torakris

I am sorry to hear this... but just remember that this is the kind of mistake that you will never repeat. I always add the seasonings (liquid), then water to the appropriate line and then the vegetables/meats.

Like mochihead said, it will keep about the same as other flours. I keep mine in the cupboard and have often had it in there for over a year before I use it all. If you live in a warmer climate though I would definitely suggest the refrigerator/freezer though.

Quail eggs, or uzura tamago as they are called in Japanese, are very popular especially in bentos. They are easy to prepare, a perfect size and add a nice color to the bento. In Japan you can buy them fresh or water packed in cans or packets. Some common ways to prepare them for bentos (or meals) are as mini Scotch eggs or skewered with something they can also be cut into cute shapes (scroll past the sausage carvings...) The yolks are often used raw as sushi toppings (scroll to bottom) and the whole raw egg is often added to dipping sauces for noodles (look at the first picture, it is on the small dish)

I don't want to clutter up the other thread (Foods of Bali) which is more of a discussion of restaurants.... I want to know what foods I should not leave Bali without trying. Also I plan to buy many (packaged) products to take back to Japan, any recommendations of brands? products? etc? What is in your bag when you leave?

I am not sure why but I don't care for haiga-mai.. I have bought two different brands and when it was mixed with white it was ok (but nothing worth the price of it), and I didn't care for the flavor of it alone.

I have got to try this!

I really love potato pancakes, I had them for the first time about 8 years ago.... I have even made them sort of Japanese style by mixing them with shiso and drizzling ponzu on top. I am really looking forward to this!

One of my favorite dishes that can use pretty much anything in the kitchen is tamago-toji. Protein/vegetables are either sauteed and then simmered or just started out simmering in a lightly seasoned sauce. I use a simple sauce of 1 cup dashi with 1 tablespoon each of soy sauce, sake, mirin and sugar. After everything is cooked through, lightly mix some eggs in a bowl (I use 3 large ones) then pour it over everything in the pan. Lower the heat, put on a lid and simmer until your liking. I like mine a bit on the runny side. My most recent version consisted of tofu (first browned in the pan) and mitsuba (trefoil), the kids devoured it.

tororo with nameko (slimy -in a good way- mushrooms) and scallions

Teriyaki chicken last night! I used the recipe for the sauce I posted above. I wasn't planning on taking a picture of which is why it looks like it was just dumped in the dish, but since I was taking pictures of the rest of the meal I though what the hell...

Last night I experimented with a brown and white rice mix. I made 5 cups of (raw) rice, 1 cup of brown to 4 cups of white. I did not soak( I actually forgot about the rice until 5:30 so I didn't have time) and I cooked it on the white rice setting of my rice cooker. I have one of the new fancy IH cookers and I have settings for white rice including katame (on the hard side that takes 38 minutes), futsu (regular that takes 40 minutes) and yawaraka (soft and it takes 46 minutes. I used the yawaraka setting to give the brown rice a bit more time. It turned out quite nice, the brown rice was a little harder than the white, but it might have been better if I soaked it. Next time I think I might increase the brown rice a bit and it was just barely noticeable. Looked like this

You were right in describing tentsuyu as a tempura sauce, but I think Hiroyuki was confused because, like I, he had probably never dipped noodles in a tentsuyu before. Mentsuyu (men means noodles) is the common sauce. I am really not sure of the actual differences, and it probably varies from cook to cook, but though they are both based on dashi, soy and mirin I add extra katsuo-bushi to my mentsuyu and a little sugar as well. Also the strength will depend on whether it is to be used as a tsuke-jiru (dipping sauce = a little stronger) or a kake-jiru (broth = a little weaker). Please keep posting your meals! pictures would be nice too!

Thanks Torakris Umm... this might be a dumb question but why the different soak times? Also what is nagaimo no tororo? ← The times are different because of the weather, it takes a little longer for rice to absorb the water in cold weather. This might not make a difference outside of Japan though as the houses here with very little insulation and no central heating are freezing in the winter and the kitchens can be very, very cold. Tororo is grated mountain it looks like this

You might want to try a genmai blend (mixed with regular rice) to start. I find the texture preferable to straight brown rice. ← How did you cook this? I usually eat just one or the other but a while ago I tried to mix them (half and half) and the white rice turned to mush... I cooked it on the genmai setting though.

If your rice cooker isn't set up to cook brown rice you might want to try cooking it in a saucepan. My rice cooker has a genmai function and it takes 60 minutes to cook instead of the 38 for my white rice. The water to rice rice is also a little different with genami taking about 1/4 cup more of water. Genmai should also be soaked (at least 1 hour in the summer and 2 hours in the winter) before cooking. I also have been eating a lot more genmai and have found there are very few foods it doesn't go with. I am having it tonight with chicken teriyaki and nagaimo no tororo and tomorrow with cream stew.

