited to add: For those of you who can read Japanese, here is a link to one of the recipes I referred to.

I usually get thin 8 slice, with my American sandwich tastes, but 4 slice is marvelous for the best French bread EVER. ← I used to get 8-slice when I lived in Japan, for frugality's sake. And sometimes "pan no mimi" if I was really broke. ← I usually get "8-slice" shokupan, too. It's only that "4-slice" shokupan is hard to come by, and I just had to grab it.

I went shopping today, and noticed a new product from Yamazaki. Calcium Soft. I didn't have any intention to buy it until I saw the letters, ４枚スライス (four slices). When I got home, I toasted one slice and had it with some butter. Crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. YUM!! I like thick slices of bread!!

Oh, you like something I hate... I found one http://www.shiogamagas.co.jp/cooking/2005_04.htm Ingredients for 10 servings 250g surimi (ground fish meat) of cod or other fish 150 sugar A small amount of dashi 120 cc sake 7 eggs 1. Put yolks, surimi, sugar, dashi, and sake in a blender and mix until slightly sticky. 2. Whip whites until stiff. 3. Mix them together, put in a mold, and put in the oven. Bake for 50 min. at 150C.

Good for you! Now, why don't you post a picture or two to the takikomi gohan thread?

The first dish suggested by Jason is probably dobin mushi. I found this blog (in English!). Images of dobin mushi can be found here. I would suggest one of the simplest dishes: Hoiru (= foil) yaki. Tear the matsutake into pieces, put them on a sheet of aluminum foil, add some sake, close the foil, and heat in the toaster oven for about 8-10 minutes. Sprinkle some sudachi juice (and soy sauce) and eat! Here is a photo of hoiru yaki. As I mentioned elsewhere, they say, "kaori matsutake aji shimeji," meaning that matsutake is the best in terms of fragrance but shimeji is the best in terms of flavor. There are many Japanese who make a fuss about matsutake, but I'm not one of them. I often buy "matsutake no aji osuimono" (clear soup flavored with artificial matsutake flavor), though.

This is interesting I never knew this. I always assumed that like wine if it wasn't worth drinking it wasn't worth cooking with. I can save some money now. I would usually buy about 1L and it would be used up in about 6 months, I never noticed any change in the taste of the food/sauces. ← This (Japanese only) and other webpages explain the difference between drinking and cooking sake. A ginjo shu doesn't make a good cooking sake!

My two children caught as many as 29 rainbow trouts at a local festival in late August. I grilled six of them with salt (shio-yaki) on that day, and today, I used seven of them to make kara-age. I used a 1:1:1 mixture of soy sauce, mirin, and sake, and it was great! I used katakuriko (potato starch) only for coating, not a 1:1 mixture of flour and katakuriko. Leftover kara-age

Has anybody in and around the Metropolitan area been to McCafe?