helenjp

So is ours...but never mind, payday tomorrow! Lamb slices and veges "Genghis Khan" yesterday, extended exponentially with 48-yen beansprouts, 50-yen cabbage, and drawn up to heaven by soft, new-crop onions. Hope you get to hit the town with your Mom and Dad, Torakris.

About 20 years ago I got obsessed with making the ultimate koshi-an (why was that, I wonder now??). I went and bought a horsehair sieve because that was the recommended type for sieving your mashed beans. The theory is that a metal sieve is too sharp, and the skins which should be largely excluded from the finished anko end up getting finely minced and added to the an. This is why, sadly, a food processor doesn't help when making koshi-an. But then I discovered...most people actually prefer tsubu-an anyway. This annoyed the heck out of me, since I had reached the stage where I could make a pretty good koshi-an, but sure enough, these days I make mostly koshi-an and shiruko. My husband grew up around the Tokachi area of Hokkaido, famed for its azuki beans, and even now is happy to eat as much shiru-ko as I can bring myself to make. I like to cook the beans with a little konbu in the cooking liquid, and I also like strips of salty preserved konbu sprinkled on top, but he likes it served straight up, with plenty of grilled mochi in it. We also disagree on tsubu-an -- I like it with awa-mochi (which is basically just a thick millet porridge with a good dollop of stiff tsubu-an). He likes tsubu-an in dorayaki, mikasa-yama, etc.

Definitely seeing more sansai in supermarkets this year...especially tara-no-me. I recall when getting a gift of fiddleheads involved rubbing them in ashes and what not! Shungiku -- the garden-grown ones I got from the shoe-shop owner the other day were tiny little shoots, not the big commercial leaves. We had some with pumpkin in harumaki (spring rolls). How about hamaguri and asari - clams? And strawberries -- once Valentine's Day is past, the house-grown ones start coming right down in price. I've never eaten as many strawberries as I do in Japan. I always think of this as a good time for imports, as the new season crops are not abundant yet -- cheapest time of year to buy grapefruit!

Yeah, maybe so, though these days I eat a stack of yogurt, yogurt cheese, tofu, sesame seeds, small dried fish, seaweeds, cabbage...all known to have plenty of calcium, and never have any trouble. I wonder if the type of calcium salt or whatever in the medication was the problem??? Maybe crunch factor is just a bitten-back snarl??? I sometimes wonder just what it is I think I'm biting down on...

Groan...just eat ANYTHING from the company, Airborne. Their motto is "No compromise. Ever.". After reading their labels, I considered writing to suggest they change it to "No editing. Ever." but really, I forgive them everything, just as long as they keep making honey... Manuka attract premium prices these days, but Kamahi, Tawari, Blue Borage, Rata...any of those names would wake my kids at 4am if I whispered in their ears. I hear that Japanese horse chestnut honey is great stuff, but after living here a total of 17 years or so, I have yet to see a speck of it.

One of my students told me she used sugar instead of salt when cooking a savory dish for friends. She said she just looked very stern and insisted that was the "real" taste, and it was a pity they'd never experienced it before!

I like 'em too...though I only get them when I go home to New Zealand. Which is pity...because I like them sauteed in sesame oil and finished with soy sauce and a little chili!

Shibazuke pickles...I'm always up for those! Our fridge is undergoing close inspection, not because of hygiene, but because nobody plans to pay me anything this month, and it's a week till husband's paycheck... The austerity menus: Saturday: Channa dal with vegetables (broccoli from elderly neighbor's plot, reject shiitake from local grower, and pumpkin) pork patties extended with rice Sunday: Lunch: spring rolls with pork and cabbage, soba noodles Dinner: rest of pork patties, shungiku (chrysanthemum greens) from the shoe-shop owner's garden, miso soup with plenty of veg I'm always amazed to find how many people posting seem to hit on the same ingredients, in or out of season. We're having a chicken and okra gumbo for tonight's dinner, thanks to a special on giant okra at the supermarket. Comin' up: lamb slices and veges seared on a hotplate, with a dipping sauce; grilled salt salmon with tofu-dressed chrysanthemum greens and a clear clam soup (if the budget stretches as far as clams...).

