jeniac42

I have far too little cabinet space so the top of my fridge is graced with a whole ton of, well, crap. From memory (I am at work right now), the following items are currently sitting up there: - English muffins - Breakfast cereal (2 boxes) - Thomas's Cornbread toasting bread (oh that stuff is good) - Peanut butter Hershey's kisses (evil incarnate) as well as the cherry cordial ones - A Vosges Barcelona bar - Granola bars - A couple of acorn squash - Two boxes of Japanese curry roux - Chestnuts - Sandwich rolls - Phone books and takeout menus - Crackers - Tortilla chips - Peanuts - Dried fruit I think that's about it. Hm. It seems like all the convenience foods land up there somehow.

I would like to participate on December 12! My Japanese oral final will be either that day or the next so I can just think about how I'd describe the food in Japanese and I'll consider it "studying"...

I'll confess that I wouldn't mind reading this book.... Does it have a recipe for dashi, or does it call for the instant kind? If it has you make the dashi yourself I think (and everyone else on this board knows more than I do here) you want to look for bonito flakes, not dashi flakes. At least that's what I've used. I have also used niboshi to make dashi when I'm feeling extra fishtacular. More often I use instant dashi, which is labelled hon-dashi when I buy it. This is just a granulated powder that you put in water et voila, dashi.

You mean satsuma imo (さつまいも, 薩摩芋)? ← Hmm. What most people here call "sweet potatoes" are actually yams, I think. It was bright orange and quite sweet, not too starchy... so I think it is yamaimo / やまいも but I could be wrong. I have always been confused about the distinction even in English...

どうもおせわさま！ As I posted in the other threads, recently I have made: kuri-gohan / くりごはん korokke / コロッケ sweet potato / やまいも takikomi-gohan / たきこみごはん (I messed it up though!)

Looks yummy. But, roasting? Did you roast the chestnuts? ← I did roast them a little bit so I would be able to peel them... was that wrong?

As I posted in the potato pancake thread, I made some really strange korokke tonight. I used leftover mashed potatoes (these had butter and milk in them) and stuffing from my Thanksgiving dinner earlier this week. I ate them with cranberry sauce instead of any other kind of sauce. They tasted good but were SO heavy. I posted a photo of them in the takikomi-gohan thread and the potato pancake thread in the Cooking forum.

Tonight I tried my hand at kuri-gohan and I am pleased to report that it came out really well! I put together the recipe from posts here and ran it by my Japanese teacher, who agreed. I only used 2c of rice, about 1.5 tablespoons of sake, 3/4t of salt, and water, plus 10 chestnuts cut into pieces. Man, roasting the chestnuts was really difficult! I had never done it before and I didn't cut through the shells far enough so it took me a very long time to peel them completely. Here it is in the rice cooker ready to be cooked. And here is the finished version, with my weird Thanksgiving korokke and sweet potatoes.

OK, I made the Thanksgiving-leftovers korokke, aka potato pancakes with stuffing. First I took the leftover mashed potatoes and some of the stuffing and mixed them together, like so. I think it was 2/3 potatoes and 1/3 stuffing. Next I shaped them into ovals, to be dusted with flour, dipped in eggwash, and breaded with panko (Japanese breadcrumbs). I deep fried them (INDIVIDUALLY - I didn't have enough oil to use a bigger pot). I didn't have a thermometer, and I kind of suck at home deep-frying, so they came out with little dark spots and pale spots. I ate one tonight with chestnut rice, sweet potatoes, and... cranberry sauce instead of tonkatsu sauce for the korokke. They tasted pretty good, although quite heavy. I'm not sure I'd make them again. (I was using regular mashed potatoes with butter and milk in them, so I think that didn't help.)

Oh, and in that vein, when my peppermill is sitting on the counter I place it in an upside-down lid from a Penzey's spice jar, I think it's the B size? The squat one, it's not too huge. Just big enough to fit the pepper mill neatly. This keeps stray bits that are left on the blades from getting all over the counter, and I like to think it helps keep the pepper mill clean too.

Well, I'm really glad I didn't go to all the effort to make the kuri-gohan tonight. I made takikomi-gohan with chicken and mushrooms, and, uh... it did NOT turn out at all. I think I maybe put too much of the chicken and mushrooms; also, I put those in before adding the water and I think that was a bad idea. The rice is all hard in the middle and starchy and just... eugh. I am leaving it on the keep warm setting to see if the steam will somehow permeate into the rice and make it OK to eat, because I hate to pitch it, but it's more or less inedible. I will try again soon.

I prefer the paper or cloth towel to the rubber mat for the cleanup reason. I also like using dental floss for cutting yeast doughs into portions for cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, etc.

I thought the Akita Otome (あきたおとめ) rice was pretty good. I forgot that it was new crop rice and so I used too much water. When I make it again I will use a little less and use the Hard setting on my rice cooker. Overall it had a good flavor and the texture was nice despite my error.

