nakji

You're right, it was a vain hope. Is the cabbage there to go with the katsu, or is it lucky in its own right?

Oh, awesome! He likes both of those things. I'll have to buy the katsu Saturday night, though - there's no way I'll get up in enough time to deep-fry fresh ones. Then I'll need some sort of vegetable- how about mushrooms, or broccoli? Or carrots? I was thinking of drawing the kanji for luck on the rice in black sesame seeds, is that going overboard?

My husband is writing the Japanese Language Proficiency test this weekend, and has to bring a boxed lunch to the test site. He has requested a lucky bento, but I'm not sure what to put in, aside from a Kit Kat bar. Ideas? Help!

Recently I've read several books by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese author, and the translations have been driving me mad. Every time the protagonist sets out to cook something (which is often), the translations are so spare and awkward, it makes me study Japanese harder so I can read them in the original. The descriptions come out as , "I made spaghetti for lunch." And I'm thinking - well - what kind of spaghetti? Mentaiko? Ketchup? Can the character make bolognese? What are we talking, here?" I want to know if it's a flaw in the original writing or just indifferent translations. As for Sci-Fi or fantasy novels - I've been trapped in a lot of hostels, and I can tell you from reading the average fantasy novel that there is a very high consumption rate of mead, bread and cheese. In other genres - romance novels do a decent job of talking about food, I think. I recall Jude Deveraux being pretty obsessed with food descriptions, as is Jennifer Crusie.

I need to move to France, I guess. Anyway, I don't regret having tried it, but I'll save my 3,000 yen for mining the shop's Bordeaux selection from now on.

Oooooh ..... spooky. I freestyled it, and ended up doing almost exactly that. Miso, sesame seeds, sesame oil, ginger, garlic, shoyu, mirin and stock. Except I used dashi, not chicken stock. We put in tsukune, mushrooms, negi, cabbage, and some chicken wontons I made to celebrate getting my right hand back. We finished it with a pack of ramen noodles - my husband likes udon, but I like ramen noodles, so we compromise and do what I like. It was most excellent. Now I know I'm on the right track, I'll have to try it again. I'd also like to do a Korean shabu-shabu mushroom nabe - has anyone ever tried this? You stir up a broth with lots of chili and garlic, and dump in a giant plate of assorted mushrooms and greenery. When that has reduced a bit and the mushrooms are tender, you start to swish your beef around. There's a sweet/spicy dipping sauce - made with soy and wasabi, I think. Then after the beef has gone, you add udon noodles. If you're still sitting upright after all this, you pour the soup out. In another bowl, mix up cooked rice, a raw egg, chopped green onion, and bits of nori. Smear it around the inside of your oily nabe, and let it crust on over a low heat. Chip it off with your spoon.

How would I go about making a nabe with a sesame broth? I am thinking of adding sesame oil and ground sesame seeds to a basic dashi-mirin-soy stock. Has anyone ever made a nabe like this before? How did you go about it?

My husband got me a copy of Cooking Mama for DS in the hope that I'd get off the computer from time to time and play with that instead. Since it basically simulates work I have to do anyway, without the byproduct of edible food at the end, I don't find it very interesting. I like the part where you have to scale a fish, though, it makes a very satisfying noise.

pho belly- the state you reach when you've drunk up too much yummy broth from your noodles, and find it difficult to walk due to sloshing in your stomach. Can also be caused by ramen or kalguksu.

Please PM me the details. This week: mushrooms. There are lots of varieties of mushrooms available in Japan, and Fall is the season to eat them. I haven't broken down yet and bought the 2000 yen-for-one matsutakes in the supermarket - although don't think I haven't been tempted. Last weekend my husband and I were in Ofuna market at our favourite produce shop, and they had several kinds of mushrooms for cheap, so we loaded up. This produce shop is incredible. Literally 100 m from a luxury department store selling 10,000 yen melons, and individual limes wrapped in protective foam blankets, this shops sells Aomori apples four for 300 yen, bags of lemons for 100 yen – and my favourite – 1 kg of Chinese garlic for 100 yen. Unbelievable! My husband usually goes every Saturday on his lunchbreak, buys whatever is on sale, and texts me the “market report” as I’m at work, so that I may torture my co-workers. They don’t live anywhere near Ofuna, and are stuck shopping at the luxury department stores near their own home stations. This week, there were lots of mushrooms, so we got a pack of shiitakes, and two packs of eringi mushrooms. They always delight me, as the first part of the katakana in their name has the same spelling as my name in Japanese. These are the sort of things you take pleasure in when you’re functionally illiterate most of the time. I had no idea what I was going to do with them at the time, but Marcella never disappoints. Penne col Sugo di Funghi Coltivati, p. 132 Finally, finally I begin to really taste the insaporire, thanks to the pungent kick of the anchovy. Marcella writes, “The expression insaporire comes up in Italian oral or written recipes dealing usually with vegetables that are tossed with sautéed onion or garlic or both during the first cooking stage.” (p. 16) Now, if I learn nothing else from this book, this skill alone will have been worth it. A vegetable that has been properly treated stands up against any fine meat or cheese or piece of bread, as far as I’m concerned, and what better way to treat a vegetable than to bathe it in hot olive oil aromatic with sweet onions and spicy garlic? [On the weekend, I made a trip to the nearest Costco to load up on bulk olive oil – not the Kirkland, but an Italian brand. I hope I’ll stop choking when recipes call of olive oil in cup, rather than spoon measures.] From the recipe on page 132: “The mushrooms undergo two cooking stages: the first one draws away and evaporates their bland, taste-diluting liquid; the second concentrates their flavour together with that of wine, anchovies, tomatoes, and parsley.” After supervising sous-chef Peter’s prep work, (Erin: “Cut the onions in a small dice.” Peter [proudly] “I know what that means now!”) I took over the actual cooking. What do y’all use as cooking wine? I’m working on a bottle of something cheap and Chilean purchased from the convenience store . The two steps seemed to take forever, since I was starving, but once again, Marcella can’t be faulted. Despite using yet another can of tomatoes, this sauce was completely distinct from sauces that have gone before. The anchovy paste, garlic, and wine worked together to lend the mushrooms a meaty, earthy taste, and it reminded me of something I had tasted somewhere else before – but couldn’t put my finger on. What was it? I skipped the parsley, as ever, but am beginning to think I might invest in a plant. Another hit, anyway. Christmas is coming, and Santa might bring me another Marcella book. Any suggestions? Something with fewer veal recipes?

