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torakris

eGullet Society staff emeritus
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Everything posted by torakris

  1. Wow! I know what I will be doing all day Saturday!
  2. I belong to an online group of foreign women who live in Japan and about 1 1/2 years ago TimTams made their way into Japan and the Aussies in our group went crazy. For days they went on about the best way and drinks to suck, obviously us non-Australians hadn't a clue to what they were talking about. My friend and I found some in a store and tried them out, the normal way, we weren't impressed so we never got to the sucking stage.
  3. torakris

    Persimmons

    Last night I made the persimmon bread from the above mentioned site, nothing to rave about but it was good. It didn't taste particularly kaki like, but what fruit/veggie breads really do? I t was quick and easy and I will definitely be making it again. My surprise was the curried persimmon soup, this combination of sweet and spicy in a savory soup took a little getting used to, but I really enjoyed it. It was more reminiscent of a dessert (think pumpkin pie) but with curry spices. I am going to play with this recipe a little more, making both a soup that is not as sweet and a dessert using the curry powder but not as much.
  4. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Last night's dinner: Hawaiian style brasied pork with stirfried cabbage, great recipe from Epicurious, the pork chunks were simmered til tender in a soy based sauce with lots of garlic and ginger and a touch of 5 spice powder and chiles. The cabbage was a simple stir fry with lots of ginger. Curried persimmon soup, this was interesting (another thing pulled off the internet). I really liked it aswell as 2 of the 3 kids but my husband didn't care for the sweetness in a soup. It really reminded of a pumkin pie, but with a curry flavor, I think I am going to work on this and try to cut back on the sweetness just a tad. Dessert (as well as this mornings breakfast) was persimmon bread
  5. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Does your co-worker mean people in homes in Japan? or people who are living abroad and have no access to a Japanese market? Almost no one in Japan actually makes any type of sauce, this is the bottled sauce capital of the world!! People's jaws drop if I mention that I make my own salad dressing. Heck people in this country don't even make their own tonkatsu, if they don't buy it already fried in the deli section of the supermarket then they pull it out of fresh meat section already breaded and ready for the pan.
  6. torakris

    Persimmons

    Searching for jam recipes, I found this site that has lots of kaki recipes: http://www.epersimmons.com/recipes.htm Are there any types of preserves, jams, etc that don't need sterilized containers? I quess that sort of defeats the purpose of preserving......? I have no access to mason jars. Looking at all of the jam recipes on the net I was surprised that although the ingredients were the same ( persimmons, sugar, lemon juice, pectin) the amounts were really different! any where from one cup of sugar to 6 cups, both for 3 cups of pureed flesh! I think I am going to try the persimmon bread on the above site to start with.
  7. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    can this help improve the taste of bland tomatoes? Unfortunately this is all I have access to.
  8. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Thanks for the advice. I have never had good luck with tomatoes in a fritatta. I have used a Marcella Hazan recipe for carmelized onion, tomato and basil fritatta and while it tastes great the resulting dish is a very unappetizing muddy brown. I really regret throwing the tomatoes in last night, they were flavorless tomatoes to begin with and I thought the fritatta could help them, but instead they ruined the fritatta. Lesson learned! I will definitely try roasting next time.
  9. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Last night I was avoiding making a trip to the store and trying to use up what I had in the house including the six eggs I dropped on the floor earlier in the day, soooo............. fritatta with onions, spinach, and tomatoes -- the tomatoes were a last minute throw in, I had been planning to make a sauce to serve with the fritatta but got lazy. Even though carefully seeded they still made it watery. saffron scented chicken pilaf (from Nigella's Forever Summer) the taste was good enough but i had a couple problems. One, there is no salt or pepper called for in the entire recipe and it definitely needed the generous amount I used. The recipe calls for basmati flavored with saffron, cardamom and lemon juice and zest. She says the rice should be cooked in 10 to 15 minutes however mine took cloer to 25 and ended up being clumped together (think Japanese rice) rather than light and fluffy like my pilafs normally are. This dish is finished off with toasted cashews, almonds and pine nuts, parsley and chicken browned separately (after being marinated with yogurt, lemon juice and cinnamon, but no salt and pepper?!). The Dish was then sprinkled with pistachios. Despite all of the flavorful components, it was on the bland side and the texture of the rice was disappointing. Went to bed early so there was no dessert.
  10. torakris

