torakris
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Posts posted by torakris
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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.
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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!
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Kristin, I usually tie the lime leaves and lemongrass inside cheescloth and fish them out. Sometimes though I'll take the vein out of the leaves, roll them tightly and julienne very very finely. I'll peel lemongrass down to the tender parts, slice down in half, turn, slice, turn, slice, turn slice, then mince finely.
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!
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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!
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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).
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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.
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...I found the chopped lemongrass and torn lime leaves a litttle annoying to keep pulling from my spoon before putting it into my mouth.
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.
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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?
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Add 3 more for me!
Amazon 1 click thing is NOT good for your pocketbook!
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eggplant with sauce...
love the meatiness of it.
Is the buta toro the black pig variety?
I'm a big fan of the black big pork belly but I usually have it in Korean BBQ restaurants.
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!
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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
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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.
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Yeah, anyone up to basket challenge II?
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Am I missing something (beside the obvious pain) from not cooking naked?
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I love tsukune. One of our local shops makes theirs with a bit of yuzu peel and grills them till they're slightly crispy on the outside and soft and juicy inside. Amazing.
I'm a sauce gal myself, but certain kinds of yakitori are better with salt.
Some of the more upscale places have fancy combos like sasami with mentaiko wrapped in shiso- delicious and definately better with salt.
Also I've noticed that a lot of places are now selling 'buta-toro' (which is just a fancy new name for regular old pork belly, isn't it?), which is sooooooo good. Salt for sure!
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.
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I made the last two recipes I listed in the above post and although they were both good, I had a couple complaints.
In the cashew sauce there was an ungodly amount of tonbanjian (Chinese chile sauce) even halving the amount left you tasting nothing else. Also in the instructions, they neglect to tell you exactly how to make the sauce. They tell you to grind the cashews and then the next step has you adding the sauce to the cabbage. I mean it isn't hard to amke a sauce but they don't even say anything like mix the ingerdients together.
The second recipe was good too, but next time I won't bother with the mustard, instead base it on the grated apple and grated onion. in this recipe as well, the instructions were a bit lacking especially about the ginger, they gave no instructions on what to do with it, grate it, sliver it, or slice it?
Do people check these books or what?
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.
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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.
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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.
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Nothing is better than fresh bamboo just dug from the ground! Unfortunately the start to become bitter the moment they are removed from the earth and become increasingly bitter as time passes, so by the time they reach the stores they need some major work to become palatable.
In Japan, they are peeled (this outer peel can be very irritating to it is a good idea to wear gloves if you are especially sensitive) then are boiled (froma cold water start) in the left over rice washing liquid or if none is around through a couple tablespoons of rice into the pot along with a dried chile for about 1 1/2 hours then cooled in a cold water bath.
I live rigth next to a bamboo forest and and the land owner happens to also be the owner of my apartment and in early spring brings me fresh bamboo just minutes from the ground, it is hard to buy the grocery store ones after eating those!
I walk past this forest everyday taking my daughter to and from kindergarten andfrom about 3 weeks ago have been scanning the ground for shoots, nothing yet!
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!
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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!
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and another 3 for me as well!
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Yesterday and today's meals I am cleaning out the refrigerator/freezer in preperation for a huge shopping trip on Sunday to Thai and Korean grocery stores.
Friday dinner:
linguine with smoked salmon, fava beans and cream.
fruit salad made with Fuji apples, mandarin oranges, strawberries with a sauce of sparkling water, freshly sqeezed mandarin juice, a touch of sugar and some almond extract.
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throw a scallop, still in the shell with the roe attatched, on to a grill, splash with some sake, devour!
The March of Asparagus
in Cooking
Posted
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.