torakris

I wonder if you would dry them the way vietnamese ricepaper wraps are done. On a basket (or maybe a linen towel?) in the sun (aka slow oven?) That sounds like a good idea. I have been searching the internet (both English and Japanese) for info on dring yuba/bean curd skins and have come up empty....

My favorite miso soup of the moment is made with satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potato), onions or scallions and bit of yuzu-koshou (a paste of green chile and yuzu) added at the table. My husband is getting sick of it though......

I often do this with the kari kari ume. the crunchy ones. I chop them up and then mix them with the rice before making the onigiri. For whole umeboshi I prefer the hachimitsu (honey) umeboshi, there aren't nearly as salty.

I too prefer the kabayaki style but when you need to feed a family of 5 on a tight budget, dishes like yanagawa nabe and unagi-gohan are life savers when you have a craving for eel!

Yanagawa nabe is wonderful! Just a quick note on Hiroyuki's recipe, he forgot to say when to add the eel. You want to simmer the gobo until tender, then lay the pieces of eel in the pan and simmer for just a minute then add the eggs. This really a simply dish. Depending on where you live mitsuba could be hard to come buy, but if your pack of frozen eel comes from Japan there may be a pack inside of tare (sauce) and sansho included. Sansho should also be in most Japanese/Asian stores.

word for 5/31: カジキ kajiki (kah-gee-key) This is a general name for some types of marlin and swordfish that are popular in Japan. There are 6 to 7 types caught off the shores of Japan and we will be discussing them the next couple days.

I saw an interesting show on tv last night, it was about dieting and was mostly discussing the newest trend of the nigari diet. They started off by stopping 1000 people randomly on the street (men and women) and found 186 of them currently "using" the nigari diet. 72% of the people on the diet reported no weight loss at all, while the 28% that did have weight loss averaged about 1 kg (2 lbs) a week with out changing eating habits or exercising. The "experts" set out to find out why. Both groups both took in the same amount of nigari per day but the groups that wasn't losing weight was putting into drinks that the drank throughout the day, while the group that was losing weight added it to their directly to their food. This was the big difference, apparently the magnesium in the nigari forms a temporary barrier of sorts that lets the fats in the food pass right through the body. So when it is just drunk alone without food it does nothing to prevent the fats eaten later from staying in the body. The people who lost the most weight were the ones (who unknowingly) were eating the nigari with vitamin B1 rich foods. The scientific explaination of this was a little over my head (and I didn't feel like pulling out a dictionary for a translation ) but the combination of the two seems to heat up the body in some way. So in the conclusion of the show they said that to be successful on the nigari diet you need to eat about 25 drops of nigari with your food and preferably foods rich in vitamin B1.

I really love onigiri and with 3 kids it is a wonderfully cheap lunch, when you make your own! Some of my favorites: yukari grilled semi-dried fish (himono) flaked and mixed with shiso and sesame seeds really salty salmon grilled then flaked and stuffed into the middle yaki-onigiri (grilled) I like to do these on the BBQ and my favorite is to spread them with kochujang (Korean pepper miso) and wrap them with an ekoma or shiso leaf

I have to admit that before I decided to teach this class I had never made yuba at home before and honestly I had never even considered it. Yuba is incredibly expensive in Japan and I thought that you needed to have the skill of a professional tofu maker to do it. I was pleasantly surprised at just how easy (though time consuming ) it was. An hour may sound like a long time but I am often in the kitchen for that long making dinner anyway. Other times did it while I was cleaning the house, I just went back into the kitchen every couple minutes or so. One day I was tired of being in the house and I made the yuba while I was outside talking to neighbors, I would run back in the house every 5 minutes or so a couple times the yuba had almost lifted out of the pan forming a tent! , it was slightly drier than the others but good nontheless. One thing I still haven't gotten quite good at is getting the yuba to come off in a perfectly formed circle, the way it is served, sort of layered in a bowl it doesn't really matter but if you want to use it for other cooking applications, or for drying you may need to practice a bit. Yuba really tastes best eaten soon after making and I wouldn't recommend keeping homemade yuba more than 24 hours. If you plan to eat it without further cooking and want to hold it for a couple hours I would suggest covering it with the left over soy milk from the pan and then refrigerating it so it doesn't dry out I have never tried to dry out fresh yuba so I am not sure how long it takes but it could require a good deal of counter space, the best thing for drying would probably be a bamboo dish like strainer, I am not sure how just something like papertowels would work.

With the small amount of tofu you would be making at home I don't think you really need to add anything, it takes just seconds to skim off the foam.

a site with lots of great pictures (of convenience store) onigiri: http://www.greggman.com/japan/onigiri/onigiri.htm

The weather is getting nice and it is time to start enjoying our food outside! What better than onigiri? what are your favorites?

