torakris

When I was in the states last month, I tried eggnog for the first time at Costco, it was quite good.

Honey Panko? I have seen this before. I am going to go look for it, what would it be used for?

Daikon is usaully divided into 3 parts for cooking. The bottom third is usually the spiciest (most radish like in flavor) and is best in soups and stir fries. the middle portion is the best for simmered dishes and if it is sweet it is great in salads. the upper third (closest to the leaves) is the sweetest and is most often used in dishes that call for grated daikon. some really simple recipes: cut the bottom part into thin half moon shapes and throw into some miso soup take a bite and if it sweet julienne it and make a daikon salad or throw some into a regular salad My favorite recipe for grated daikon (I make this a lot!) Japanese spinach salad (sorry, I am not very creative with names) Boil until tender 1 bunch of spinach rinse under cold water, drain sqeezing out excess water, and season with a sprinkling of mirin, soy sauce, and dashi (if you don't have the mirin or dashi don't worry about it.) remove the seeds (and skin if you like), then dice 1 tomato grate enough daikon to equal 1 cup (about 1/3 to 1/2 a daikon) this should be a very fine grating, similar to grated ginger drain off the excess liquid, I place it into a cheesecloth and wring it out gently. In a bowl stir together 3 Tablespoons rice vinegar 1 Tablespoon sugar stir until dissolved, then add the chopped tomato and grated daikon and mix gently. Place the spinach into a shallow bowl or a dish with sloping sides and place the daikon, tomato mixture on top. Serve. I will be back with some other recipes later today.

Back 10 odd years ago when I was on my Chinese cooking spree, I tried making about 10 versions of this soup and wasn't happy with any of them. I haven't tried it since. I think it is time to try again. now if only I could find fresh water chestnuts.................

Monday night, what I made: gazpacho (yes, I know it's January, but I was craving it!) shredded pork wraps with lemon coleslaw ( from Epicurious, I liked the coleslaw, but the pork was on the bland side) What the kids ate: Daughter #1 tortilla with shredded pork Daughter #2 tortilla with coleslaw Son croutons from the gazpacho sigh

There is supposed to be egg in moo shu pork? I don't recall ever eaten it that way. I can't imagine it without the Hoison sauce! To me that is what Moo shu pork is, I used to eat it when I had a hoison craving. I haven't had moo shu pork in almost a decade! and when I did it was in very cheap restaurants around Cleveland, Columbus, or Athens, Ohio and it was never very good. So what's up with the ketchup thing?

When I am in the US I usually but a bunch of cooking magazines, then rip out the recipes I like and put them into a folder. I found over the years that I was taking so few recipes from Gourmet and Bon Apetit, that I stopped buying them. Now with Epicurious, I don't even see the need to glance through them. The only magazines I subscribe to are Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking. I enjoy Food and Wine, my grandmother has had a subscription forever and I always look at it at her house, but I don't drink and I don't live anywhere near the restaurants they review so it isn't worth the money. Last month I bought their 2000 (year) collected recipe book and have enjoyed cooking from it and they also have recipes at their website.

My friend and I will be at the Tamasakai (Tokyo), Japan Costco in just a couple hours! We are going to look at cookbooks and buy whole chickens. I will definitely stop and get their 90 yen all you can drink, drinks. This is too good of a deal to pass up since most drinks in this country are in the 350 to 500 yen range, and NO refills!

I have seen mitsuba called trefoil in the US, but don't think I ever found except very occasionally in a Japanese market. What to substitute would depend on your taste and what else was in it. I have seen recipes that call for ratios od 2:1 and 2.5:1, in Japanese restaurants in Japan they tend to be on the soupy side (the way I like them) while in the US I have found them to be firmer. I haven't made it recently but I used to make a Korean style chawanmushi with one large bowl instead of individual ones and for that I used the lower 2:1 proportions. Unfortunately my husband doesn't care for chawanmushi so I rarely make it anymore. In Japanese supermarkets they even sell chawanmushi "sets", these include 4pcs chicken breast, 4 pcs shrimp, 4 slivers shiitake, 4 ginkgo nuts and a small amount of mitsuba.

