nakji

To add to helenjp's advice, cut glass would look really nice. We started our meal at the ryokan this week with a small glass of akajiso cordial in a cut glass tumbler. Here you can see how a tray or a large plate might be adapted to your purposes: And garnish some pieces with fresh leaves, as you can see (and helenjp suggested). You could create a focal area with a piece of paper, which they did here: That paper was printed with ume (or sakura?) blossoms, which are in season right now, I believe. You could use some paper with a summer print - green maple leaves? The sashimi was presented on a bed of straw and seaweed, with flowers as accents: Coincidentally enough, we drank Hakkaisan ginjoshu with this meal.

More seasonal soup. I've wanted to make a Tuscan bean soup for a while. Marcella Hazan has a recipe for bean soup on page 88 of Marcella Italian's Kitchen. But, I had no swiss chard, cannellini beans, rosemary, or short pasta. So this soup is more in the style of Tuscan bean soup. I used Japanese white beans, fresh spinach from the local garden, and some thyme. And no pasta. It was still really excellent. I goosed it with a bit of parmesan and lemon, to balance the flavours.

Sounds beautiful! What sorts of dishes have you got for presentation? I've just come back from an onsen trip, and had a formal Japanese meal there. One tip I picked up about presentation there was for shellfish - presented in its shell on the plate, the chef had it resting on a small pile of wet sea salt, to keep it from rocking back and forth.

I opened a window and lit one of those "chef's candles". I'm not sure the candle did much other than cast a romantic glow on me, bent over the chip pan with my strainer; but the window dealt with the smell in about an hour. I have a small apartment, though, and I was able to shut the doors to other rooms.

Yes, naeng myeon is actually a Pyong Yang specialty! You can also use a bit of sesame oil to thin out your gochujang, along with corn syrup, which will give some extra flavour.

I like beans. Lima beans got a bit of a bad name with me for being included in those horrible frozen vegetable medleys along with cubes of carrots and mushy peas that I grew up eating. But I've been circling around some gloriously fat white beans at the market for the last couple of months, and thinking they'd be a reasonable substitute, finally got the excuse I've been looking for to buy them when my husband requested this Jaime Oliver recipe. He calls for lima beans to be served with seared tenderloin; but I substituted the Japanese beans and sirloin. I think these beans are delicious enough to stand on their own, perhaps with a side salad for a light dinner. I served them with some roasted baby leeks and asparagus - much better dinner companions than those freaky carrots and peas. Fillet steak and Lima Beans

Yes, that's the bean in question. Mine didn't cost that much, though! 700 yen for 500 g, actually. Are there any savoury applications for this bean in Japanese cooking?

I bought a bag of rather large white beans from the market the other day to make a Jaime Oliver recipe that called for lima beans. The beans are flat, white, and - er - bean-shaped. What did I buy, and what can I use them for? I'm especially interested in ways they can be substituted into European or Middle Eastern dishes.

Yes, I use Japanese eggplants as well, mainly because I'm in Japan, and that's what I have at my disposal. They come out very succulent and meaty. The first time I made this recipe, I used small eggplants (of the sort that Japanese people pickle whole) I found at a market in the countryside, and not only did they taste great, they looked lovely. My husband never was much of an eggplant fan until I started making these. Now it's the sort of thing we have with a bit of bread while we're waiting for the pasta to cook. We can go a bit overboard sometimes - I can never make a bottle last more than a week at my house. I only have the one book by her, but I'd love to collect more of them. Even the simplest recipes are so good. Not only that, but the book is interesting to read, too. She has a real voice that I can hear with me in the kitchen. My favourite way to learn cook something is to have someone show me how first - I don't really enjoy working from anonymous, "best of" type cookbooks. My favourite cookbooks to use are the ones where I feel like the author is in the kitchen with me, and I really feel that with her books.

I've made the recipe on the previous page, Melanzane Conservate a Crudo several times, and I don't refrigerate it - I just leave it draining in the sink. But it's fairly cool in my kitchen. The salt should do the job of preserving it, but if you're at all worried about it being too hot, you could err on the side of caution and leave it in a cool room or in the fridge. Please let us know how they turn out - I keep wanting to try this recipe, but I love the other one so much, I don't want to switch.

You have him exactly. He wears plastic shower sandals all the time, which I love. He has a crew of lesser allotment men, who shout for him when they see me coming. I introduced another like-minded foreigner in our neighbourhood to buying there, and now we compete to see who can get the better produce from him. Really, I have to say I'm glad I decided to start cooking from this book in Japan - in Canada, it wouldn't be half as fun going to the Superstore and tossing a sad plastic bag of spinach from Mexico into my cart. There's no colour there at all, is there?

