margaret

This is a link to an article about the new vitamin PQQ. Apparently natto is the best source, but it's also in parsley, green tea, green peppers, and kiwi. One more reason to eat natto! Not like I needed any more.

Last night a friend made dinner for me, and served cucumber slices with prepared garlic miso. I'd never had it before, and it was really nice - big chunks of garlic, but not too overpowering. Really nice complement to the cucumber. I googled for more info today, and found that the same company makes a variety of misos - scallion, shiso, yuzu, and even one with pork. This is their website: http://www.aizu-tenpo.co.jp/prdct_bin.html It's all in Japanese, but from top to bottom, the products are: a mix of bonito, cucumber and konbu that's recommended for okayu, or rice gruel konbu, daikon and squid scallion miso meat miso (pork) shiso miso garlic miso yuzu miso extra spicy kochujang

Did she put a little butter into it? If you put butter in it, you don't need the ponzu at the end... No butter I think. I actually liked the lightness the ponzu gave to the mushrooms, and it was accompanied by other heavier foods so it didn't really need butter. The prominent sake taste was really nice, too. I sometimes do foil-yaki with mushrooms, butter and shoyu.

A friend of mine prepared dinner for me last night, and made a simple side dish of shimeji and shiitake mushrooms steamed in sake. Just rolled up in a foil packet and stuck on the burner. It was good with a splash of ponzu. I do a similar thing to smallworld's miso-jaga-bata, but I usually do them in a frypan on the stove.

I use Japanese mushrooms for wa-fu (japanese style) pasta dishes. Shimeji, enoki, shiitake, some shoyu, some negi, topped with powdered ao-nori or kizami nori. Every summer I get hooked on sara-supa (salad spaghetti). Although the idea of it is kind of horrible, sometimes it just works for a quick lunch on a hot day.

grilled portobello mushrooms with garlic and rosemary oil white beans with lots of sage and garlic scallions wrapped in foil with butter and olive oil, some shoyu, some lemon juice, stuck in the oven mango slices for dessert

Could this be ocha-zuke? Tea poured over cooked Japanese rice, often prepared from a powder mixed with hot water. Flavored with nori, tiny rice crackers, ume, wasabi, etc. Cheap and easy, and a good way to use up leftover rice. I'm actually not a big gohan person. I like it, but I don't need to eat it every day. I like it plain, with just some nori and shoyu, or else maybe takana or kimchi chahan (fried rice with pickled mustard leaf or kimchi). Leftover fried rice the next day rolled up into onigiri. During my poorer student days (not totally over yet), I used to eat a lot of ketchup gohan. Uggggh. Sad to say, this wasn't so long ago. Now I make a lot of takikomi gohan out of convenience, usually with dashi/soy/sake, and whatever vegetables are around - gobo (burdock), takenoko (bamboo shoot), carrots, some kind of mushroom. Mochi, however, I can't get enough of. Grilled, dipped in a soy-sugar sauce, wrapped in nori. Or else melting and soft in a bowl of oshiruko.

friday night: leftover asparagus risotto panko-ed and deep fried halved grape tomatoes thrown in a frying pan with some garlic and olive oil, mixed with torn fresh basil, lots of salt and pepper, a light splash of vinegar saturday night, digging frantically through the freezer: horrible frozen gyoza. i have a hard time accepting gyoza that don't contain chives, i think. leftover miso shiru with potatoes, onion, wakame, scallions one bottle of sierra nevada Definitely time to go food shopping.

I can't think of any Japanese stir fries that I enjoy either. Does kinpira count? I guess buta-kimchi is a popular one in Japan (pork stir fried with kimchi), but that's not really Japanese. Or chinchao ro-su (beef with peppers), but that's Chinese. As is ma-bo dofu. I'm sensing a trend. Sometimes I'll make a simple yasai-itame (stir fried vegetables) with more of a Japanese flavor as opposed to a Chinese one, but it's never anything too interesting (or distinctly Japanese).

And lots of milk candies! Perhaps not cuisine, but always a treat when friends come to visit from Hokkaido. Oh, and they also always bring canned kani-miso (crab brains) that everyone goes crazy for.

I really do love bean curd in all its incarnations, but forced to choose...I'd have to say hiya yakko too, if it's nice tofu. Or in the winter, yu-dofu - blocks of tofu in a pot of steaming soup, just a light dashi, then dipped into ponzu. Or perhaps Kyoto yuba (tofu skin). I have a Japanese cookbook about tofu, and it gives some interesting examples of various bean curd products - Tofu-you, which I've never had, but seems to be some kind of tofu cheese from Okinawa. The description explains that it's dried, salted, mixed with awamori (Okinawan liquor) and then perhaps fermented. It's a bit unclear. Anyone ever tried this? The accompanying recipe has it as an ingredient in a seaweed salad. Also from Okinawa is Jimami Tofu, which seems to contain peanuts and potato starch. Okinawa is so different from Japan, though, so I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I've never had these things, huh. The cookbook is pretty good, though, and gives ideas for uses of tofu that I may not have thought of.

