torakris

butter on pop tarts? eeeewwwww! I like them best straight out of the box! no toaster for me. I almost cried the first time I gave my (born and raised in Japan) children a pop tart and they didn't like it. How could they not love it? I begged for them as a child They didn't like kool-aid either. I see these both as good things now!

Tuesday dinner: sprouted mung bean soup with sesame seeds and a splash of sesame oil panko breaded and deep fried fish with lemon wedges wild mushroom salad with lime-nampla-cilantro-mint (from Thai Food) chijimi (Korean savory pancake) with garlic chives and pork served with a kochujang-soy-sesame dipping sauce crab kimchi --tiny whole crabs about the size of a large thumb, kimchi-d, this was purchased

My new Japanese cookbook has a recipe for aspargus to be wrapped with a very thinly sliced piece of pork, seasoned, rolled in flour, then egg. then in sesame seeds. It is then roasted and served with soy and karashi (Japanese mustard). Can't wait to give it a try.

We actually "braise" cabbage wedges in our outdoor dutch oven all the time. Toss them in with meat (usually beef or chicken), potaoes, carrots, onions and garlic. the cabbage, placed on the bottom, gets wonderfully carmelized and tastes incredible.

check out this kewpie line! http://www.kewpie.co.jp/products/pro_index.html these are "sauces" that are meant to be squirted onto bread and then popped into the toaster oven. From left to right: cheese cake cream tuna-mayo pizza sauce (this is just a toamto sauce no mayo including) corn-mayo not pictured but mentioned is a new product to come out this spring/summer bacon-mayo (might not be bad on a BLT! )

Thanks! Normally when I am using lime leaf I either leave it whole or shred it. I was considering cooking the lemongrass and lime leaf with the heads and shells when making the stock, but I wanted to follow the recipe to the T!

I think the Japnese eat mayo more than Americans eat ketchup! Two of the most digustings things I ahve done with it: 1. made a dressing for a tomato and seaweed salad with equal parts of mayo (Japaese stuff) and ponzu, took one taste (befroe using it on the salad) and tossed it, covering the salad with just ponzu. 2. Made a mixture of mayo and thinly sliced Japanese leeks (naga-negi) and then spread it on to a soy marinated piece of chicken and grilled it, we scraped the topping off and ate the chicken. These were both recipes from a Japanese magazine. I do like mayo on okonomiyaki and yakisoba though!

I have been wanting to experiment with matcha and tiramisu, basically just sprinkling the top with matcha rather than cocoa or chocolate. I think it would clash with the espresso though, but soaking the lady fingers with matcha "tea" seems like it would be too much. Ideas? I am too cheap to really experiment, a recipe of tiramisu can cost about $15 (in Japan).

Went to the garden shop yesterday, bought some new planters, dirt, and now have my herb garden starting the the backyard: common sage purple sage marjoram flat leaf parsley curly parsley thyme rosemary I love spring! EDIT: can't forget the mint that is springing up everywhere! Even used it in last night's dinner.

it's pretty standard to leave them in, as far as i've seen. it probably adds a bit to the aromatics of the soup when serving. but yes, it's a pain, and i've eaten my share of lemongrass that would have been much better on the plate. I have never been to Thailand, but when I have eaten the soup in restaurant the lemon gras and lime leaf are usually kept whole and smashed to impart flavor, the chopped lemongrass was quite an annoyance when trying to eat the soup! Also my soup had a blue hue instead of red (like he said), because the shrimp I was using head blue gunk in their head, is this normal? I rarely buy shrimp with the head on.

made 3 more things last night tom yam gung --it probably made a about 3-4 serving and was good, but there was nothing in the bowl except shrimp (so I added mushrooms as well) and I found the chopped lemongrass and torn lime leaves a litttle annoying to keep pulling from my spoon before putting it into my mouth. grilled egglant salad with steamed eggs this was really good and even could have served 4 to 6, though my husband and I finished it off no problem. fried rice with crab this also was very good, however most of these fried rice recipes only serve 1! I didn't notice that, but it was written under his general explanation of fried rice. How hard is it to put the # of serving at the beginning of each recipe?

Add 3 more for me! Amazon 1 click thing is NOT good for your pocketbook!

When I am in the US I only buy individually wrapped "English" cucumbers, the flavor is so much better.

tissue, do mean dengaku? grilled eggplant topped with miso? I love the stuff. I think buta-toro can be from any kind of pig, but I aslo prefer the flavor of the black big and often buy it when on sale. One of my local yakiniku places has this wonderful kemuri-yaki (smoke-grilling) with black pig belly, I have dreams about this! The very fatty piece of meat is grilled at your table over a very high heat, the flames jumping all around and when it is done you are left with a piece of meat crisp but very well "greased" Smallworld, I agree with what you said before they are some kinds that are just better with salt!