Top story in today's online New Zealand Herald was on Greymouth/Hokitika http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ I'd have to agree with episyd that Wanganui would be the safest choice...but I guess you knew that. The thing that would likely surprise you is not so much the cold winters and cool summers, but the rainy winters -- makes winter seem much more miserable than the temperatures suggest, and the west and southwest of the South Island have particularly high rainfall, even for NZ. In Wanganui, you wouldn't need Canadian-level overcoats (except for southbound holidays), but you would need warmer everyday clothes than you imagine. Also, NZ has windy island weather, so even summer days can have a chilly breeze (but maybe I feel it more these days coming from Japan's sweltering summers). You probably knew most of the remaining food terms anyway but... Scones...like southern US biscuits, UK scones Pikelets...a small griddle cake, bit thicker/stiffer than a pancake, definitely not as thick and big as a hotcake. Favorite starter project for kids learning to cook. Often served cold and buttered... Pineapple Lumps....gerkkkk, can't see the attraction myself. Lumps of chewy pineapple flavored candy (smell reminds me of unwashed kitchen cloths...) coated in chocolate. Also Chocolate Fish, Fantails, Jaffas, Curiously Strong Peppermints... Feijoas....a subtropical fruit which has become popular in NZ over the past several generations, has dark green fruits with a creamy white highly scented sweet-sour flesh, slightly pineappley scent. Originally south american, as is tamarillo, a very sharp-flavored deep red oval fruit (has many seeds, often unpopular with kids, but packs plenty of punch!). My kids have never tasted these, because we only go to NZ in winter on cheap airfares! Hangis....much like Hawaiian style luau. Last time I tried to dig one in my back garden here in Japan I hit a gas pipe... Cribs...South Island dialect for a small and simple holiday cottage, in the North Island usually called a bach. Kina....sea eggs, sea urchins, usually eaten raw Paua...a dark fleshed univalve, chewy, so usually minced into soups, fritters etc. Belgium...??? Could Kiwi fill you in on this? Survey of kids: they look forward to fat British style fresh sausages, flounder panfried for breakfast, wacky icecream flavors, lamb chops...and gravy made from a packet!!

I have to admit that I cannot deep-fry successfully on an electric stove. I use gas in Japan, but on an electric stove I find it hard to get the batch back up to temperature fast enough. Goes without saying that food (especially meat, which takes a while to warm up) should be at room temperature when frying. I found that out the hard way. What about "half deep frying" in about 1.5 inches of oil? That's about as much as I would feel confident with on an electric stove. Also remember the old rule...food should never cover more than half the surface area of the hot oil/fat. That's extra important with an electric stove. And...deep frying takes practice! Do it often enough, and you'll surely master it.

...are you cooking on an electric cooktop, using a specialized deep-fryer, or cooking over gas?? Makes such a difference...

Overeating and depression...yeah, I notice this at the sheltered workshop caf that my brother in law attends. He used to eat about half the food on the family dinner table, while the other 4 family members made do with what was left, but a shake-down of his meds seems to have sorted that out. As for cravings...I wondered what PMS was all about until I turned 40. So now I know. And now that I live in Japan, I've discovered what a Snickers bar is too (never saw one before I moved here). I cannot believe that this item actually passed marketing and product testing and became commercially available...also can't believe that a few times a year I actually go and buy one PMS in your 40s is cruel. It means that you are competing with your teenage sons for the same foods... Calcium supplements for cramps...gave me kidney stones...I never, ever, put anything with added calcium in my mouth these days! The pain of cramps just doesn't compare!

My favorite thing about being in Japan is how everybody goes nuts about whatever veg is just coming into season...the anticipation builds up...the first of the crop is sighted in shops, and eagerly reported to friends, lush photos all over the mags, and then it's HERE!!! and we start getting all excited about the next thing. The current thing is juicy, slightly loose-hearted spring cabbage (just put THAT in a medley and smoke it, then). My "vegetable side" hate list here starts and ends with shredded cabbage, the traditional accompaniment to crumbed, fried pork. Great if shredded and served immediately. Not great when prepared by the bucketful early in the morning and left to dry out... Isn't the vegetable medley the adult metamorphosis of the student stirfry?