    Persimmons

    I have been designated the lucky recipient of a bag of 37 kaki. I was hoping the baking would work out because it seems to be the easiest. Guess I will have to give some of the other recipes a try.
  11. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Last night's dinner was dressed up leftovers! bad, very bad spinach and mozarella ravioli with a cheese and herb sauce (my MIL bought this frozen meal in a bag at Costco, and even my kids wouldn't touch it, so she gave me all the leftovers, I tried to improve it with a homemade tomato sauce but it was still nasty) spicy coleslaw from Mark Bittman, this is actually quite good, I am just sick of it because my MIL asks me to make it close to once a week! ritz crackers and dip made from boursin cheese with garlic and herbs, a little mayo, a little sour cream, and a small can of tuna. My children's request after eating this dip at a potluck on Sunday. staek cut into cubes and sauteed with shiitake and enoki, popped on a bed of watercress and drizzled with ponzu (the only non-leftover)
  12. We smoked ankimo for dinner last night and it was absolutely incredible! Between 4 adults we finished off 3 good sized pieces and were left wanting more.
  13. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    I can't imagine an Asian store not stocking it!
  14. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Sounds great! I will give that a try today. I still have a monster bag of almonds we bought at Costco a while back that I am trying to use up. Great addition to our BBQ today, my husband bought a smoker yesterday so we are going to try smoking oysters and ankimo (monkfish liver). regular BBQ will be chicken wings with a hoison based sauce for the kids, buffalo wing style sauce for the adults, a huge salad with the remaining veggies from the garden and what ever food my MIL thows together, probably yakiniku and yakisoba the only 2 foods she ever makes for BBQ's.
  15. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Waiting for the lamb chili to finish. Back to sardines. Torakris, how the hell do you stuff a sardine with all that? Are they bigger than what we have here? You actually open the fish up. Cut off the head, slide out the innards, open it up like a book, flattening it down and then pull out the backbone. Then you spread a little of the stuffing on the flesh and then roll it up jelly roll fashion, I secure it with a toothpick. Another wonderful recipe from Jamie Oliver. In Japan sardines (iwashi) are often flavored with curry powder, usually mixed with the panko before sauteeing. I still have yet to try this combo yet though, I really like them with tomatoes and lemons. Last night's dinner was potluck Halloween Party with about 30 friends. My contributions were a taboulleh (Best Recipe version where they soak the bulgur in lemon juice instead of water, fantastic!) and a flourless chocolate and vanilla marble cake (courtesy of Fine Cookings new holiday baking issue). This cake was the hit of the party and today I am going to be busy faxing the recipe to everyone who was there! I did make a dud though. I tried sauteeing almonds in butter and olive oil and then mixing them with sea salt and cayenne, but I got distracted and they were slightly burned. Then I was completely out of sea salt, so I decided to use Kosher salt, unfortunately that was almost gone too and it was just powdery no different than regular salt. They ended up tasting like oversalted burned popcorn, so I left them at home.
  16. As a very non-professional cook, with no current plans to travel the world and eat out at top restaurants, I like magazines that focus on food and easy preparation for home cooks. Living in Japan I have to pay twice what others do, so I pick my magazines carefully. Currently I subscribe to : Cook's Illustrated Fine Cooking Eating Well (I used to enjoy their magazine way back when and when I say they were starting up production again I decided to subscribe. I like their combination of nutrition, food and travel and find their recipes quite good) Edited to make it look like I actually know how to speak English
  17. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Last night's dinner: a vegetable pulao, courtesy of Seductions of Rice, very, very good turnips with cumin (shorvedar shaljam) from Madhur Jaffrey, one of my favorite turnip preparations yoghurt with roasted cashews and cilantro
  18. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    Sardines are truely wonderful fish, we eat them every way imaginable. Sashimi with grated ginger in top, fried, breaded in panko and various seasonings and sauteed, baked in a gratin with tomatoes and potatoes, stuffed with pine nuts, herbs, cheese, tomatoes and baked, sauteed and tossed with spaghetti, and then off course grilled with a sprinkle of lemon juice.
  19. torakris

