nakji

Hey, good food is good food. I'm not picky! And the chances of me having a nice big dinner with lots of fabulous Vietnamese dishes is much greater than the chances of me getting anywhere near the French Laundry! So call your Mum, and while you're at it - ask her how long she cooks her caramel pork, and whether or not she uses pork shoulder.

Well, the museum was fabulous! We ate our lunches in Inokashira park, which was beautiful. It was a bit like being in a Ghibli movie, actually, as all of the trees had their finest colours on, and soft breezes sent fluttering cascades of golden leaves onto us as we ate. If you know "My Neighbour Totoro" at all, hopefully you'll get what I was trying to do with this photo... My Husband prefers sandwiches, so he got a roast beef Totoro, with pickled eggplant accents. I like the "soot gremlins" as they're properly called in English. These are tuna mayonnaise onigiri - my favourite! These are the first onigiri I have ever made. Next time, more salt. It took about an hour to put these together, mostly because I prepared two separate boxes with different ingredients. It was nice for a special occasion, but you wouldn't catch me making these every day! I only lost one eye in transit, too, which was nice. I mainly credit that to the fact that I'm an adult who pays attention to carrying my bento upright when I'm on the bus/train. I wouldn't expect similar results for a child. Monday's lunch had the egg and chicken crumbles inspired by Torakris's conbini bento. It was delish, but hard to eat with chopsticks. Next time I'll pack my fork. It inspired a gasp of awe from my American co-worker, who was startled to realize that things bought in a conbini can be made at home. Next week, I'll shock him with spaghetti.

Oh yeah, it probably totally is. But unlike a lot of other (noodle) dishes, it was readily available at restaurants in Hanoi. My favourite version, actually, was at Stop Cafe on Bao Khanh....*sigh. So Tender! You could shred the pork with your chopsticks.... mine is always too tough. I guess I need to braise it longer... I call this condition "pho belly", which results from having drunk up too much broth for your belly to handle, so you walk home with it sloshing around from side to side.

Thanks! One of the things I love about Hanoi is that every two hours, there's a whole new set of food to enjoy! But food is really time sensitive, and nothing of note is served between 1-3pm, so I suggest getting up early like the locals do, and catching a nap in the early afternoon. I also strongly recommend a visit to Chim Xao, a restaurant on Ngo Hue (right off Pho Hue, not too far down from Hoan Kiem Lake, on the left), where the whole steamed soy sauce fish and the bo luc lac are great. I recommend chicken street, off of Nguyen Thai Hoc, near Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. I'm not sure, but I think the street name is Ly Van Phuc - anyway, there's a cloud of chicken grease smoke over it, so you can't miss it. Get the sweet potato, banh my, and chicken thigh. You won't regret it. Please post pics when you come back.

I'm not sure if that Banh Cuon place is still there, but I know banh cuon can be had in Hanoi. There was a small stall selling it across from my house on Phan Phu Tien (near the Temple of Literature). Like most street food in Hanoi, though, it's extremely time-sensitive. They only make it from 6am-9am, then they would switch to prepping for bun cha for lunch 10am -1pm. Some serious Hanoi foodies hang out over here, you can try looking around or posting a question there. Good luck!

I've really had to reduce the amount of food I keep on hand in the past few years. When I was living outside of Seoul, I had a big kitchen, and often kept ingredients for three or four different cuisines on hand at any given time - basmati rice for when we felt like Indian, Korean rice for Korean dinners; various and assorted European and Asian spices, etc. - I'm sure you all know what I mean. When I moved to Hanoi, the options for dried goods shrank incredibly - although I could go to the wet market and pick up any number of fresh and exotic fruits and vegetables, simple things like fresh meat (that I trusted) was a lot harder to find. My solution? Stop cooking, eat on the street like everyone else. If you looked in my fridge in Hanoi, it held Halida beer, limes for G&Ts, and condensed milk for coffee - and it was only in there to keep it away from the ants. Then I moved to Tokyo. Dinner out is $30 a head, unless you're eating fast food, which I try to avoid when at all possible. So it's back to the stove. But - I have two tiny burners and two shelves for storage. My fridge would be a bar fridge in Canada. It required a complete change of thinking. The first week I was here, I was listening to a podcast on the train about housing designers and the emergence of a trend for high square footage living in the US and Canada. One of the designers said something that has stuck with me: "Small fridges make for good neighborhoods". In my case, this is very true. On my way home from the train station every night, I pass three green grocers, a fish shop/take-away sushi, a mini-supermarket, and a bakery. I have switched to planning my meals on Saturday morning, and then picking up the meat and staples I'll need for the week at the supermarket. Then, every night as I come home, I pick up whatever fruit or veg I need to complete the meal. My pantry holds a bottle of mirin, a bottle of soy sauce, a bottle of veg oil, a bottle of olive oil, and a bottle of rice vinegar. I have a small bag of salt, sugar, and flour. I have another small pouch of Korean red pepper flakes, some tubes of tomato paste, instant dashi, and a bottle of good Marsala. I have resisted buying traditional western spices, because without an oven, I'm not baking or roasting. It's been a real learning experience for me, but it's interesting how many great and delicious meals you can make from a few ingredients. It helps if you stick mainly to one cuisine, though, and right now I'm using the opportunity to learn more about Japanese home cooking. That being said, when I'm back in Canada for the holidays, I'll be reveling in my parents' spacious fridge (Look! Three kinds of juice cooling at once!) and baking up a storm. But I guess my point is, you can prepare wonderful meals from a small range of ingredients with a little thought and care.

