Hiroyuki

The best sake for cooking purposes is cooking sake or ryori shu 料理酒 or chori shu 調理酒 in Japanese. I posted a photo of mine here. Drinking sake are not good for cooking purposes, because the better the sake, the higher the seimai buai (rice milling ratio), which means the less umami components. Sake, whether drinking or cooking sake, won't go bad in a few days. From my experience, I can say it will keep for at least two or three months and probably for six months or longer, provided it's kept in a cool, dark place. I'm curious, what dishes do you make with sake? Note: Many cooking sake contain about 2% salt to avoid taxes under the Liquor Tax Law.

I often make nikomi (simmered) hamburg these days because that's what my daughter craves for. The ingredients of the sauce are: 4tbsp ketchup 4 tbsp tonkatsu (or chunou) sauce 2 tbsp soy sauce 2 tbsp mirin 2 tbsp sake My daughter really likes the sauce and the nikomi hamburg.

I finally bought a rectangular tamagoyaki pan today, which measures 13 cm x 18 cm and costs a little less than 800 yen. At the first attempt to make atsuyaki tamago in this new pan, I had some difficulity flipping it, and it broke into two pieces when I tried to flip it after pouring the second one-third of the tamago mixture. I somehow managed to get it back into shape.

One of the rare occasions that make me want to buy pocky: My daughter's birthday is in September, when strawberries are not in season, so I often buy a box of strawberry pocky or fran (Meiji's product similar to pocky) to make a birthday cake. This particular one is flavorful and contains 25% strawberry flesh. Inside: Resultant cake, with canned cherries and sticks of strawberry pocky on top, which is made by my son and daughter.

Recently, I bought a pack of tonburi to use it in my Japanese-style cold spaghetti. The texture may be similar to that of caviar, but it lacks in flavor. Wikipedia page on tonburi

I made Japanese-style cold spaghetti for lunch today, but unfortunately, it wasn't very successful although I used two special ingredients for this cook-off, sudachi juice and tonburi. Cod roe spaghetti topped with tonburi. Expensive sudachi juice in the small bottle on the right. On the left is noodle soup concentrate. I poured them immediately before eating (my favorite style).

I've never had Kyoto-style tempura. Their website says that they use cotton seed oil. Their tempura seems lighter than in Tokyo.

This year, I got chestnusts from my parents today. It took me more than 50 minutes to shell about 40 of them, even though I used the special gadget called kurikuri bozu. We are going to have kuri okowa tomorrow!

Great photo! I've never had raw whale meat, though. Your photo makes me want to have deep-fried whale meat (tatsuta-age) again, which was often served at school lunch almost 40 years ago. Images of tatsuta-age can be found here.

Thanks! I'm going to make wafu (Japanese-style) reisei (cold) spaghetti pretty soon!

My family had the iso wari cha soba tonight. I made sweet potato, kabocha, and shishito (a type of green pepper) tempura and carrot-onion-small shrimp kakiage. In Japan, soba is often served with tempura. Leftover tempura: I tend to make much more tempura than we can consume for a supper. I'm not alone. Making only a few pieces of tempura sounds rather stupid... Iso wari cha soba had an intense flavor of green tea powder. I was unable to discern the flavor of the seaweed, which probably contributes more to the texture of the soba.

There are so many things you can do with a rice cooker, besides simply cooking rice. There are even books out that are devoted to the subject, like tthis one (Japanese only), but I'm not interested because I like my cooker to be always clean. I once tried vaccum cooking in my rice cooker, though, as I described here. (My wife once made a cake, using a premade pancake mix.) Here is a webpage in Japanese that shows you various dishes you can make with a rice cooker. The webpage, however, contains this caution: There seem to be rice cookers that can cook rice only. If the cooker is turned off while it is baking bake, this means that you cannot bake it with that rice cooker. Simply give it up. So, I would suggest getting a cheaper model and using it for purposes other than rice cooking.

Today, I bought two packs of noodles that looked interesting. Left: So-ramen (ramen noodles as thin as somen) Right: Iso-wari cha soba (which contains seaweed as well as green tea powder, unlike regular cha (= green tea) soba) The so-ramen comes with packets of lemon juice and fragrant oil. This evening, I had this lazy meal because I was alone in the house. So-ramen had an interesting flavor, but I wasn't particularly fascinated by it. I think I will have the iso-wari cha soba in a day or two.

I'm not familiar with goro awase. I googled and confirmed it was tokoroten-like jelly. Tokoroten is a traditional summer wagashi. Images of tokroten can be found here. I must confess that I'm not very fond of it, but my mother and sister like it.