Well, I hereby raise my soup spoon in salute to your Dad! I love soup. When I was a university student, my Dad came into the city for something, and dropped by with a bunch of garden flowers...and strict instructions not to turn them into soup!

Lamb cake...what an amazing idea that is! I'd love to see one. Easter is one western festival that has never conquered the Japanese calendar, but I still hear my kids counseling their friends to search the garden if it appears that Easter Bunny has missed the house call. In New Zealand, where I'm from, Easter is not spring, so special foods rarely go beyond hot cross buns. Our local church in Japan, perhaps predictably, prefers to use white eggs, undyed. They know all about dyeing eggs, but no...

I remember my parents making this comment too...especially as they were all set to enjoy their unencumbered post-parenting freedom with more dining out! Of course, I don't have this problem...nope, it was pure chance that, seated in a booth tucked under the staircase, we burned our hands on the invisible hot rock in the middle of our plates that the yakiniku was served on... I'd rather like a pink-shaded bedside lamp with a pull-cord that I could turn on to read the menu, and turn off to disguise red-faced inebriation!

It's true that I'm out of touch, though I spend a month or two in NZ most years. Because I mostly visited the South Island interpreting for agricultural or fisheries business, I saw more of the hardcore rural culture and mainstream hotels than the midtown cafe culture. I don't think that meat and 2 veg is a bad thing, not in a cool-climate agricultural society. The tourist triangle of Christchurch, Queenstown, and Te Anau (not to mention Nelson) has definitely grown up over the past 15 years, and I'm sure the experienced and innovative chefs in those areas (especially with the smaller, more exclusive lodges that started to appear in the 80s) have raised the game in other smaller towns too. It's a long time ago now, but negotiating the season's menus for tourists doing the main drag, and organizing business groups' events in smaller towns, I felt that rural South Island food WAS different from urban North Island food. Definitely not worse. That was a yummy list of tummy-rumbling memories from Kiwi! Speight's beer! Mmmm! Though I don't care for the US-influenced lighter Japanese beers (Sapporo for me, thank you!), I know that some Americans find NZ beers too sweet and full. Just keep drinking...the smaller breweries don't just make good beer, these days they make an incredible range of styles. As for wine - definitely the best are the best, but they can be hard to get, even in NZ. The average daily drop might be more astringent than you are used to. When looking for cheaper wine, I find myself going for the more flavorful Aust/NZ wines and taking the tannin that goes with them, because the equivalent budget European wines taste thin and metallic to me...obviously just what I've got used to. Put it this way -- in 2 months in NZ, I NEVER get to taste all the wines and beers that attract my interest. Another personal southern favorite -- organic, whole-grain rolled oats! When our supplies of NZ oats and honey run out, the whole family starts eyeing the airline timetables... Greymouth: still had a post-gold, post-coal, post-railroad era feel about it when I was last there. It sits below the Alps, on the most exposed part of the wild west coast, battered by the coldest seas, ready to take all the rain that the winds dump there before crossing the Alps...the obvious choice of location for that nice little murder movie, Bad Blood! It's beautiful, on its own terms -- I have clearer visual memories of the scenery of that area than of Invercargill or Wanganui. I believe Perfect Strangers was shot on the west coast too, but I have not seen it yet. Greymouth people pride themselves on being different and plainspoken, but if it all gets too different, the Tranz Alpine railroad will take you to Christchurch, and a solid half-day's drive will get you to Nelson -- a beautiful, sheltered area full of seafood, wine, fruit, art, music (hoping to get to the wooden flute festival there one day...), and full of people on jaunts from Wellington or Christchurch. Wanganui...yet another spot on my All-Abattoirs Tour. Warmer currents and northern location mean it is of course much warmer than the South Island. The gardens and forest indicate how much more sheltered it is than the exposed west coast. Behind Wanganui, the hilly farms are still quite rough - check out another gloomy little movie, Vigil, to see the half-cleared limestone hill farms. The Wanganui River makes it a beautiful area. You will not see much of Maori culture in the south and west of the South Island, but Wanganui has always had a strong Maori community and my hazy memory tells me that the museum there had a very fine collection of Maori things. Culturally, it reminded me pretty much of other smaller North Island towns -- being off the tourist track, it didn't (then, anyway) have the same class of food or service as smaller South Island towns. I have a friend who returns to his Wanganui farm religiously every year, and I think you would find a stable but open community there. On the other hand, it's not even 3 hours' drive to Wellington, which is a very diverse city, and less than half that to Palmerston North, which Kiwis love to sneer at, because it is a flat, inland city - but it is also a university town with plenty of interesting people. Also not too far to North Island skiing. The area south of Wanganui is a flatter, more agriculturally developed and diverse area, sure to provide you with plenty of eatables to choose from, but my information there is way out of date! I know a Japanese to English sign language interpreter in New Zealand...there must be people in NZ who know American sign language, because of the conference business. In Japan a few years back, it was cool for teenagers to learn sign language as a secret language for in-class gossip! I don't know which to recommend -- you can guess at the differences when you know that (VERY roughly) about one third of NZ's population live around Auckland, one third live in the rest of the North Island, and the remaining third live in the considerably larger South Island. Geologically, the North Island is much more volcanic, younger, with some limestone uplift. The South Island is pretty much a big hunk of greywacke booted violently up from below the seabed. That makes for two surprisingly different landscapes. I'm from South Auckland -- what was once a staid rural dairying area supplying the city; and is now an area of light industry, public housing projects, and home to most of the area's Polynesian immigrants, interspersed with people looking for the cheaper end of the seaside suburbs. I don't miss the old ways -- I LIKE singing Christmas carols in Samoan, Cook Island Maori, Niuean, and English! (After all, I'm a translator.) I like it that church suppers include Samoan chop suey, Niuean fish salad...and cucumber sandwiches! I like being able to buy Indian snake beans, drinking coconuts, and local honey all at the corner shop. My local shopping center has more people splurging on Chinese take-out with their unemployment benefit than readers of Cuisine magazine (which really IS an excellent mag)...it's true that I'd have to go further afield to buy more upmarket ingredients, but good food of one kind or another is one thing that is always to be found in NZ, especially if you are willing to cook it yourself.

