nakji

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.

Wow, kellytree, those all look great. I usually end up eating at around 10 o'clock, and I'm not beginner in the kitchen, either, so I can sympathize. Can you tell us what the dishes were? I see lentils..... How about my bitter tears of resentment? Shall I post a picture of my poxy two-burner glass range? My collection of one-dish recipes grows ever larger...last night, a tribute to Yoshinoya. Those ribs look great - do you mean "half mirin, half soy"? Because I have a thing for that particular ratio - it's what I used in my gyudon, pictured above.

Well, it does need some flavour. Nikomi Hamburg and roasted eggplant salad with miso dressing. I made some bean sprouts on the side, as well, dressed with sesame oil and soy sauce.

Mmmmmm...pickles. What are you pickling these days? I remember reading through your foodblog. I have a big tub of miso I need to use up, so I might start pushing some garlic cloves in. Bentos were done in about 20 minutes this morning - it took a long time because I was preparing two separate boxes with different ingredients. My husband's box had veg fried rice, using up the bits of vegetables lurking in my crisper. I fried up some gyoza, and included some gochujang thinned with vinegar to spice up the rice. It came back empty, so it must have been a hit. My bento had the rest of my sweet potato salad, marinated tomatoes, sliced cucumber, and a leftover remake of last night's sundried tomato pasta made into an omelette. These two bento really used up random bits of leftover food, so I'm feeling quite frugal! My bento making doesn't happen until 7:30 am, thank goodness!

Today's bento used leftover ddalk galbi from last night's dinner, along with the rest of the rice. I took the rest of the sweet potato that wasn't cut up for the ddalk galbi, nuked it and made it into sweet potato salad - a classic Korean panchan! It took about 10 minutes to prepare, (15 including potato cooling time) - I just reheated the food from the night before, and made the potato salad. Tomorrow is the first day I'll have to prepare two bentos. Wish me luck.

I have seen this on TV. It's absolutely true. Just check out the home shopping channel. The balloon is blue.

Do you make it with soft or firm tofu? And do you use one of the mixes you can buy in the supermarket, or do you make yours from scratch?