Oh, I'm glad you liked it. It warms my heart to know that dish being cooked by someone new. There's just something so cozy and delicious about it, isn't there? I have not abandoned Marcella, and her recipes, despite a posting absence. Most recently I've taken to making Salciccie con Cime di Rapa, from page 238, a recipe I had tabbed last fall in anticipation of nano hana season. I believe both nano hana and rapa are one and the same - if not, they're close enough for my purposes. I'm still frustrated, however, by Japanese sausages, which are both smaller and less flavourful than the ones she calls for. Even if they're extravagantly pierced all over with a fork, they barely yield a teaspoon of cooking fat. I've also returned again and again to the mushroom recipe - while the sausages here are a disappointment, the mushrooms are anything but. I've also tried the tagiatelle alla romagnola con sugo di spinachi on page 102, as the allotment in my neighbourhood has been turning out heaps and heaps of winter spinach for 100 yen a bunch. I continue to shock and awe the allotment man with my abilities to use vegetables. Sample conversation: (try to picture it in Japanese) Erin: ooh, spinach. I'll take it. Allotment man: Spinach? Do they eat spinach in Canada, America-san? (He calls me America-san, despite knowing I'm a Canadian. I'm taking it as a complement) Erin: Yes, we do. Allotment man: What do you call it? Erin: Spinach. Allotment man: Huh. Spinach in Canada. Is that so? Erin: That's so. I neglect, of course, to tell him there's no way in a hundred years anyone's taking fresh spinach out of the ground in Canada in February. I got my hands on some fresh tagliatelle that an Italian deli has started selling for the recession-friendly price of 200 yen a bag. The recipe is nothing more than a bunch of fresh spinach, sauteed extravagantly in olive oil and garlic, with some tomatoes added. Marcella's cookbooks really ought to be sponsored by the olive oil industry. That's the sum of the recipe, really, but if you're working with fresh, sweet spinach, the olive oil turns it velvety soft, and the sweetness is complemented by the tomatoes. Another hit. I used to torture my parents in a similar fashion with bacon.

Valuable information. When I'm able to face fried things again, say in six months or so, I'll try this out.

Wow, that doesn't really seem like a lot of time set aside for eating. I hope they're getting sturdy breakfasts at home. The remains of the karaage went into today's bento, along with some odds and sods from the fridge. I got a whopping great bunch of spinach from the local allotment, so that was steamed with a bit of sesame, and folded into the egg as well. The pickles were really grand - can anyone tell me the name of these? And how are they made purple?

I dried them extensively with paper towel in between fries. Are there any other methods for dehydrating them more? And does length of time between fries have any effect? I left them about an hour between each fry. And they go really well, together, too, don't they?

Last night I had some hot oil and a pack of chicken thighs on hand (and how often does that happen?) and thought - hey - why not try karaage? Let's see what everyone in the forums has to say about it.... I used Hiroyuki's method of fry; rest; fry; a 50/50 mix of flour and starch; and a marinade with a 2:2:1 ratio of sake:soy:mirin, along with some ginger and garlic. It came out perfectly! My first time ever! Who knew it could be so easy?! These are a definite must for my spring hanami bento. But it's almost like dangerous knowledge - now I know I can have perfect karaage any time I want....yikes.

Last night I finished up with three more tries. First, the triple cook method. Three minutes in the microwave oven, then a double fry: When I pulled them from the oil, they were definitely crisper than the ones made with the Robuchon method earlier, but went limp almost immediately. They had a creamy interior that I enjoyed - I hate mealy fries, I'm with Pam on this one. Next, the double cook method: Not so crisp as the triple after being pulled out of the oil, but they did not get appreciably limper after sitting a minute or two. The inside was drier, and approaching mealy in some chips. Finally, satsuma imo, for fun; these are a popular street snack in Korea. Garnished with shichimi togarashi. Very crisp with only a single fry in the oil. On the thicker chips, they had a mealy, sweet interior. Honestly, I think I cut them too thin, as most were too thin and hard all the way through for me to fully enjoy. Lesson: don't think a satsuma imo will behave the same way as an North American sweet potato. They're worth another try cut with a thicker chip - maybe 2 cm thickness? I think they'd result in a crisp exterior with a mealy interior. Dips: I didn't have any ketchup in the house - it's one of those things I always mean to buy, but never get around to. I used chinese black vinegar (excellent - very malty); soy sauce, a favourite dip from Vietnam; and Kewpie mayonnaise. I considered pouring garlic butter over - a popular practice in Japanese and Vietnamese izakaya/ beer hois, but I didn't on account of cost - not health Conclusions: I'm at the mercy of my potatoes. Not one method yielded an acceptable crispness, so I have to think I've just got the wrong kind of potato. I enjoy them a little limp, they didn't go to waste. But I doubt I'll bother making fries at home again, although if I did, I'd use the Robuchon method - if I'm going to end up with limp fries, I'd might as well use the least-fuss way.

