helenjp

nabe! Tip from Japanese magazine...drain (shucked, water-packed) oysters and drop in a little arrowroot powder (katakuri-ko). Swish round, then pull oysters out and toss in nabe. This stops them shriveling up when cooked. It works! I thought it would make them gluey, but most of the katakuriko just slides off the oyster (together with any tiny bits of gunk) and stays in the pack. Hankering for oysters, but younger son doesn't like them, and brother-in-law is in one of his suspicious moods where he thinks almost any food will make him sick.

You can make Japanese "thermal springs eggs" by immersing eggs in their shells in water at 150 deg. F (60 deg. C) (give or take 10 deg. F or 5 deg. C as you prefer) for 30 minutes or so...or by putting an egg on top of rice on "keep warm" setting in your rice cooker for about an hour. The ideal thermal springs egg has a soft yolk, and the white is cloudy, but in no way hard. So to poach eggs, you might like to try something in this temperature range?

You can sort of make your own (for use as an all-purpose shortcut seasoning) by... Filling a largeish kitchen shoyu pourer with equal amounts of mirin and shoyu, until about two-thirds full. Putting in 2-3 chunks of konbu and 1-2 dried shiitake, maybe a chunk of green ginger. You can also put in katsuobushi etc but that really makes it hard to pour, so if you want to do that, you might want to leave it for a few days and then strain the katsuobushi out. I prefer to add the katsuobushi to the recipe separately if needed, and think the basic mixture keeps better without it anyway.

Sunday: white rice pickles pork belly parboiled, sliced, fried in sesame oil and simmered with yatsugashira (an extra-large type of taro) and very thick fresh shiitake, soy sauce/mirin seasoning. We had a strong-flavored dinner dish to balance the "Sanuki" style udon at lunch -- udon served in it's own cooking liquid, garnished with sesame, scallions, ginger, and yuzu peel. Saturday: Younger son's request - vege soup with lamb and white beans, more or less Hungarian style with a very little tomato added. Friday: Hmmm...that was the day that I threatened to put my brother-in-law on an invalid's diet of gruel if he didn't shape up and take a bath, but I forget what we actually did have for dinner!

Hmmm...definitely spicy, sour foods! I remember that part, because it sparked a week-long office war! One of my workmates earnestly begged me on behalf of my baby not to eat hot, spicy food, just as I was racing out the office door, dragging the female half of the office shoeless behind me in my haste to get to the curry shop. I laughed...and came back an hour later to find the men fuming in an atmosphere of nicely-matured injured pride. I admit it, here was this guy full of kindly concern for my obvious lack of maternal instinct, and I laughed at him. Never again! I think the spiciness was to mask the actual smell of food, sourness too. Developed a real loathing for the smell of soy sauce, miso, and natto, things I normally ate every day. Had to wonder about that when my diagnosed but until then symptomless allergy to soybeans started to produce rashes after the baby was born... As for actual craving...don't recall anything until much later, when I used to long for something sweet on my marathon 3 and 4 hour walks. That probably wasn't craving, that was probably exhaustion!

Hmmm...son got a long-coveted takoyaki grill for Christmas, so we have had quite a few takoyaki sessions since then! We also used them to make Dutch-style poffertje -- worked well, but the texture could not be considered a variation of takoyaki, where the dough is supposed to remain gluey in the middle, and the "fillings" are supposed to add texture, preferably chewy. So...chopped up konnyaku seems the favorite budget-stretcher addition in Japan. We've also used corn and cheese with chopped scallions as noted, plus chopped-up sausage, and shrimp. Some of us considered offsetting the "glue" with herbs and/or chewy dried tomatoes, but some of us were voted down...

Saw your name and just knew what you would recommend... I bought this to use in New Zealand. I love the dark blue stoneware liner, love the way it cooks, love the oval shape. Cooked some great fish and chicken "no-water" dishes in mine!

Just kidding...though our cats used eat apple cores, possibly by precept and example. They would bring home fish from the beach from time to time, and often caught birds. They seemed to prefer their rarer catches of mice and rats though -- birds and fish were left outside, but rats and mice were frequently brought proudly indoors...and occasionally dropped, alive... People call miso-soup over rice "neko-manma" or "catfood" here. Getting off topic here...time to get back to boring translation!

