Hiroyuki

I ALMOST MISSED THIS!! GLAD THAT I CHECKED EGULLET A LITTLE BEFORE EIGHT THIS MORNING!! I watched it! Your daughter was cute!

Very interesting! So, what about the similar stuff in crabs? Do you eat it and do you like it?

Fish marinated in miso is quite popular here. Simply mix miso with other ingredients such as mirin, sake, and sugar, and put fillets of fish in the mixture for one day or two. In normal Japanese homes, miso is mostly used to make miso soup, and sometimes in nabe (one-pot dishes) and to make stir-fries such as fuki miso (butterbur sprouts stir-fried with miso) and nasu miso (eggplant stir-fried with miso). When I have certain types of sansai (edible wild plants), I sometimes make a 1:1 mixture of miso and mayo as a dipping sauce.

Looks delicious! Is this a common method to prepapre monkfish in your area/country? Do you ever eat monkfish liver (ankimo in Japanese) in your area/country?

Dulse is very intriguing to me. I wish I could taste it... Illnesses associated with fiddleheads are unheard-of in Japan. sanrensho, are you referring to zenmai?

Is your question directed at me? I understand that tuna tends to become mealy when cooked, but that collar turned out very tender and yummy when I grilled it in my toater oven. It didn't dry out if I remember correctly.

I thought Kuitan would deserve a thread here, so here it is. The official website of Kuitan (Japanese only) It's fun and educational. For example, you can learn some intricacies of sushi making from Episode 1. Episode 1, 5/7 Episode 1, 6/7 Enjoy!

My family are huge fans of Kuitan. It's not a cooking show but a drama, and it's hard not to love it. It's both fun and educational. Why not indulge in watching it and other episodes?

Thank you for sharing your wonderful, fun week with us. I have enjoyed every post of yours, and I have learned a lot from your foodblog.

You mean natamame? It looks like this. No sea vegetables in fukujinzuke.

I have for many years considered sushi finger food and get weird looks from others when using my fingers. They give you the warm towel before you eat to clean your hands. Right? My father in law just can't get his hands dirty when he eats. Fried or bbq chicken are eaten with a knife and fork as well as pizza. My wife is a little better but not much. ← Sushi was a finger food in the Edo period, and it was also a fast food. It still is a finger food, but I am tempted to have it with chopsticks like many Japanese. In Japan, they give you a wet towel (oshibori) at many restaurants, usually a warm one, but a cold one at some restaurants when it's summer.

This is simply a cultural difference. In Japan, you are supposed to hold your rice bowl (at about the chest height) before picking up some rice with your chopsticks. and eat rice with chopsticks? I sometimes do that, but this is considered bad manners in Japan. When you eat a donburi dish like gyudon (beef bowl), however, that's what we usually do.

They look good (I mean the wings)! Do you have any idea how they are prepared and seasoned? I like chicken wings (called tebasaki in Japanese). Dried pickled plum drink? What does it taste like?

Probably Danish bread. Danish bread and pastry have become very popular in Japan. Examples of Danish bread can be found here. Edited to add: I love mille-feuille of Maxim's de Paris.

Oh, what are your favorite Japanese cakes? Mont blanc, strawberry sponge cake, souffle cheese cake, and... I wonder if you can find rare (= unbaked) cheese cakes in your country. Edited to add: Thanks you, Pan, for your further comments about rice. Interesting story!

Very interesting observation. In Japan, an ideal meal is "ichiju sansai" (one soup and three dishes (i.e., one main dish and two side dishes)), in addition to rice, which I failed to properly demonstrate in my foodblog because of the time I could spend on cooking (30 min. to 1 hour). I have a feeling by looking at your meal photos that the concept of staple food is much less apparent or nonexistent in your multi-cultural country than in other Asian countries. Like I said in my foodblog, rice is more than just a staple food in Japan, it's the king of foods and all other dishes (okazu) center around it.

I'd like to know how cheap restaurant and street foods are in your country as compared to a minimum wage, for example. In Japan, the average starting monthly salary for a college graduate is around 195,000 yen, the minimum hourly wage is around 650 to 700 yen (varies from prefecture to prefecture and from industry to industry), and a bowl of ramen at a ramen shop is around 400 to 600 yen. Just give us a general idea, will you?

I had no idea that the invasion had such a side effect... I don't know what to say...

You could write a book on yomogi. Thanks for a comprehensive list. Some comments: I certainly don't want to have yomogi leaves in summer! May and June should be the right time to harvest them, right? You mean 180 ml, right? Don't tell me you have tried all of those recipes!

Thanks for the suggestions. I will definitely try them. Does the yomogi require aki-nuki (boiling separately) before putting in the miso soup? How long would you boil the yomogi for ohitashi? Have you ever had yomogi in nabe? ← I should have clarified that. Sorry for lazy writing. You must first boil yomogi in water for some time, say, 2 to 3 min. for aku nuki (harshness removal). Then, you can have them in the ohitashi style or you can put them in miso soup. In nabe? No. Probably you can substitute them for shungiku.

I had a book on yomogi, and yomogi tempura was in that book. You can also boil yomogi leaves for some time and eat them as ohitashi (with katsuobushi and some dashi/soy sauce/mirin sauce, for example) and put them in miso soup. My parents used to gather large amounts of yomogi, let them dry, put them in a cotton bag, and then put the bag in the bathtub to make "yomogi buro" (yomogi bath). This is supposed to be effective to almost everything including skin diseases.

I'm not that familiar with regional Japanese, only the food around Kansai where I live. But the tendon I eat always just has the dipping sauce. The picture looks different though. What is it? ← I'm a Kanto man and the tendon sauce is something like this.

I was unable to make "fukinoto" tempura for some reason or other. My son had been craving for yomogi (mugwort) leaf tempura for some time. He actually picked up some yomogi leaves on the river bank last Saturday and asked me to make some with them, but I was too busy then. Today, I asked my son to pick up some yomogi leaves. He came back 15 minutes later with this: I bought a pack of frozen kisu (a type of smelt). For demonstration purposes, I made three different types of yomogi leaf tempura. Yomogi leaves coated on both sides: Deep-fried at 160 C for 2-3 min. Yomogi leaves coated on the lower side only: Deep-fried at 160 C for 1.5-2 min. Shredded yomogi leaves plus ko-ebi (small shrimp) kakiage: Deep-fried at 160 C for 2-3 min. Kisu: 180 C for 1.5-2 min. No photo. Supper: Hot soba (buckwheat noodles) in a donburi (large bowl) with tempura. We topped the soba with the tempura before eating. The soba soup is easy to make: Simply boil a 12:1:1 mixture of dashi, soy sauce, and mirin. I sprinkled some shichimi togarashi (spicy condiment in the small bottle). A key to success to tempura making is to make sure that each item to be deep-fried is dry (free from moisture on the surface) before coating with tempura batter. Use paper towels, if required. Otherwise, it will take more time to deep-fry than necessary.

No one could have guessed it was you! Blog on, as they say. P.S. How can you keep track of everything in your fridge?

Thank you. I have fully enjoyed your special week.