Koshihikari is a cultivar -- there are cultivars which are used exclusively for sake, for example, but koshihikari is the cultivar which is the modern standard -- cooks up soft, white, glossy, and sweet. Most of the popular new brands have koshihikari or a close relative as one genetic "parent". Promoting each cultivar as a desirable brand, and selling cultivars separately rather than blending them all together is much the same as selling Jersey herds' milk separately from Friesian herds' milk.

Deep fried flounder (very small ones, fried whole) with lemon and soy sauce. Potatoes and corn, scallions, gratineed with a little bechamel (Kids' favorite). Spinach. Should have been a spring cabbage and spinach salad, but it was a looong day.

My back hasn't been the same since I fell down a whole flight of stairs (memo: don't read while walking down stairs...) nearly 30 years ago. Barefoot is my vote too, and a wooden floor is easier on you than concrete, of course I don't like clogs, because the shaped foot part is designed for back-forward motion, not the side-side motion that is common when working at a kitchen counter...but they are still the best for long periods of standing, if you have to wear shoes, and don't feel like hiking boots with 2 pairs of woolly socks. When you stand with both feet flat on the floor, your lower back sways out...but when you lean forward, your lower back will naturally round...a combination that means PAIN. You might find a chunky foot rest helpful, as having one raised just a little helps to unkink your back. Yoga is good for stretching your back, but be very careful that you are stretching evenly -- very easy to favor the painful side and make things worse. If your back pain is not acute, belly dancing is great for loosening up hips and shoulders after long periods standing in the kitchen or sitting at a computer. (I think belly dance lessons should be tax deductible for translators!). Or just give in, and use a bar-stool? For me, the only solution is to move to another country. Apparently, you should be able to touch the bottom of your sink with your fingertips. My counter-top was designed for a 150cm Japanese housewife, and it is excruciating -- I have to crouch to work at it, while also leaning backward to avoid the low-hung overhead cupboards. Solution...stack my chopping boards to raise the worksurface...take the chopping board to the coffee table and work kneeling down...tell the kids to do the dishes...play plenty of music and keep moving while I work.

