nakji

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?

Mmm - Chicken Adobo. I really want to make this some time. Can it be made without an oven? Wow! What are the garnishes around the plate? And how did you make the galette? I worked through the weekend, so I didn't get the chance to do proper grocery shopping - fortunately, I was in the Korean neighborhood, so I picked up some ingredients for one of my husband's favourite meals - ddalk galbi. (Actually, I love it, too.) After we ate all the "big bits" out, I tipped some plain rice in the pan to "bokkum" it up. I wish I had a tabletop burner to keep it going until the rice is nice and crispy, because my burners are terrible. I made a side dish of soft tofu to cut the heat. Tonight was simpler - pasta with sundried tomato, mushroom and cream sauce, with a green salad on the side.

Well, one or two is all I'm sure I'm able to afford, so in that case, they suit me fine! If you had to limit yourself to , say 5 flavours, which would you choose? I've just found out that Pierre Herme has several shops where I live, so I'm going to try some for myself.

Can you tell me what the sprouts in the picture are? I bought a bag of them last week and love them! I've been sprinkling them on everything!

I can get that tofu at my local shop, but my husband doesn't like tofu. Anyone have any recipes for converting tofu haters? One of my favourite ways to make tofu is korean style - plopped on a plate with sesame oil, gochugaru, sesame seeds, and chopped green onion sprinkled on top.

I'm really enjoying your descriptions of meals in Paris. The food is so unlike anything I've ever had the opportunity to try. Your descriptions are so clear and thoughtfully written, I feel like I was there with you. I would love to try one of the Rose-Litchi macarons - it sounds heavenly, and I love litchis. I'm definitely in the crowd that prefer a lot of ganache. Please keep up your reports.

nakji! nakji!

Well, I may just have to try that. I can nikkujyaga my way through all the major meats. Has anyone ever attempted a lamb nikkujyaga?

Well, that kicks the ass of all my "Japanese cooking at home" attempts. I'm humbled. Also: I need better dishes. Tonight, because I'm in love with food from the 70's (Hey- potential thread idea!) I made steak au poivre. I'm finding that with a bit of creativity, I can cook anything in my frying pan, although my burner doesn't get very hot. Usually I would roast the potatoes in the oven as a side dish, but tonight I parboiled them, then tipped them into a pan of hot olive oil. I walked away for about 15 minutes, and when I came back they had crisped up nicely. I set them onto a hot plate, and then made the steak au poivre in "How to Cook Everything", with garlic and rosemary substituting for shallots and tarragon. I served it with a salad of iceberg lettuce, cucumber, and the mystery sprouts from last night, wit a sesame dressing. It was a success. I'd like to make this again, using Japanese premium beef, instead of the Australian steaks I used tonight. We'd get a lot less beef, but I think the taste would be superior.

Yes, it's the food section in the bottom of the Tokyu department store in Shibuya. He got them loose from the "Rosenheim" deli counter there. I didn't enjoy the red one very much - it tasted too strongly of cinnamon - but the herb one was mild and lovely. Still not as good as the ones we used to get in Hanoi, so I know what you mean - it's hard to find a good sausage. But these are the best we've tried so far.

These look really good. I'm a sucker for biscuits. Is a pipian a kind of sauce? I didn't know that Mexican cuisine used sesame seeds. I made my husband's favourite meal tonight - sausages with mustard potato salad. He bought the sausage at Tokyu Foodshow, a very, very dangerous place to go into, if you at all like food, and I made the potato salad from a recipe in Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything". It's the only kind of potato salad my husband likes because it doesn't call for any mayonnaise, just two kinds of mustard, and olive oil. I like it because it has a really sharp taste that cuts through the greasiness of the sausage. The recipe calls for basil leaves, but I found some sprouts at my vegetable stand that looked interesting, and they were only 30 cents, so I took a chance on them. They were really peppery, and complimented the salad perfectly.

I'm glad I don't have to face that at the end of a long day. I want to make some of these recipes for my family when I go home for christmas, but you made me realize that it might be difficult to get the right cut of meat. Thanks! I'll look for it at the supermarket. I wouldn't feel so bad about spending that much on mirin - I bought a bottle of marsala last week for the same price, and I'm sure I use that much less often. Chicken nikkujyaga sounds delicious, is the meat thinly sliced as well, or do they use cubes?

Wow! I can almost smell it. I miss a good bowl of Bun Bo Hue. Day 2 of my great boxed lunch adventure: Leftover chicken with teriyaki sauce, some broccoli stem and red pepper kinpira, and some mushroom rice. I had some kabocha squash I wanted to put in the top as well, but I'm still getting used to the dimensions of my box. So I plopped it on the rice, instead.