Monday night: All from David Thompson's Thai Food Tom yam gung (hot and sour prawn soup) this was quite good, but i thought the shrimp looked very lonely all by themselves so I added some eryngii mushrooms Grilled Eggplant salad with steamed eggs this was very, very good! one hint after grinding the roasted chilli powder DO NOT take a big whiff to see what it smells like! My nose is still burning Fried rice with crab, OK don't really need a recipe for this but it was great! Dessert: Ice cream leftover from the day before

Had a small dinner party last night for 12 (okay 8 of them were kids ages 7 and under and since they only ate rice and cucumbers I guess we shouldn't count them) using this book. We had originally planned 6 dishes (there were also going to be 3 more people) to be eaten around 4:00 but because we didn't strart cooking until 4:30 we only made 3 and the pat thai (that required 2 hours of noodle soaking) changes to Thai style spring rolls (not in the book). So we made the green papaya salad and the chicken curry with green beans and ginger, both of which were very good. My problem came with the proportion sizes, he says these recipes can serve 4 if served with a meal of about 4 to 5 dishes (approx. 1 dish per person) well we quadrupled the green papaya salad (we bought a bigger papaya than needed), tripled the curry, and each each adult had between 4 and 7 spring rolls. All the food was gone. Do we eat an unusual amount of food? or are the portions just unusually small? A lot of the curries call for only 100 grams of meat (about 1/4 pound), is this normal in Thai cooking.

Yeah, anyone up to basket challenge II?

Am I missing something (beside the obvious pain) from not cooking naked?

Buta-toro (also called ton-toro)is some great stuff! I have never eaten it at yakitori yet though. Actually it is not from the belly, rather the jowls and is quite pricey because only 300 grams can be taken per head. For anyone who doesn't know what this is take a look at this website, it is in Japanese but has great pictures, I am drooling already! http://www.e-2929.com/syouhin/tontoro/tontoro.html This and other type of pork products jumped into the market a year or two ago when BSE (mad cow) hit Japan and the general population was avoiding beef. ton-toro become a very popular yakiniku (Korean style BBQ) dish because people didn't want the beef.

I just made another recipe from this book (Shunju), the kani sembei or crab crisps as they call them in English. They were actually quite good, with no mistakes in the recipe, thoughthey looked absolutely nothing like the picture. The two friends I made them with, all agreed this was definitely a man's style tsumami (a snack with drinks), good food to have some alcohol with. The are basically a mixture of cream cheese and crab spread onto a spring roll wrappers and then baked, the taste was quite similar (as are the ingredients) to what I used to eat in the US as crab rangoon. Those were just wontons filled with cream cheese and crab and then deep fried. I prefer them deep fried to baked. As to Kobayashi Katsuyo, I really think she helped define current Japanese (homestyle) and was a great influence to many women.

Smallworld, Just do what I do and eat it all day long! No need for freezing. What could be better for breakfast than apple pie. Need to get back to Costco soon, I can hear the pie calling.

Sunday night: Went shopping with friends at Korean and Thai supermarkets during the earlier part of the day and was hoping to have an early dinner around 4 but since we didn't even make it home until 4:30 we ended up cutting our original menu in half. Thai meal (with help from David Thompson) green papaya salad --very good chicken curry with ginger and green beans --excellent Thai style rice paper rolls -pork strips -shrimp -garlic chives -Thai basil -cilantro -bean sprouts -cucumbers -carrots dipped into either a nampla-lime-chile-ginger sauce or doused with sriracha dessert was ice cream for the kids the adults (only 4 of us compared to the 8 kids) drank sangria and pina coladas before, during and after the meal.

Why do you boil them in the rice washing water? What roll does the rice play? If you boil them for 1 1/2 hours aren't they overcooked, too tender and going towards mushy? What size are the bb shoots that you're cooking? What causes the irritation of the outer covering. I guess that's what I'm reacting to when I eat fresh shoots. What gets rid of this effect? The rice is supposed to remove the bitterness, this is quite a common method used on other vegetables as well. I guess I should have said brought to a boil and then simmered, the Japanese simmer them whole they are not normally sliced before. Before peeling of the skins they are about a foot long and about 7 inches wide, after removing the outer skins they end up about 6 inches long and 4 inches wide, I have never had them go mushy on me. If they still seem bitter after this process I have seen it recommended to slice them and then simmer them one more time for about 15-20 minutes. The most important thing is to prepare them as soon as possible, the longer they sit the more bitter they become. I wasted a lot of good bamboo because I didn't realize this!

Just finished Saturday's dinner: BIBIMBAP with: pork bulgoki chrysanthemum leaves namul carrot namul renkon namul stirfried napa cabbage with lots of garlic topped with kochujang and a just barely fried egg!

and another 3 for me as well!