torakris

A quick search on yahoo Japan and it seems there is some variation here, some places have menus that offer various kinds one such menu read Takoyaki Japanese style (regular I am assuming?) cheese cheese and mochi cheese mochi and corn (these all include octopus as well) shrimp (instead of the octopus) Other menus had no variation in the takoyaki themselves but you have a choice of sauces, they have soy sauce, spicy sauce or sweet sauce. Other places advertised themselves as Kansai (Osaka area) style and others as Kanto (Tokyo area) style, though have no idea what the difference is.

words for 2/10: Most of the other green (blue) nashi don't really make appearances in the markets outside of their growing areas. You either need to order them from the orchard yourself or be lucky enough to have a relative who is kind enough to send you some every year. Many nashi have a very short season, lasting anywhere from about 2 to 4 weeks in September. Some of the other green varities are 菊水　きくすい kikusui 八雲　やくも yakumo 新星　しんせい shinsei

Interesting, but I don't know if I would consider them takoyaki any more...... They sound almost closer to taikyaki or imagawayaki but with a round shape. I am assuming she is not adding onions as well and definitely not topping them with sauce and bonito flakes....?? Other takoyaki variations?? I saw cubes of mochi in them once.

word for 2/9: 二十世紀梨　　にじゅうせいきなし nijuu-seiki-nashi (knee-jew-say-key nah-shee) Nijuu-seiki means 20th century, and these are one of the most popular nashi in Japan. Over 50% of them are grown in Tottori prefecture and you can find them in the markets between August and October. picture: http://www.maruka-ishikawa.co.jp/veg-fru/i...iki/nijuss2.jpg

first a quick word about nashi or Asian pears, they are generally divided into 2 categories: aka-nashi ("red" meaning brown in color) ao-nashi ("blue" meaning green in color) we will start off with the green ones...

Had a very busy Sunday, finally got a round to planting my cranberry bushes and I also pulled my yuzu, sudachi and kumquat trees out of their planters and put them into a nice sunny part of the backyard. I also finally pulled down the remains of my various tomato and pepper plants...... THEN I tackled the kids bedroom and ended up with 3 bags of trash, so I wasn't really in a mood for cooking dinner. Chicken wings simmered in a rice vinegar-soy-sugar-garlic-ginger sauce with hard boiled eggs, burdock root (gobo) and broccoli, served a top Japanese rice I did find time to make some double chocolate cookies for dessert though....

My cold took a dive for the worse on Saturday and I spent most of the day curled up on the couch in front of the TV, that rest must have been what I needed because I feel much better today! Anyway i was craving some comfort food so Saturday dinner: penne with Italian sausage, onions, chickpeas and tomato sauce I added lots of fennel seeds because I like them! I got the idea for this from a dish Heather made a little while back.....

I think we have all had enough of apples so let's move on! word for 2/8: 梨　なし nashi (nah-shee) Usually referred to as Asian pears, we will be discussing these the rest of the week.

When my husband and I were living on Maui breakfast almost everyday consisted of fruit mostly mangoes and papayas followed with guava juice. I wish I could eat like that again but they are so expensive in Japan and they don't taste the same. Sometimes I think about all of the guava we smashed beneath our car tires on our trips to Hana (the most beautiful part of Maui), they practically line the road, I swear next time we go back i will eat them off the road I miss them so much!

word for 2/7: アルプス乙女 arupusu otome (ah-rhue-pooh-sue-oh-toe-may) This is the most popular crabapple for eating out of hand, these ping pong ball sized apples start appearing on supermarket shelves around October. http://www.tsuji.ac.jp/hp/zai/gif/arupu.gif

Hiramatsu http://www.hiramatsu.co.jp/ is a restaurant I would love to get to, I know he has a restaurant in France and maybe one in the US as well? He also has a couple cafes around Tokyo that maybe more affordable. I was quite surprised at the prices of some of these Iron chef restaurants, I expected them to be much higher and many of them have cafes or more casual restaurants. Ishinabe's Vietnam Alice restaurants are very reasonably priced and seem to be very popular with the Japanese. there is one about 15 minutes from my house and almost all of my neighbors have been and raved about it! I was supposed to go this past week with some friends, including a friend from Thailand who loves the place, but it was canceled because half of us were sick. Here is some information about the restaurant, the menu and pictures (sorry Japanese only): http://www.bellevie-akasaka.com/bellevie/s...-alice/main.htm The most popular seems to be the 1500yen lunch (about $13) with 4 types of spring rolls (fresh and deep fried) a bowl of pho and a dessert.