My father is from Shinshu (aka Nagano), but I'm not familiar with Matsumoto specialties. Browsing through various sites, I have confirmed that Matsumoto is famous for its Shinshu soba, sansai (edible wild plant) dishes, oyaki (also known as yakimochi), and basashi (raw horsemeat). As sanrensho points out, if you can read Japanese, you can have a lot of information from sites such as: http://gourmet.gyao.jp/search/p20_t_a10900...gc_y_sk_r_ibase http://www8.plala.or.jp/okusan/sinsyu/spot...u/tokusan01.htm This site says miso pan (bread) is a speciality of Matusmoto. And this one says that sanzoku yaki (chicken flavored with ginger and garlic and deep-fried) is another. Matsumoto for a honeymoon?? How cool!

I watched the show, but I didn't bring myself to trying the recipe.

I can make decent atsuyaki tamago in my 18-cm non-stick, round frying pan. As for me, I would recommend a non-stick one because then you don't have to add some oil after each roll is done.

Bought a pack of boild chamame the other day. As you can see, the beans in the pods are brownish, are nuttier and more flavorful than other varieties of edamame.

Hello Hiroyuki! I don't think they stay out long as the weather here is very fierce in the Wintertime. Is there an appropriate time of the season to take them down? ← That's very simple. Soon after Boys' Day is over. By the way, Yosaku is the title of a very famous enka (Japanese ballad), where Yosaku is a woodcutter.

Are those carp streamers up there all year round? In Japan, we put them up around Boys' Day (May 5). Those KIRIN (Japanese beer brewery) parasols are impressive!

The kanji 日経人, I wrote upthread, mean someone working for, or related to, Nikkei (Nihon Keizai Shimbun), the leading financial newspaper company in Japan. From this post of yours, I can see Nikkeijin simply means 日系人 (Japanese descent).

It's been sweltering hot this week, I have made cold udon, cold spaghetti salad, and cold soba. I used this very long, takasui udon that I had received as a gift. Takasui means that a high pecentage of water (> 40%) is added to the flour in the noodle-making process, as opposed to 30 to 35% for regular noodles, to give the noodles a mochi-mochi (mochi-like) texture. Slightly translucent, and tasty. For dipping sauce, I used store-bought men tsuyu (noodle soup) concentrate. The next day, I made cold spaghetti salad: with cherry tomatoes, green perilla leaves, corn, myoga (sometimes referred to as Japanese ginger, but the flavor is quite different), and some red perilla leaf furikake (= something you sprinkle over rice). For dressings, I tried the men tsuyu concentrate, ponzu, and mayo separately. And, yesterday, I asked my children which they wanted to have, somen or soba, and they both replied, "Soba". No photos.

I had no idea, so I had to google. According to this (Japanese only), Nonvolatile components of an alcoholic beverage, mainly sugar, i.e., candy-like dark brown solids resulting from heating the beverage to evaporate. The more ekisu it has, the denser (sweeter) it is. Here is a story of a man who drank a lot of mirin and got a hangover due to the ekisu bun, if you can read Japanese. http://portal.nifty.com/koneta05/04/28/02/ As for asazuke, 80 to 100 ml mirin-fu seasoning Equal amount of vinegar 1 tsp salt 7-8 cucumbers I posted some photos to the pickle cook-off thread (page 1) in the Cooking forum.

Le Lectier? Here are some pics here http://www.nature-farm.com/fruit_lectier.html In Niigata, two Western varieties are grown, La France and Le Lectier. Thanks for the compliment. I like sasa dango, too, expecially the flavor of those bamboo leaves. Just out of curiosity, Nikkeijin is 日経人?

The state of the art?? You mean some kind of very traditional method of brewing or the most advanced brewing technology? The greatest thing is probably the fact that due to the recent revision of the Liqour Tax Law, hon mirin is now readily available at almost every supermarket. Now you don't have to go to a liquor shop just to get a bottle of hon mirin. It takes 2-3 months to make hon mirin, according to this. If you are rich enough, just go and get 3-year-old mirin, like Helen once did. Every serious cook seems to laugh at mirin-fu chomiryo (mirin-like seasoning), but I like using it because I don't have to evaporate the alchool when using it. As I mentioned in my foodblog, I have three types: hon mirin with an alcohol conent of 14%, a newer type of mirin-fu chomiryo with 8%(?), and a regular mirin-fu chomiryo with less than 1%. I use them almost interchangeably, and I can't discern their difference! To make asazuke, I always use a 1:1 mixture of mirin-fu chomiryo with less than 1% and vinegar. Using hon mirin for that purpose is just wrong! I googled "地みりん", and I got 51 results.