I used satsuma imo. And they were crisp on a single fry. So crisp, in fact that the ones I'd sliced especially thinly were hard all the way through. I soaked them in a little vinegar water just to keep them from going brown, not to rid them of any starch.

Hiroyuki, is speed of eating an important factor in your children's lunches? How long do they get for their lunch period? Peter, I'm glad to see the bentos are off to a roaring start. What did you put into the boxes? I'm happy to pay you back in some small fashion, after all the valuable knowledge you've sent my way.

Oh, really? Pardon me while I go blot my fries.

I decided to try the Robuchon method linked above first, since it's fairly straightforward. Set-up: I started with one potato of undetermined breed. It was big, yellow, and waxy inside - I suspect a kita akari potato. I cut fairly thin fries, since the Robuchon topic suggests smaller fries are more successful. I put them into room temp oil and brought the temperature up to 175 degrees (I had a bit of a turn waiting for the temp to rise until I realized my thermometer was in Celcius), when they started to get quite dark. I pulled them, drained them, and tossed in salt. They were limp, creamy inside, and darkly brown on the outside. Exactly how I like them, but I suspect they'd be considered a failure by most people here. With a squidge of kewpie mayonnaise: I have a bowl of sliced sweet potatoes soaking, and a plate of pre-cooked potatoes cooling in the fridge for a triple cook process later. I will have my husband judge these methods later, when he returns home.

A topic near and dear to my heart. Radish peel daikon is a favourite of mine. These days I've taken to making daikon kimchi, since the daikon at the allotment stand are so cheap. I always use up the leaves, as well, since they're worm bitten enough to convince me he's not using a lot of pesticide. I've slipped some pickles back to the farmer, as well, and he now goes out of his way to give me a little bit larger bushel of whatever I'm buying whenever I turn up at his stand. I'm cooking strictly in season, and my husband is helping by supplementing our take with lots of vegetables from the Ofuna market, where most things are incredibly cheap. I have a mental map of everywhere I go for work, and take advantage of the fact that my employer pays for my trains. I always have a carrier bag in my purse, so if I'm swinging by a station that has a Kaldi coffee with a sale on, I can stock up on Italian tomatoes, or similar. They had coconut milk on for 137 yen a can this week, so that went into the basket! I also have potted herbs that I started with materials from the 100 yen shop.

As I've become more and more interested in home cooking, I've become more conscious of how to balance the types of dishes I serve together on the table. I've done most of my home cooking in Asia, and this continent takes this balance seriously. When I cook dinner in Japan, I always make sure I have a balance of dishes on the table to hit all of these flavour centres - the classic rice-soup-pickles combination, enhanced perhaps with a sesame-dressed green, to hit the North American part of my brain that requires "creamy" be added to this list; or a vinegar-and-sugar dressed crispy vegetable, to hit the "crunchy-sweet" button. If a meal doesn't get all these elements right, I feel, it's just not as satisfying. One of my husband's favourite meals is sweet-salty fried pork and ginger on rice, complemented with a bit of potato salad and some sour Japanese pickles. Sweet-salty-creamy-crunchy. Although I've only recently started thinking about it consciously, even when I was young I knew a good balance when I saw one - my favourite meal growing up was grilled chicken with barbecue sauce, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, and bread-and-butter pickles. Mounds of them. And I could never eat beef stew without dumplings and pickled beets. There are classic combinations in North American-style cooking, of course - a Thanksgiving dinner with roast turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce and stuffing comes to mind immediately. What combination of dishes do you and your family find the most satisfying?

I'm very excited about this topic, since I've never, aside from a brief flirtation with a lemon chicken recipe in university, done any serious deep-frying. Japan is the perfect place to start, though, since the 100-yen shops are filled with all sorts of knick-knacks to make frying easier, including draining racks, oil thermometers, attractive draining papers, and mysterious powders that solidify cooking oil after use. Leave it to Japan to make a messy operation clean. As for the potatoes, however, I'm going to make two kinds of fries: sweet potato and regular potato. I duly read through the potatoes in Japan topic, and am not optimistic about my chances considering the lack of suitable frying potato here, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. I like my potatoes more like English "chips" and less like thin, crispy "frites". Frankly speaking, I like a thick, floppy fry, with a creamy interior. Any tips on making this happen?

Last night I made invited some friends over, and we made ddalk galbi, which was fantastic, as ever. I even put shiso in, hoping to get that ganeep flavour, but it's a pale comparison. I like my version - gochujang thinned with soju and sesame oil and with a few tablespoons of gochu garu; a tablespoon or so of sugar, soy, and about half a head of crushed garlic; a wee bit of grated ginger. However, for me, the gold standard of seasoning is the Chuncheon ddalk galbi chain, but I can never get my sauce to taste like theirs. I feel like it has more complex spicing, but I can't figure out what they might be putting in. Any guesses on how they make the sauce?