I just picked up a nice Japanese ham the other day and it reminded me of a dish I made a while back, a type of potato croquette. I basically made thicker than normal mashed potatoes added some chopped ham, did the flour egg and panko thing and then deep fried them. My friend makes the deep fried rice balls all the time but I never seem to get around to it. My kid's favorite: prepare a meat mixture similar to meatloaf, add finely chopped cabbage in about a 2:1 ratio, shape into flat patties, do the flour, egg and panko thing then deep fry. Normally served with tonkatsu sauce, my oldest eats them smeared with mayo! The grocery store closest to my house serves them already made, so I rarely make them, usually I pick up a couple for the kids dinner on busy days.

Chawanmushi is a wonderful dish and don't forget that in the summer it is great served cold! The dashi should be in a 3:1 ratio to the beaten eggs So for 4 people 4 medium eggs 2 1/2 cups dashi (at room temp) 1/2 tsp salt 1 Tbsp mirin 1Tbsp soy sauce Gently beat the eggs in one bowl and combine the other ingredients in another. Slowly pour the stock into the eggs, mixing well but not beating (there shouldn't be any bubbles on the surface). You can either strain in now or strain it as you are pouring it into the cups, but it must be strained. Place whatever ingredients you are using into the cup and slowly ladle or strain the egg mixture on top. if garnishing with mitsuba or something else gently place it on top of the mixture. Traditional ingredients usually include: chicken shrimp or crab or kamaboko dried shiitake ginkgo nuts mitsuba This is a great dish to get creative on, the last time I made it I used wakame and chicken meatballs seasones with yuzu rind.

Oh, I had forgotten about this one! I usually eat it zaru soba style, in the summer this a very popular lunch at the convenience stores. My friend and I will usually pick up a couple of bowls of it and take them to the park with us as a quick and easy linch for us and the kids. 7-11 (convenience store chain) makes the best version.

I think I like cooking and eating equally. Back before I "knew" how to cook I enjoyed eating out much more. Now I prefer to eat my own food and love cooking for others as well. Although I will cook almost anything at home, I look to restaurants for ideas, I have never been a creative person and have a hard time coming up with food combinations on my own. I also turn to restaurants for certains meal that for one reason or another I prefer to eat out. Sushi is one of these, although living in Japan I have access to excellent fish in even the smalllest of supermarkets, I would just rather pay a little more money to eat it out. When I do go out I tend to order either something I would never be able to make at home (usually due to price or accessability of ingredients) or something I would like to try to make so I can get the idea of the flavors. One of the joys of cooking my own food is the sense of accomplishment that I feel when I am done,

Like nightscotsman, I grew up eating at 6:00 on the dot! I have always been more of a morning person than a night person and even in college I had a hard time eating at 8:00pm. Nowadays with 3 small kids I try to keep dinner between 6:00 and 7:00 (my husband also gets home around this time) and when going out to restaurants I try to go before 6:00 because that is when they are the least crowded.Trying to get into most restaurants in Japan after 7:00 can mean upwards of a 2 hour wait and alot of places have adopted this new policy of not taking reservations on weekends. So occasionally when I am going out with a group of friends we have to get there before 6:00 or we can't get a table together. Of course I am usually in bed by 9:00pm every night so early dining works for me!

Spent yesterday morning at Yokohama's china town and then spent the afternoon driving to Narita (Tokyo's airport) and back to drop off my Aunt who had been visiting for 3 weeks. Got home tired and not really hungry so I ripped open a bag of tortilla chips, placed them in two dishes, grated cheddar cheese over them and popped them in the micromave for 40 seconds. Poured a bowl of salsa while I was sauteeing some cocktail sausages, then placed them along with ketchup and mustard on the table in the living room and we all sat down to watch cartoon network. My kid's were in heaven!! This week it is time to get to some serious food!