Are the egg yolks cooked first, or slipped in raw?

My friend let me know he was signing on for another Tet tour this year in Vietnam. It made me so nostalgic -I miss Hanoi, especially on drizzly cold Tokyo days. I came home and made two of my favourite Hanoi home cooking dishes. Caramel Pork: I made this with bullion powder instead of fish sauce, like my Vietnamese friend in Hanoi showed me. She didn't like the taste of fish sauce, and I didn't have any on hand, anyway... My second favourite dish - tofu and tomato. In Hanoi, I would buy squares of freshly cubed fried tofu from a lady in the market, frying them fresh for everyone in a giant black wok. In Tokyo, I get it in a plastic pack. Not nearly as romantic, but just as convenient. This dish is so simple to make, and so delicious. Just saute ginger, green onion, and some garlic in a neutral oil. Then add fresh or canned tomato and the tofu, and some salt and sugar to taste. Simmer until the tofu expels some oil into the tomatoes, and it becomes more than the sum of its parts.

I'm in awe! Thank-you, that's exactly the information I needed. I think soot gremlins will be fun to make, and I'll try to make the cat bus for my husband. It's his favourite! I'll post some photos to show you what I end up with. Scrumptious! I'd eat that bento up quickly! Enjoy your well-deserved rest. I'm going to watch Totoro again for inspiration.

Ah! I've seen the sakura denbu in the store, and not known what it was. The colour is so unusual - I didn't think it was food! The chicken crumbles are great, and look like a great addition to my bentos, one my husband will definitely like. He's really enjoying getting a bento for lunch, and I'm having fun making them.

I'm not sure if this belongs in this thread, but it seemed more appropriate than the "Pizza in Japan: horror stories" thread, as this pizza was a dream. We went to Forza Napoli! near Ikejiri-Ohashi station in Setagaya-ku. It has take-away, restaurant, and lounge spaces, and some pretty incredible pizza. The crust was so light and crispy - but still had enough heft to be chewy. I'm so used to thin-crust pizza that are like chewing on crackers - I had a horrible prejudice against wood oven pizza for a long time, but it turns out I was just eating crappy ones. I am a complete convert. I had one with marscapone, proscuitto, and mushrooms. Prices were reasonable, with a Margherita at 1,400 yen, up to 2,500 yen for seafood pizzas. You can even do half-and-half, if you can't make up your mind.

I want to make a kyara ben this weekend for my visit to the Ghibli museum in Mitaka, but I can't find many images in an English search on Google. I can't figure out how to type any of the kana on my computer, although I can read them all. I know there must be lots of results on Japanese sites. Can anyone out there help me? I'd like to do something with soot gremlins, and the cat bus, if possible. This week's winners: Chorizo sausage, mustard, olives, cheese, homemade flat bread, olives, and carrot. Not your traditional bento! And in the greasy-but-good category, sesame noodles with vegetables, gyoza, bean sprout salad, and mashed sweet potato with miso.

I can't read enough of the site to tell - do they make their own french fries? That to me would be worth a trip to Roppongi.

Recently I had a great burger at Homeworks, in Hiro-o, just a block down from National Azabu Supermarket (which I was extremely disappointed with - I went expecting a Hong Kong's City Centre style market, and ended up with a store full of defrosting off-the-base hot dogs and repackaged Costco items ) In consolation, we went for burgers, and they were great! We had 150 g burgers with bacon and cheese, and they came with juicy fresh vegetables, and some sort of sour cream/onion/cream cheese schmear. The fries were indifferent - I wouldn't bother to get them again, they were just frozen shoes strings. The onion rings were breaded, which I prefer to tempura style, like MOS Burger. Two Asahi draft, two burgers, one onion rings, one large fries came to about 4,000 yen. They have homemade desserts as well, but I was stuffed. The atmosphere was casual, and there's no smoking on weekends!