    Dinner! 2002

    This week has been so hectic, we've already been trick or treating 3 days and have a Halloween Party tomorrow. I shopped a couple days ago with out planning a thing, and opened up the refrigerator yesterday to a lot of green things (some that didn't originally start out that color). So last night we ate* sauteed liver with onions and mizuna in a soy based sauce avocado slices with sudachi ponzu sugar snap peas (blanched then a cold water bath) dressed with thick mustard dressing leftover from a couple days ago crab shumai (frozen) garnished with cucumber sticks and mayo for dipping (mayo is the most popular condiment in Japan and is often served with veggies, I find it gross but the kids love it!) Japanese rice
  20. I had seen and heard about this being done quite a few times, I finally tried it myself about 2 years ago and it was a disaster. Everything stuck together and it came out of the pot in one big glop. Next time I will try them in a shallow pan. I wish they sold fresh pasta in Japan and I really wish I had the time to make it myself..... My Great Grandmother used to make ravioli every other Sunday for our family of 11, I still remember the sheets of homemade pasta rolled out by hand covering our (huge) dining room table.... nothing beats homemade
  21. How does Nobu prepare his? Fall is the season for anko (monkfish) and thus ankimo. The most common way of eating it is steamed or fried and in a ponzu sauce with grated daikon. I did a quick search and came up with recipe for smoked ankimo, I am going to have to give this a try it looks great! The site is in Japanese but has lots of pictures. http://www.tcp-ip.or.jp/~camp/smoke/gyokai...oke41/smk41.htm
  22. torakris

    Persimmons

    Kaki are actually divided into two types, astringent and non-astringent. The astrigent types must be completely soft before they are eaten, Hachiya is one variety of this type. The non-astringent are eaten while still on the hard side, fuyu (the most common type of kaki) is an example of this.
  23. torakris

    Persimmons

    Here is a site I just found http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/fruits/...c/persimmon.htm
  24. torakris

    Persimmons

    WOW!! I was planning on posting about kaki (persimmons) today. Kaki is the Japanese word for persimmon, I never realized they used that word out of Japan as well. There are two main types hachiya (with a pointed bottom) and fuyu (with a flat bottom) as well as many others. It is kaki season in Japan and everywhere you turn the trees are just dripping with them. Last week I recieved a bag of about 50 from my Father in law, and as every year they just sit there because I don't know what to do with them. The Japanese just cut them up and eat them, when I asked some friends about what kinds of desserts they make with them they just stared at me and said they had never seen kaki made as a dessert. I have a cookbook that was put out by a foreign wives group here in Japan and actually found some recipes using kaki, a couple of days ago I made a kaki sryup which was said to be good on pancakes and such. However it is more like a sugar sryup with a kaki twang, not bad but very sweet. So I brewed up some iced tea and added a nice sized dollop and found it to be really good. Unfortunately it isn't really ice tea weather............. There are also recipes for baked persimmon indian pudding and persimmon crumble, so I assume they can be used similar to apples? My husband is currently soaking the remaining ones in shochu, it is supposed to make them sweeter. Anyone have any other ideas of what to do with them?
  25. Actually I just went and checked them out on the Tokyo food page, which had incredible reviews for both Miyako Zushi and Kozue. I am still trying to get the drool out of the keyboard. However, Miyako Zushi led me to the New York Grill (also in the Park Hyatt) a place I had nearly forgotten about and has a wonderful weekend buffet style brunch for 5800yen (about $50). This fits into our budget a little better than the $200 per person at the other 2 restaurants. We love Japanese food, but since we live here we were hoping for something a little more Westerny (word?). Thanks for the info.
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