I love soba salad! I have stopped making it for Japanese guests though, they seemed to really have a hard time with it.

One of the best things about the lunches is the variety. You never see the same foods in one month and except for a couple of very popular dishes (curry rice, mapodofu, corroke) they may not even be repeated the next month. They also work with very seasonal ingredients.

I agree with this first comment especially. I would never pull out her books if I was planning a party. It seems to be just good and fast every day kind of food. I want to check out her Entertaining book though.

I actually prefer the other Japanese noodles (udon, somen, etc) to soba, but sometimes I do get a good craving going. In the winter I like a nice bowl of hot kitsune soba (with a piece of slightly sweet deep fried tofu) with lots and lots of scallions. In the summer it is zaru soba all the way usually with a big mound of grated daikon and a little quail egg yolk dumped into the dipping sauce. My husband is a tanuki soba guy (with agedama, the fried bits leftover from tempura making) hot in the winter and cold in the summer, in the summer he likes to mix a pack of natto in as well. What is your favorite way to eat soba?

I really like Donna Hay's stuff! I just "discovered" her a couple months ago and now own the fast food book and off the shelf. The pictures are gorgeous, the recipes are easy and the food is just darn good! Although I follow some recipes I usually use the book for ideas to create my own recipes. I haven't cooked too much from Off the shelf yet since my friend has borrowed it since almost the day I bought it, but I did have the chance to make a couscous and roasted squash dish that was excellent! My friend and I are headed to the nearest Costco on Tuesday (the only place in Japan they sell her books) and she wants to pick up fast food and off the shelf while I want to look at the flavors book and I think we are both going to check out Entertaining. Her style of cooking (simple and fast) is great for busy people (like me) who enjoy good food.

I used to make these really great pumpkin cookies, but now no one will eat them because they think they will become pregnant!? It only happened 3 times!!

Yeah, what Cooks said. And yeah, its definitely panko. They have entire vats of the stuff. Pretty filling, but then again, not for an elite e-gulleteer like...like...oh, I dunno. SA Is anything done to the panko before they put it on the noodles? Frying etc? Does this particular dish have a special name? This is so interesting I want to give it a try!

Akiko it is interesting that you mention the milk. I actually like the milk here and couldn't drink while I was in the US! I normally drink my milk with ice cubes, it has to be ice cold for me, but when I tasted the school lunch at my daughter's school I drank it on the warm side and actually found it to be not bad. I love the cream here, although the fake stuff here is nastier than the fake stuff in the US, but the fresh creams are really great! Of course I have never made creme brulee in either country.

I have to admit that Japanese people seem impressed by almost anything home made but even more so when it is something "exotic". For impromptu lunches I will usually throw together a Thai curry with a can of coconut milk a little curry paste and anything that is in the refrigerator. The anything in the refrigerator approach also works well with fresh spring rolls using rice paper. I set out a couple of dipping sauces and let people make their own. When fresh tomatoes are at their best I make a tomato and mozzarella tart witha basil and garlic crust that I got from Jack Bishop's Italian Vegetarian, it is incredibly easy and gets raves every time. I also get a lot of requests for my tiramisu , and one woman I taught it to last month told me she loved it so much she made it 3 times in one week!

Luckily the whale meat is a thing of the past, at one time it was a cheap meat substitute, but now it is quite expensive. The udon noodles with curry are one of my daughter's favorites, they were just served this on Tuesday and my daughter said that when the meal was over she went up and told the teacher how much she loved them and how good they were. My husband, who also attended Japanese elementary school in the 70's told me he was also forced to to eat everything, nothing was wasted. Nowadays however, it depends on the teacher, some are stricter than others. In my daughter's kindergarten, they carry the dish up to the teacher and ask if they have eaten enough (if there is anything left on the plate) and the teacher will either say fine or encourage them to eat a little more of something.