torakris

I think you are referring to ochazuke, the ochazuke thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?act=ST...T&f=19&t=16695&

Last week I bought some natto and it came with this green sauce in the packet. It was shisho sauce. Looked a little like fine pesto, as a matter of fact. But the shiso flavor was very nice, very strong counter to the natto. I had this a little while ago too, I was quite surprised at how good it was. I just bout a new kimchi cookbook the other day and it has a recipe for making natto kimchi, not mixing the 2 together but actually kimchi-ing natto!

I use my saibashi (long chopsticks) for almost everything, sort of like a spoon and tongs rolled into one. I use the Japanese do-nabe (earthen ware cooking pot) for loads of non-Japaneses dishes from paella to risotto to fondue! I seem to go through phases in my cooking, there was my Indian phase, then korean phase, then Italian phase, then Thai phase, and now I am in a Japanese phase, mostly out of necessity because it is what is the cheapest in the stores. Anyone who follows the dinner thread will notice my sudden turn to entirely Japanese! April is the month we always seem to go into debt!

How about soem of the things to do with cooked Japanese rice traditional or not: ochazuke omuraisu (omelette covered rice, usually ketchup flavored) fried rice onigiri mochi I can't really think of a rice preparation that I don't like, except for maybe omuraisu.

this was the closes tI could get to a smirk! Wher did that eryingi discussion go?

Japan, like most Asian countries, is rice based and thus have an incredible variety of rice dishes. I am going to attempt to organize them. General rice categories are listed in caps with variations and explanations below them. TAKIKOMI-GOHAN this is rice cooked with one or more additional ingredients. Sometimes they are added raw to the raw rice and sometimes they are slightly cooked (sauteed) and added to the raw rice. Seasoning can be as simple as just dashi or just sake or as complex as dashi, sake, soy, mirin, etc. This is a quick dinner, everything cooked together in the rice cooker, and all you really need is a simple soup to go with it. Thus it is quite a popular dish at home and packets of takikomi no gu (preseasoned meat and vegetable mixtures that just need to be added to the raw rice) are available everywhere. This is a very seasonal dish with the ingredients varying depending on the season: spring-- takenoko-gohan (Bamboo shoot rice) summer-- mame-gohan (green pea rice) autumn-- matsutake-gohan (matsutake mushroom rice) winter-- kuri-gohan (chestnut rice) MAZE-GOHAN "mixed" rice, this is a dish in which pre-cooked ingredients are stirred into the rice after it has finished cooking. One traditional maze gohan is na-meshi in which daikon greens (or other greens) are salted then stirred into the rice just before serving. This method can be used with almost anything, the meat/vegetable mixtures are usually cooked with a little extra liquid so as to flavor the rice. Garnishes (yuzu rind, mitsuba,shiso,etc) are placed on top of the rice once it has been placed in the bowl. SUSHI-MESHI This is the traditonal rice preparation for serving sushi, the rice is seasoned with vinegar, sugar and salt. Besides the regular nigiri, this is used as a base for other types of "sushi". chirashi-zushi - sushi rice topped with/or mixed with seafood and/or vegetables temaki/maki-zushi - sushi rolls oshi-zushi - sushi rice topped pressed into a mold, topped with fish, then cut into bite size pieces inari-zushi -deep fried tofu pockets (aburage) are seasoned then filled with sushi meshi with or with out additional ingredients fukusa-zushi - similar to the inari-zushi, but a paper thin egg omelette is used instead of the tofu OKAYU/ZOSUI These are both types of rice gruel. Okayu is raw rice mixed with water (in proportion of anywhere from 1:5 to 1:20) and is the only rice dish traditionally cooked with out covering, though nowadays most people make it in the rice cooker. Okayu is the chicken soup of Japan and is served to people feeling under the weather. It can be seasoned with anyhting your heart desires from umeboshi to egg yolks to nori to various vegetables to kimchi or even a combination of them all! Zosui on the other hand, is a type of gruel in which cooked rice is added to some type of liquid.. You can make a dashi based, soy seasoned broth to stir your rice into, but the most common way is to use the leftover soup from a nabe (Japanese hot pot). Both kinds are seasoned with things like eggs (cooked till just barely set), nori and various other seasoning STEAMED RICE DISHES I can't seem to find a Japanese word that actually categorizes these stead rice dishes, but I am clumping them together anyway. These types of dishes are made with either mochi-gome (Japanese sticky rice) or a mixture of the sticky rice and plain Japanese rice. These are all steamed (in various vessels) rather then the other rice dishes which are "boiled". okowa- is cooked in cloth lined bamboo basket and can be plain steamed rice or have a variety of ingredients (similar to takikomi) added. the most popular of these is sekihan the red bean rice topped with gomashio wappa-meshi -a wappa is an old fashioned wooden lunch box and now wappa-meshi refers to a type of rice steamed in one of these with a variety of ingredients depending on the season and the locality kama-meshi - a kama is the traditional rice cooker of old Japan, consisting of ametal bowl topped with a wooden lid, today small individual sized kamas are used to served kama-meshi. The ingredients are the same as wappa-meshi and vary depending on the season and locality. DONBURI the word doburi actually refers deep, tradionally porcelain dish, with a lid about twice the size of a normal rice bowl. The rice is placed in the bowl and covered with a variety of topping, meat/fish/egg/vegetables in various sauces with any type of seasoning. Examples included gyudon- beef bowl katsu-don- tonkatsu (pork cutlet) tendon- short for tempura donburi oyakodon- oya meaning parent and ko meaning child refering to the chicken and egg combination