Oh, and yaki-imo. How could I forget??

What do you usually order at Honmura-an? I'd heard so many good things about that place, but was a bit disappointed the one time I went. I had soba in a cold broth with grated daikon and nameko mushrooms, one of my favorites, but the noodles were really, really short (inhibiting slurping action) and there wasn't much broth. I really enjoyed the dessert, though - oshiruko, soft mochi in a sweet red bean soup, but with soba dumplings in place of the mochi. It was cute. I still haven't found a soba place in the city that I really dig. I've been going to Soba Nippon in midtown lately, but I'm not a huge fan. Anyone have other recommendations? I go to Soba-ya to drink the soba beer but that's about it. Have to check out that place on 13th street.

Crispy, creamy yakinasu (grilled eggplant) with tons of fresh grated ginger and some shoyu. Or else perhaps the grilled garlic they serve at yakitori joints. Salted.

In an attempt to clean out the crisper before the whole thing just turns black and rots away: white bean soup with lots of rosemary, garlic, some greens braised cavolo nero asparagus risotto They were all fine, but not what I was in the mood for. Currently contemplating the pros and cons of a much-craved PB&J.

That sounds fantastic, the sesame seed udon. In the summer I really like zaru udon dipped into cold thick sesame sauce. Soba is still my favorite, though. Served any way. I've never tried ramen. The hype is incredible, though. All my Japanese friends in the U.S. say the first thing they want to eat when they get off the plane is their hometown's ramen.

Takikomigohan is what I meant. Sometimes it's so hard to explain what I mean. I need a better cooking vocabulary. Never can figure out how to say anything.

Inspired by the Pizza Hut thread... When I was working at a Japanese restaurant in the U.S., we were told to describe okonomiyaki to American customers as Japanese pizza. What are your favorite toppings? Do you prefer Hiroshima style, with lots of cabbage between thin layers of batter? Or Osaka style, with all the ingredients mixed together and cooked like a pancake? Modan-yaki, topped with yakisoba? More unusual varieties you've seen? Okonomi is usually a clean-out-the-fridge type dish for us. I like mine with mochi. Kimchi is good in it too. The most unusual okonomi I ever had was at a tiny restaurant in Asakusa. Anko (sweet red bean paste) brought to the table after the meal with its own small bowl of batter, dessert okonomiyaki. I was the only one who enjoyed it I think.

Seafood pizza with mayo? Oh, you mean okonomiyaki. Just showed the pictures to Japanese bf, whose only comment was "you shouldn't think of it as pizza." I still don't want to eat it, but it makes a little more sense that way perhaps.

Tofu dumplings in a kombu/ginger broth with slivers of cloud ear mushrooms. Sauteed enoki mushrooms and scallions atop deep fried nests of yakisoba noodles with drops of a thick dashi/soy/mirin glaze (ankake). Tofu crumbled with spinach, sandwiched between slices of lotus root, battered and fried. Sprinkled with salt. Japanese rice boiled with kombu dashi, burdock root, carrots, shoyu. Lettuce cups smeared with miso, filled with leftover tofu spinach mixture. Very very very plain salad with some kind of ginger dressing that I didn't make. More cheap sake.

What effect would velveting have on tofu or soy protein?

Torakris, I never understand how people can eat yakisoba without beni shoga! It really makes the dish for me. I've never had the white bean taiyaki. It's difficult to even find the regular ones here in the US. Gotta take what you can get I suppose. I've been thinking about attempting dora-yaki on my own - not being in possession of a fish shaped iron - but haven't tried it yet. Maybe I'll use the white an for that...

After two weeks of eating out almost every night, I finally had a chance to cook something. Lotus root and burdock kinpira (sauteed and then simmered in a soy/mirin/sake/red pepper mixture) Kabocha squash pan fried with garlic, salt and drizzled with soy sauce Homemade ganmodoki (tofu crumbled and mixed with julienned carrots, kikurage, gingko nuts) and deep fried, then simmered in a light soy/dashi broth, topped with grated ginger a tiny bit of leftover simmered Japanese pumpkin Japanese rice with nori and a paste of ume shiso Cheapo nigori sake Chocolate ice cream for dessert. Boyfriend attempted to make yukimi daifuku (soft mochi rice cakes stuffed with ice cream) but failed, so we ate the ice cream on its on. Er, still eating it now.

In the summer, yakisoba, heaped with beni-shoga (bright red pickled ginger) and powdered nori. In a paper bowl. In the winter, oden. Anytime, tai-yaki (fish-shaped cakes stuffed with sweet red bean paste)

o-dango!