I have never been to Korea, but some of these things sound very Japanese as well. Ketchup and mayo mixed together is a very common sauce here especially for deep fried foods and when you order french fries in most family style restaurants they will come with a small bowl of ketchup and mustard in a ying-yang pattern. I have also seen this "sauce" dressing cabbage or lettuce leaves. Whip cream sandwiches are popular here too, usually with fruit, this is what they look like: http://www.c-store.co.jp/shinshohin/reco0113_1.html strawberrry sandwich I have never seen the cream directly on meat but they do package the sanwiches 3 halves to a pack and I have seen a strawberry sandwich in the same wrapper as a katsu sandwich and a cucumber and tomato sandwich. Whipped cream-like potato salad is a very popular sandwich filling in Japan though.....

cold isn't getting any better yet so Friday was more easy food: chapche -- Korean dish of noodles and vegetables (and usually beef but I didn't have any in the house), I added dried shiitake, burdock root (gobo), carrots, scallions and spinach miso soup with tofu and mitsuba (trefoil) Japanese rice

Wow and I thought the Japanese had some weird combinations! nachos with gumballs....???

exceptinsects, welcome to egullet and the Japan Forum!! Imagawayaki are wonderful, my favorite is the shiro-an (white bean) and my husband and kids almost always go for the custard. I found this incredible site just about imagawayaki, I have linked to the photo page since the whole website in in Japanese but for those who can read it it is fascinating, they have rankings of the most popular kinds, a list of every prefecture and what theyare called there, this snack has an incredible number of names! check it out: http://hb2.seikyou.ne.jp/home/my-morita/ni/photo/index.htm

from one of my Eating Well Cookbooks here are some tips for reducing fat in salad dressings: 1. use tea use equal amounts of strong brewed Earl Grey tea, EVOO, and wine vinegar or lemon juice, the recipe also adds dijon, garlic and herbs 2. mellow vinegars basalmic and raspberry vinegars need less oil because they are less acidic 3.fruit juice or nectar they list apricot nectar or orange or cranberry juice as the best choices 4.buttermilk or cottage cheese for creamy dressings 5.grating tomatoes grate two vine ripened tomatoes and mix with 1 T each of EVOO and red wine vinegar, herbs and garlic 6. non-fat yogurt 7. roast garlic

some mouthwatering pictures of Japanese "street foods" in this case ringo ame (candied apples) and grilled squid and corn: http://enenen-web.hp.infoseek.co.jp/eat0ringo.htm

word for 2/6: ヒメりんご This crabapple is rarely seen in stores, its most popular use is more making ringo-ame (apple-candy) or candied apples. These are popular during festivals when they are sold from stands: Here is a great picture of both the stand and the candied apple: http://enenen-web.hp.infoseek.co.jp/eat0ringo.htm

pcarpen, those pictures are incredible, I have some Isreali couscous I didn't know what to do with but now I do! Helen, Thanks for the takuan advice, I have discovered that with many Japanese pickles the store bought can often turn out to be cheaper and in many cases better than something made at home and thus rarely make them. I enjoyed the homemade takuan that was given to me but found it a little over-salted (and I go very heavy on salt) and though it was in a chunk that I sliced, some pieces were a lot saltier than others. Thursday dinner I have been dealing with a cold all week and haven't been up to cooking so last night was a simple dish mu-shu pork rolled into tortillas with hoison sauce and leftover sweet potatoes

If looking for fresh sardines in the US, you might want to look at Asian markets as well. Sardines are very popular in Japan and maybe under the name "iwashi" EDIT: I walk away from my computer for a couple minutes during posting and someone posts the same thing as me!