I hear what you say about mainstream food, only kosher...my sister's favorite cookbook is a UK paperback called The Jewish Cookbook (can't find it right now...). She doesn't like food surprises, and she hates it when things turn out less than perfectly - that book is her pillow! Maybe Jewish mainstream cookbooks are so good because kosher cooks cook at home so much? Interested to read Jackal's brain recipe...the pastry was a surprise! I was served fried brains by my mother's friend once. They were sheep brains, breadcrumbed and deep fried. They may have been steamed and mashed in a white sauce and then formed into croquettes, but I don't recall the details - I was 7 at the time, and after one mouthful, I opened the window and dumped them in the bushes while my mother and her friend were gossiping in the kitchen. That mushy texture reminded me of instant mashed potatoes.

Invercargill on sabbatical??? You will want to make an extensive study of Bluff oysters! Don't miss the toheroa (a dark-fleshed shellfish) season - though sometimes the supply is not enough for the season to open at all. Other seafoods from elsewhere in NZ are scallops, smoked eel (and many other smoked fish), and green-lipped mussels, which NZers eat by the sackful. Also take your sweaters, your long undies, and your raincoat...New Zealand houses are usually not centrally heated, and Invercargill has plenty of old-fashioned houses. The southern and western part of the South Island has a cool, wet climate. That means drizzle year round...but spectacularly lush green farmland on the limestone areas round Invercargill, and thick bush on the steep mountains that run down to the fjords on the west coast. Invercargill is also not too far from Te Anau, which offers some of NZ's best skiing -- enough different slopes that the notoriously changeable weather rarely makes all slopes unskiable. (Island weather means that moist marine air can make snow icy very quickly). From Invercargill, you might want to go to Stewart Island. Dunedin and Invercargill are (surprise!) very Scots in their heritage, but where they are Scotty, the Stewart Island population is just plain dotty. Invercargill is not rich, because every now and then a government thinks they'll move a few unemployed people down there and see if they feel like working at the aluminum smelter or on the fishing boats...but behind all that is a prosperous farming community, so while isolated, it is not dead....but get a car if you can, because you will need your own rugged transport to enjoy life there. Second hand cars are notoriously expensive in NZ, but you can also resell a car of any age! A car will enable you to visit the coast, check out penguins, seals, fossils...visit inland goldmining areas...go skiing...) Food....the farming industy there is mainly sheep and some of the biggest abattoirs and freezing works in NZ are there...meat is cheap and of good quality (I had the misfortune to interpret for a party visiting all NZ's abattoirs once...I remember every one of them!). Most people eat strictly Brit-style meat and 2 veg for dinner. However, South Island cheese is of better average quality than in the North Island.... Food is cheap in NZ, but manufactured products are not. If you plan to cook, you might want to take a few favorite kitchen items with you...not electrical equipment, of course, as NZ uses 240v supply.

I have made ceviche and polynesian-style fish in lemon juice and coconut...in those cases, the fish is cut thin, and then soaked in quantities of sharp citrus juice, until it turns white. At Japanese New Year, I cure a block of sashimi-grade salmon in coarse salt and a little honey, with plenty of sliced but not squeezed lemon or yuzu. The salt and honey make the salmon much firmer, but it never loses that translucent look. I serve the fish sliced, interleaved with freshly sliced quarters of citrus. I don't use other herbs, but that is just because my Hokkaido-born husband wants the taste of salmon without strong condiments interfering!

W-wow! Thank you that carefully, planned, executed, and documented trial, and for all the other comments. I have that Georges Lang cookbook, which first alerted me to the possibilities of paprika, and I've been wondering for a looong time what the different types are like! I agree that it works well as a single spice though. Maybe that's why the quality of paprika here in Japan is so poor -- it's used purely for color. I have a simmered chicken recipe which uses a lot of paprika with vinegar, soy, and garlic -- can't say the flavor of the paprika is very evident.

A kind of cross-continent multi-ethnic deepfried gyouza (pork fried first and mixed with parsley, coriander, Chinese chives, before stuffing skins and deepfrying) Soup with channa dal, young daikon and leaves, flavored with cumin and the sharp whey from some yogurt cheese. Rice for the die-hards.