Monday dinner: simmered kinme (a red skinned fish I don't know the English name of) and mitsuba (trefoil) in soy-sake-konbe broth shirae (tofu dressing) of sugar sanp peas and carrots (recipe: http://recipes.egullet.com/recipes/r328.html ) bacon and mushroom saute (with shiitake,shimeji,enoki, eryngii) Japanese rice dessert: the rest of the polenta-almond-lemon cake with yogurt cream and raspberry sauce

Add one more for me! Picked up a new Kimchi book yesterday! I have spent 9 of my 33 years working in libraries (4 as a reference librarian at a University), I organize by Library of Congress # or as close as I can get with my Japanese language cookbooks. My cookbooks have finally surpassed my anthro/arch books and are probably rivaling my history books at the moment. my close to 1,000 books are all in Library of Congrees order, go ahead call me anal, but I like order!

Last night I pulled off the shelf: The Young Housekeeper's Friend by Mrs. Cornelius, the revised edition published in 1859. My Grandmother just passed this down to me and it is very interesting reading, I read the chapter on washing clothes last night and all I can say is Boy I am glad I didn't live in 1859!!

That is the only thing that looks good!

I just made this this weekend, it took about 10 minutes to throw together, it is done entirely in a food processor, and was absolutely incredible! My copy finally arrived! I am going to do the orange semolina cake next.

On Weds, McDonald's Japan is releasing three new sandwiches: Premium Mac--twice the beef of a normal burger with 2 unidentifiable sauces Tofu Sandwich--a deep fried tofu patty seasoned with soy, ginger, sesame and garlic served mayo and a special sauce Omelette Lettuce sandwich--a cheese omelette with bacon lettuce, potato salad and ketchup (breakfast only!) pictures: EDITED to remove link since the burgers are long gone, but trust me they were there!

I am a sashimi person! I find the rice a distraction since I really want to taste the fish. favorites include toro chu-toro most of the white flesh fishes amaebi salmon I love uni and ikura as well but find they are more suited to nigiri style as they are too difficult to eat otherwise. Like Jin I love the saba (mackeral) the shime-saba (lightly vinegared) in great and I always order it and my husband always laughs at me and says that it is for obaasans (old women!). Well someday I will be one so I guess I need to practice.. Back in January My husband and I went to Crab kaiseki restaurant, we had the crab shabu shabu kaiseki, but one of the starters was a crab sashimi that blew me away!. True crab sashimi is pretty hard to find except at the pricier places and it was the first time my (Japanese) husband had eaten it, I had actually had it 12 years ago at the very same restarant but with an ex-boyfriend!

some of my favorite yakimono are what I refer to as rest stop foods. These are foods that are common in rest areas along the major freeways. Besides discovering various local specialities I know I can always fids a soy sauce grilled squid, grilled mochi dango, some type of vegetables depending on the season and the location (corn, yaki-imo,etc)

These are incredible! I had them for the first time at a friends BBQ last summer and couldn't stop eating it! They have been a regular at almost every BBQ since then.

I just saw the rainbow ones yesterday for the first time, they were jumbo size and on the reduced shelf at the supermarket.

I too love hokke, I buy it quite a bit because it is large I feel like I am getting more for my money! I had some miso ramen yesterday, it was quite good!

I had to bring this back up because I found this site of "RARE" pocky! http://www.bento.com/morefood.html Honestly I have nothing better to do then search the web for information about pocky! OK couldn't get a direct link, click on the pocky page of the fun links and then click on the the large pocky box on the bottom of the page.

some types of sushi: nigiri-fish placed on an oblong shaped piece of rice, occasionally with additional garnishes or nori, scallions, etc chirashi- scattered rice, 1 or more type of fish scattered on top of rice sometimes with vegetables/eggs/nori/etc temaki-hand roll usually triangular in shape filled with anything the chef desires in a piece of nori maki-a simple nori roll of normally one or two ingredients, cut into bite size pieces futo-maki-"fat" roll consisting of many ingredients rolled in a piece of nori and cut into pieces

Last night I made a baby corn,young coconut, shiitake mushroom soup from Thai Food using both the juice and the flesh (I drank half of the juice first though!). It was unbelievably easy and the husband and all 3 kids loved it!

Sunday (Easter) dinner: Our Easter BBQ with friends was rained out, so we spent the day at the pool (indoor) with the kids, later we ate: Vietnamese style fresh spring rolls with tuna (sahimi style), pork, bean sprouts, cucumbers, carrots, bibb lettuce, mint and cilantro baby corn, young coconut, and shiitake mushroom soup (from Thai Food)--this was great!! dessert: lemon-almond- polenta cake served with raspberry sauce and whipped cream (from the current issue of Eating Well)

He works close to a Yoshinoya gyudon shop! I normally just make onigiri for his breakfast and he eats it at work, but occasionally he will go out instead.

sakana no shio-yaki (salt grilled fish) is one of the simplest and most delicious dishes ever. And ayu (a Japanese river fish, I am not sure of the English name) is the best fish prepared this way!

nimono is very difficult to perfect, at least it is pretty forgiving and you can taste as you go along. Unless you really mess up! For example my simmered kaboch recipe uses 2 cups of dashi and 2 teaspoons of soy and 5 to6 tablespoons of sugar, while the same amount of taro takes 1 1/2 cups dashi, 2 tablespoons of sugar and 5 tablespoons of soy and 5 tablespoons of mirin.There is no one basic recipe for all simmered vegetables.

food in Hokkaido: http://www.global.city.sapporo.jp/conventi...ne/cuisine.html