Great article from a great university! I spent 6 years of my life at Ohio University...

torakris, do you know if it's easy to pickle daikon? I love it & often by packaged pickled daikon but I'd love to try it at home sometime. Thanks! I have never made takuan and probably never will. I can get them for a great price here and I don't think I could duplicate teh flavor as well. For true Japanese takuan you will need zarame (a type of brown sugar) and rice bran (nuka), if you have these available you can make it, oh and you need semi-dried daikon. Here is a good recipe, in Japanese sorry, but it has pictures of the step by step process: http://www.aranami.co.jp/takuan/re-601.html Thursday dinner: sashimi style squid mixed with avocado and soy and wasabi sauteed Chinese cabbage with ginger, sesame oil and pepper simmered satsumaimo (Japanese sweet potatoes) with yuzu and mirin ( I got the idea from Helenjp last week) more takuan pickles Japanese rice

word for 2/5: クラブりんご kuraburingo (koo-rah-boo-rheen-goh) crabapples, there are a couple different types in Japan we will look at them over the next couple days.

I have to admit to almost never watching the show when it aired in Japan, the personalities were just too annoying! I have never been to any of the restaurants either, here is a list , anybody I missed? IRON CHEF JAPANESE * The first: ROKUSABURO MICHIBA (retired from the show) Poisson Rokusaburo in Akasaka, Tokyo. (2min. walk from Akasaka Station.) Plaza Mikado Building 1F&B1F 03-5570-6317 http://www.rokusaburo.com/ * The second: KOMEI NAKAMURA (retired from the show) Nadaman Komei in Shibuya, Tokyo. (5min. walk from Shibuya Station.) Tokyu Honten Department 8F 03-3477-3655 http://hyd.fc2web.com/B04/B04H01.htm He also has a couple other restaurants, the main one being Nakamura Komei ARIAKE which opened in 1999. http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g252202/ Nakamura Komei GINZA opened in 2001 http://www.g-chef.com/restaurant/nk002.htm Nakamura Komei YOKOHAMA opened in 2002 http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g252212/ Cafe & Grill little Nakamura Komei opened in 2003 Nakamura Komei TAKAMATSU which plans to open in 2004 * The third: MASAHARU MORIMOTO Morimoto in Philadelphia, PA. At 7th and Chestnut Street. *Mr. Morimoto used to work at Nobu in New York City, which is located at 105 Hudson Street. IRON CHEF FRENCH: * The first: YUTAKA ISHINABE (retired from the show) This man has quite a few restaurants Queen Alice which is French, Vietnam Alice which is Vietnamese style and Alice Kitchen which is a more casual French, there are branches of all of these shops all over the Kanto area http://www.queen-alice.com/ * The second: HIROYUKI SAKAI. RaRochelle in Shibuya (3min. walk from Shibuya Station) 03-3400-8220 Lunch 2800 yen -Dinner 8500 yen - http://www.la-rochelle.co.jp/main.html There are a couple other branches including one in Fukuoka, he has also recently opened a new shop in Ginza called Agnes Cafe ( a bakery/cake shop) IRON CHEF CHINESE: * CHIN KENICHI Akasaka Shisen Hanten in Akasaka (3min. walk from Nagata-cho station) 03-3263-9371 http://r.gnavi.co.jp/g176400/ There are a couple branches of this restaurant and he also has a couple mapodofu shops. http://www.date-navi.com/gurume/chinken.html IRON CHEF ITALIAN: * MASAHIKO KOBE Ristorante Massa http://ironchef.jp/loft/data/koube.html

are we talking about ojhingu bokum? Sorry if the spelling is off.... Basically squid stirfried with chilies and some other vegetables with a kochujang sauce? If so I love this stuff ! Madhur Jaffrey has a great recipe for it in "A Taste of the Far East" with chiles, kochujang and powdered chile pepper. I usually leave out the powdered chile as the dish has quite a bit of heat without it. I could go for some right now!