I will admit that I have some texture issues with food and am still working hard to overcome my inherent dislike of slimy foods. I do like okra when it's fried but not sure about a preparation that would emphasize its slimy texture. I was eating some miso soup with wakame a few minutes ago and have to admit that I even find wakame a little too slimy when I eat a lot of it at one time. I wonder if there is a good way to get used to this type of texture?

I like this idea. I might try it but put the wine into ice cube trays first and then put it into a baggie. I also freeze extra egg whites (after making ice cream, custard, etc) like this. One really obvious thing is to place a damp towel or paper towel under your cutting board to stop it from sliding all over the place while you're working, but I imagine everyone knows that. I'll see if I can think of any other tricks I use that are more useful....

So what say you? Should croquettes be considered a potato pancake? They are made from potatoes and are vaguely pancake shaped. ← I plan on making some of these anyway with my leftover potatoes, so if it's OK I'll post about them here. If not, I'm pretty sure there's a korokke thread in the Japan forum so you can always look there for an update on the scary fried potato cakes with stuffing mixed in...

Last night's and today's food, with PICTURES! My camera is really terrible so it looks even worse than it did in real life, though. First, my new rice cooker / 私のあたらしいすいはんき： Please excuse the splatters on the stove. They're from the curry that's cooking in the pan on the right hand side of the photo. My kitchen isn't that dirty! I also made the House brand Java Curry with ground beef, onions, and carrots. It was pretty good like that! I decided it should be called hamburger curry / ハンバーガーカレー and this is a picture of my lunch for today. It also has pickled daikon / たくあん： And with the leftover rice I made onigiri with pickled plums for breakfast. How would you say that? うめのおにぎり？

Korokke (at least as I know them) are mashed up potatoes mixed with vegetables or meat, then breaded with panko and fried. I was thinking of making some with mashed potatoes and stuffing... hmmm.

I've never made potato pancakes with grated potato. Maybe this cookoff will give me a good reason to try it. I have some leftover mashed potatoes from last night; I might turn them into potato pancakes a la Tee Jaye's (a sub-Denny's chain of restaurants in Ohio, home of the Barnyard Buster). I was also thinking of making korokke with them - do those qualify as potato pancakes?

Today my new rice cooker arrived, and I plan on using it tonight. I was thinking of making kuri-gohan with it - I have all the ingredients - but then I thought maybe I should do a test run with plain rice first. I have never had a nice rice cooker before (this is a Zojirushi neuro fuzzy 5.5c version) so I'm not used to them. Maybe I'll do a test run with plain rice tonight and set up the kuri-gohan on a timer for tomorrow's dinner.

Ah, I see. I like the stronger flavor of the dipping sauce type tsuyu, and so I made it a little strong, but I do think it was kind of overwhelming after I ate the entire bowl of noodles. I will keep posting, and I'll add pictures as soon as I get my digital camera battery charger back from my friend who borrowed it.... Today's meal was leftover "Thanksgiving" dinner, which I posted about in the Cooking forum. I just wrote it all out in katakana for my blog... but here it is! Roasted chicken / チキン Stuffing / スタフィング Mashed potatoes / マシュ・ポテト Gravy / グレービ Green bean casserole! / グリーンビーン・カスロル Cranberry sauce / クランベリーソース I tried to look up and Google as many of the katakana words as possible and I think they are all right.

Clearly you didn't read my post.

Thank you! I thought that mentsuyu (めんつゆ) and tentsuyu (てんつゆ) were different... the recipe I used said tentsuyu. I assumed it had more soy sauce or something like that, but maybe I am wrong.

Here's the end report on this trial run. I butterflied the chicken and rubbed it down but good with some sage butter. I put it on the top part of the broiler pan and placed that atop my large straight-sided saute pan, which housed the stuffing. I put a little bit of extra liquid in the stuffing to try to compensate. I'd sauteed the onions and celery for the stuffing in the saute pan, and just let the leftover butter grease the pan. I cooked the chicken at 425F for 1h10min, then turned the oven down to 350 for about another 20 minutes while I got everything else ready to go (the boyfriend helped with the potatoes and the general moving about of pots and pans). Amazingly, given the fact that I don't have a meat thermometer, the chicken turned out absolutely perfect - crisp skin, juicy meat, and no pink to be had anywhere. I guess there's a small chance it wasn't at a high enough temp but it sure tasted good. Victory is mine! The stuffing came out pretty well. The outside set and got some nice crispy bits; I don't think I needed the extra liquid, though, as the inside was a bit gooey. I didn't think about the chicken fat that dripped into it the whole time. Unfortunately I over-rouxed the gravy in the eleventh-hour (2am-hour?) rush, but other than that it was really good. The chicken wings were especially really super-awesome. This was the first time I did this without brining the chicken first, and I was really pleased with the result. Also, I served it all with, uh, quenelles of tinned cranberry jelly

I also prefer the crushed potato texture, which is why I've always used a masher (the kind with the bent metal rod rather than the kind with a metal disc with holes in it) instead of a mixer. I'll have to try the fork next time. I tried to advise on proper whisk usage but was, alas, unheeded. Probably because by 2:30am most people are pretty hungry... oops.