I have never lived in a country where wine has been "cheap". I'm used to paying around $20 US for what I'd consider a nice wine. I'd fear for my health if I lived anywhere it was cheaper than that! Especially if those two months I spent in Australia are any measure. Out of morbid curiosity, what does a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau go for on average in France?

I bought a bottle for the first time ever this year. I'd seen the hype in previous years, but there's something about buying wine in a convenience store that I can't get over. I don't know why, since I do practically everything else in my life in one. But quite frankly, those Georges DeBoeuf labels look downright cheap and tacky to me. This year, I have a wine shop that I visit regularly. I don't know much about wine, but I'm trying to learn, so my husband and I try to go every week and follow the owner's recommendations. When I went in over the weekend, the owner had six bottles open for tasting, so I tried a couple. The first, at the lowest end of the price scale (around 2500 yen) tasted like straight-up grape juice. Definitely not worth it. The second, which the owner recommended and priced at 2800 yen, was lovely - kind of peppery and astringent, if you'll pardon my descriptors. The last one, the most expensive I tried at 3500 yen, tasted like cherries. I liked it, but it seemed a bit one-note, so I got the peppery one - it was Domaine de Buis-Rond.

Now that....sounds like an apple recipe I can get behind, like. Excellent, excellent. Question: Graham Marsala - do you mean garam masala? Not some sort of Marsala wine? Now, somethings I don't have access to - the potatoes will have to be May Queens, and the brown sugar is a little different in these parts. Oooh, what do you think about substituting Daikon for the potato? Hmm. (And I agree with you about the dice on those apples, but I have a broken arm, and my husband is doing all the knifework around here, and he tells me I have to be patient.)

I just bought a rather large chunk of old cheddar that I'll be feeding off for the next few weeks. My favourite thing to eat with cheese is a bit of pickle. I normally make some quick pickled onions like these. But I'm in the mood for something a bit different - in the vein of Branston pickle, but perhaps not as complicated to make. My parameters: I have a small kitchen, with no canning equipment or storage. I need a quick pickle, in a small batch - something that'll yield about 2 litres (I can give some away). Daikon, Japanese turnips, cauliflower, leeks, carrots are all in season here. Any suggestions?

Wow, I guess I get in the mood for baked beans once a year around this time. Actually I've been craving beans for a while. Usually I'm happy with canned beans, but all the shops in my area have been stocking tomato baked beans, which I don't like. I don't expect maple baked beans, like you can get in Canada, but would the odd can of molasses baked beans kill anyone? Anyway - end run around the problem - I'll make them from scratch. Which is how I learned to cook anyway, since it was the loss of my favourite prepared foods when I moved to Asia that forced me to start making thing the better way. I got some gorgeous pinto beans at a local market while I was at work, and when I brought them back into the office, my British co-worker had some sniffy words to say about molasses baked beans, claiming they were inferior British tomahto-based beans. How did that schism happen, anyway? I assume it had something to do with the greater availability of molasses in North America. I don't have an oven, or even a dutch oven, so I googled stovetop methods and found this one. Worked great to cook the beans, but the sauce directions were too weak by my standards, so I doubled quantities. I didn't have any ketchup, either, so I substituted tonkatsu sauce goosed with tomato paste and some Vietnamese chili sauce. I did not soak.

I got these the other week as well. I think citrus and chocolate flavours go together well, so I enjoyed them. Why do they only ever come in minis, though? Last Fall, I seem to remember lots of different kinds of full-sized kitkats. This Fall: nothing. Maybe it's my 7-11.

ohmygodohmygodohmygod Kimchi and bread, together at last. Imagine the pork belly sandwiches that could be made with this. Can someone post a picture of this? Pretty please?