Birthday dinner menu selected by now-12 year old son: Lamb chops on rocket leaves (now sheep are definitely prey I decided after one stood on my foot and was either too stupid or too evil to get off. At least a cow will move if you yell and twist its ear...). Packet gravy (big luxury here, saved for grand occasions!) Green beans Roast potatoes served with tarako-butter (salted cod roe mixed with softened butter) "Runway Birthday Cake" -- almond torte with grated chocolate and finely ground coffee, baked in a loaf pan and layered with a little raspberry jam and a chocolate ganache, and covered with a soft white chocolate ganache; runway markings marked on with a chocolate pen (refering to my work books -- I translate aviation safety material), and topped with a chocolate Airbus A310 brought back from Schiphol airport! Oddly, younger son chose an all-Japanese menu, though similarly old-fashioned, for his birthday a couple of weeks back.

yeah, but every day??? Hope you don't feed your cat beef...it might get the wrong idea about what size mammals to attack!

Japanese beef-rasing....definitely takes place indoors. Japanese visiting NZ when I used to be an interpreter thought it was cruel that cattle had to stay outside! Maybe some cattle spend some time in pasture in the summer in the more remote beef regions such as Kyushu or Hokkaido, but it is not common. Certainly they eat pellets, exclusively so in some cases. Expensive "wagyu" is supposedly raised on grains, not animal-protein based feeds, but some cattle had to have been eating all that UK animal-protein-based feed that Japan kept on importing long after UK farmers stopped using it! The average Japanese person thinks that Japanese beef is safe because it's done the Japanese way...but all beef here is not "wagyu". There was a scandal reported in AERA news magazine and elsewhere about a year ago (??hazy??), after a woman working at an agricultural testing facility in Hokkaido committed suicide after reporting a postive BSE result. Apparently she was heavily criticized for endangering the industry by allowing the result to go through, instead of re-routing the cow as a "downer" and sending it back to the farm to be disposed of quietly etc etc. It came out that farms had been recommended to slaughter cattle early, as younger animals tend to produce false negatives even when infected. To give them credit, Japan now has very strict rules, and downers cannot be processed for human or animal consumption, but are treated much like toxic industrial waste... Japanese beef 25 years ago was VERY heavily marbled (to my Kiwi eyes, anyway). I think it has become a bit leaner, but definitely not a grass-fed look. Use of growth hormones etc...I am really unsure about the legality of these in Japan. A farmer in Australia that I knew sold his farm to a Japanese-owned beef cattle operation and stayed on as manager, one of the earliest such operations, about 10 years ago. He was looking forward to it, but a year later he had quit the job. He said that the Japanese owners were trying to force him to use steroids and other practices which he felt were unsafe, unhealthy, and in some cases illegal. I can't say whether that means that such practices are the norm in Japan, whatever the law; or whether the owners thought they could get away with something in Australia that they couldn't get away with in Japan. Wish now that I'd taken notes, collected evidence etc., instead of just hearsay at a party! As somebody mentioned in some other thread, Angus have long been a popular breed in New Zealand for grassfed beef, but I assume that Charolais and Simmenthal and so forth get supplementary feeding. New Zealand farmers traditionally prepare ensilage as well as hay and root crops for the winter months, and hay was all I used to see in the holding fields at the local abattoir....30 years ago. About 20 years ago, I had the misfortune to interpret for a group of Japanese touring every major abattoir in New Zealand, and did not see protein-based feeds in use then, though we did not examine the holding areas or practices in detail as they were in NZ to observe processing and packing methods...and it's a while ago, anyway. From that experience, I gathered that most of the packers and wholesalers were accustomed to dealing with ready-to-cut packs of frozen or chilled meat portions, and butchers really expected their meat ready to slice and sell - I doubt if that trend has changed. I don't know much about North American practices, except for what I hear from a friend in Canada who owns a butchery. I do think that NZ practices have been shaped by long years of export-driven business, and by the increasing halal market. I'm not a big fan of the flavor or texture of grain-fed beef, but of course that's just a matter of what I grew up with.