Well, after a terrible day that culminated with the JR Yamanote line shutting down at Shinjuku station in the middle of rush hour, I really needed one of these when I crawled in the door at 9 pm - After I downed it in about one gulp, I put some nikkujyaga on - this time with pork, for Hiroyuki. It was good, but Japanese beef is so much more richer than any beef I've ever eaten before, so I have to prefer the beef version! But the pork was delicious, too, and even better, there's a bit left for my bento tomorrow. I used the long potatoes instead of the round potatoes this time, and I think they held together better than before. I also used up all of my cheapy mirin, and I'd like to upgrade a little - can anyone post a photo of a good brand of mirin for me?

Those red sprinkles are S&B red chili flakes. They are finely ground, aren't they? Oh oh oh, KFC! - Korean fried chicken! Did it come with a little bag of pickled radish? I used to eat so much of the pickled radish I would get a stomachache! I miss it. I love eating a dish of green beans for dinner! When I was really hot in Vietnam, I made a salad with cold green beans with a bacon and mustard vinaigrette. With some bread and cold beer, it made a wonderful light supper.

Hmm, this will probably be my solution as well! I simmered my kabocha in the rejected gyu-don sauce from before (waste not; want not) and put it in the freezer as future bento stash. I tried a piece, and it was good, although a bit dry. I think it was because I didn't use a drop lid. I don't have one, but I'll try it with paper towel the next time. I couldn't resist buying a new bento box for myself the other day at Loft - beware of time off from work! The shops of Tokyo are too tempting! But it was a pleasure to reach into my bag today and take out my lunch. The squash pasta was leftover from the night before - I put aside a bit of plain pasta before tossing with the sauce, and kept some sauce reserved as well. Then this morning, I nuked the pasta in hot water briefly, then tossed with the leftover sauce. This meant the pasta wasn't dry and gloopy when I got to eat it at lunch. The pork in the top level was reserved from when I prepared the pork for my husband's lunch yesterday, and the tomatoes were marinated the night before, and kept in the fridge. The only work I had to do this morning was a quick microwave of the pasta and sauce, and I heated the pork in the same pan I was making my "toast" in. (No, I don't have a toaster. :sigh:) It cost me about 10 minutes of prep and two extra dirty dishes, so I think it was a good investment! The great thing about this is that wanting to have leftovers for my bento keeps my dinnertime portions limited! It's win-win.

No, it was very easy. The recipe is in the on-line dining section of the NYT this week, but I'm sure you could search for "40 Cloves of garlic" chicken. The only difficult part from my perspective was having to peel the garlic, which I understand you can buy pre-peeled in some places. I strongly recommend that option. I just subbed out some of the garlic cloves for garlic scapes. Gorgeous! Dinner tonight was kabocha squash pasta and garlic green beans.

One of the things I love about travelling (and eating) is that I'm always pleasantly surprised by the dishes I find. Since I grew up in a very homogeneous area of Canada, when I started to travel, it had never occurred to me that Japanese people liked curry, that people in India had their own take on omelettes, and that sweet potatoes and cake could have anything to do with each other. Peanut sauce on vegetables=salad? It does in Indonesia. Eggs and pancakes and curry sauce? Sure, I'll have some roti prata. Don't even start me going on about my first taste of char siu in Hong Kong. Pork for breakfast doesn't have to be bacon. I hope you get a chance to travel around and try the dishes you love to cook in their natural habitat! Breakfast this morning was another english muffin, topped with homemade veggie cream cheese. I used broccoli as a green element because I had it on hand, but next time I think I'll use green onion like the recipe called for.

Thank you! I love garlic scapes, and I'm always trying to find new ways to use them. I often put them in pan-fried meat parcels, to replace green beans in Thai green curry, they're also great with salmon. I sometimes toss them with penne in a 1:1 ratio and serve with bolognese sauce. It's a great way to cut down on pasta. All hail the garlic scape! A molten egg is never superfluous. Oh, my.

Thanks for the input, Hiroyuki. I think I might try the 7:5:1 ratio next time, because I don't think my husband likes a really assertive dashi taste. What can I say? He likes sweet things! How do you get ginger juice? I missed your picture of your son's bento earlier - it's very nice. You can't imagine how relieved I am to see that it stretched over several containers. Every time I go into a bento section in a store I can't imagine how people get whole lunches into such tiny boxes! On a technical note - what ratio do you simmer your kabocha in? And do you think I could make onigiri the night before? I don't have hot rice in the morning.