This is something that's been bugging me for a while: when you buy plastic packs of sushi at the supermarket, they give you little packs of soy sauce, right? If I take it home, of course I put it in a little dish for dipping. But more often, I'm taking the pack back to my office for lunch. How am I supposed to apply the soy sauce? The package has no convenient well to empty it into, so I mostly just try to sprinkle it delicately and evenly over the pieces. Is there a better way?

Oh, that sounds great - I've never thought of mixing apples and oranges. How much orange juice did you add? I had a couple of apples accumulate on my counter this week, which I received as gifts. I normally dislike apples, and I especially dislike the varieties grown in Japan, as they're too sweet for my taste. I like a tart apple. My husband was making noises about throwing them out, but I hate waste more than I hate apples. Sure enough, I log in, and what's on the forums but a topic on apple sauce. D'uh, of course. Sean Dirty, I took your challenge and made your applesauce because I was intrigued by the use of wine for simmering. I thought it might cut the sweetness, and it really did. I used a touch of honey instead of maple syrup, and peppercorns instead of nutmeg, since I didn't have any on hand. The dice on the apple isn't as pretty as I'd like since my husband did it for me, but otherwise I was really happy with it. Not like babyfood at all. We had it with pork loin for dinner, and with oatmeal for breakfast. There's still some left, which I might pair with some old cheddar for pre-dinner snacks tonight. Do you have any ideas for an apple chutney?

Risotto con la Verza e il Parmigiana, p. 161 Finally, I got around to making this recipe with rice. In the spirit of using what's around me, I used 1 cup of regular koshihikari rice, and 1/2 cup of mochi rice. I've never actually eaten arborio rice, and when I make risotto from Mark Bittman's recipe, I never think twice about using the Japanese rice I have on hand. This time, I felt a slight twinge, but I soldiered on. Now that it's winter, I always have chinese cabbage on hand for making nabe, so that substituted for the savoy cabbage. I followed her instructions to the letter, however, on cooking it to "a rich nut brown". What is it about the marriage of bacon fat and cabbage that adds up to more than the sum of its parts? Making this reminded me of making one of my favourite Korean home cooking dishes, kimchi bokkumbap, where you fry kimchi and some fatty pork - Spam is popular, but I like to use thin strips of pork belly. It took forever to make, but came out satisfactorily creamy, I think, despite not having any cream. I think the addition of mochi rice was a brainwave, really. We devoured it while watching Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food, episode two. I love eating and watching TV about food at the same time. Do I get a certificate I can put on my fridge? And that's what I'm afraid of!! See, that's the sort of thing I always remember about my travels. And I can smell Siberia now that you've shared that - isn't there something intriguing about a delicious and a harsh smell mixing? I feel like I'm there with you. And since I'm Canadian, I know exactly the feeling of hot air escaping out a cold window - and who can forget the smell of diesel? Oooh, she got me with bad karma for making all those substitutions. [clenches good fist, shakes it at the sky]

I'm glad you enjoyed it! I always use the cheapest block parmesan from Seijo Ishii for mine. I like it as a foil for spicy foods, or other highly flavoured dishes. I'd like to translate the flavours into a soup, but I think they'd need a spike of acid - maybe apple or yuzu. What do you think?

Blue Pumpkin wasn't worth writing home about, just some wizened muffins and dry cookies for the people who travel to SEA and want to eat Western food. The ice cream was good in the heat, though. Happy Herbs pizza - it won't be the best pizza you've ever eaten, put don't plan any ambitious projects for the next day, if you know what I mean. Whatever you do, don't get "extra happy". I liked Dead Fish tower, but I thought the focus there was Thai - I could be remembering wrong.

Great. I know the water gets turned over every day, but it's nice to know it stays fresh during the day. I don't know what brand the maker is, I've never looked that closely at it. It's usually kept at 90 degrees Celsius in my office, and I usually brew loose leaf green tea with it. I use the first pulse of water to heat the pot - a Japaneses pot which is much smaller than a Western pot. I used to think I hated tea, until I moved to Asia. Then I realized I disliked most bagged "orange pekoe" teas - the kind my parents drank. What's Russian tea?

Dong Incheon station, in Incheon South Korea, used to have this amazing potato sandwich vendor. Three slices of lightly toasted white bread, with one layer filled with cooked ham, and the next layer filled with warm potato salad spiked with more shards of ham. The whole this was then fried in a little margarine. That and a Vegemil would cure what ails you.

I have been to the Yokohama ramen museum. Not only does it feature no less than eight regional styles of ramen for your sampling pleasure, the whole place is a mocked-up Showa era streetscape, where you can visit a candy shop, watch busker routines, or take goofy pictures of yourself in front of old movie posters. Serious fun, and delicious ramen. My favourites were the tonkotsu ramen with roasted garlic chips, from Kumamoto, and the miso ramen from Sapporo. Yokohama Ramen Museum blog post.