I decided several years ago that in most cases, eating beef is tantamount to voting to continue current practices in raising, slaughtering, and processing beef. I rarely buy beef, and when I do, I buy grassfed beef. Why don't I buy more beef? Because it seems odd to make such a large animal part of my daily diet. Birds and fish seem on a more normal scale to me! (Not that I've been harvesting in the park recently...)

Interesting... In Australia, pawpaw/papaya refers to the larger, more tropical carica varieties. In New Zealand, we also grow a more cold-hardy and less fragrant type called Mountain Pawpaw...see link below. The bigger ones seem to attract the name papaya. especially over the past 10-15 years, but the mountain pawpaw always seems to be called pawpaw, maybe because they are grown and the name is passed from parent to child, whereas the more tropical varieties are bought, and get named by the vendors! http://www.wineoftheweek.com/food/0305autumn.html Ripe, carica papaya is a lush tropical fruit. Green it is refreshingly juicy and a little sour. As for the asimina types which seem to be best known in the US, I think I've seen them growing in Singapore, but don't recall ever seeing them for sale in NZ or in Brisbane (but I'm not familiar with Australian tropical fruits).

Tell all... Torakris, hope you are feeling better...hope the kids don't catch it or recover with superhuman speed! Salt is a problem with homemade pickles...especially as takuan has a particular balance of sugar and salt. On the other hand, storebought umeboshi seem way too sweet!

I like fresh sardines too. Boning. One of the best descriptions I have read was in a Marcella Hazan book (just scanned my shelves and can't spot either of mine, not sure if it is in Marcella's Kitchen (I think it is though) or the Classic Italian Cooking (...if I have the title right). I use sturdy kitchen scissors and my hands...cut head off (not strictly necessary, but), slit from vent to gills, discard guts and rinse fish quickly. Use hands to open fish right out, and put the butterflied fish on a board, skin side up, and run your hand firmly down the back, over the backbone. This is the key point! It loosens the bones. Then snap the backbone near the tail and head (if head is still attached). Gently "unzip) bones, pulling from head to tail. Use scissors to trim belly sides of the fish, or run the blade of a big knife under the fine bones at the belly, and trim off. Use scissors or knife to remove the dorsal fin if you want, and you're done. I usually toss them into salted water for about 20 minutes at this point -- think it sweetens the finished taste and firms them up a bit. You can sprinkle them with pepper or herbs, curry powder or whole curry spices, grill with extra salt, or quickly flour one or both sides (cornstarch or a grainy wholewheat flour) and deep fry in whole or half fillets! Enjoy!

...probably a wise move, unless you move somewhere much colder. I did make it once or twice, and it is dead easy, but you either have to dry a couple yourself, or buy them in bundles of 10 or more...which is utterly too much of a good thing. Home-made takuan by the tubful doesn't keep all that well in Tokyo temperatures unless refrigerated. Tasted OK, but so does the stuff from the supermarket! Our dinner tonight...another mixed menu pork belly and dried beans (brown kidney and scarlet runner) cooked in the rice cooker, caramelized onions out of the freezer, tomato out of the can, not too many herbs. Used a generous dose of aged "moromi" vinegar, which was a success. Rice, cooked in the rice cooker later on... Asparagus and egg-drop chicken soup for those still sick. Spinach "salad" (except the spinach was cooked) with ham and cheese, dressed with tiny bit of mustard vinaigrette. Natto for the die-hards who can eat natto with pork beans without feeling weird about it. Last of the Christmas chocolate for the truly indestructible stomachs only, mikan for the less hardy.