I am slowly getting our Bali plans together..... I have two guidebooks, one English and one Japanese and I have gone through and marked various things, mostly restaurants I want to try. Here are the ones I am interested in, any opinions? Seminyak --Gado Gado Sanur --Kafe Wayang --Splash Bakery (breakfast/snacks) --Stiff Chilli (beachside with sandwiches and gelato) --Cafe Tali Jiwa (organic) --Apakabar --Billy's Cafe (cheap breakfast) --Massimo (Italian) --Wayang Bali (this is very close to the hotel) Kuta --Kunyit Bali Restaurant Tanjung Benoa --Bumbu Bali (class + meal) Ubud --Cafe Wayan & Bakery (Sunday night Balinese buffet) --Kafe Batan Wara

Oh, geez. I'm reminded of Thanksgiving dinners at my newly health-conscious MILs house. Skinless turkey breast cooked in fat-free, salt-free chicken stock. Mashed potatoes in chicken stock, no salt, no cream. Margarine everywhere ("Butter is SO unhealthy ..." ). Cranberry juice sweetened with Equal (why is there no 'puke' face smilie?). Pumpkin pie with a low-fat crust, no sugar, and fat-free Cool Whip topping product. Of course I was asked what I thought of the food. Of course I said the pie would be vastly improved with whipped cream or ice cream, caramel-cinnamon sauce, and chopped nuts. "Well, we do have Cool Whip ..." that was the year my husband and I went out to dinner on Thanksgiving night. The horror of those leftovers was too much to consider. ← Now this is a true nightmare! At least we had other food to fall back on....

A quick search on the web shows that it is California rice and available in the US and the UK. I could find no references to the name in Japan.....

I've been thinking about this, just a bit mind you, and I'm coming to this conclusion: [sARCASM]Kris, it's all your fault. Apparently, the hostess didn't know that you are a member of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. If she had known that about you, she would have asked YOU to do the filling for her, instead of some unknown guest. You would have done an excellent job, of course, because you are an eGullet member (not to mention being part of the management team). Everyone (well, almost everyone, but you get the idea), everyone would have enjoyed the pumpkin pie without incident. And you wouldn't have started this discussion thread and I wouldn't be writing this post ...[/sARCASM] I think that I've been thinking about this too much ... ← I arrived at the house just as the woman was mixing the filling.... just minutes too late. I was immediately asked though to see if there was something I could do with mashed potatoes that this "no sugar" woman had worked on. Besides being gummy and dry (if the combination is actually possible) they tasted like nothing. Two cups of milk, a nice chunk of butter and a couple of tablespoons of salt later they were nice creamy and delicious. Apparently she has a thing against milk, butter and ungodly amounts of salt as well.

She wasn't expelled from the table but I don't think she will ever be invited again. The other 5 of us belong to the same book discussion group, this woman teaches English at the same place that one of the members did and since she was a fellow foreign wife she decided to invite. I had met her once before but didn't really know her. I sure this pie will be brought up at every book discussion group meeting we have for years....

When the hostess and some of the other guests tatsed it they commented jokingly that must ahve forgotten the sugar, everyone thought it had been a mistake. The woman then replied that no it wasn't a mistake that she never cooks with sugar and that it is better for your body. That was it, no apology, nothing. It was as if she honestly thought there was nothing wrong with it.

I haven't made vinegar before but I highly recommend you check out Leeners, they have vinegar making kits. I purchase my cheese and sausage making stuff from them and they are great, next year I plan to expand to vinegar and hot sauce.

I recently got together with a group of Americans friends here in Japan and had a nice Thanksgiving dinner, well it was nice until dessert. Earlier in the day the hostess had been working on a pumpkin pie, she got the crust and then was called off to do other things, so one of the guests offered to make the filling for her. The hostess gave her the recipe and left her to it, what the hostess did not know though was that this woman is on a diet in which she consumes no sugar. She followed the recipe to a T but added no sugar and only a pinch of salt because salt isn't really good for you either..... Of course not one of the 22 guests knew it was a sugar free cake until they had a slice of it on their dish, she could have saved time by just serving everyone straight from the can, it tasted no different. The hostess was extremely embarassed, this guest was actually a guest of one of our friends so no one really knew her very well. Then the absolute killer is that the woman refused a piece of the pie because "she doesn't eat sweets", so who the hell was she making it for? Why do people do this and what do you do about it?

There's a Japanese brand of lemonade that I quite like. It's called Suppin Lemon. Not too sweet, but you may need to add a bit more lemon (or less sugar) to the sauce recipe. It is most commonly found in the 250mL tetra paks, but sometimes you can find it in a 1 litre carton. It's mostly yellow, with a white middle part with the name in hiragana (I think the letters are outlined in green....). I found a picture of the tetra pak here. ← Rona, Thanks!! I thought that I had seen one before... The Japanese really like lemon flavored drinks but they are usually the carbonated versions. I know that one of the International markets by me sells a pink lemonade in a bottle, but I was worried about what color the dish would be.

I don't think I have ever eaten lemon chicken before. I so desperately want to make this and I went to 3 stores yesterday looking for lemonade.... I have one more store to try before I become sad.