I believe way back we were talking about kamasu (red/Japanese barracuda). Beside eating in the dried hiraki style, kamasu can be eaten in a multitude of ways from sashimi to deep fried, sauteed, simmered, etc. Becasue of the smallish size of the fish it is most often cooked and served with the head and tail intact. Here are some pictures of various preparations of kamasu (scroll down to see them all): http://www.toshin.co.jp/cook/00_06/kamasu/kamasu.html

Shinju, first off welcome to egullet and the Japan Forum! One cookbook I have has 3 kinds of ume jam, one made with the ripe ones, one made with the green ones and one made with the leftover pulp from ume essence making. So I guess there are types out there for everyody! The ripe ume one looks similar to an apricot jam (my favorite) and I think I might give that a try this year. The ripe plums should be in the markets very soon.......

The rest of the pictures have been added! Including pictures of iridofu (stir-fried tofu dish), koya-dofu (freezedried tofu dish) and the yuba making process.

oops, I was so busy thinking about the soy class I forgot a word for today. word for 5/29: ごめんなさい gomen nasai (goh-men nah-sigh) I'm sorry though for some reason I have a feeling I may have used this word before.....

Yesterday some of my (Japanese) neighbors and I were talking about foods that they miss from either childhood or their hometowns and the women who just moved in next store less than two months ago from Osaka asked where she could find some Tokyo corroke. Everyone just stared at her as no one had ever heard of such a thing..... Apparently they are quite popular in Osaka, little balls of corroke skewered on a stick, I found a picture: http://satouno.hp.infoseek.co.jp/photo/ebisu.htm

Then you MUST try the fresh kind! It is a completely different product. I have seen recipes for fresh yuba and they normally involve the yuba skin wrapping up something else and either being eaten as is, simmered or deep fried. I am rather a purist when it comes to yuba and prefer the very simple way that it s served in the picture, with soy sauce and wasabi. More information about yuba recipes can be found in this thread on yuba: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=42292

I just checked out the website fort his place: http://www.windsor-hotels.co.jp/0601/english/main.html gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous!

It is probably a combination of both and the fact that this is what they do for a living! The age and quality of your soybeans are probably not the same as what a tofu shop would have access to. I also noticed differences in the taste of soy milk when I varied the pureeing time in the food processor, tofu shops use machines that may crush them more efficiently. Also don't forget to think about the water you are using.....

I was one of those people who turned up my nose at it before I had ever even tasted it! Then in college a Friend introduced me to mabodofu (at a Chinese restaurant) and I was hooked! It took me many years to feel comfortable cooking it because I wasn't sure what to do with it. I have a pack of some type in my refrigerator at all times and now I love to think up new ways to use it! One of my favorite lunches is a block of silken tofu cut into cubes with some cut up cucumber and topped with the Thai sweet-chile sauce.

For some reason, some of the pictures were left off, so while we are working to get that fixed here is a picture of the yuba (tofu skins) This is really worth making for yourself, I paid only 100 yen ($1) for all the soy milk needed to make that and the same amount if bought from a tofu store here would cost about 700 yen ($7)! You can get it a little cheaper in the supermarket at $4-$5 but it doesn't taste nearly as good!

No. Tofu making from the soy bean is not really a simple task. Though it isn't particularly difficult it is very time consuming and considering the low price of tofu in the stores it is not something would do regularly. The version with soy milk is incredibly easy though and it does taste better than most supermarket varities, though you are limited by uses for the final product.

I am planning on doing a second part but it will focus on other uses of the daizu legume, miso and soy sauce. I do have a mabodofu recipe that is great! But for this class wanted to stick with Japanese foods, though mabodofu in Japan could almost be considered a traditional Japanese dish it is so popular. Soy milk has really just become huge quite recently, the variety in flavors is really incredible. Just 2 days ago I had a soy milk-espresso shake at Tully's (coffee shop) that was wonderful!

Try this recipe: http://www.epicurious.com/run/recipe/view?...o&queryType=and it is really great! While not a traditional dish, it combines a lot of Japanese tastes and is really simple to prepare. I normally make this for a group and use a whole side of salmon..... The Japanese don't really BBQ in the way that Americans think of as BBQ. 90% of the "BBQ's" I have been to in Japan consist of the exact same things: a variety of meats, seafoods, and vegetables grilled normally with out any oil or seasoning (though sometimes the meats are sprinkled with this musty tasting salt and pepper mixed product), then they are dipped into a bottled, purchased sauce. Then when everyone is full they pull out the griddle and make yakisoba... Japanese foods that could be adapted to a BBQ: yakitori teriyaki sauced anything onigiri (rice balls) are wonderful cooked on the BBQ try some Japanese vegetables, shishito (little peppers), soramame (like fava beans) grilled in the shell, Japanese sweet potatoes wrapped in damp newspaper tehn foil and placed in teh coals for about 20 minutes miso and scallion stuffed squids, or the same miso and scallion mixture spread onto a scallop on the half shell and then grilled Kobe beef....