We had something vile for dinner at our house tonight! I picked up a ling (ocean pout), known here as "genge", which I found out too late is short for "ge no ge" or lowest of the low, the pits, etc. It looked like a typical soft-fleshed deepsea fish. http://www.h5.dion.ne.jp/~kakure/zukan/zukan_042.htm After a face-to-face with the ling, I decided to have him nabe-style, with plenty of long onion, tofu, and konbu, as everybody was still feeling low after flu. I've eaten ling in New Zealand before, but this was not that. It seemed to come from deeper sea, and was jellyish when raw, and jellyish plus slimy when cooked. Nobody could face it, not even me! Fortunately I'd baked an apple crumble for breakfast, so we ate that instead, and all crawled back to bed. By the way Torakris, the yuzu-koshou was good with sardine fillets, especially with the olive oil to crisp it up. Another time maybe I'll thin some out with yuzu-su and pour it on after grilling?? Also another time, I wonder about making other types of citrus-koshou. It's a wonderful way to have citrus peel flavorings ready to hand!

I can understand disliking cilantro. I like the taste, and in my 20s thought I'd grow some...but with masses of it growing beside a warm brick path, the smell was too nauseating. I can still eat it, but would never grow it again. ...now of course, what I miss is the warm brick path...

That's what I mean...refrigeration, canning, pasteurization, zapping of one form and another, and we suddenly get very lazy about checking if our food is really fresh enough to eat.

Yesssss! Found an Aussie site for Panasonic rice cookers. They talk about a "soup" setting which sounds like the "okayu" or congee setting. And!!! they have a chicken pot roast, they recommend lining the bottom of the cooker pot with foil, and using the normal "cooking" setting. Gotta try this! (If I can find a whole chicken, that is!) http://www.panasonic.com.au/home_appliance...r/recipe_10.cfm

It was Setsubun today in Japan, when you are supposed to eat sardines, and pin up holly leaves (and in some places sardine heads) over your doorways to ward off demons. If the demons come anyway, you are supposed to throw dry-roasted soybeans at them, saving enough to eat one for every year of your life. This year our demon was upstairs in bed with flu, and said that he'd had a message (by on-ee-mail of course) from the oni (demon) saying that he was never going to visit again after the treatment he got last year -- when our two sons leaped at their poor father and practically knocked him senseless trying to get his mask off. This year we're all too sick with flu, but next year the boys can be demons, and we'll chuck the beans... and as for the holly bush by our door, my husband forgot to water it while I was away with the kids in summer, so it looks as if the demons won out this year. By chance, we were all fitted out for the season -- we happened to have nothing in the house but 6 fresh, fat sardines, so I filleted them, soaked them in salty water for a while, and grilled them with yuzu-koshou (having dug it out of the fridge after reading of Torakris' obsession), red pepper, salt, and garlic in olive oil. Plus...white rice a mild miso soup with chopped nira (Chinese chives) and chopped beansprouts, courtesy of elder son broccoli from the stand over the road eggplant simmered in soy, mirin (sweet sake) and mustard.

This thing about spices and hot condiments being used to mask rotting food...I really, really doubt this. I suspect that we are more careless about food freshness than any preceding generation. Even in my lifetime, I can look back and think of foods that were considered unsafe to eat after 24 hours, that now are considered practically indestructible...milk, for example. Regards Helen H

I see that Krups puts out a rice cooker that is actually designed to be used as a slow cooker too... http://howstuffworks.pricegrabber.com/sear...cd067d79cb7f674 Ever since I found out that people cook beans in their rice cookers on the "okayu" setting, I've been gathering my courage to do a waterless chicken or pork braise in mine. (I liked this method of cooking whole fish or poultry or large cuts of meat in NZ, anxious to try it out here without turning the oven on and blasting the house into darkness in our usual winter scenario). Anybody performed this evil perversion with a rice cooker and willing to talk about it??

Cheap bologna (mouth-coating grease, foul smells, yeeeeurch!) Sausage (but I'm cheating, that's really an extension of the above) Silver Palate cookbook. Don't know why. Never liked it, seemed dated the day it was born, and I haven't learned to care for it since. But ditched my copy so long ago I've forgotten most of it.) As for foods in their natural state? Not too keen on mushy stuff like boiled fish sperm or lamb brains, but that's about it.

Well, gobble my gumboots, I'm sure I haven't got that right... http://www.slowfood-yamagata.jp/ hit the button at left which says "Katei-ryouri DB" to get to the recipe search page