I made these for dinner tonight, and they were a hit! I made them individual size, and I used Bittman's dough recipe from "How to Cook Everything". I let the dough rise in the fridge all day (while I went Christmas shopping), and it was dead easy to roll - I didn't even need to use the makeshift roller I had on hand - an old Skippy peanut butter jar - I just shaped them by hand. It was no problem to get it thin enough. Toppings were crap grocery store "pizza toast sauce" and "pizza cheese", elevated with fresh basil, precooked chorizo sausage, carmelised onion, and sundried tomato. We ate two each. Living without an oven, this is the perfect solution for us! It's difficult and expensive to order pizza in, as well, and I prefer to make my own, anyway. I'll be making these again.

Last week's best bento - bibimbap! Or as it's known here - bibinpa. Although the best bibimbap is served hot in a stone pot, this one was great anyway - I just made sure to drizzle the rice with a little sesame oil for easy mixing. I put in spinach, mushroom, bean sprouts, leftover beef, and a fried egg. The rice had crumbled nori, and a little kimchi on the side. The blue elephant container has the gochujang. I mixed everything in the bento cover - highly satisfactory! I punked out for two days this week, but I have to say that nothing available for sale on the campus tastes as good to me as my own packed lunch.

Like me! What a brainwave! That's going on my "Recipes to try" list. On Friday I went to a Thanksgiving potluck with some other teachers. My contribution: Chicken with garlic. We also had Kabocha soup, sweet potatoes with white miso (stunning!), salad, grilled eggplant with miso...it was great!

I can't wait to see it! It reminds me of my parents' old kitchen before they redid it.

And I pretty much relived the four years I spent in Korea! Next time you're there, try the "rainbow soju" and get Jason to take you to the 50-year old makkeolli hut in the back of Jongno. If you want to try some of these dishes at home, check out The Korean Home Cooking thread.

Is it possible to do baked beans on a stovetop? I don't have an oven, and I wanted to amke baked beans as a side for a Thanksgiving potluck I've been invited to. Has anyone tried to cook them this way? I don't have a crockpot or a pressure cooker either - I'm using a seriously challenged kitchen right now!

Additionally, you could try using Korean pepper sauce (gochujang) thinned with a little sesame oil or rice vinegar for dots and swirls. It would be really simple to make and provide a bright contrast on the plate.

That's really nice! What's the brown stuff in the lower left hand corner, next to the egg? Is it ground beef? I especially how they manage to get so many elements in. Day-today, I can't imagine having all those little pieces prepped - one tomato, one teaspoon of potato salad, one korrokke.....making only one bento is hard work and takes a lot of planning. I have a system where I make a list of each night's dinner, and then little diagrams of my bento containers for the next day. Then I look at dinner and decide what can be used again or reworked for lunch the next day. Then I fill it in with other bits like eggs or veggies. Today, however, I was suffering from being away all weekend, and not having anything in my arsenal. I used frozen rice, reheated, and tamagoyaki. I also had some gyoza in the freezer that went in as well. To make up for the parlous lack of vegetables, I added the carrot veggie art.

Yoink! I'll be using that recipe, thank you very much! It looks incredible. Did you make the rice from the recipe as well? I might try it with plain rice instead. Peter the eater, those fish look gorgeous! I've been craving orange beef for a while, and checked out a few recipes - the crispy fried kind and the stir-fried kind, and I really like the crispy kind, so I came home with good intentions for making that style. Of course, I took one look at my tiny range and gave up and made the stir fried kind. It was good anyway! Served with stir-fried bean sprouts in sesame oil, soy sauce and Korean red pepper.

Ooooooh - I understand now. What's tempura sauce like? I've never seen it. :sob:

Milgwimper - this one's for you. Kimchi fried rice, and mandu/gyoza. Normally, you'd want a fried egg with kimchi fried rice, but I was worried about food safety. All this box is missing is yellow pickled radish! This box wasn't exactly healthy, but it went down pretty quick at lunch. Yesterday I had leftovers from Tuesday night's dinner - eggplant salad with miso dressing, and leftover mini nikomi hamburgers. I added some kabocha I had stashed in the freezer. This was definitely my favourite box this week.